Never give up!

Thinking about the show topic from today's show, Dave Decker from Angeresources.com wrote about the "Myth's About Domestic Abuse" from his website http://www.angeresources.com and as I was reading aloud myth number 16 that "Many abused women actually like the conflict and the abuse
• i.e. they like the "pain" and chaos and they are "masochistic" I thought back to the many times I have heard that in my lifetime and even said it myself. I thought back to my mom's situation and how she could have left the abusive marriage she was in and divorced my dad and had every opportunity to get help, and she chose to stay. As a child I could never understand why she would allow herself to be abused by my dad and had heard my older siblings plead with her to get out of the marriage and start a new life for herself. We were of course hoping she would take us with her, but even suggested that she leave us in the home with my dad and that we just wanted her to be happy and would be okay if she just got herself out. As I grew older and the abuse continued on and on, day after day, month after month and year after year I became bitter about the abuse I was suffering at her hands and at my dad's hands and became soured in my ways of thinking and believed that she stayed because she "must have liked the chaos and abuse". As a teen-ager I even tried to convince her to leave my dad and told her that I would work and her and I could get an apartment together and I was even willing to overlook the abuse she had been inflicting upon me my whole life. I cared very much for my mom even though she cared very little about herself or her children and that included me. She would not accept my offer and chose to stay. I would often think about it as a young adult and thought to myself that she must have enjoyed the horror's of living with my dad and also believed that she enjoyed abusing me as I was born out of marital rape and she made it very clear that she did not love me or want me and should have killed me at birth. I continued to love her deep down inside my heart, and all the while my mind and my crushed spirit hated what my parents had done to each other and to us, their seven children. All of her children wanted her to be happy and healthy and did not want to see her abused and end up a bitter woman on her death bed, which is exactly the way it went. My mom did not enjoy being abused, she did not enjoy being raped, she did not enjoy being made to feel worthless and she did not deserve any of the abuse she was forced to endure by her own mother and then by her husband. If you are in this situation or have been, make sure you get help. Call a crisis line if you have to. Do whatever you can to hold on and get some help. Never ever give up! It's not an option! You do count, you do matter. You do not deserve to suffer or be abused. No one deserves to be abused. No one likes to be abused or enjoys being abused. Please reach out and never stop reaching out until you get the help you so deserve!!