Growing up in a small town and barely surviving abuse and teenage drinking, Tessa takes off for the US Air Force to change her life, but poor choices continue to haunt her with betrayals as she searches for that ever-elusive desire to be loved. She starts a family; however, just when life seems to straighten out, drug abuse enters her home, and then physical illnesses start plaguing her. So begins a life of struggling to survive so she can raise her children. Given less than a year to live after a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, she turns to the Lord. She is not prepared for the feelings of love and belonging she has missed all her life. After another divorce, she takes her children and moves back close to her hometown so that she can live in peace and raise her children. Tessa struggles with her relationship with her parents, and then after her younger sister commits suicide, her mother’s words change her life forever. Tessa starts dealing with the scars she has kept hidden all these years. Hidden Scars is that journey of learning to live with those scars like tattoos on the soul so that she can be set free.

Hidden SCARS

Tattoos on the SoulBy Tessa Rey

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2013 Tessa Rey
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4817-0007-8

Contents

Chapter 1 Open Wounds......................................1Chapter 2 Emotional Scars..................................13Chapter 3 A New Beginning..................................19Chapter 4 Nightmares.......................................25Chapter 5 Betrayals........................................31Chapter 6 The Wrath of God.................................37Chapter 7 Cancer...........................................45Chapter 8 Saving Grace.....................................61Chapter 9 Learning the Christian Walk......................69Chapter 10 Finding Forgiveness.............................79Chapter 11 Metastasized....................................87Chapter 12 Enough Already..................................91Chapter 13 Divorce.........................................97Chapter 14 Emotional Battle................................103Chapter 15 Hashimoto's Thyroid Disease.....................107Chapter 16 When the Lord Speaks............................111Chapter 17 Forgiveness.....................................115Chapter 18 Deflated........................................119Chapter 19 Good-byes.......................................123Chapter 20 A Full House....................................129Chapter 21 Osteonecrosis...................................133Chapter 22 Blessings.......................................137Chapter 23 No Plan B with the Lord.........................141Chapter 24 Set Free........................................145Chapter 25 Brokenhearted...................................151Chapter 26 The Darkest Hours...............................157Chapter 27 Transformation..................................161

Chapter One

OPEN WOUNDS

* * *

It has been said, "Time heals all wounds." I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens but is never gone.

—Rose Kennedy

As I stare into the mirror and examine the scars running across my chest and back, I am thankful I can hide them with clothes, but like physical scars that knot up over time and cause extreme pain, I am aware of the emotional scars that will also knot up and cause pain when they are pushed down and ignored over time.

I wanted to share my journey with you as I walked through the cleansing process of dealing with the emotional scars and acknowledging the physical ones. My transformation is here for you to witness, and I pray it might inspire some of you to always have hope and never give up.

As I wrote the following story and had to deal with the scars, I slowly began to heal in some areas and realized I just needed to let things go in other parts of my life. Love should never be conditional, and I have become aware that I spent my life looking for and trying to earn people's love. Then I discovered God's love (or agape love), and my life has never been the same.

As the title states, this book is about dealing with hidden scars, so I focused on the hurtful things; however, my life has been blessed with many wonderful moments as well. I learned that when something terrible happens, something amazing will also happen. I just have to find the joy in whatever is happening and enjoy my glass not only being half full but also overflowing. I also understand that because of my own pain, I have caused many scars to others as well, and I pray they will forgive me.

At the end of each chapter, I have included a sidenote with information on where one can find help with what I have experienced.

The names have been changed to protect identities.

I am a warrior. I don't know at what point in my life I learned how to overcome my adversities. I was small for my age, and people always told me I couldn't do things. It became a challenge. The tougher things were, the more I would push to overcome the obstacles. It took many years of slipping in the pit of life before I finally took hold of the Lord's outstretched hand and let Him pull me up out of the muck of life. Now I cannot believe I lived so long in that disgusting mess before I grabbed hold. People call me a survivor and an inspiration, but to me, a survivor is someone who has overcome their obstacles and lived to tell about it. I see myself as a warrior because my battles rage on. This is my story.

