(READ FULL STORY BELOW)

ART BY ILA POP

EDITED BY LUCY VON

EDITED BY MONTYILL

DESIGNED BY MONTYILL

AND LUCY VON

FORWARD BY LANA GENTRY

+FEELING NAUSEOUS AND WANTING TO VOMIT

My name is Lucy Von.

I am writing this to share my experience of beauty, mental illness, and unfortunate events.

This is my experience; this is my strength, and this is my hope.

I grew up in a wholesome Christian family located in the bible belt and agriculture center of the USA, good ole Kansas.

The heartland of the United States of America, known for being the home of saloons, cattle, cowboys,

and the original midwestern gangsters of America.

I was not supposed to ever be sick.

Especially when I was raised in a good home with good parents.

I mean, heck, my dad was a Christian missionary and traveled to Mexico to buy my mom from a Christian orphanage.

He was a “good” man, that was desperate to find himself a “good” wife and give her a “good” life in the USA.

That is what he did and 9 months later I was born.

Well, this “great” man of a human being loved to sneak in my room at night.

He got great pleasure from fondling himself while having his hands up my nightgown.

This was so very painful for me.

I did what any loyal child would do and kept silent. I did not want my daddy to get in trouble.

When my daddy would sneak in my room, for his late-night “fun time,” I would use my imagination to go somewhere else.

I now know that I would, what they call in the medical field, disassociate and check out.

I had “friends” that would help me check out from these painful experiences.

These “friends” were otherworldly creatures, aliens for lack of a better term.

Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but I am simply sharing my experience.

Whether these beings are from my imagination or from another dimension or planet.

The truth whether they are real or not, I will leave it up to you to choose your own truth.

Yet at the very least, these experiences with these “others,” helped me survive traumatic childhood events, in which I was powerless over.

It has taken me a lot of therapy to accept that I was powerless over those events,

to come to accept that my father, that I loved deeply, was capable of such atrocities.

Accepting that it was human to have love and hate co-exist,

and battle against each other inside my soul.

I could love my father, yet still have hate for his actions.

That is ok and perfectly normal.

It was part of our family tradition to keep quiet about these “habits,” of my daddy. If we ignored it maybe it would go away.

To talk about this stuff was to betray the family and be at fault for the destruction it may have had on our already broken family.

I have always had a knack for being able to make lite of difficult situations. I am resilient like that.

As time went on, I learned to enjoy some of the” fun times” my dad had with me, while he fulfilled his sexual needs.

He did not always hurt me during his “fun times.”

He would go out of his way when he could to make it fun for the both of us.

I think they would call it grooming, now a days.

He was able to convince me that I enjoyed it as well and that I was valued and appreciated for my services to him.

My young mind accepted that daddies and men expressed their love like that.

My mom knew what was going on yet never did anything about it.

She resented me and hated me for my daddy touching me and not her

or maybe she was angry and felt powerless over the situation.

After all, my dad was a drunk and had a very bad temper.

He would get abusive with my mother.

Looking back now, I think she feared him and feared being an immigrant in a strange country with no family to turn to.

We were stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Those were the cards life dealt us, and we would put a smile on our faces and act as if life was great.

We were the perfect Christian family.

My mother was a cold human, I could always feel her anger, pain, and resentment.

I could see the effect that growing up in an orphanage had on her.

She had seen and lived through horrors no child should ever have to bear.

Despite what was going on, this was my family, and I still loved my parents no matter how messed up they wer

Life had dealt both my parents’ brutal hands.

As time went on, I hated myself for what my daddy did to me,

I felt that since I was his pretty little girl, that I had somehow did something to invite his behaviors.

I grew to accept that that’s the way daddies showed love to their pretty little girls.

My dad would grab me by the back of the neck and squeeze it very hard when I got too excited or would begin to hint clues to his “fun time” activities.

To cover up his actions he would say I was sick.

When I was “sick” he would get out a bottle of olive oil, gather the family together in the living room, kneel before the couch, and have us pray for hours.

He would anoint my head with oil and say he had to exorcise the demons out of me.

It was a theatrical scene.

Loud shouting prayer, tongues, and all.

Eventually my mom and dad got divorced.

My father decided he was no longer attracted to me since “I was becoming a woman and looking like my mom,” as he would say.

As I got older, I repressed my childhood memories. I locked them deep away.

I am a strong young woman and must be strong for my mom and siblings.

