I Believe In The Healing Process

Have you ever kept a life altering secret to yourself for a matter of years? I was twelve years old and in the seventh grade. I had many best friends, but I had only one that I told almost everything to. I would spend weekends after weekends with her. Particularly one Saturday I may never forget. She had planned for her cousin to spend the night over with us. Through out the night, we watched blood clenching scary movies. By two am everyone was knocked out cold in deep sleep.

I was the first to wake up that morning. I stumbled into the kitchen and got a drink, when I turned around surprisingly my best friend’s step dad was in the door way. I never really liked the man. He disgusted me most of the time, and I frequently avoided him. After a while I decided to go back to bed. As I started walking back down the hall, he started hitting me around like a rag doll. Then he pushed me into his bedroom and locked the door. Unable to shout he began physically abusing me; I knew I had to get out. I easily fled away from him, reached the door, unlocked it, and ran to my best friend’s room where she and her cousin were still asleep. I knew he would not touch me around my friend and her cousin. So for the whole day I stayed around them. After that day I never spent the night again. Two years later I found out that he died, and yet out of fear I had not told anyone.

This is why I believe in the healing process. Since that night I still have occasional thoughts, dreams, and flashbacks about it, most of the time I cringe or break down over them. I also don’t trust many people, especially when I am alone with them. However, I have tried to get over that night in many ways, one by speaking out about that night. Healing has come through talking to a trustworthy friend that I know will never tell anyone and trying to take my mind off of the situation and think of something else. I even realize I can relate to people that have gone through similar situations. I help them out by explaining the ways I deal with it and try to get them to accept it as part of their life and their past. This also helps me to know and accept that there are more people in this world and not just me, which go through these kinds of problems. I believe healing is a way to cope to make you a better person.