Issa
We met the first time when I was six, when his mother started dating my father. (Our parents lived together for a few years and married when I was eleven.) We didn’t see much of each other that first year, because our weekends rarely coincided. When we were around each other, I found him to be really touchy. He hugged me too often and I didn’t like him. I found him to be an annoying pain in the ass.
When I was seven he invented a game called “married,” which he wanted me to play. Not house, not doctor… “married.” Seeing how the alternative was follow around my younger annoying brothers, or his older sister who wanted nothing to do with me, I agreed. Playing married wasn’t a huge deal at first. It started out really small. The touching. The asking to see if I had boobies. The rubbing up against me. The fake kissing. The over-showing of his penis. I had two brothers, I’d seen penises, so I just never saw what was wrong with it. After awhile, he went a bit farther. He basically dry humped me. I had no idea what he was doing and it didn’t last longer than a minute or two, so I ignored it. I’d pretend I was somewhere else, not there with him. I think he took that as a sign that I enjoyed it.
Here’s where it gets tricky. He was not older than me. He was not some bully picking on a younger child. He was my age. Exactly my age, in fact. He is a day younger than me. I was quiet and embarrassingly shy. I didn’t know how to make him stop. I knew I didn’t like what he was doing, but I didn’t have the words to explain to anyone what was going on. In some ways, I was scared of him. I shouldn’t have been, but I was.
This went on for years. I wanted to tell my mom, but I just couldn’t make myself form the words. I tried, but I couldn’t. Each time I went to my dad’s house, I swore I’d stay away from him, but I wasn’t ever able too. He’d corner me anywhere and push me to the ground. He’d put his hands all over me. He’d hump my leg. He’d try and kiss me for reals. When I’d ask him to stop. Whenever I told him I didn’t like this, he’d tell me I did. He’d tell me he’d kill me if I told anyone. He told me if I didn’t like him, I’d have stopped letting him touch me years ago. It was too late now.
When I was twelve and we were on a camping trip, he took to the place of no return. He sneaked into my tent in the middle of the night and I woke up after he’d removed my sweatpants and panties. He would have raped me that time, but he had no idea what he was doing. He raped my leg. I tried to push him off of me, but I wasn’t able to. It was over as quick as it started.
After that I swore I’d tell my mom. Then the unthinkable happened. My innocent baby brother was molested by our uncle. He told my mom and it tore our family apart. I wanted to tell her what had happened to me, but I knew everyone would think I just wanted attention. I decided then that I’d never tell a soul. I also decided that day to sleep with a knife while at my dad’s house. It was a small knife, a pocket knife.
For awhile I got lucky. I barely saw him for the next year or two and when I did, I made sure I wasn’t ever alone with him. I’d go to sleep at friends’ houses whenever I had to go to my dad’s. At fourteen he cornered me in a bathroom and yet again raped my leg.
He only entered me once and to this day I would tell you, he couldn’t tell the difference. I did though. I knew. He held his hand over my mouth, so I couldn’t scream.
When school started that year, I thought I’d hit the freaking lottery: his parents decided to send him to boarding school. When I’d see him on school breaks I made sure to stay far away from him. I’d made my baby brother teach me how to defend myself, but the opportunity never presented itself again.
At a Christmas party one year, when I was seventeen, he asked me if I wanted to come cuddle and watch a movie later. My boyfriend (now my husband) saw the way I cringed and balled my fists, each time he talked to me. Later, I told my husband most of what had happened. I’m not sure what he did to my step-brother, but I know he’s never tried anything again.
I’ve told two people this story. One is my husband and the other my best friend, who I told in a drunken moment when I was nineteen. I will never tell my parents. I haven’t told my younger brother, someone who would understand. I avoid my dad’s house on holidays like the plague. I visit on random times and never for longer than a few days. I go years between visits. I do this for many reasons, but one is so I won’t have to see him. I have never allowed my children to be alone with him in a room. In fact, he’s only seen my girls a handful of times. Mostly at weddings and funerals.
