Helen's Scars: A Memoir About Abuse and Prostitution

Everyone, has a story to tell, I’ve just been contemplating if the world was ready to hear mine. You would be surprised by who will try to stop you from telling your story, as if it will affect them. Where were those so-called “loved ones” when I was killing myself on the streets looking for love? I am here only by the grace of God. I have scars, and they cover me from head to toe. Isn’t it funny how, in the midst of your darkest hours of life and sin, darkness tries to make you laugh? It makes you forget about all the sorrow and pain it put you through, before issuing you another gut-wrenching blow of misfortune. But life never really offered me a laugh. I found my comfort by diving into a life of drugs and prostitution. My life was anything but perfect. And I knocked busters, men twice my size, on their ass to prove that I would not be taken advantage of in these streets. Fighting my brothers and sisters was a way of life. My family rejected me, and my mama turned her back to me while I was treated like trash in my own family.

Abuse, neglect, suicide, drug addiction and prostitution were a part of my darkest hours of life. Could it be that my mind has been trying to outrun my pain and sorrow all these years? Or is it that my pain doesn’t want me to forget what has happened? I thought that if I got married, life would change for me; but looking back on it and laughing now, married life did not treat me any better. And that’s because my husband was strung out on heroin and running the streets, sleeping with crackheads and whores. My family rejected me, and my husband beat me. I laid down to die as a way to escape the pain I was feeling, but death didn’t want me, not then.

How did I get myself out of such a predicament? I did so by the grace and mercy of God. I know that diamonds are precious stones. They are ugly to look at in their natural state, and found amongst rocks and dirt walked on by people who don’t know their worth. I was a diamond, and did not know my worth so long ago. I was stepped on in life and by people I loved and who I thought loved me. I added to my darkest hours with my own hands by the things that I was doing; I don’t deny it.

Today I am delivered, no longer living in life's darkest hours. I’ve survived my hell on earth, and am not ashamed to tell my story. Getting here wasn't easy, I cried many nights, but I am here standing strong in God's mercy and grace. I've overcome it all, and if I can survive my darkest hours of life and find peace and happiness, so can you.