It amazes me that a pic of an adorable little kitten can get 500+ likes, but the reports of abuses and crimes against our children, I’m told to stop sharing, that I’m spamming people. Really which would you consider to be more important? Can we not give our kids the attention they so rightly deserve during Child Abuse Prevention Month, or will we keep silencing them. ‘It’s in the family and we don’t talk about these things’, really? Keeping these dark ugly secrets shamed me into believing I deserved nothing different in life. At 9 my mother caught me naked in bed with my stepfather, got mad at me and sent me to my room for the night. At 9 was the first time I had a loaded shot gun shoved in my face and threatened to blow my f’n head off. At 11 he sold me for pure enjoyment because he could. He was treated to a few beers as the adult men watched a child be fed alcohol until she couldn’t stand up. They pawed at me and took turns feeling me up in a public bar. At twelve he used that same shotgun that was used pointed at my face at age 9, and shoved the barrel inside of me repeatedly. Tearing my insides apart as he threatened again to blow my head off, but this time it would be from the very inside of my vagina. He used the barrel of his favorite shotgun to take my virginity. At 13 I became his whore and the small town I lived in all viewed and judged me as just that, his property to do with as he pleased, o matter what that meant. At 12 I stopped bathing because it wasn’t safe to allow him to trap me in the small area. My mother during twelve years of his sadistic torture not once ever did anything to help me or stop him. In fact she neglected to see me as human. I was his object and she sacrificed her daughter to him so that she would not have to comply with her wifely duties. Caring for the family was my responsibility. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, and caring for my younger sister and my older brother, it was all on me. My skin rotted away in the filth and infection from not bathing. My arms and legs still bare the horrific scars from the puss leaking, infected, and disgusting sores that covered my flesh. My teeth became black broken fangs from never being given a simple toothbrush or having one trip to the dentist. I now carry all of this ugliness on my body. My reflection always is my reminder of these nightmares. It has taken a long time to see myself as a human, deserving of love, respect, caring. Not just an object to be tortured, beaten, raped, sold. Now this is why it matters to me, does it matter at all to you? If it does, then please help me share and lets get this information out there. Trust the town that ignored and judged me as a child, well there are many others like it and there are millions of children living in that same nightmarish life I had to endure for twelve long torture filled, decaying, rotting, disgusting, hellish years. How do you think my life followed when I left home? My six relationships throughout my adult life were a pattern filled with repeated attempts to actually murder me and take my very breath away. When will it all matter enough that it gets as much support as that adorable little kitten?