ESSAY February 2023 - God Is In Charge of the Ups and Downs of My Life - Hamed

A simple answer to this question could be, “I am here because I have to be”, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. The pain of repeatedly hitting bottom lines was enough to get me in the door, but never enough to keep me inside. 

 

My past was destructive and abusive. When I was less than five years old, my mother burned my hand with a hot spoon to punish me because she thought by doing so she would teach me perfect obedience. When I was six I was sexually abused in a very painful way by a nine-year-old cousin. The abuse became more widespread, first other cousins started abusing me, and then others of them offered me to friends of theirs and to people in the neighborhood for their abusive pleasure. Individuals in school started to abuse me. The emotional abuse that followed the sexual abuse was worse. When people understood that I was abused, I was mocked, teased, beaten, threatened, and treated as a piece of garbage. In family, at school, at work, wherever I went I faced sexual abuse, and if that couldn’t be perpetrated, then emotional and physical abuse. Even in my own home I was not safe. The relative who abused me also taught me how to masturbate and that was how I chose to cope with my feelings and difficulties.