Childhood innocence must come to an end, and for some, it is much earlier than it is for others. My innocence was taken from me at eleven years of age. I was asleep in bed with my baby brother, Mark, tucked under my arm down the hall from our parents' bedroom, where we were awakened by their return late one night. I could tell Dad had been drinking again when his voice turned abusive toward Mom and he started beating on her. It was all I could do to keep Mark from running to them and so placed my hand over his mouth to stifle his cries. We both would flinch with each slap and whimper. I was terrified we would anger Dad and he would also hurt us. Until then, he had never laid a hand on either of us, but I had never seen this side of him. He had spanked our older brother and sister, Matthew and Sunny, often with the razor strap, which hung ever-present just outside the bathroom door in the hallway between our bedroom and my parents'. He had never laid a hand on Mom until that night, and when it was over, I heard him tell her to go file for divorce because he could not promise that he wouldn't beat her again. I held Mark long into the night as tears slipped silently down my cheeks until he fell asleep and I drifted off. The next morning, I was late getting up, and as I came around the corner into the living room, there was Mom in her rocking chair with a bruised and swollen face and missing a tooth, holding Mark. Dad had gotten up early and left. Guilt swept over me that I hadn't attempted to stop my dad. I had just lain in bed, hiding like a coward paralyzed with fear.

The next time I witnessed his rage was on New Year's Eve when I was home babysitting my younger sister and brother, Aponi and Mark, and Dad arrived. He waited for Mom and my older sister, Faith, to get home, and as they came through the door, he jumped up and pinned Mom in a corner, who then told Faith to call the cops. Dad threatened to hurt Mom but didn't go beyond getting in her face and holding her in a viselike grip with his forearm around her neck. When the police officer arrived, I was asked who I wished to stay with, and out of fear, I told him my father. I figured my mom had the older three kids but my dad just had us, and if I went with my mom, then he would be all alone. The police officer sent mom and Faith off to a friend's house for the night, leaving us with our dad. He had all three of us crawl in bed with him. An eleven-year-old should never be put in a position to choose between parents, and worse, whatever I chose, Aponi and Mark had to follow. My father moved out, and the family managed the best we could with us three younger ones going and staying with him at our grandmother's on the weekends. I was in sixth grade at this time. Mom had been married before my father and had had my brother and two sisters, Matthew, Sunny, and Faith. Then she married my father, and my younger sister, Aponi, my brother, Mark, and I were added to the family.

In May, our dad took all three of us to a rodeo with his girlfriend, so any hopes of parents reconciling was coming to an end. Later that month, he ran across someone he had known earlier in life and started dating her. Opal had two children of her own. He had Mom file the divorce papers, and so it was final. We would never be a family again. He and Opal were married and brought a daughter, Shelby, into the world the following year.

Mom had been working for Boise Cascade, and toward the end of my seventh-grade year, she decided to move the family. So she transferred jobs in order to drive a road grader up in the mountains during the week and then come home on weekends. I and the two younger siblings spent the summer with our dad and his new family, and because both adults worked, it became my job to manage the five younger ones, prepare dinner, and clean house. One time after an exhausting day of babysitting, preparing a roast with potatoes and carrots in the oven, and dusting, I felt really accomplished and proud of myself. But then Opal came home and immediately started running her fingers across the end tables in the living room and showing me how I had missed spots when I had been dusting. I was so angry and started to talk back, but Dad interrupted me, telling me to put my shoes on and help him irrigate. The time at my dad's became more stressful, and as seasons changed, we visited less and less, my dad becoming a stranger.

