Why Me? (Paperback)

In the blink of an eye, Mom ran up behind me and pushed me into the fence. Instinctively, I reached out my arms to stop my fall and ended up grabbing the live fence. My hands clamped around the thin wires, and my body collapsed to the ground as the electricity coursed through it. I opened my eyes and saw my mother standing over me with the strangest smile on her face. “Oh, my God, I’m going to die!” I thought in panic. Imagine never being able to close your eyes and remember the feel of your mother’s arms wrapped around you. Now imagine closing your eyes and remembering your mother’s tears splashing down on your face as she is on top of you, crying as she is trying to choke you to death. My mother left me these memories and many more during my traumatic childhood. After many years of struggling with trying to understand “Why Me?” I took back control of my life and started saying, “It was me, now what am I going to do?” The answer is my book, “Why Me?”. It is my childhood journey through the terrors of physical and mental abuse from first grade until the day I moved out. It is my way of letting the world know what was really going on behind closed doors.

This was an extremely difficult book for me to write as many of you can imagine.  In order to make the reader understand how I felt at a certain age or a certain time, I had to relive experiences that I never wanted to remember again.  Many times, I would write a few pages or an entire chapter and then not come back to writing it again for 2 to 3 weeks at a time. 

I debated a long time on how much to include in the book.  If I were to write about every horrific experience that I had growing up - it would have turned into a 500 page book.  I do feel that the experiences I wrote about in the book were the ones that really affected me long term and were ones I wasn't willing to forget about over time.  It is because of these incidents that I still struggle with an eating disorder, why I still can't look people in the eyes when I talk to them and why I have such a hard time trusting people.  While there were other incidents that would have made my readers cringe and cry (like Mom making me brush my teeth with Comet) - as an abused child - incidents like that were so normal that it all seemed to run together and I couldn't remember how old I was when certain events happened or what house we lived in.  I do know that when I talk about my abuse, the incidents I wrote about are the ones I can't let go of and that I remember as if they all happened yesterday.

However, I found that with each word, sentence, paragraph and chapter I completed, it helped me come to terms with the abuse I endured.  Actually reading what I went through myself helped me to realize that I really was the victim in the entire situation and that I wasted so many years feeling guilty for something I was not responsible for.  If anyone can take anything away from this book - it is my hope that it is inspiration - inspiration for others to share their stories and hopefully get some peace in their lives.  After every beating my mother gave me - it was so important to me to find something positive to cling on to - something to convince me to wake up the next morning.  It may sound cheesy and silly to some, but that's how I got through it - day after day. 

I will never understand why my mother treated me so poorly and I feel I have wasted too much of my life trying in vain to understand.   I will however, do everything in my power to help any child suffering as I suffered.  I pray for all of you suffering and I love you all.

UPDATE 5/23/2011
Please take the time to view my new release, What It Is, which is my journey to overcome my childhood demons and find happiness and love once and for all. 

Thank you for sharing my life.