Screaming on the Inside (bike)

I am battling overwhelming feelings of worthlessness while being treated with love.  I want to be whole. I long to be healthy and to break all the cycles that have ransacked my life.  Here is what is swirling around in my heart.

This week I wrote out a timeline of abuse I have experienced. The words written paper had a powerful impact.  I saw that in the 19 years of my childhood I was sexually abused for 16 of them by 11 different males.  My world was turned upside down by the selfish disgusting lust of vile men.

Meanwhile, I was abused by my parents for all 19 years, emotionally, spiritually, physically, verbally.  Their treatment of me wasn't just a trivial thing. They taught me that I was worthless. They taught me that I was not worth receiving gifts or kindness or love.  They taught me lies.

In the last few days, I have remembered another painful memory.  It is the memory of my mother seeing me being sexually assaulted by Robert, a teenage boy that lived with us.  She told me that I was now worthless. She told me that if I ever told, people would know how worthless I really was. They would never believe me and that they would see me as shameful and want nothing to do with me.

She wrote that painful lie so deeply on my heart then proved to me it was true. She and my dad did one cruel thing after another to prove to me how worthless they thought I was.  Then my parents told me they were adopting the young man who they knew had stolen my childhood. They rejected me as worthless and gave him the honor of sonship.

While I was treated as no more than a slave, he was treated with kindness. While I was neglected he was given gifts and kindness.  I recall being beaten for him when he should have been beaten. He was allowed to tie me up, torture me, to defile my body and to abuse me physically, sexually and psychologically.

One day, my parents bought my little sisters beautiful shiny strawberry shortcake bikes.  They were four and five years younger than me.  I had never been given a bike. I was nine years old. I didn't even know how to ride a bike.   I looked at those pretty pink bikes shining in the sunlight and for just a moment I imagined that I might be worthy of a beautiful gift.  I worked up the courage to ask.   I went to my dad who was in the back yard with Robert.

Feeling sheepish and afraid I asked my dad " Can I please have a bike?"  he laughed out loud, then looked at Robert with a look in his eye that was more like a sinister sparkle. He said, "Sure you can have a bike."  He and Robert went off together laughing at something, but I didn't know what.
About an hour later my dad returned home.  He had something in his arms.  He and Roberts grinned at me as they plunked it down in front of me. They had scoured the dump to find me the worst possible bike.  It was a rust-encrusted bicycle, that was so caked in rust that I could not see a speck of silver showing through. It had burgundy paint that was bubbled and covered in mud. The handlebars were twisted. The tires were so old they hung like droopy cracked skin from the rims. The seat was a faded gold banana seat that had deep tears so the rotten padding was gapped out across the seat creating a bumpy cavernous crater in the middle of the seat.

I looked at the ugly piece of trash they presented me, and several feet in front of me sat my little sister's beautiful shiny bikes.  I could easily see the difference.  My dad and Robert laughed and walked away from me.  I don't remember crying.  I accepted my lot.  I knew that this bike was a perfect picture of my worthlessness.  It was what was left of me.

I had just started my first babysitting job. So I spent the next few weeks getting supplies from the local hardware store. I used SOS pads to scrub the deep layers of the rust off the rims and handlebars.  In time I saved up enough to buy new tires and new tubes. I struggled and battled to get them on the bike but eventually, they were attached.  I wheeled the ugly bike down the road to a nearby gas station and filled the tires with air.

It didn't look pretty, and it would never be whole but the bike represented me.  It was tattered, broken and ugly, but I was going to get it to work somehow.  I was going to learn to ride if it was the last thing I did. I walked the bike several blocks away to where there was a hill.  I sat on the cavernous seat and was filled with fear.  The hill looked so big and I had no idea how to even balance.  I had taken the bike this far, I had to press through the incredible fear I felt.  I put my foot on one pedal and pushed off with my other foot. I found myself barreling down the hill so quickly that it took my breath away. I found my footing and began to petal. I soared on my ugly bike.  As a worthless girl, that ugly bike was all I was deemed worthy of, but I chose to make the best of it.

As the years passed by and the abuse continued and escalated the deep roots of worthlessness cemented themselves to my heart.  This week I have battled those feelings in such a fierce way.  In the past month was given the gift of a true friend. She treats me like some sort of precious valuable treasure.  I can not understand it and I am struggling to reconcile with it.

She has given me undeserved gifts.  I can not repay her if I wanted to because I do not have enough money to even buy groceries right now. I find myself screaming on the inside, wanting to tell her, you have to the wrong person.  Don't you see, I am so worthless. I deserve nothing, I shouldn't be treated with kindness. I shouldn't be given gifts, I shouldn't be cared about.

In my brokenness, I sometimes feel like running, on sabotaging on pushing away to protect my heart.  When I have been given good gifts before, those very people then abused me, used me and hurt me.  Years ago, My last best friend slept with my husband, stealing more than she ever knew.  Yet a month before she gave me a great gift by helping pay my airfare to New York so that we could have a girls week touring the Big Apple.  It was such a beautiful gift.  Then she lost her job and needed a place to stay for a few months.  I let her stay in our home while she looked for a new place. I embraced her as a true friend and she took advantage by having sex with my husband on my living room floor while I slept alone down the hall.

So now, I need to decide how to cope with all this pain.  I am crying from the heartache of my mother's words as she deemed me worthless while refusing to protect me from Robert and embracing him as a son.  I am broken from the cruelty they doled out to me.  I am afraid to trust because of the horrific betrayal I experienced at the hands of the two people who claimed to be my best friends.

So how can I receive a gift? How can I see myself as anything but worthless and undeserving to the kindness my sweet friend is offering. How can I respond in a healthy way?  Running isn't the answer. rejecting love is not going to help me heal.  Accepting the lies spoken over me, and enacted repeatedly will not help me to grow.

So, I stand at a turning point. I have to choose to trust. I have to choose to accept love. I have to choose to battle the whispers of my past that say I am unworthy of gifts, unworthy of goodness, unworthy of kindness and love.  I have to fight past the urge to run.  I have to speak a new truth over myself.  I may not believe that I am worth anything yet but despite my disbelief I need to somehow say "Kirsten, you are being treated the way God wants you to be treated so breathe in, and be the person you were designed to be."
Lord help me to accept love and reject lies.