I was 4 years old when the sexual abuse started. He was 16, and my sisters best friend. Our Moms were best friends as well so he was constantly around. For 4 years he continued to assault and do whatever he wanted to with me. I was too young to even know what was going on, and as a severely underweight kid I had no way of fighting back. I wasn’t able to fully understand and comprehend what he did to me until I was in middle school. Then it felt like it was happening all over again. There’s many stories about what he did to me but the one that most effects me was from when I was 6. It was Christmas Eve, and our families were at a friends Christmas Party. All the adults, including my parents, were drunk and high, so the kids just had to fend for themselves. The whole night he would come up to me and touch me where he shouldn’t. I tried to tell my mom but she wanted nothing to do with me. Then he forced me into a random bedroom, and you know, took the rest of my childhood innocence I guess is the nicest way to describe it.
Sexual assault and abuse happens way too often, to way too many of us. People love to counteract trauma by saying “it made us stronger”. We didn’t need to be stronger, we needed to be safe. And for most of us we should’ve been safe with the people who were close to us. The people we trusted, who violently and traumatically broke that trust. To anyone else who has been sexually assaulted, it was not your fault. I know that that statement seems to be over used nowadays, but it truly wasn’t your fault. No matter your age, what you were wearing, your gender, your relationship to who did it to you, no one has the right to abuse you like that. You are so much more then how they made you feel.
