Hi everyone! 😊 If you are actually reading this I am extremely thankful and I truly appreciate you taking the time to read my story. My name is Kayla and I am a 27 yr. old mother of two. My birthday is Nov. 15th which is coming up pretty soon. I truly dread the idea of getting closer to my 30s. 😕 I have a 6 yr old son named Cayden and a 3 yr old daughter named Leah. They are my pride and joy. I am currently married but I am separated and heading towards divorce. I was married for 4 years before finding out that my husband was talking to other women and cheating. It took a long time for the reality of my situation to sink in. I didn’t know it at the time but my husband was also emotionally abusing me and my children. I never thought I would end up in a marriage as horrific as the one I was in. My husband put me through unnecessary pain and torture. My story is a long story so if you have the time to hear it, please make yourself comfortable because this may take a while. I guess the best place to start would be the beginning so that’s where I will begin. I had somewhat of a good childhood from what I can remember. My grandparents bought me everything I could possibly want and I was pretty happy. Unfortunately, my parents began to fight and argue when I was around 7-8 yrs old. I noticed the changes and I guess it bothered me more than I assumed it did. I started having severe anxiety and soon developed separation anxiety because of all the fighting. I guess that I got it in my little head that someone was going to leave me all alone, either my mom or dad one. So I held onto my mother because that’s who I felt closest to and I was so afraid to lose her. I started having nightmares of bad things happening to my mother. My dad just made things worse by getting angry at me for having that type of anxiety. When she would leave without me I would cry and scream for hours but my dad would whoop me and scream at me. I will never forget the hate I felt towards him for doing that to me…I couldn’t help it. My dad ended up leaving my mom soon after. He left her and 2 kids all alone because he just couldn’t “handle” it anymore. I came home from school one day and my mom had to explain to me that my dad had just packed everything and left. They ended up getting a divorce. Soon after, I developed depression as well but my anxiety stayed the same, no better or worse. Around the age of 13 I decided to go and live with my dad for a little while so I could improve my relationship with him. It helped in a way. After living with him for 4 months or so my dad decided to let a friend of his move in temporarily. This friend of his was a young man that was in his early 20s and his name was Jason. We ended up becoming good friends and he started to date my older cousin Lisa. A few months go by and they end up breaking up for some reason. Jason comes over and tells me everything that happened. He put his hand on my leg but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Now..my grandparents owned a restaurant at this point in time. The next night while I’m hanging out at the family restaurant with my mom and grandparents, Jason decides to stop by. He comes in and talks for a little bit but before he leaves he comes over and asks if I will go riding with him in his truck so we can talk. We were close friends at this point so of course I agreed. Note: My mothers home and our family restaurant are in an extremely small southern town out in the middle of nowhere. I go out in to the parking lot and climb in Jason’s truck. He starts it, pulls out, and takes the road next to our restaurant which leads to the river/woods/farmland. This road has houses on it for the first mile or so but then it forks and ends up being gravel and dirt roads. During this ride he talks about how much he likes me and I don’t feel uncomfortable until he pulls off onto the gravel road instead of turning around. At this point I’m not too uncomfortable so I just keep talking to him and we keep going. A few minutes pass and now he makes another turn onto a dirt road leading to woods and a cabin past it’s prime. He pulls the truck up near the cabin (100 or so yards away) and shuts the truck off. He takes the keys out of the ignition and gets out to do something. A minute passes and he gets back into the truck with me. It is around 7:30 pm and pretty dark. At this point I am extremely nervous and a little scared. Mind you, I am only 13 yrs old and I have no clue what sex is and I’ve never even made out with anyone. I’m assuming he brought me all the way here just to make out with me. I’m wrong. After what seemed like a lifetime of eery silence, he reaches over, puts his hand behind my head, and pulls me in for a kiss. I accept the kiss but I was so nervous! Then he reaches his hand down and touches my breast…ok I can handle that. Next, he puts his hand between my legs (I’m fully clothed here) but I squeeze my legs together and lightly slap his hand. When I slap his hand lightly I guess it made him mad because what happened next is forever burned into my memories. He grabs my left leg tightly and jerks it to the side and the pulling it up over him so that it is now squeezed between him and the truck seat. I am now in a strange position with my back against the passenger door. Then, he reaches up and starts to pull my shirt up and he starts to grab at my breasts. At this point I am asking him to please stop and to please slow down. He seems to ignore my requests completely. I start to panic. I kick him in the chest with my left leg almost knocking him out of the truck. He regains his composure and halfway steps out of the truck so that he has one leg planted on the ground and a bent knee on the stepside of his truck. Then, he grabs my left leg and jerks me towards him pulling me out of the driver side doorway. Now I am halfway out of the truck or at least my legs and hips are. He jerks my pants down and at this point I am screaming no as loud as I possibly can but we are in the middle of nowhere. Nobody can hear my pleas or cries. I start crying and begging. He flips me over and slams my head against the driver’s seat as hard as he can. He rapes me…over and over and over. I try to fight back again but he grabs me by my hair and pulls as hard as he can. It felt like it lasted