chalice26's Diaryland Diary

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Me the statistic

I heard that 1 in 4 girls is sexually abused as a child. I think it's probably a lot more. I know I was molested, but nobody that writes statistics knows that, and I know that almost every girl I know has been sexually abused at some point. I think it's more like 3 in 4.
I was 12 years old the first time I experienced sexual abuse, and I didn't even know what it was. I had stayed home from school because my brother was sick so I could take care of him. I was coming in to check on him in the living room because he was coughing and my mom's boyfriend (who wasn't working at the time) was already there. He was wearing just a towel around his waist and he was standing with his legs apart turned toward me. The towel was split open and I could see his penis. I hadn't seen a man's penis before, and I basically thought it was funny. I told my brother about it and I said, "It was almost as if he wanted me to see it." We basically laughed about it and I told him to keep an eye out to see if he saw anything.
When we were kids, my brother and I would be sick for up to two weeks at a time, and most of what I remember from the beginning happened during this period. Nobody was home but me, my brother, and my mom's boyfriend. This man paid a lot of attention to me and was overly nice to me, but I just didn't realize it at the time. I just thought it was nice to have someone want to talk to me. My mom worked a lot and my brothers were younger, and we lived out in the country, so there weren't a lot of people to hang out with.
One time, I was lying next to him in their bed and we were looking at a catalog. I got up to go check on my brother and when I got back his penis was laying across the pages. I pretended not to notice and then made some excuse and got out of there. The same day, we were all three playing Yahtzee and he pulled it out of his boxers and motioned with his eyes for me to look down at it. I made an excuse for me and John to switch places and later asked him if he saw it, but he said he didn't.
After that I saw his penis on a pretty regular basis. He would wake me up in the morning for school wearing nothing but a towel and sit on my bed and wriggle out of it, or warm himself on my heater and "accidently" drop it.
I developed these really quirky defense mechanisms. Like how I couldn't use the restroom without checking all the cupboards, the shower, the closet to make sure he wasn't hiding in there. I did that in every bathroom for years after. I wore my bra to bed every night for protection. I kept my hand on the car door handle whenever I was in a car so I could jump out and escape if I needed to. I also did that for years after, and I trained myself to sleep with my hands held tightly to my brass headboard, which according to what I thought at the time, would prevent me from being kidnapped. I developed a lot of strange fears after that. I would no longer let anyone touch me, I wore baggy clothes, my grades went right out the window, and I decided that if sex was the cause of his behavior then I would never have it, because I couldn't stand the thought of being the reason a guy would behave that way.
I spent every day waiting for him to get comfortable and brave enough to rape me. I knew it was coming--it was just a question of when.
I ended up telling someone about what had been going on when he was out of town working. Everyone believed me right at first, but he somehow convinced them that I was lying. He said that I got the idea from PK and the Kid. He also said I didn't want to move away, so I made it up to get them to break up. And I was really shy, so I wasn't willing or able to give them many details, and they all eventually stopped believing me.
So he came home and everybody talked and agreed to forgive me if I "told the truth" and I wouldn't take it back, so I basically became ostracized from my family. Nobody wanted to talk to me because all I did was "cause trouble." I spent a lot of time alone and after that the only person that would talk to me was him. And then I just felt really strange and torn, because I knew that I hated him, but nobody else wanted anything to do with me, so I did sort of start depending on him for companionship. I know now that he was alienating me on purpose and he did it in other ways. Like he would give me money for something and then tell my brother's they couldn't have the same thing I'd just gotten. And everybody started saying that I only liked him when he gave me things and they hated me even more.
Eventually he began beating off in front of me. He would be laying on the couch with a blanket over him and on the end facing me it would be pulled up and he would beat off while he stared at me, but no one else in the room would be able to see. I never was able to get anyone else to catch him doing this, and it really frustrated me, because I knew no one would believe me if I told them, so I had to deal with it alone.
One of the last things I really remember happening was this one night when I woke up and I was looking right in his face. I was so scared, but he lept up and left my room. I looked down and my shirt and my bra were pulled up. By this time I was fourteen and I knew that this meant that he was getting more confident and I also knew that right at that moment we were the only two people awake in the house. My heart was pounding and I was scared to death, but I didn't know what to do. I think it was about a half an hour later when my brother started coughing and I knew that my mom would be getting up to help him and I was so relieved and thankful. I went to her and I said, "Someone was in my room." And we went into the living room and her boyfriend was sitting at the breakfast bar drawing or writing and she told him what I'd said, and he took off running into my room, as if there would still be someone in there and that even made my mom suspicious, I think. I went back to my room and they got in a fight and he roared off on his motorcycle and I went back into the living room. Mom said they'd been hanging out, but she dozed off, so I knew that she believed me, and after I went back to bed she came in with a baseball bat, and that's when I knew that she had no intention of protecting me. Of course I never used that bat and it stayed there in the corner by my bed until we moved from there.
At one point he even hit my mother and she kicked him out. But then she let him come back, and he and my uncle got in a big fight because he backhanded my brother right across the face. On my birthday he smacked John in the side of the head with the handle of the broom.
After he was finally gone for good, I felt a lot better about a lot of things, but some things never did get better. I never developed any desire to have sex with anyone. I never masturbated or thought about sex at all. My first kiss was when I was one month shy of 20. I never would have had sex, but I ended up getting really drunk and someone took advantage of that fact.
Even after a year of being in a relationship, I could still not respond physically to any form of stimulation. It was like that switch was off and I couldn't turn it on. I was damaged and I knew it. I never felt good or safe and so I was never able to really let go and just enjoy it--unless I was drunk.
With my husband I'm much better, because I do feel good and safe, but there's still a part of me that just can't let go--unless I'm drunk. And I don't think it ever will.

1:12 p.m. - 2005-05-11
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