C's Story

When interviewed, C was a 20-year-old college student.
She states that her father was an alcoholic
who physically abused her mother. Although
he never hit C, her father would threaten to kill
her mother and would pull out a gun in her presence.
When her mother tried to hide the gun, he would beat her.

C states that her home was never a happy house.
She never had friends over to the house because her
father was drunk a lot. She notes that her mother
largely ignored her during the battles.
Instead C, at age seven, was comforting her mother.

C found a little respite at her grandmother's house
because that is where all her friends were at.

Eventually, her mother divorced her father.
C visited her father every summer and hated it.
She doesn't speak to her father now, because she
doesn't like to deal with him.

How was C affected by growing up in a violent home?

C states that she has blackouts. When she
hears an old song, She sometimes gets
an eerie feeling or feels confused and gets scared.

C contends that she has "apparently inherited
the family pattern of picking chaotic partners."
She has had a lot of emotional abuse from
her boyfriend, though he never hit her.
Eventually she realized her boyfriend was
not capable of treating her the way she wanted
and deserved. She decided she was missing out
because her boyfriend didn't show her half
of what she gave him. Realizing he did not
know how to love, she broke up with him.

At the age of twenty, she feels that she
has had a little too many sex partners.
Believing that if she gave a man sex first,
he would not take the time to get to know her
and not be able to hurt her.

She at one time had a sexual relationship
with a woman. C thought that maybe with
a woman there would be a strong emotional
connection. She confided that she ultimately
found her to be as cold as a man. She ended
the relationship because it was not what
she thought it would be. The relationship was
lacking the love and trust and support she wanted.

Today, C is maturing nicely. She reports that
she is now going to church more, and feels this
has helped her. She is trying to find
a connection with God. She also wants to help
teens so that they don't have to go through
the same thing she did.

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