I've never done anything like this… its not an acceptable thing in my family.

well here is my story…

When i was growing up my father drank. a lot. He was abusive physically and emotionally. i don't have the nice childhood memories most have. I have the memories of walking outside to see my dad on top of my mom in the driveway screaming, my whole family hiding bruises, the pain this hands caused. I learned to accept it and see that it was my life and i had to deal with it. my time with other people always seems to get cut short.. i've had to deal with more deaths than alot of people i know.. When i was in sixth grade my cousin Codydied, he was in a car accident with his girlfriend. we're still not surre what happened. He was like my older brother. My protector. My rock. My life was in pieces and i was all alone. i've never had many friends. i wanted something to make the pain go away to fill the void, where i live its not hard to get drugs so naturally i started smoking weed,fighting,not trying in school. i thought my life was over. The following year (7th grade) I was a little better i learned to cope by cutting, if i was going to be in pain i wanted to control it.I also learned to hide the pain so i could be seen as the "model person", the kid who rose from the ashes. when in reality i was living in the ashes. I met this youth minister guy the few friends i had talked about. Gary. He showed me attention, love,support,safety. I became not only the "model person" but now i was the model "christian girl" i knew how to hide my cutting and pain especially at church. I learned from the best after all. when we were younger, my dad would take us to church ocasionally and show everybody his perfect little family and how happy we were then we'd go home and i would realize that would never be true we were just puppets to him. Gary gave me positiveattention i had neverexperienced from anyone. (i was always the fat girl) Him and his family became my family. thick as theives. They found out about the cutting and i told them everything by now the abuse was pretty much over. we dealt with it, we overcame it together. my new "family" helped me when i had to go home to my real one everyday.Gary and Emily were just like everyteenagers dream parents part parent/ part best friend, . Gary and i became very close. We talked about everything, we shared problems, we were best friends. Being in high school was hard mostly because of being the fat girl so i discovered a newway to not feel pain. when the weed quit working i starting taking anything i could get my hands on, hydro, zanx,bars, etc. I managed to keep it a secret not letting my church "family" know. I kept busy to help me not stop and think about things. So I threw myself into being the go to girl for anything Gary, Emily, or anbody in the youth group needed. I lived my life to please Gary, I did what he asked no matter what, i was always on his side after all i was "The daughter he never had". But he was always right, no matter what i thought i never disagreed with him. in shorter terms i was his personal slave emotionally and literally. we had a relationship that was so muchmore than "best friends" at this point. It was beyond even a father/daughter bond. i guess you could say in a wayi was kinda like his wife.(we'd been ask several times befireif we married.) In a way i liked it, i had attention, i hadsomeone love me forthe real me. In March of my senior year in High School, during the week of our county youth expo(FFA,4-hstuff)my mom sat me down and told me Gary had been raping my closest friend next to him since she was in seventh grade, he was in jail and would never get out. (my family always told me they thought something was weird about how friendly he was with girls.) instead of comfort they told me "I told you so" in meaner terms. My world stopped, cumbled, and shattered in so many ways. How was i going to function without texting him all day long like we'd done the past 4 years? how was i never going to be able to see him again? Never get to say goodbye? i wouldnt believe it, but i knew deep down that it was true since i'd thought that before. My Graduation was the first big event in the past 6 years that Gary was going to attend. My life was taken from me and i had no say in the matter. its been 6 months since he was arrested and sent to prison. i battle life everyday