Post 3 (my scholarship application)

I was trying to get grants and scholarships to go back to college and get my bachelor's degree and started filling out applications one Saturday, a few months back. I decided to share my application essay which got quite a bit of rise out of multiple people, and thought maybe you'd get something beneficial out of the essay. So, here goes nothing. The rubric stated, "Tell me why going back to school, and receiving this scholarship will further your future and help guide you there. What past experiences in your life have molded you to want to go back to college and how will you let these experiences set your future?

The future absolutely petrifies me.  The simple thought of the power it has over this planet is enough to put tears in my eyes and chills up my spine. The fear of the unknown and the weight of the world, it so effortlessly carries, are both ironically nauseating, as they are intoxicating.  Although I have not the slightest idea as to what my future holds, and what God has planned for me, there is, in fact, one thing I do have control of.  I have control over my brain function. I am in full control over myself, and my mind.  That, you see, is far more powerful of a statement than one might believe.  Let me explain.

Four years ago, I was that super spacy, bubbly, bossy, overly happy, witty, sarcastic, and just a little high-maintenance, girl, with the world by her tail, and not a single thing to lose, with my whole life ahead of me.  I was staying with my mom at the time, raising my two babies, with her help of course, with a full-time job, in an industry you couldn't pry me out of.  I absolutely loved my job and each of the customers who came in each day.  Working in a "male" dominant industry can be a little bit tricky at times, but I wouldn't have changed it for the sun and the moon.  I belonged there.  I am positive that in spite of the horror it eventually brought me, I absolutely belonged there.  I still to this day wouldn't change a single day that I showed up to work.  It was worth it to me, as sick as it sounds. Now, I'm not exactly sure what I had done at the time, to deserve what was coming to me next, but it will in fact be a time that haunts me somehow for the rest of my existence. 

(pause). (Before I go any further, I need to mention that I have never publicly spoken of this part of my life, to anyone, aside from five individuals whom I trust wholeheartedly, to keep my sacred and deepest secrets hidden from the outside world.  The five of you know who you are, and I love every single one of you, with every inch of my broken soul. Thank you.)

The first experience I had is the blurriest of them all, to where I only remember sitting there, alone, disgusted, mortified, and more than anything, terrified, that this wasn't going to be the last time.  I remember being on my knees, pleading to God, begging for mercy, and praying that what had just been done to me, would never, occur again.  You see, some individuals in life take their jobs for granted, and they take their roles way too literally, whereas individuals like me, are easy targets, for lack of better words.  We are small petite humans, who absolutely adore our position with the company, and wouldn't dare cross someone with such dominance and authority, and well, we do what we are told.  So, you guessed right.  That is exactly what I did.  I did as I was told, without hesitation, and without talking back.  Needless to say, the man tortured me.  He tortured me more than 50 times, (91 to be exact, but who's counting, right?), over an 18-week period.  It was like clockwork.  I knew, as soon as I received the email, it was time.  I was to be in his office, or whichever random room he chose for that day, and it would only last approximately nine minutes, start to finish, each and every time. It was almost as if my favorite place on the entire planet to be, had turned into my very worst nightmare.  It was the day that my neck was physically foil taped down to an old antique desk, the kind my grandfather used as a senior pastor throughout my entire childhood, was the day my body had finally had enough. It was warm outside, and one of the customers saw me walking down west Washington st, and asked me if he could give me a ride home.  I agreed and never looked back.  I didn't bring it up for the first time until four or five months had passed and have only spoken of it a handful of times since then.  I knew no one would believe me anyways and was honestly too proud to admit that I could let something like that happen to me for so long and not say something to someone. Destroying someone's family, a well-deserved career, and marriage just wasn't in me. I just continued to tell myself that I am too tough for tears and was raised to be stronger than the pain I felt. I had my own back, and it only made me that much more independent and that much more mentally unbreakable.  I won't sit here and put on some front, like I'm invincible, because that is not the case. I won't pretend that I don't avoid the aisle at Lowes and Menards, the one with roughly 30 rolls of three-inch foil tape on the shelf, for that item will haunt the darkest parts of my soul, for the rest of my life.  I know that what happened to me wasn't my fault.  I know that I could not have done anything differently, to have possibly avoided being the target, that first time.  Things like this happen, and well, unfortunately, this time, those types of things happened to me. 

I am one of the lucky ones, who eventually escaped the torture.  If I can just help other girls, innocent and helpless girls, who are in the same position that I was once in, then I know that I have done my part, and it will all be totally worth it to me in the end. I want to save girls, like me.  I want to free girls, like me. I need them to know, that they aren't alone.  The darkest places I've ever been in, are the ones I remember vividly, because I remember walking through them alone.  Just me. I want to show this man, this coward and disgraceful excuse of a man, that although he stole almost four years of my sanity, my everyday functioning, and my everyday normalcy, I am still standing here, fighting, and will never stop until the pain stops. If I can only help other girls get through the cloudy place, fight off the demons haunting and skewing their vision and thinking processes, and pull them from the scariest and darkest place in their imaginations and their dreams, then I will have done my part as a woman who made it out. I did it, by myself. I am a survivor. I refuse to fail, and I won't.  Until God brings me home, I will not stop trying, and will never stop helping.  I am a survivor. And you can be one too. 

Each of us breathing on this planet, deserves the same choice, as to how we want our future to play out, with absolutely nothing holding us back.  The future I once visualized for myself, is dead.  I'm a warrior, who refuses to let their attacker win the war, who will continue to fight, and who rewrote her own game plan, to life, by choice. God had other plans for my time and my life.  I want to successfully complete a bachelor's degree, design a life-altering program, for individuals like myself, design a webpage, tell my story, in hopes of it helping millions of other girls, write a book, and possibly establish my own self-help blog, reaching out to all parts of the earth, bringing all of us together, as one.  I want this educational journey, to allow me to explore new things, meet new people, educate as many victims as I possibly can, and one day at a time, attempt to make this world a more beautiful place to live in, with a future, I am no longer afraid of.