I know logically it’s not my fault. However I also know I could have stopped it, had I had any courage. I was not raped, not in the way most people are. I let a little boy, my step-brother, a kid who was my age do this too me. I know what he did was wrong, I do. Truly. I also know, as an adult, how I could have stopped him. Adult logic however, isn’t little girl logic. I am thankful every day that my girls are stronger than me. I know if someone looked at them wrong, they’d not hesitate to tell me.
My husband understands. He knows, he gets it. He learned long ago not to rub up against me without me knowing he was there and what he was doing. My own husband has to announce when he wants to get all touchy. Ten years of marriage and he still has to do this. He is a saint.
I never wanted to tell this story. I’ve been asked many times over the years if I was abused as a kid. I’ve lied to my mother, to my friends and to therapists. I can’t seem to figure out why I am telling this now. I think its because last week a little boy told my seven year old that he had a boner. I had to explain to her what that meant. She knew what he said wasn’t okay and she told a teacher and me. She did the right thing in telling and all he did was say the word to her. But I had to explain to my seven year old child what a boner is. I can’t seem to stop thinking about this, since that day.
I am hyper-vigilant when it comes to who is around my children. I know it can be anyone though. Any one can take a child’s innocence away. I lost mine when I was seven.
I wish I could get it back.
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Issa blogs at Issa’s Crazy World. This post was originally written six months ago. Issa asks that you keep all comments here on VU, rather than on her own blog.
Danielle
My senior year, I was so ready to be done with high school and all of the bullshit. There were boys I had serious crushes on, but nothing ever happened. I didn’t know how to assert myself, how to let them know I really did like them. By this time, my reputation was a disgusting, mangled mess of lies, and I just didn’t care anymore.
I had a dear friend who always attempted to make me feel better. We’d been friends through most of this high school drama. She knew how I hurt. She wanted to see me happy. She started trying to get me to assert myself. And honestly, I don’t remember what she said, did, or suggested, but slowly, I started to feel assertive.
My first attempt at being STRONG and ASSERTIVE and FORWARD with a guy was horribly successful. I actually grabbed a guy’s ass (in his tight Wranglers) and told him I liked it. Within a few weeks, we were together non-stop. Within a month, we were a couple.
I asserted myself with the wrong person. I asserted myself with a dangerous, careless asshole, who had no idea about the history I carried within myself. I asserted myself with a person who cheated on me, berated me, humiliated me, hurt me, hit me. I made the wrong decision.
He was two years younger. He was cute, sorta. Lanky, blond, blue-eyed, bad-boy type. Catholic. By the time I learned that he had some issues with drugs and alcohol, it was too late: my heartstrings were all tangled in his fists. One of the first days we hung out after school, he was drunk. It didn’t really bother me, it was just a bit disconcerting. We went to the house of a friend of his, and there were lots of people I didn’t know, younger than me, and all fucked up. I realized I was with the “wrong crowd”, but I didn’t care.
He got so loaded that day, and he drove me home. He passed out at the wheel and drove into a ditch. I had to climb out of the passenger window, walk around & push him out of the driver’s seat, and get us out of the ditch.
I was supposed to pick my brother up from school. I didn’t make it. He walked home. He snored as I drove to his house, with the tires and steering column shaking violently. He didn’t wake up when I pulled into his driveway. I left him there, got my car, and went home. He called that night, acting as though nothing happened. I went along with it.
He was with me a few hours after I found out my parents had split up. He took me out to get drunk. On a school night. I vaguely remember throwing beer bottles at speed limit signs as he drove around the back roads between my house and his.
I won’t blame him for the amount of alcohol I drank that year. I probably would have done it anyway. But it was an unhappy drunk, an unhappy time, and honestly, he made me happy, for a brief period. When I wasn’t happy, it was too late.
