Читать книгу I Choose to L.I.V.E. - Embracing the Real Me - Saunya Williams Ph.D. - Страница 15

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Saunya M. Williams, Ph.D.

the only child at 10 years of age. I enjoyed having a friend that was always available, but I soon realized that his attention was not of a friendly nature. My relationship with my stepfather would vacillate between him being my best friend and him being someone that I desperately tried to avoid.

When the abuse became more frequent, I did not know how to manage the emotional roller coaster that I was riding on because it never came to a stop. Subsequently, I was covered in emotional scars so I searched for a camouflage to provide aesthetic restoration. I connected beauty to love, which were the most important things that I felt had escaped me at a young age. I began to believe that my beauty was the key to genuine love, and that genuine love would accompany my beauty. As a result, I began to use my mother’s cosmetics to try to cover my emotional wounds and appear to be someone that I was not.

As a young girl, all I could do was try to look beautiful and present myself as normal because I did not feel normal at all. In fact, I felt damaged, contaminated, and utterly destroyed because I was left alone to deal with the battle of being abused. I excelled academically, yet my stepfather told me that I was stupid and would never amount to anything. I was a virgin, yet he called me a whore. I was a child, yet he wanted me to perform the sexual acts of an adult. I was defenseless, yet he kept putting me in situations that required me to fight. I was innocent, yet he caused me to feel like I was sentenced to a lifetime of guilt.

I despised the things that my stepfather used to say to me, and the fact that I would feel like I was covered in dirt. Being a child, I could not comprehend why I was being targeted and could not imagine what I had done to deserve such disgusting and inexcusable treatment. My cry seemed to always fall upon deaf ears, and my grasp for help seemed to always return void. Although my mind was twisted and confused, I was certain that I never wanted other people to develop a similar perception or to echo similar statements about me. I felt confident that wearing a mask was my only way to survive in a life that was such a horrible reality. From this point, I knew that makeup would be my solution and allow me to bandage my emotional poverty.

Starting at the age of 11, I began to believe that I was worthless so makeup easily became my means to disguise my