If dying was the most horrifying experience of my life, then being dead had to be the most peaceful. Oh, I knew I hadn't really died, but I also knew that had I been able to stay in that unconscious state, had I been given a choice, I would never have come back. no one can hurt you in death. My horrible life would be over and no one could ever hurt me again. 

Coming back from that peace was always terrifying, and made me extremely angry. Along with despair over surviving the suffications, I would have crazy thoughts running through my mind. 

'Oh no, I'm still alive. God I wish I were dead! Can't god do anything right? Nothing good ever happens to me. If I'd only died, daddy would go to prison and my family would be safe from him. 

I always cried after awakening from my ugly world. My terrible life would stretch out before me, and pain like no one could imagine would overcome me. 

I knew there would be no end to my ugly, hateful worthless life. I would go on forever watching my father destroy everything he claimed to love. 

I couldn't handle the thought of doing this all over again, this living dead life of mine. I just couldn't do it. I could not bear it again. I wasn't strong like i pretended to be. I was tired. Too tired to live through it myself and too tired to watch it happen to my brothers and sisters any longer. 

Out of one of the pillow incidents came  one of many thoughts of suicidal revenge and murder. 

I would kill my father in a second if it would put an end to what my father was doing to us, But if god couldn't stop my father, what could I do. My father would do whatever he wanted , anytime he wanted and that was just the way it was. 

I'd quit believing good things happened to me a long time ago. I believed God had deserted me for unknown reasons, which he didn't think to explain to me. 

It would be many years before i realized that the God I had forsaken had never forsaken to me. 

He was with me every time I hid in my closet hide-a-way. He was with me when my father broke my nose and broke my cheek open to the bone for going to the fair. He was with me when my father wrapped my hands round a pipe and forced me to beat to death, decapitate, skin and eat a favorite pet rabbit. 

God lived my childhood right beside me. Every horrible thing that happened to me also happened to him. The inner strength I used to overcome my ugly dirrty life, was a God given strength. 

It was god who held me back when I wanted to throw myself into the snake river gorge. It was he who held my hand back when I clutched the pills to end my life, he who saved me from so many drug overdoses I couldn't count. 

I know now it was God who gave me the wisdom to realize that the best revenge possible is survival of the body and mind. I survived a horrible life and will use the knowledge and pain to help others who don't know, to be able to understand the damage done to a child through the abuse. 

I also survived, so I can help others who have been abused know that there is hope and healing. You are not alone. 

If I have done my job right, through the reading of my words YOU 
 will become an abused child if only for a single night. Through my words, you will have to survive being raped and smothered just as I had to. Through the shame and degradation, pain by awful pain. But not without hope.   

Only then, as one of us, will you be able to understand and possibly help stop the death of innocence happening to our children today. 

I will end my story with the old adage "All good things come to those who wait". 

And say to you "not so for the child of abuse". With us it is better said " good things won't come no matter how long you wait, so you better damn well make your own"