Leslie
I grew up in suburbia, in a home that valued the status quo over conversations about reality. I was sheltered from the harsher things in life, and grew up giving everybody the benefit of the doubt, believing that people are inherently good. My god I wish someone had had the courage to tell me the truth … tell me that some people are not worth trying to save … that some people are out to hurt you.
I married my college sweetheart. For almost 10 years we were together, but sadly it didn’t last: we separated when I was 31 and later divorced. Not even 4 months after I had moved out to live on my own for the very first time, I found myself incredibly lonely. I didn’t know anybody in my neighbourhood, and I had never been all that good at cultivating deep friendships. For the many years since my mother’s death when I was 16, I kept everybody at arm’s length. I was alone, suffering from depression and low self-esteem.
When I met him online, it was my first date since I met my ex-husband. I followed all the rules of online dating and didn’t give him my last name or any personal identifiers. We met in public and he brought me flowers. Our plan for the date was to take a walk through downtown, and I had picked a meeting place near my apartment, but not so near that he would figure out where I lived. He seemed sweet, so I broke my own rule and told him I would just drop the flowers at home first, so I didn’t have to carry them around. I still can’t believe how naive I was …
Now that he was in my personal space and could see that I was totally unprepared for what he was planning (because even now I am sure he was looking for someone to dominate) everything went faster than normal. Our first date lasted over 24 hours, and included a trip to the house he shared with his dad. From that first date onward, we were almost inseparable for 16 months. For someone who had spent years of her marriage bored, he was exciting in a new and interesting way. It didn’t take long for me to discover that part of that was because he was an addict. He told me pretty words about wanting to quit, and how I could make him happy enough for that to finally happen. It took less than 3 weeks for me to become totally and completely ensnared because for the first time ever, someone was telling me that I was wonderful and beautiful and sexy. He blackmailed me constantly, telling me that if only I would buy him this, or do that, he would get better quicker. Every time he got high, it was somehow my fault – I had done something wrong, or hadn’t made him happy enough. He commandeered my life and even rented my condo out from under me, in order to control everything about me. He convinced me to take a leave of absence from work, further segregating me from any moderating influence. He extorted money from me so that I was always broke, and had to ask him for “allowance” money.
Every time I tried to leave, he found a way to bring me back.
I learned early on that when he would get high, I was going to suffer. I have never told anyone the things that he did to me, because I don’t want them to feel anger over something they can’t fix. For the first time, I am admitting that he raped me and sexually abused me on a regular basis. Once I needed medical care after a particularly brutal night. More than once, he hit me. He called the police on me multiple times, telling them that I was out of control and he didn’t know what to do with me. He was emotionally and verbally abusive, yelling at me in front of his kids or anyone who happened to be around. He convinced me that I was the one with the problem, because I was so depressed. I became so scared that I was going to take my own life that I committed myself to hospital for 3 nights, and spent a further 3 nights in a crisis centre. Life with him was filled with just enough genuine fun and excitement so that he could say that he did nice things for me. He bought me gifts with my own money, but dammit if they weren’t good gifts that I would never have bought for myself. But the mind-numbing lows far outweighed the “good” times. In the end, just before I finally found the courage to leave him, my finances were destroyed and my family had disowned me, thinking that I was the problem.
Even now, 2.5 years later, I am still paying (literally and figuratively) for the time I spent with him. My friends all now know that I went through hell, even if they don’t know the details. They have all, at one time or another, asked me how it happened.
I wish I had an answer for them.
Anonymous
I read a post recently about the impact smaller, “lesser” instances of sexual violence had had upon a blogger’s life. Until I read those words, I told myself that the little things in my life didn’t matter. Weren’t enough. Weren’t worth mentioning. Didn’t count.
And for all that I’ve forgiven and all that’s healed and all that, for me, through the years, became not so much and no longer bright and painful, some little things remain. Some little things rise up, band together like free radicals to form cancerous doubts and toxic shame. Sometimes all the little things take my breath away.
I’ve struggled, always, with voicing the little things. It’s not a big deal, I tell myself. It’s not a big deal anymore.
Today I test my voice, quietly.
*
One time I curled up in a dormitory lounge and cried on my boyfriend’s lap, confessing what I felt he needed to know. Shameful secrets. I thought he needed to know these things because they made me “less than.”
Convinced that I’d been masturbating at school, she wrenched me out of the car and threw me out into the driveway. “DO IT NOW,” she screamed. “DO IT NOW. SHOW THE NEIGHBORS. SHOW EVERYONE.”
I sobbed, tried to breathe, tripped and curled up. Touched my thigh. Closed my eyes.
I was six.
And then it was over. Just like that. A moment seared into my memory with a hot poker.
It feels like a betrayal to say these things. To admit they happened. A betrayal because I know she carries guilt and shame for losing her cool, for doing these things.
I’m a mother now. I have forgiven her and we have healed each other.
It hurts my heart to say out loud that the pain is still there, will always be there, will simply—always—be part of who I am.
At 16, I traveled with some of my family into the mountains of West Virginia. I met distant cousins. Three boys with thick accents and dirty clothes and a yard that stretched on and on and on into the plush Appalachians.
The first night, I slept out in a tent with the oldest boy and his friend. They were 15.
I pulled a blanket around me and shivered with a sense of anticipation I had no words for. Hormones left me edgy and drunk for something I’d never had. I wanted—maybe—to be touched. I wanted. Something.
But when he reached into my pajamas and pulled my panties down and slipped a finger into me I whispered, “Stop.” Because it felt slimy and awful and wrong, very wrong. He had thick dirty fingers and an ugly accent and a distant bloodline and bad breath.
I heard the crackling sound of his finger pumping in and out until I said it again, louder. I shifted. “Stop.”
And he stopped.
And in the morning, as the sun rose, I sneaked across wet grass and went into the house and climbed into the shower and sat on the drain and cried myself hoarse.
That night, we all played hide and seek. Sitting in a circle, we held our hands out to decide who was “it.” He looked at me and held up two fingers— curled slightly, clenched together, thrusting faintly in the air.
My fourteen-year-old brother glanced between us, confused.
I hid, burrowed in soft dead leaves under a thick bush. I never wanted to come out.
Sometimes men make me nervous the way dogs make me nervous. I know it’s probably fine but what if, what if, what if. The current of anticipation disrupts the air around me.
Sometimes, after I come, I cry. Sometimes I feel nauseated. Sometimes I curl away from my husband and shake. “I’m sorry,” I want to say. When I do say it, he sighs softly. How could he understand.
These are sometimes thoughts. Sometimes pains.
I am a mosaic. When I squint at the mirror, I am whole. I am not pain. I am not shame. I am not pride. I am not beauty. I am a million little things. My voice is soft.
This is who I am.
