How can you trust anyone in life when the people you were meant to trust the most were the ones hurting you?
That question has lived inside me for as long as I can remember.
From the outside, we looked like a normal family, mum, dad, me and my sister. The most enjoyment I found from my younger days was dancing, I love it. I think even then that dancing was my way of escaping, a bit of peace in a world that didn’t feel safe.
My childhood wasn’t safe.
My earliest memories are bruises, shouting and fear. I was battered for just existing, dragged by my hair, kicked downstairs, locked in rooms for hours…the violence was constant.
And I never understood why it was always me, why not my sister? Why did she get love, and I got pain?
Then, one day, he sat me down, calm as anything, and told me he wasn’t actually my real dad.
And in the most twisted way, it made sense.
It was like everything suddenly clicked, that feeling of being the mistake, of being unwanted, of never being enough. That conversation didn’t bring me relief, it brought more pain, because it confirmed what I’d felt my whole life, that I didn’t belong, that me, Whitney, wasn’t worthy of love.
After my mum and him split up, I thought maybe things would get better, how wrong was I?
He kidnapped me once; I still remember that night now. My mum and a bunch of men with bats storming the house looking for him, me screaming in a kitchen corner, too scared to move. That night did something to me but after that the violence turned even worse.
He started sexually abusing me.
And at the same time, my mum started beating me too, I was getting it from every direction, a child with nowhere to hide, no one to protect me, no one to even notice.
By 14, I was off my head on drink and drugs. Not long after, I was doing drugs with my own mum. The same person who was supposed to care for me. I was soon homeless after I hit her new boyfriend over the head with an iron…as he approached my bedroom.
I had nowhere to go, mates couch’s now and again if I hadn’t upset them from my drunken wild behaviour. I started to sleep in the park, even outside random houses, hoping someone might just let me in.
At school, I’d show up black and blue, no one said a thing. It was as if it was expected of me, like that was just “my life.”
I couldn’t trust anyone, I didn’t even know what trust looked like.
I started going to counselling, but reliving everything would wreck me, I’d come out of sessions and drink myself into oblivion, angry and broken all over again. I was in constant fight mode, anyone even looked at me in the wrong way thenI would presume they were going to hurt me and I would lash out, violence, drink and drugs were all I knew. Eventually, I ended up in prison.
18 months I got.
And honestly? It was the first time I felt safe. I had a bed, no one could get to me and most importantly I wasn’t hurting anyone else. And I was clean for the first time in years.
That time in prison gave me space, and strangely it gave me the start of getting into books. I didn’t watch telly like everyone else…I read. Let me tell you, those books saved me. They helped me understand that what happened to me wasn’t my fault. They made me believe I might have another shot at life and to look at things differently, that maybe life wasn’t over after all that I could still make something of myself, if I tried hard enough.
When I got out, someone took a chance on me, gave me a job. I kept messing up at first, I didn’t know how to live a normal life but they stuck by me. I’d never known that kind of belief before if I’m honest.
Slowly, I started building a life, a real life though, got a council flat, did it up bit by bit, got a little car. I started to feel like maybe I could do this.
At 23, I found out I was pregnant, and everything changed.
My Lilly was born.
She taught me how to love, and how to be loved. She gave me a reason to work hard, to break every cycle I’d ever known and not go back to that old life. I wanted security for us as I never had that so I bought us a house when she was 1 year old. I worked my arse off for that deposit. We moved in with nothing but a sofa and her cot but I made that house a home for us and was, for once, proud of my self.
At 30, I started my first business, it failed, but anyone who knows me knows I’m not someone who gives up.
I sold my house, took another chance, and built again…
Now…
I run a global digital PR agency, working with brands all over the world. I’m surrounded by people who don’t want to hurt me, they just want to know me, help me and genuinely love me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still something I’m learning to accept.
Most people would probably describe me now as the one with the big laugh, the positive one, the one people come to when they need lifting up.
What I’ve realised is this; what happened to me doesn’t get to win anymore.
Not another day, not another moment…
I’m in control now.
Not them.
Not what they did.
I get to decide what my future looks like, not my past.
Because when you grow up thinking you don’t matter, it takes time to shake that off.
To believe you deserve more, to stop expecting pain.
I thought I was the mistake, but I’m not. I’m now who I’ve worked hard to become…
And I’m only just getting started.