forever…a never ending nightmare. Moving on, I was so afraid to tell someone what happened to me. I wanted to tell my mom but I was too afraid. I ended up telling my cousin Lisa instead. She was in shock and she went straight to my dad and told him. Of course, they carried me to the cops and they made me retell all events. I had to relive it over and over in my head. We went to court and I lost…lack of evidence. He won and only did a very short time in jail. I was devastated. I was diagnosed with depression/anxiety and PTSD soon after. They put me on a ton of meds but nothing helped me forget that night. I still have a fear of riding in trucks with men alone. My teenage years were all a blur because I used drugs and alcohol to help forget the past. Around the age of 17/18 I had a severe car accident that I was very lucky to survive. I flipped my car 6 times and I was ejected from my car on the 6th flip. I was ejected from a small crack in the driver window. I landed head first on pavement but ended up in a water filled ditch. I remember waking up drowning pretty much. I had no feeling from the hips down so I was unable to walk. I had to crawl out of that ditch with my hands and pull myself up onto the highway. I laid there in the road for at least 15-20 mins before someone found me. They wanted to airlift me but there was nowhere for a helicopter to land. The ambulance ended up picking me up instead. I had a fractured C6-C7 vertebrae, a head injury, internal bruising, and other minor injuries such as glass being stuck in my face. I was told I needed immediate surgery to repair my broken neck. I still couldn’t walk. They performed surgery on my neck by doing a fusion. They removed bone from my hip to replace my fractured vertebrae but first they had to remove all of the bone fragments. Then they put in a small metal plate and fixed it with screws. I was paralyzed for a year and my mom had to do everything for me. After physical therapy and a year of pain, I was finally able to walk again. Sadly, I had long term injuries such as short term memory loss. My car was completely totaled. My PTSD only got worse and so did my depression and anxiety. They had me on enough pain medication to kill a horse. I took pain meds for a year after surgery and when I got ready to quit taking them, I couldn’t. Nobody told me how addictive these things were!! Within the next couple of years, I end up trying to commit suicide multiple times and I also used cutting as a way to feel. I am lost but i keep trying to pull myself out of this dark hole i am in. I start trying to live a normal healthy life, I moved on and tried putting the past in the past. Around the age of 19 I met someone and we started dating. I fell in love and I was crazy about him because he was the only man that had ever done me right. At this point in time, I still heavily relying on pain meds to get through each day. Sometimes I even resort to buying them off the street. So me and this guy dated for about 2 yrs and the unexpectantly on my 21st birthday I found out I was pregnant with his child. I was happy and finally felt at peace in my life. He seemed happy also but he also seemed worried. 8 months later I have a beautiful healthy baby boy that is a little early but he is ok. He weighed 4 lbs and 11 ounces. We name him Cayden Lee. My first born, my love. My boyfriend starts to distance himself and he doesn’t come around as much. I feel heartbroken. Eventually, he stops coming period. I try to work out things with him but he refuses and wants nothing more to do with us. He ends up moving to a different state all the way across the country without even saying goodbye to me or his son. I was shocked that this man I was utterly in love with could do such a terrible thing. He left us and deserted us. I raise my son with the help of family and try to be the best mother I can be. The pain pill addiction gets worse and eventually it gets to the point I am sick of it. I just want to be a normal person again. At my version of rock bottom I find out about a drug called Suboxone and a recovery program for opiate addicts. My family does some research and finally finds me a doctor nearby to see for help. We go to this doctor and they put me on Suboxone. My pain pill addiction is finally gone and I’m in recovery. For once in my life, I feel that things may actually work out. My life starts to get a little better each day that goes by. Suboxone has saved my life!! During this time I am also declared as disabled and unable to work due to injuries caused by my car accident. That doesn’t stop me though. I end up going to college to get a degree in health information technology. I want to be a medical assistant or a medical coder. I’m doing wonderful in school. Not only am I on the Dean’s list but I am also on the honor roll with perfect grades and a 4.2 GPA. A year into school I meet someone. I fall madly in love. This man is everything I’ve ever dreamed of and I can really tell that he loves me and cares for me. His name is Matt. We start dating and 6 months in I find out I am pregnant yet again. A huge shocker. I tell Matt one afternoon while we are relaxing at his house. I call him into the bathroom and show him all of the positive pregnancy tests even though I’m so nervous I could cry. He looks at them and looks at me. He can tell I’m distraught. He picks me up, kisses me, and tells me how exacted he is. I’m so happy that he is happy. Relief washes over me and I’m crying happy tears. Matt already has one daughter and an adopted child from a previous marriage but I love them as if they are my own 2 daughters. 6 months into my pregnancy, we go and get married. I was so happy and so in love with this man. He truly made me feel complete. 