Mom got a boyfriend. When she was not working in the mountains, she was with him, leaving Sunny to be our caretaker. We were unsupervised most of the time because Sunny was involved in sports and had a job. I was really close with my grandmother on my dad's side and had always enjoyed visiting her. After the divorce, my father's siblings insisted us kids were too much for their mother to handle, and so my visits became few and far between, even though Grandma would call and beg for me to come spend time with her. I was twelve years old when she passed during an afternoon nap, but I had learned a very valuable lesson. My grandmother had always told me that if I laughed, the world would laugh with me but that if I cried, I would cry alone. So I learned how to hide my tears behind a big smile. Around that same time, I had started drinking and gotten drunk after my eighth-grade year, and through the years to come, I would use the alcohol to numb the pain that life would soon throw at me. My sisters always had big parties with lots of alcohol that lasted for days, and after one of these parties, I had decided to try drinking.

While my parents were still together, we would go to my cousin's house, and the adults would go out. One time, Star, my stepcousin, admitted that she was terrified of her stepdad, Uncle Alvah. Star had us practice an escape route should he come home in a drunken, abusive mood. We practiced escaping out the window and rescuing my baby cousin and then sneaking to the car in the shed and pushing it till we got it out of earshot. I could not comprehend why Star was so frightened until one night when Mom was at the bar and everyone had gone to bed. Sometime in the night, I was awakened in extreme terror. Someone was lying behind me, pressed up against me, with his arm pinning me down as he groped me. I fought with everything I had and pushed him away and thankfully was on the edge of the bed so he lost balance and fell to the floor. At this point I realized it was Uncle Alvah. Once I freed his hand, he just got up and staggered out of the room. I noticed then that Aponi and Mark were also in Mom's bed with me. I lay there, once more feeling like a coward, too afraid to move while I listened to him go into Faith's room, where shortly after, I heard a slap and Faith cussing him out. Then I could hear him move down the hall and stairs to where Sunny was sleeping. He was down there for quite some time before he came back up and went out the door. I knew about the loaded gun in the closet and tried to still my nerves and get up, but the few strides may as well as have been a hundred. I was too frozen with fright to move. Later, I found out Aponi had fallen asleep in the living room and Uncle Alvah had molested her first. She had gotten up and crawled in bed with me to hide from him, and he had followed her. I tried to tell Mom the next day, but she didn't want to hear it, and so my pleas fell on deaf ears. I came to believe that no one cared about what happened to me and that I would have to deal with these things on my own. All the adults in my life were too occupied with their own lives to show concern—except my grandma, and I had just lost her.

The summer after eighth grade, Mom moved the family back to our small hometown but sent Sunny and me ahead. We moved in with her parents and my Uncle Alvah, even after we had told her that he had molested all of her daughters in one night. One night while I was asleep on the living room floor in a sleeping bag, I was once again awakened by someone groping me. I fought with all my might and was able to get away. Then I curled up in the bottom of the sleeping bag, wrapping the zipper underneath. The worst part was that my grandfather had started talking dirty to me since we had moved back. He would expose himself when no one was around so I was not even sure if it was my uncle or grandfather who had touched me this time. They both smoked the same brand of cigarettes, and the air was just putrid with the smell. This experience triggered a terror that would be with me for many years to come. No one could touch me in the middle of the night when I was in a deep sleep without sending me into an anxiety attack. I told no one about this second incident because I figured I must have deserved the attention these men were giving me. I became a loner, not wanting to trust people but longing to be loved at the same time. I had a deep, desperate longing to feel loved.

