I find it baffling the guilt that lives in survivors bodies, as if we are actually the ones carrying our abusers shame. When frankly, they are the ones that should be ashamed. As if enduring injustice is an embarrassment and somehow our fault? It seems so… Infantile. Yet it is such a prevelant subtle and psychologically embedded experience in our society. It’s always been strange to me. It’s 2am, and tonight my form of catharsis was creating a blog and strangely, a timeline of sorts. A way to lay out the complex and gruesome journey that has been my life, in order. Though its not nearly all of it, which may be surprising that one human being can endure so much.
I think it’s a testament of how much lives in the shadows of so many. Who are forced in one way or another to carry the shame and blame of their abusers. For me, this is another way to keep track and release it, and maybe help someone else reading it, release too.
At 5 years old my Uncle molested me for a year or two, every morning and during the day every chance he got.
It was odd really, my mother was never affectionate and being such a young child I craved it. She was very physically abusive. Beating me, screaming at me. And my uncle was seemingly sweet, it wouldn’t be till I got older that I realized how wrong it all was. In my tiny young head I thought he was my boyfriend. I remember the sadness and heartbreak I felt when I saw a picture frame he kept of a beautiful blonde woman. It’s a confusing thing really, being molested so young. You have no idea really whats happening or any way to make sense. Except, in my case, someone is finally paying attention to me without anger.
We moved away from North Carolina thankfully, when I was about 7 or 8. I never saw him again, but until I finally told my mother the thought of him returning haunted me.
Every night I would think about it, and I lived in fear for so long because he told me I would get in trouble if I told anyone.
My father, was a contract killer for pay. That’s what my mother told me at least. I remember their fights, very physical and aggressive.
So I was glad when we moved. I didn’t see or hardly hear from my father anymore though, and I missed him achingly for a very long time.
My childhood was filled with my mother being extremely violent towards me, dragging me by my hair, beating me, and keeping me on a tight leash. She kept dating and marrying violent men, too. Her control was beyond what I can express, and her ability to validate her behavior is next level too. I didn’t even really go to any birthday parties as a child or have any of my own with friends. I think deep down, she knew she had brainwashed her children and if they saw how normal mothers treated their children, we’d be less likely to submit. And let me tell you, it was hard enough as it was to make me submit.
The violent men my mother married, were also something else. Another flavor of my mother, but worse. I remember one of the men she married for a short time, tried to get rid of me. He left me in the dark outside the key bank parking lot, forced me out of the car. I waited in the bushes until my mother came for me. I kept telling myself she wouldn’t leave me and she’d make him tell her where he left me. He was a cruel man. My mother would often run into my little sister and I’s bedroom and barricade the doors while he tried to kick them down and hurt us. I remember one day she came running in with blood gushing out of her neck, he had ripped a chunk out with his teeth. The last time we ever saw that man was one night my mother finally called the police. He was sent back to North Carolina. Thank the gods. My mother never really let go of her anger, and I know she had every right to be as fucked up as she was. The things she had endured as a child were beyond most peoples understanding.
But nonetheless, it contorted her into a monster.
At 13 years old my mother put me in a closet for 3 years. A closet in my little brothers room. I was enrolled in online school, given a laptop in there, internet use heavily monitored, had to earn the right to listen to music etc, and allowed to keep what could fit on some shelves of the closet, and in a plastic bin with a red lid.
Yes, a closet. 3 years. No I did not mistype. The funny thing is how both of my parents try to gaslight me and minimize it whenever i’ve brought it up in the past, but my education in matters of psychology and everything else now far outweighs them and there ability to gaslight me. I was a child then. I remember imagining another human next to me, I remember telling myself once I got out of this closet I was going to do big things, that I would show them just how powerful and intelligent and deserving I was. I made promises to myself in that closet. Promises I’ve kept.
At 16 my parents got a divorce, i had a wonderful stepdad for about 9 ish years, he was a covert narcissist enabler, but he never physically harmed me my sister or my mother, and rarely yelled at me. He also convinced our mother to stop beating us. But when I turned 16 my mother had a pretty obvious psychotic break. I think we could have all seen it coming if we reflected even a little bit… I was in a literal closet for 3 years prior. I mean, the writing was on the wall.
I don’t know the details of the divorce because I was a kid, but I know I witnessed my mom lose her mind in a way I had never seen. She didn’t feel like herself at all. It was eerie. It was a messy divorce. I know she grew up very abused and neglected, I always cut her slack cause of that. Me and my siblings went to live with my dad in a small apartment. I knew my dad was hurting, big time. Mom went off and wasn’t doing so well herself.
