Victim Impact Statement (names of villages omitted to protect the victim's identity) Asked to please share

My life has changed since I was sexually abused. My attitude got worse. It never used to be this bad. I get grumpy so easily and I don’t know why. Little things make me upset and I never used to be that sensitive. My grades dropped. I used to get mostly A’s and now I have a lot of difficulty in school. I don’t always get good grades anymore and I was barely passing any of my classes. I feel like I have to be careful with people. I don’t trust people well anymore. Guys are often scary to be around and it’s hard to trust them because I never know what may happen.
I think about it a lot. It makes me have low self-esteem because of what happened. I feel like everyone knows what happened to me, especially when I go out. Sometimes I feel guilty about what happened, even though I know it wasn’t my fault. I feel angry, mad, and disgusted when I think about it. I trusted him and he took that all away. It hurts me to think about what he did to me.
It has made things hard on my family. I know that it hurts my mom, grandma, and sisters to see me go through this. Sometimes I get anxiety about it. I have trouble breathing sometimes and my mom thinks that they are anxiety attacks. These started happening after the abuse occurred. My family had to move from
xxxxx to Bethel because of what happened. After the abuse started happening I felt depressed. I just didn’t feel like myself anymore.
I started staying home after the abuse began. I used to always go out with friends before that. I was scared. I didn’t like when he was around. I was scared to be alone at home and with him. I would call a friend to talk or I would read so that I wouldn’t feel unsafe or isolated. I always think I’m ugly now. I remember when I was younger I used to think I was pretty. I find so many things that are wrong with me. I think these self-hating feelings started after I was abused.

Saturday

Walk a mile in my shoes, would you have made it?

One of the hardest things for me growing up, up until the day I spoke up about my uncle, was going to my Grandmother's house, which was a daily thing. I truly LIVED NEXT DOOR TO MY ATTACKER. I can speak about this from experience. Every day of my life I had to face him and act as though nothing was wrong, but believe me, every time I laid eyes on him, I had thoughts of doing things no person should ever think. I literally would have to converse with the person on a regular basis as though nothing was ever wrong. The hatred that it created was much too great to explain in writing. I was always on edge, and always felt like he was about to do something to me. Some nights, I would fantasize about the ways that I could kill him. About how easy it would be to do one of the nights he drank himself into a drunken stupor. Thankfully, I never acted on it.
We as a community can prevent so much tragedy and heartache by simply speaking up. We can stop these people from victimizing others, we can empower other people to speak up. There is NO  reason to try and silence the victims or to defend their attackers, family or not! What they are doing is wrong and creates a lifetime of heartache, which will go on to create even more problems in the future. Telling a victim to be hush about what happened or saying they are making it up, is doing nothing but further victimizing that person.
I myself had many serious issues that I know aren't all directly related to what happened, but I'm sure some of my actions were my way of acting out because I was so full of hatred and had no where to direct it.
We should all place ourselves in the victims shoes, think about how hard it must be to live your life day to day going face to face with someone who did such things to you, and how it must feel to know that if you say anything, that you may rid yourself of your attacker, but you must still face those who turned on you for doing what was right, knowing that there is no way around it. Think about it.

Child Molestation, final piece

So at school I started to be mad at everyone and never wanted to do anything. We were walking in line to the gym one day and I did not want to go. The teacher aide was like come on , why are you being so slow? At that point I remembered being taught about "good touch, bad touch" so I busted out crying and told her. She mocked me. She repeated what I said with a sneer and with high pitched whiny voice and said hurry up. I never spoke up again.
Soon we were brought to Seattle to be reunited with our parents, and I never told my father. I often thought of him beating my sister's boyfriend almost to death and for some reason did not want him to do the same to my uncle.
As the years go by I continue keeping this inside. I would only wear clothes that were wayyy too big for me. I would not let my mother fix my hair. I did NOT want to be attractive in any way. Before I would go to sleep at night, I would surround myself with chairs and other big objects so that I could hear if anyone came near me.
In the fourth grade, I started to get very sick, I would throw up every time I ate, my stomach was always hurting. I lost about 15 pounds on my already tiny body. My parents kept bringing me to the hospital in Bethel, and the doctors always said the same thing. I was faking it. One day I threw up dark thick blood, so my parents pooled up enough money to take me to Anchorage. While there I got an endoscopy and it was discovered that I had bleeding ulcers. The doctor knew right away and brought me to a room and asked me point blank. I broke out in tears and did not say anything still.
I was given medication that helped, and sent back home.
As the years go by, I am told by other relatives that the same uncle was doing the same things to them. This infuriated me as I was the oldest cousin.
Soon at 17 I was ready to go off to college. I start thinking, I'm never coming back anyways, and I called up the Alaska State Troopers and speak up. I tell them everything, including what he is doing to my cousins. After I spoke up, some of my cousins also told. Other's did not.
About a week later, I stopped at my Grandmother's house and my uncle was standing there reading his indictment. He yelled at me, "why did you say these things about me? I'm going to go to jail for a long time!" I yelled back, "cause that's what you did to me you sick fuck! Your ass was probably even too drunk to remember!" Then my Grandmother came out of her room and yelled at me too. Saying that we shouldn't say those things about family members, we should always keep the peace. I stormed out mad and hurt as ever. How could my grandmother think that this was OK? I soon leave off for college. My Grandmother and I don't speak for years. About two years after my uncle was arrested and convicted, he had the fucking nerve to call me. He told me that if I didn't forgive him I was going to go to hell. I also got a Christmas card from him, telling me that he confessed his sins to God and that if I forgive him it was a sin. WTF?!?
But I felt a new sense of freedom knowing that he was paying for what he did, not only to me, but for what he did to my younger relatives as well. I felt empowered. At about 23 I called my Grandmother, and asked her why she thought that was OK. I was crying and she apologized. We now are very close and she understands.