He walked me to class, took me out on the weekends, hung out with me at my house during the week. He took me to pick my brother up from school when my car was in the shop. We hung out with his friends; very rarely mine. I met some people through him that were normal, sane, not part of the “wrong crowd,” and I’m thankful for those people; they ended up getting me through the bullshit he put me through later.
My parents hated him. My mother told him he was an asshole, and my dad pretty much ignored him. I continued to spend every waking hour with him, and spent many nights sleeping on the floor next to his bed, avoiding home.
He was the person who convinced me to use drugs for the first time. I’ll never forget it.
I started lying to my father about where I was staying, whose house I was sleeping over at, just so I could party with him and his friends. I relished his attention, and I liked the ease with which all of his friends just seemed so superficial and easy-going. No heartaches, no stress, no separated parents, no responsibilities.
I arrived at a party one night after work. Most everyone was wasted by the time I arrived. One of his older brother’s friends started picking on me, trying to draw me out, I guess. Instead of defending me, my boyfriend joined in. Within minutes, this older guy had pinned me up against the wall in the garage, cussing and spitting in my face. I was scared, but kneed him in the crotch. When he let go, my boyfriend and his brother took over, “playfully” grabbing me & threatening me. When they both slammed me so hard that I saw stars, I think my boyfriend woke up and told his brother to back off.
I had handmarked-bruises on both arms and shoulders for the next week. I avoided his calls.
He apologized; I went back to him.
Rinse and repeat. Alcohol. Anger. Sarcasm. One night of a threat with a gun and being pinned against his car, and I was done. Done, done.
I avoided his calls. I berated myself for getting involved with him in the first place, for being assertive towards him, of all people. Why not the guy I had a crush on since 5th grade, that I never told? Why not the nice football player who let me sit with him at lunch, who I had meaningful, intelligent conversations with in English? Why not any motherfucker other than this guy?
We went camping in the deserts of Carlsbad, New Mexico over Spring Break. My father actually let me go. It was a whole group of us, along with the father of his best friend. There were a couple of people in the group that I really enjoyed being around, that I felt safe with. Yes, I went.
The first night, he slept with my then-best friend, a girl in his grade. They shared the same birthday. We all shared a tent together. Everyone was drunk, on drugs (except me). I barely drank. I climbed into the tent, tired and dirty. He was on top of her. She saw me, pushed him off, and said my name. I slept in a friend’s truck that night. She banged on the window, but I wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t unlock the door. The rest of the trip was a blur. Alcohol, shooting guns in a dried-up riverbed, people falling into campfires, someone flipping the 4-wheeler with both of us on it–the breath being knocked out of me, both of them trying to make it up to me.
I got angry and yelled at him while we were climbing into some caves. He pushed me down.
Somehow, I went to prom with him. It was a disaster. By then, my friends were gone, pretty much. The sweet one that had helped me assert myself–she had left school by then to have her baby. I was so lonely. I continued to hang out with all of them. He convinced me to leave prom after dinner. No dancing, no visiting with friends, no nothing. I wasted the time on my hair, the money on my dress, the love in my heart for this.
The hotel that was supposedly “all taken care of” fell apart. We ended up at one of his friends’ houses, where his childhood friend (a girl) proceeded to try to pick a physical fight with me. He walked away, going to the bathroom to drop some acid. He passed out on a bed, but not before he called his childhood friend into the room, pulling on his belt buckle. I drove home.
The week after prom, random people started telling me about the girls he was talking to when I wasn’t on campus. His own sister told me he was sleeping with one of her friends. My then-best friend called me to apologize about Spring Break, and begged to “make it up to me.”
The night of graduation, she showed up at the ceremony with him. I have pictures of the three of us standing there together, and now I look into my young face and am dumbfounded that I allowed myself to be treated so badly.