At 17 I was r* p e d for the first time.
I still remember running for the door and almost making it, then being jerked backwards and held down while he pulled my pants down. I was in running start, at a community college. Being locked in a closet had its few perks, one of which was having a 4.0-4.5 GPA in online school. After being raped, the first friend group I had made there at college, decided it was my fault. Which honestly, whenever anyone speaks out especially if they aren’t the “perfect victim” and are at all what the Patriarchy views as “asking for it”, thats what they get. It’s not uncommon, its the most common thing ever.
Not too long after after I dropped out and began partying even more intensely. Its interesting though isn’t it, there it is again, the shame of something awful and abusive somehow being the victims fault.
The victim being the one shamed for something the perpetrator should be.
There it is.
“she was asking for it”
what is that? the more i’ve healed the less I’ve understood this normalized infantile belief. So from there, I always needed to be high on something. I had been pretty proud of myself for making friends after having to relearn how to socialize from being locked in a closet for years. And when I lost them and experienced continued betrayal, well. I turned to drugs. I became such a druggie that I literally would steal and chug niquil to get high if I had to. I would do anything everyday to be high on something.
I had moved in with my boyfriend at the time, he was the only one who took my side after I was raped. His mother didn’t make us pay rent and was kind to us. At least miles kinder then my parents had ever been.
Then, it started to become clear how badly my mother was doing. I went to visit her. Due to the intense Stockholm Syndrome I had developed, and my natural inclination towards loyalty especially as a young child, I moved in with her. I had never worked a job and had been ridiculously sheltered but I decided I wasn’t going to let my mother be abandoned in her time of need. She was doing awful, she said she was suicidal and the place she was living looked like a closed down crackhouse for hoarders.
My dad hated me for that, I never understood why till I healed enough. Till I realized the monster my mother really was. Stockholm syndrome is real.
Growing up, I’d hear “you’re lucky you’re cute, you’ll never make it in anything. You’ll take the bus you’re whole life” was common place phrase for me to hear.
despite all that I decided I was capable, and I was going to be there for my mother.
I got a job as a cleaning lady, moved in and cleaned the disgusting house my mother had been somehow living in. She was on disability, but needed help around the house and was saying she was suicidal. I kept the house clean, and made sure my mom had weed, by that time I knew how important coping until you could heal was.
While living there, At 17 years old my mother put me on a date with her boyfriend.
He was 30. He went by the name “Zero”
I did not want to, but she convinced me, saying it was “polyamory” and that she wanted me to be taken out on a nice date.
Yeah, obviously I’ve since learned that is NOT polyamory and that my mom was in the middle of a very long psychotic break. Stockholm Syndrome, being sheltered, then learning things the hard way. Not fun.
This man, gave me the creeps. My mom said he had his eye on me and it could be good for me and insisted.
I won’t talk about what he did to me. You can probably guess though.
The worst part, later my mom told me he was in love with and sleeping with his biological mother as well. Since he was 15 years old. I told her I never wanted to see him again, and she said that’s fine. Whenever he came over I hid.
Stockholm syndrome truly is real, and it’s been quite a journey recovering from it.
Looking back now, I know I was merely an offering my mother made to this predator in a pathetic attempt to make him like her. Broke my heart processing that, shattered any illusions of my mom actually caring about me that I’d had.
Later that year, I came home to my mother in bed with a guy I had been seeing.
They both laughed at me as I stood there stunned. I remember standing in place in my room afterwards blank faced and unmoving for 5 minutes straight. To the point the person I was hanging out with kept waving there hands in front of my face going “Ivy?”
When I asked the lover of mine I found her with to leave so I could speak to my mother, she screamed at me and told me he was staying.
I realized finally, in a way I hadn’t before, my mother wasn’t my mother anymore, she maybe never really was, and she was only going to hurt me worse and worse. And that I couldn’t save her.
Even though she constantly spoke of suicide and subtlety threatened it, I had to save myself.
I moved out, back in with my previous boyfriend and his family who were very kind to me.
He was kind to me, though I doubt I deserved it. He was beyond kind to me.
I still feel beyond grateful to that man, and I always will.
He seemed to understand what I was living through was unreasonably wrong and affecting my behaviors even though I wouldn’t fully understand that for many years.
For that I will always appreciate him.