9 months down the road and I’m being induced. Our baby girl, Miss Leah Faye arrives into this world weighing 7 lbs and more beautiful than we could have ever imagined. Matt is by my side throughout the whole ordeal and even sleeps in the hospital bed with me during our stay. We were this beautiful happy little family that felt so complete. I couldn’t have been happier. I had a loving husband, a healthy baby girl, an amazing son, and 2 beautiful stepdaughters. I finally had the family I had always hoped for. Matt knew about my recovery and the Suboxone. At this point I am still in recovery and doing very well. A year goes by and our sweet babygirl is a year old…boy, time sure does fly. I have this connection with my daughter that I can’t explain. However, my marriage is starting to go downhill. My husband starts to argue with me about everything and it’s as if he is distancing himself from me. I cry at nights and write him texts begging him to tell me what’s wrong. He says it is lack of sleep, working too much, and stress. I trust him and believe that stress may be the cause. We start to have financial problems. I was disabled up until now from my wreck. They found out I was married and they took my disability away from me but I don’t understand why. That was half of our income and now we don’t have it anymore. So financially we are in trouble. I go out and try to work to help my husband with bills but I can’t handle the job emotionally or physically. They fire me. Things get worse between me and my husband and it seems like we are fighting over everything constantly. I truly love this man but I feel so alone and lost. I ended up finding another job but I am fired after only a couple weeks due to physical limitations and my right arm going completely dead. When I lost that job my husband seemed to resent me. Things really started to go downhill then. We lost our home due to financial issues and we had to stay with family. During this time, my husband decides to leave me and my 2 kids. He left us homeless without anything. I had never felt more broken hearted than I did then. I wanted to give up. I wanted to die. I was madly in love with this man and he just threw me away because the going got tough. After a week he decides to come back. I sell my car and rent us a new apartment. We move in and things seem to go well for a couple months. Then it got bad again. He started to put me down emotionally, telling me that I was worthless and useless. He would tell me that I couldn’t do anything right and that I was a bad wife, a bad housewife, and a bad mother. I knew I wasn’t perfect but I knew for a fact that I was a good wife and a good mother. I waited on my husband hand and foot and did everything I could to please him but he would still put me down. My depression started to seep in again. I became so sick emotionally that I had given up in a way…stopped caring. He started to put down my medicine and then he started to treat my son badly. I also started to notice little things like him putting a passcode on his phone or texting on his phone secretly. My intuition told me he was cheating but I ignored it. We start having financial problems again which adds to the fire. One morning, his phone rings so I pick it up to check it while he is sleeping. I find the messages, the pictures, and so much more. He had been messaging an ex and another woman from work…inappropriately. He had been sending them nudes. They had sent nudes back to him. He was cheating on me. I brought it up to him that night but he said it was all lies and you can’t cheat if you’re not sleeping with someone else physically. I knew he was in the wrong but I loved him…so I stayed. Eventually, the fighting got worse. He comes to me one night and tells me he wants a divorce. My heart is officially broken at this point. I had tried everything from praying for him to reading the Bible to him and showing him my love. I wrote him love letters for days explaining my love for him. Even though he had put me through all that pain, I still wanted to be his wife. I wanted to try and make things work. But of course, they didn’t. We lost our apartment and once again he left me and my 2 babies homeless with nothing. We ended up staying in hotel rooms for a few nights until my mother was able to take us in. My depression only worsened and my anxiety was through the roof. I had never been homeless or so lost in my life. I trusted this man with all my heart and soul but he still tore my heart to pieces and left me. My mom took us in even though she truly didn’t have the means. I have zero income at this point so there is no doubt that I was struggling. I went to churches for help. I had to beg others for the things my children needed. I was at an all time low. I thought of suicide and I thought my babies would be so much better off without me. It has been 5 months since my husband left us homeless and scared. I have started to move on with my life the best I can but it hasn’t been easy. I’m fighting for my happiness back and I am trying to be a good mother for my babies. We still aren’t divorced but we are separated. He wants me to sign a cheap $100 divorce papers that says he isnt required to pay support for me or his child but I will Not Sign it. I will wait until I can afford a real divorce. I am tired of being run over and used by men. I am currently fighting for my disability back because it has been determined that I still cannot work. I was recently diagnosed with systemic Lupus, Rheumatoid arthritis, and chronic Nephritis. My right kidney is trying to fail on me but I will not allow it to. I was mentally evaluated for disability recently and diagnosed with depression/anxiety, panic disorder, PTSD, OCD, and social anxiety. I was also told that I had PPD after my daughter was born. I plan on seeing someone to get medication for my mental disabilities so that I can get better soon. I am so tired of living this way. I just want to be happy and healthy for once and I am willing to fight for that. Maybe in the future I will actually find a person that truly loves me and my kids. Until then I just want to work on myself and try to be a better mother and person. My life has been very challenging but that doesn’t mean I should give up. Every day is an uphill battle for me but I know I still have a chance at happiness. All I have to do is reach for it and work for it. I have faith that God will lead me in the right direction this time around. Thank you for reading my introduction and I hope you come back to read my blog every week! I will try to post my blog daily but I’m not sure if I can every day. However, there will be a new blog post at least once every week for those that are interested. I hope to share my story and help others that have been in similar situations to mine. 😊
Southern Mom In Recovery (living addiction free) 