I went to Project Graduation, and she “made it up to me” by going with me. By the time that was over, he was drunk and passed out in his own vomit in a friend’s backyard. I stuck a note in his pocket, telling him it was over.
I avoided his calls. I got tested for STDs.
It ended badly. I was a sobbing mess. I begged, pleaded, ranted, screamed. I was so angry at him, for cheating on me, for making me look like a fool, for dragging me down a road I didn’t want to go down. I didn’t recognize myself anymore. I wanted him gone, but I cried when he told me he was done with me.
I didn’t return his last phone call.
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Danielle blogs at A Little Left of Lost.
Girl With a Purpose
My mother walked out of my life when I was around the age of four months old. At the time, my father was working two jobs trying support my sister and me. One was delivering fliers on the weekends, and the other was a computer sales shop. He had been forced to learn how to balance two jobs and take care of his daughters.
At one point, he was told that he needed to find another job because the computer sales store was going out of business. He left that place and was left with one job that only paid $200 per weekend. It wasn’t enough to help us make it through. He applied for many things but nothing ever gave us enough money. He had almost given up, until he met another woman.
I was two years old when they got together. She had a one-year-old son, a great home, and lots of money. My dad ended up getting back on his feet and after three years he was engaged to her. My sister and I were young, we didn’t know what “engaged” meant–so we thought nothing of it.
After a couple of months passed my father got a better paying job and went back to school. While he was at school and work she had decided on methods of punishment. She would say we were ‘naughty children’ and ‘her son is much better behaved’. My sister and I were woken up for school by a slap, a kick, or a bucket of water dumped on us. If we got mad from being drenched we were punished. Some days she would make us face a wall and stand there for anywhere between one and fifteen hours, other days she would slap us until we were black and blue, sometimes she would even sit on us. When my father got home she acted like nothing happened and told my father we were perfect little angels.
This went on for a few years until she got pregnant with my little sister. During the pregnancy she punished us but it wasn’t by beating us…. Instead she would send my sister and I out into a snow storm while we were wearing our pajamas. We were in shorts and a t-shirt with no shoes or socks. My sister ended up with frostbite on her toes, fingers and ankles, and I ended up with nightmares and permafrost on my toes which caused my toenails to become permanently black.
We ended up receiving more and more abuse. Finally at the age of 14, my older sister stood in front of me attempting to protect me from her slap. As soon as my step-mother slapped my sister, my sister started hitting, kicking, biting and using absolutely anything against her in self-defense. After my sister unleashed her anger on my step-mother, my step-mother called the police. The police took my sister and I to live in a temporary foster home. When we got there we stayed up the whole night explaining everything that happened, from start to finish. We explained in great detail, and finally got her out of our life. We were put into the foster home until they believed it was stable enough for us to come out. In total we were in for 11 months and two days. We were finally released back into my father’s care.
We happily moved into an apartment, he has a steady paying job and he is fighting for custody of my other little sister.
I am sixteen years old now. I live every night with nightmares, depression, and panic attacks. I can’t handle being around too many people, I don’t like loud things, and I stick closer to family and I am trying to become less anti-social, but that takes time.
I am now bringing up a court case against her for the abuse I underwent.
Everyday of my life I continue to tell myself I will get my justice, she will be served, and I do have potential. I fight everyday of my life for perfect grades. I strive to win. Because, in reality, I am a girl with purpose.
2010 Bloggie Awards
I’m not gonna say much here because I’m pretty speechless. So I’ll keep this short and sweet.
Violence UnSilenced is a finalist for Best Community Blog in the 2010 Bloggie awards. It’s a huge honor, and regardless of the outcome of the voting, it’s already a priceless victory in terms of exposure. So many people will learn about VU now.
Most of all, I can’t imagine a more appropriate category.
This site belongs, and has always belonged, to all of us.
Thank you so much.
(and, if you’re so inclined, you can vote here.)
More importantly, please read and support the survivor below this post, and survivors before her, and the many, many survivors to come.