Later on, I found out my dad, his girlfriend, and my sister stole the inheritance my grandmother had left me in her will. They all lied as a unit about it.
Him, and my sister were the last remaining good in my life. And I had never expected that from him. Its funny how the people you idolize as a child, you grow up and realize none of it was real.
I was riding in my sisters beautiful new car, and a text came in on her phone. I sat there in shock as I put everything together. They all admitted to it after that. I remember stomaching their bizarre disgusting excuses and still summoning undeserved compassion for them.
Suffice to say…
Until I was about 20 my behaviors were not great.
I was coping with a lot, stuff I didn’t truly realize until later. Stuff I’m still realizing.
I got into drugs even more, and was always high on something.
I remember the feeling of just truly not caring if I lived or died. I eventually got into smoking meth and during a 3 day nonstop meth bender i blacked out. I had this weird vision, I was standing on a stage speaking to people and they were crying, holding there hearts. This booming voice like thunder came into my head and said THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE MEANT TO DO, GO HOME NOW. So, strangely, I did. And I got off the drugs. Cut ties with all those people. I became a massive weed smoker. It felt the lesser evil and safer, and I could still cope that way with the immense weight of trauma I had been carrying. So, that was a start.
At 20-22, I got into the adult industry and mainstream porn.
Thankfully by then I only had one addiction, weed. Though I still played with other substances. I had been doing nude modeling and stripping because i was mentally breaking down and the management position I had at a sandwich shop wasn’t making enough money and was hurting me worse then stripping and nude modeling ever did ironically and strangely. Being raped and my mothers psychotic episode definitely interrupted my college experience. But, I also enjoyed it, sex work. It made me less shy. My mom had locked me in a closet for 3 years because she caught me taking photos in my underwear; I guess it was my way of reclaiming myself.
However, I was raped again brutally in the adult industry, pretty early on in it, I thought I was going to die when he suffocated me with my own vomit. And the pain. I’ll always remember that. It’s like he wanted it to hurt me, I could see it in his eyes. I’ll never know how he managed to edit that scene to be able to post it.
It started out a normal day on set, with a whole crew makeup artist, director, assistant, cameraman etc. But then when we were about to shoot the sex scene, everyone but the “male talent” left. He gave me champagne, and weed. I found it all odd but I was new to the industry, young, and sheltered, without any family guidance, doing porn, so I went along with it.
I found it weird that the room I was shooting in was a little girls room, it looked like a 5 year old should live in it and you had to crouch because of the low ceilings and was completely pink and made for a child. But I knew everyone had their kinks, me included.
Suffice to say, I laid on the bathroom floor limp for a bit after he was done with me while he went and showered.
I told my manager what happened afterwards. He cancelled all my shoots for the next 2 weeks and called a directors meeting, but urged me to shoot again after the 2 weeks. How nice of him.
I left the industry pretty quickly after getting into it, but thankfully I won some awards first. It made a lot of the trauma and ways people had treated me seem less true.
Like the trophy in front of me was telling me “They’re all lies, you’re incredible”
But my body began breaking down, I kept getting sick in various ways. From all my research I know now the brutal impact PTSD of my cases degree can have on one’s body. And I think all the stress, PTSD from childhood and young adult life, and exposure to new germs, I just couldn’t handle it and left the adult industry after my first couple of years.
I began reconnecting with my spirituality, my mother had been very spiritual and i had distanced myself from it after what happened with her. I grew up with womens circles, witches covens, and metaphysics books were one thing my mom always let me have even in the closet.
But, I received so much shame from the spiritual community. My naivety had me thinking it would be a kinder more accepting place people go to heal.
It felt like the church with new words and rules.
I started to find myself, change my style and the way I dress. Put an alter back in my home, etc. Took back a lot of the spirituality that kept me company as a child.
I reclaimed my spiritual connection. Cause sadly my mom had such a control thing over that too growing up. But it was mine now. All mine.
I found a man at ecstatic dance one day, it’s a thing here in LA for sober dancing, it’s safer and more inviting than the club scene and i wanted that. Him and his ex girlfriend got my information and I began seeing him. He felt like a breath of fresh air after I had been drowning, he taught me a lot about spirituality and I did Ayahuasca for the first time with him in a ceremony he told me about.
But, after healing a lot and therapy and reading galore I know he was a narcissist.
I left the industry while with him, I paid for everything, and we fought all the time because he could not meet me emotionally and made me feel bad about normal human desires.
