Des ALMA 2

I was born in Latin America, to the typical single mother with an absent father. She was raising me technically alone with my grandmother, as she held a long distance relationship with him. Visits once a month, while he was drunk all weekend with us. Full of gifts, love bombing with grabbing and kissing, I was the favorite ginger haired treat for daddy. He was obsessed with me, my mother started being hostile to me. I started with insomnia and later with asthma attacks; nightmares about family members becoming evil haunted my sleep. I kept a secret for almost two decades: another male relative simultaneously molested me as my father did too. The younger male escalated the abuse on the day I got this id. We left the city to live as a “united family” with my father away from this young abuser. My daddy escalated his molestation while claiming when I confronted him and my mother, he had black outs about abuse when he got drunk. He was enabled by my needy mother, who did not stop him when she knew she was in my room at night. I went through university, married but divorced due to chronic depression. I was too ashamed about my trauma for years, actually disclosing the incest episodes on my 30’s. I was diagnosed accurately with Cpst and have navigated the trauma with narrative exposure therapy, retelling my story in therapy, online confiding with other survivors and in a blog. I cut ties from the dysfunctional family that did not believe me. We are a legion of human beings that were betrayed by people we grew up with, and we were chained by guilt not to speak up.