We bounced between house rentals throughout my high school years but stayed around our hometown, and Uncle Alvah was there to go into drunken rages. One time, he shot at us while he was chasing our horses through the fields and threatening to shoot them. We had to get out of the van and hide behind it as bullets zinged past us. The summer following this incident, Uncle Alvah went to rehab, and everyone convinced us kids that he was safe to be around again because he no longer drank and had only been dangerous from drinking. So one day following my freshman year of high school, he stopped by the house and asked me to go with him to gather cattle up in the mountains. I was in charge of Aponi and Mark as usual, and so I told him I couldn't; however, Aponi volunteered, and I gave her permission. If there was one decision in my whole life I could take back, it would be this one. The next day, no one was waiting for me after driver's education, so I finally walked up town and called the house. My grandma answered. I was told my mom had to go get Aponi and that grandma would be in to get me shortly. I was furious I had been forgotten in town and was pouting pretty hard by the time Grandma arrived. When I got home, my older sister filled me in on Aponi, and the guilt that swept over me was overwhelming. I had left my baby sister wide open for such painful abuse. Uncle Alvah had showed up to get me, but instead, I had let Aponi take my place. Unknowingly to us, he had planned far ahead already, spiking orange juice with drugs and alcohol and then making her drink it. After she passed out, he abused her. The next morning when she awoke, he was sitting on his horse outside the tent, headed out to gather cattle, but he made sure to tell her what he had done before he rode off. Aponi waited till he was out of sight and ran all the way to town, ducking and hiding behind trees and running over hayfields that had just been mowed while she was barefoot, slicing her feet to shreds. She made it to town and got a drink of soda but started vomiting violently. She called our mom and hid until she arrived. Mom took her to the doctor, who confirmed she had been abused. When Aponi got home that night and I saw the shape her feet were in, the realization of what my little sister had endured just sickened me. The next year proved to devour the family, our grandmother posting Alvah's bail, and so we had loaded guns by the door with instructions to shoot him on the spot. Aponi testified, sending Uncle Alvah away to prison for ten years, but he escaped once and headed after our mom and Aponi. Thankfully, patrols stopped him before he reached the family. I had left for the US Air Force to escape; however, everyone continued to live in constant fear, and I would have nightmares for years to come. He was able to reach out to people from prison, and he threaten to kill or burn houses down, so he was required to serve his complete sentence before he was released.

This chapter of my life left open wounds so deep that only God could stitch me back together, and I hadn't met Him yet. He was there the whole time. I just didn't know how to reach out and take hold.

Sidenote: Much later in life, I came across a helpful handout from A Safe Place Ministries, and I have listed here a few notes from that handout:

In a brief moment, someone who chose to indulge his sinful passion for power and control chose you. Your life will never be the same again. You cannot undo the reality of the assault or the aftereffects that continue to shake your sense of safety and security. But hope and healing are possible. It will involve a commitment to move out of denial and a willingness to let others walk beside you through the valley of secrecy, guilt, shame, doubt, and fear, the valley that you now walk alone. Whether the assault happened yesterday or years ago, there is a way out of the pain. The effects of child sexual abuse are far-reaching—both in the present damage done to the developing child and in the child's future. The child must usually deal with the repercussions of the betrayal of trust, powerlessness, terror, and pain alone and in silence. "The average child makes nine attempts to disclose the abuse before someone responds. Boys often have more trouble than girls in saying they have been abused" (Doris Sandford, 1991). Adults abused as children often experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder—intrusive memories, flashbacks, nightmares, dissociative episodes when present stressors trigger memories of the past trauma. Some common reactions to sexual assault include the following:

1. Shock and disbelief: Feeling numb and dazed, withdrawn and distant from other people. Desire to avoid people and places that remind you of the assault.

2. Remembering what happened and what it felt like: Unwanted memories, flashbacks, or nightmares. Reexperiencing some of the sensations and feelings you had during the assault, such as fear and powerlessness.

3. Intense emotions: Anger, anxiety, grief, depression.

4. Physical symptoms: Sleep disturbances, headaches, stomachaches, difficulty concentrating, and loss of interest in things formerly enjoyed.

5. Fear. Fear about personal safety, feeling powerless and vulnerable.

6. Self-blame and shame. Feeling dirty, devalued, humiliated, shameful or guilty.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Hidden SCARSby Tessa Rey Copyright © 2013 by Tessa Rey. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.