He couldn’t get over his ex, and compared me to her, who I admired deeply for her bravery and style.
After I broke up with him a year later, while we tried to be friends, he raped me.
I fought him for 3 hours. I still remember screaming for him, the real him to come back and to stop. To please stop.
I cried for days afterwards. It was hard for me. I confronted him and had him come to a therapy session over zoom where he admitted to raping me in front of my therapist.
I had been in an open relationship with a woman at the time in charge of a transformational event for healing.
I asked her to please not invite him, I said he raped me. She co-erced me saying she really needed a videographer and couldn’t find one on such short notice.
She was one of those “women are asking for it” types. Sadly you see those a lot. I had paid for me and a couple others tickets, over 1k for each. As a gift. I paid for food, and rented the vehicle we all took. I figured I could just avoid him.
So I went, and as you can imagine the numbing continued deep inside.
The healing workshops though, worked. And I began feeling so intensely everything I hadn’t before. Everything I suppressed for so long.
And with no real safety I realize now, as the woman had convinced me to come with my RAPIST.
I tried to leave the event early, I began breaking down and sobbing so hysterically I could barely stand it. I told the other girls i needed to leave and asked if they could figure out rides. They understood. But the girl i was dating flipped. I was going to give her a ride too, and she lost it. I knew she would be fine, it was HER event and ANYONE would be willing to give her a ride. But hey, who cares about me processing my own trauma how I need alone right? Narcissists man.
And then, somewhere in between or after that, (it all became a blur and disassociation set in, big time) the man who raped me, his ex girlfriend (and my then friend) decided to launch an intense online accusation about me “copying her aesthetic” and my community began tearing me down and turning against me.
I had never received so many disgusting comments and messages before. I had tried to be her friend after I broke up with him, just like I tried to be his friend.
I think it was just all becoming too much to take.
My coping mechanism that I had been forced to learn with my mother as a child, “Forgive the Unforgiveable” wasn’t working anymore.
So, I almost jumped off my balcony. Thankfully someone amazing got on a plane and came to be with me.
Then, at about 24-25 i fell in love (sadly with another narcissist) and got engaged quickly.
He lied to me, a lot. And broke what was left of my heart and trust in humans.
I left him because i kept becoming physically ill and he wouldn’t stop lying and omitting things, after I left him I almost committed suicide. Again.
But I didn’t. And I’m glad. Though to be honest, I had nearly no real support.
Nothing to hold onto. And experienced, even more betrayal and selfish narcissistic abuse from the people I reached out to. In my deepest time of need, suicidal, people made it about them.
At the time; I had no strength left, no dissociated beliefs on love to keep me okay anymore, and my hope in life and humanity was dying.
My eyes were also opening, and my heart was feeling suppressed pain very quickly.
I’ve spent years now healing, reflecting, learning. And its since then that I have become someone so strong sometimes I even struggle to comprehend myself.
And I did it by myself.
It’s funny what having absolutely no real reliable consistent support will do to a person. Its insane the strength I have developed.
Even my old therapist broke my trust and the law at one point with me.
It’s just laughable what I’ve been through sometimes.
Though, my old therapist did call the police and put me on suicide watch, which helped and probably saved my life. So for that I’m grateful.
And I turned to strangers for support and they did there best with what little they could offer me. It’s not like I had my family to turn to. I knew they’d make it worse.
Sadly I attracted another abuser, and during my healing from my ex fiance, recovering from having hit bottom and becoming suicidal, and EVERYthing else; I experienced my first non-sexual form of assault.
I had to file a police report for kidnapping. I pissed my pants. Literally. He wrestled my phone from my hands when i tried to call a friend or police.
He is 6’4 240 pounds.
It was bad.
his name is Wylie Cable.
And then while reeling from that and seeking safety, I was drugged and raped in my sleep. twice. one I wont name for my safety, the others name is Alexander Ray Lujan/Zandiel.
…
Yeah.
The sheer amount of strength, self sufficiency, and trust in MYSELF that I have developed along this path…. Wow.
There are manipulators, liars, and abusers being called out left and right.
You may have seen me briefly call out many of them on my Instagram.
The world is changing, and I think its time we stop pushing shame onto victims and start putting it onto abusers.
Doesn’t anybody understand yet that hysteria is a result of intense abuse and having ones reality totally gaslit??
Or has empathy left the building? What about justice?
You have NO idea what people are going through or what has made them who they are.
