“I Was Raped, Beaten, and Survived to Tell”
Between rapes, abuse, and betrayals, death seems kinder than life
I received a message that stripped away all my certainties about what it means to survive. A woman — let’s call her Elizabeth— decided to open her heart and tell me the most brutal story I’ve ever heard.
“Life doesn’t really get better, does it?” she began.
At that moment, I had no idea how much that question would haunt me.
At seven years old, life was normal.
But her brother’s birth transformed her into the unwanted child of the house. Her mother and stepfather started treating her like a burden, a mistake they were forced to endure.
When a child needs help with homework and instead gets a dictionary thrown at their face, something is fucking wrong with this world.
The screaming was constant. The accusations, endless. Threats became the soundtrack of her childhood. The physical abuse started subtly — a shove here, a push there. Her mother only hit her once, she says, but fuck — how many times do you need to hit a child to break their soul?
At fifteen, her mother kicked her out with words that froze my blood: “I hate your father more than I love you.” What kind of monster says this to…
