I hated it when she said that. I wanted her to give me an answer now. What she was talking about meant I’d have to learn to trust my instincts. That was something that I found very difficult after growing up in a “wonderful Christian” home that I felt was hiding sexual abuse. I was often pulled back to this question. Were my memories true? My father denied the abuse and my mom and rest of the family had run to his defense and left me on the outside. It was very hard and left me wondering if my memories were true. So I often debated it with myself in my head.

I was 24 years old, in college at Michigan State University majoring in psychology and taking any class that looked interesting. I was floating; most of my energy was going to my therapy. I was in school mostly because I found it easier than working full time. In my family it was one or the other. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. So I was in school and, unbeknown to my family, I had started therapy. During therapy I realized that my dad had sexually abused me.

I didn’t want to believe that my dad had done such a horrible thing to me, but yet I also believed myself. I had spent so much time over the years trying to get somebody to help me. I’d been asking for help, sometimes in blatant ways, sometimes in unconscious ways. I had often become depressed, had even attempted suicide. I had found growing up to be a very difficult experience. I had started therapy to try and understand myself. And now I was finding answers, just not answers that I wanted.

As a child I had often been a worrier and had a lot of stomach aches that my dad referred to as a worrier’s stomach. The depression had started most seriously in High School. I remember one week in my senior year, realizing how seriously I was thinking about killing myself, that I scared myself. All these symptoms add to my belief that I’m right.

After graduation, I went away to a Christian school and struggled with a lot of depression there too. But I enjoyed being away from my family and was sad to have to move back home after college graduation. I needed to move out of my father’s house but felt that was impossible. This was not something my parents encouraged either. They wanted me home. I often complained to friends that I wanted to run away from home. One friend commented that, as I was an adult, I didn’t need to run away, I should just move out. But for some reason it didn’t feel possible to me.