Bullying and Suicide (part two)

So you go home. At first it feels good to be around family for the holidays. However, the village is small and the people haven't changed. The sneers and insults become even more frequent. Your circle continues to get smaller. Now you basically only have conversations with your family. Every time you leave the house and say "hello" to someone, they say, "eww, gross, disgusting, or don't talk to me". Some have even taken to hitting you or spitting on you when you leave the house. So you stop leaving the house. You are in a small, house in the village and your circle has become about five people. This goes on for a few years, lets say, five. You have no mental stimulation except for what's on the free t.v. channel. You don't leave the house at all. You begin to fall into a deep depression. At this point you start asking yourself, what is the point of living? Is this how my life is going to be forever? Will I be trapped in these four walls with nothing to do and no one to talk to for the next fifty or more years? A few more years go by and you try your hardest to stay strong, but the depression deepens. Soon, you family moves. Now your circle is completely gone. You HAVE to leave the house and endure the bullying to get the things necessary to survive. Every time you leave you are pushed even further down. Now you continue to live, not talking to anyone at all for the next, three years or more. Then what? One day you are sitting in your room after not having had any real conversations with people, or any positive experiences, really for the last ten years. You are sitting there, and you make a decision, I'm leaving. This is the only way. Then you do it. You take your life and put an end to the suffering. Now you are laid to rest for an eternity in the very place you spent your life trying and wishing to escape. Next to the very people who pushed you to this point.

Bullying and Suicide (part one)

We all know that Alaska has a very high rate of suicide. I am not an expert on suicide, nor do I wish to be. I am simply going to share my recent experience with suicide (thurs) and my thoughts on what could have driven a person to do such a thing. I would very much like to hear your thoughts on this subject as well.
After a recent loss of loved one to suicide, I sat for hours asking myself why. And here is what my brain has thought up.
Living in a small village your circle of people is very small to begin with (500 people). Of those you probably only interact with say, maybe 25. You start off going to school and everything is great, you have friends, you are free to play whenever and wherever you want with whoever you want. Soon, you are in high school and things begin to change ( you only have about 10 classmates, so your circle has grown even smaller). You join the basketball team, and all of your relatives come to see you play. The coach is introducing players and your name is called. Suddenly, your classmates are booing you very loudly, humiliating you in front of the people that mean the most to you. You choose not to go down to the gym floor. Your circle is now even smaller. The next four years of high school continue this way, with your classmates humiliating you and picking on you every chance you get. Now your circle only includes your family, and people that you may have casual contact with, say, at the grocery store or post office. What teenager wants the only person they have positive contact with to be their mother? You continue to push on, with a plan to leave the village as soon as you are old enough. You graduate and join the military, where things go well, for a while. Soon something happens so dramatic ( I will save that for another topic) that you are forced to go home. Heartbreak.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog about being a Modern Native! I would like to start my blog off by thanking you for your interest.
I am an Alaskan Native who has moved from a village in Western Alaska to Anchorage. The transition was not easy. There were a variety of reasons for my wanting to leave the village. A lot of those villages have issues that I feel are brushed under the rug, so to speak. I would like to provide an open forum for Natives to voice their concerns and ideas for possible solutions as openly as possible.
I would like to start this Blog with my readers posting ideas that they feel don't get enough attention.
Again, thank you for coming.
Happy reading!