I was a strong girl, and nothing would ever hurt me or my family again.

I had a superpower, that superpower was being able to carry large amounts of pain and secrets, for the greater good of the family.

As one can imagine the horrors of my childhood brought with it the fact that I became overly sexually developed,

to put it nicely I was overly sensual for my age.

I hated this; it was disgusting to me. I hated that I had an energy that men were magnetized to.

My sensuality caused me so much pain, as it brought the painful feelings and memories along with it.

The beauty of a woman exploring her sensuality was taken from me at a young age.

That turned my body and sexuality into my enemy. I resented my body and my sensuality.

I did everything in my power to try and numb it and shut it down.

To shut down and lock out the memories stored in my body and in my sensuality.

I excelled in school; I turned my pain into an obsession with perfection. I always had to

be the smartest, the most intelligent, the prettiest, the skinniest. I became obsessed with

impractical perfect standards. If I could be perfect enough, I could earn the love of my

mother and father.

I was an expert in wearing the pretty smile, getting honor roll in school, being active in every school curriculum, from sports, to choir and to band.

Anything to keep me away from home and keep my mind going a million miles an hour.

I excelled and had few friends. I could not risk them knowing how broken I was inside.

As I got into my teenage years, I could feel this searing pain inside stirring.

I came from a “good” family; I shouldn’t be feeling this pain and hate.

I hated myself for having this anger and I hated myself for having this pain that should not be there.

What was wrong with me?

I began to release the pain by inflicting cuts on my arms.

It seemed to help numb the pain, or better yet to feel the mental and spiritual pain materialized on my body.

It helped me to keep up the smiling face and façade of a pretty, healthy, and successful girl.

It was my semblance of control over my own body.

Eventually, I started starving myself.

Feeling the hunger pains in my stomach made me feel powerful.

The hunger pains gave the pain an outlet since I could not figure out where the source of the pain came from.

Seeing myself fade away to bones was thrilling,

Soon I could leave this body. Soon I would be released from the anger and pain.

The less I looked like a woman the better, then no one would find me attractive.

My mom started to notice I was not eating and forced me to eat.

I hated having food in my stomach. It made me feel out of control and like a failure.

Being the smart young lady I was, I soon learned to force myself to throw up, to

maintain some type of control and power over my own body.

This became a vicious cycle.

My family, friends, and doctors would tell me I was too pretty, too healthy,

and came from such a good family, and that I should not be choosing to do this to myself.

I believed them all. I felt like such an awful person.

I carried so much pain inside and I was doing my best to fight to stay alive in this disgusting and painful body.

I soon earned my way into long stays in mental health facilities.

These stays took up much of my teenage years.

I could not figure out how to just stop.

I was too pretty, too healthy, too smart to be like this.

There was no way to get well when the sickness was a family alignment.

Yet, how deep the roots dug, I did not yet know.

The still waters ran deep.

I hated myself for being sick I hated that my sickness caused my family pain.

Why could I not just stop?!

Eventually, I found out how to concoct over-the-counter medications into potent cocktails.

I took the cocktails, drugging myself enough to escape myself, my eating disorder, and my past.

Then like clockwork I dated the perfect boyfriend, he was a drug dealer, and it was off to the races.

We got married and had a daughter. The abuse got way out of control.

I left that marriage with more layers of damage.

I was a lost broken soul, finding refuge and empowerment in the world of adult entertainment and Satanism.

These people were my kind, my home. I excelled in that world.

Escaping my past and finding strength deep within myself to fight to hang on to life.

I was too healthy, too pretty, too smart, too successful to be sick.

Oh, how deep the roots dug, I did not yet know. The still waters ran deep.

After a few abusive relationships, losing custody of two children, dying on several

occasions, becoming homeless, and doing time in jail, I finally came to the rock and the

hard place in my life. I couldn’t die and life was a horror show.

It was time to face the deep dark past, it was the only way I could get better.

It was the only way to build a life worth living.

After much therapy, I finally was able to integrate with my dark past and make peace with it.

I have finally learned to live at peace with what was not mine and what was.

I can finally see the true sickness for what it is.

I went through some unfortunate events, yet they do not define who I am any longer.

WRITTEN BY LUCY VON

MONTYILL.COM

SPECIAL THANKS TO LANA GENTRY, ILA POP, SHARKBAIT, AND EVERYONE

WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THE PRODUCTION