If there is one thing I have learned, growing up without real support and lots of abuse and being betrayed at every turn, it’s that nobody knows the complexity of my story but me.
People think you aren’t supposed to talk about what you’ve been through, but I think that’s another story perpetrated by abusers who wanna keep hiding. Cause maybe if we all talked about it all more, and felt less ashamed, it wouldn’t be our burden to carry anymore. But instead it’d be on the people who hurt us, who need to accept accountability and CHANGE.
I am proud of the woman I am today, and I wasn’t always. I have worked my butt off for years now, and especially in the past months. I’ve lost track of how much money I’ve spent on therapy, or somatic release classes, how many books I’ve read and tears I’ve cried, how many leaps of faith I’ve taken.
Nearly every single time I tried to heal with others, they betrayed, abandoned, manipulated, and hurt me in some form.
I’ve come a long way, crawled my way out of trauma induced psychosis, and outted abusers on my social media platforms. Also, I realized how reliable my gut is, and how developed my psychic gifts have had to become.
I’m finally 2 months sober, no day to day marijuana use or addiction anymore. And I did that through getting kidnapped and sexually assaulted, AGAIN.
Cause, I was finally ready.
I’m medicated on prozac, its the reason i’m still alive because being without really any consistent genuine support, and being suicidal, it finally pushed me to get the medication I needed.
And I don’t feel ashamed, I feel better then I ever have.
I’ve let myself be perceived in ways that aren’t exactly pleasing, and continued to forge forward developing an inhuman strength I honestly wish I never had to develop.
But I LIKE who I am now.
She’s powerful. Independent. Kind.
And ruthless with the truth and her self preservation.
And though you may think I have a bad taste in my mouth for porn, having had that one bad experience that deeply traumatized me, I don’t.
To be totally honest, sex work, porn, it saved me. After being beaten down in confidence I found an open minded community of fans who loved me, and thought I was beautiful and capable. And every other time on set, was beautiful. It’s like every job, and every place in the world, there are bad people, and good people. There are predators, and protectors. And I’m grateful I never experienced what I did again.
And, I don’t have that manager anymore. The entire industry revolutionized itself in my absence during those years away.
Honestly, the person I am today is because of porn and sex work.
My insecurities lessened, my shyness decreased, and I became who I felt like I was really meant to be.
The best thing I found in the adult industry, is on a porn set you can’t avoid your innately human aspects. Theres bodily fluids, and vulnerable positions, feelings, sensations, sounds, that inevitably bring out our raw human self. And with safe people, and more caution, I experienced a world that gave a deeply abused and under-educated girl, a chance to make money, and shed insecurities, and feel beautiful.
And my family, it breaks my heart. My mom was my something I held really close to my heart, for a very long time.
I will always love her, I will always be so grateful for how she fought to give me everything she did.
My dad too, he gave us so much.
I will always love my family, I and I am still grieving them to this day.
But it doesn’t change the lying, stealing, and downright abuse. Sadly.
If there is one thing I have learned that is most important to me through all of this.
Its the importance of learning from your mistakes, and validating YOURSELF and your OWN story and your ability to make correct decisions for yourself. Even when they are misunderstood by others. Afterall, they don’t have access to the complexity and all the details you do, and they will never be as informed as you are about your own life. They will never be able to make a better decision for you then you can for yourself.
The most important thing, it’s learning not just the importance of REAL love and compassion, cause boy I have learned that in its absence.
But the importance of truth. How love cant even really exist without it.
How so few people are willing to look at it, and the change it forces forward.
It’s the ability to let go of anyone, even your own mother, father, sister, in the name of truly loving yourself and owning how wrong what happened to you was.
Even if they wont.
To own the truth of something is terrifying.
If we own the truth things have to change.
To me, love Isn’t even love without truth.
It can’t even truly exist.
I haven’t been perfect, I don’t know many people who would have been having gone through what I did.
But I have grown lifetimes in years, through sheer determination.
And I will keep growing.
I will keep being a better person, to myself and others.
And you can too.
Only YOU know what’s best for you, only you know the full extent of your story.
I believe in you.
We can do, ANYTHING.
don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
if I can live through all that and still have that belief, I know you can too.
And hey, I’m just a pornstar telling her story.
But I think we got this.
I think we can do things our abusers never even dreamed we could.
I think we know exactly what we’re doing no matter who calls us crazy.
They don’t know the hell we’ve seen.
You got this. I know you do.
Don’t Stop. <3
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