I grew up with just my mum. I didn’t know my dad until I went looking for him when I was 10.
I was abused by my cousins from age 7 till 13. It stopped because they moved. I couldn’t tell my mum because we didn’t have a mother-daughter relationship.
Since then, I’ve looked for love in the wrong places. I did many things to boost my self-esteem. I didn’t know the things I was doing were because I had a lot of anger and unforgiveness inside of me. I just thought I was getting through life, until 2015. A guy wanted to date me, and at the time, I had started a purity journey. I told him if we were going to date, we wouldn’t have sex. He asked why, and I told him I didn’t want sex, but while I was saying it, I sounded really angry. He noticed and told me to stop. He asked, “Who did this to me? Who messed me up?” He said he noticed a lot of anger inside of me and I was acting really defensive.
That was how my journey to healing started. We didn’t date, but he’s still my very good friend. He introduced me to his friend who is a therapist. I was able to talk to her about everything, including my childhood, as I cried.
It took me close to 2 years to heal and I thank God. I told my mum about everything that happened, this year. I had gotten to a stage where I could talk about it without crying. The last 2 years have been very interesting. I became very paranoid. I couldn’t stand the sight of a guy playing with a little girl or putting her on his lap. I would just shout. My therapist said it was normal for me to react that way.