And sometimes I avoid it.

Every now and then, I hit a fucking brick wall.  Today is one of those days where I feel like I’m being slammed face first against brick.
For whatever reason, things are weighing on me and its not helping me out on the scale.

I want to get it all out – its not pretty.

So here it goes – the thing i need to let go of to be ok (even if I am protecting the guilty).

When I was 3 we moved to Oklahoma.  My mom had a best friend here (T) and my dad (bio) was going to college here.  My mom’s friend’s husband (J) watched my brother and myself during the summer and sometimes during the school year after school because he didn’t work.  In fact, in all my life I have rarely known J to work.

J had 3 kids by his ex(s?).  2 girls who were in their 20′s when I was 3 and one son who I’ve never met to this day.  His girls had kids of their own, although its still blurry as to how many.  I grew up knowing these heathens, I mean kids, and I don’t know their names because I was isolated from them.  J watched my brother and myself for about 5 years.  My bro is 3 years older than I am.  J and T have a son together (H) who is 5 years younger than me…maybe 6?  Either way.

I remember the first time J watched my brother and me.  He put my brother outside to play in the yard with his grandchildren.  He made me go in the bathroom and take a bath.  The water was cold.  It was really really cold.  I didn’t want to take my clothes off.  I didn’t want a bath.  I had one the night before – this was 8am or so.  He told me that he’d make pancakes if I got in the bath and if I didn’t then he wouldn’t cook for any of the kids all day.  So I did it.  I mean really, did I have a choice?  I was 3.

He just watched me sit in the bathtub that first time.  I barely moved.  I was scared.  My mom was the only one who bathed me.  Not my dad and certainly not this man who wouldn’t let me around the other kids.

After the bath, he put me in his room and made me stay in there alone.  I don’t know why.  I got dressed and I peed myself.  I was potty trained, had been for a year.   I was scared that he’d make me take another bath so I put my panties and pants on a vent and let the air dry them.  I had seen my mom do this before.  When they were visibly dry (but not to the touch really) I put them back on and waited.

The rest of the day was quiet.  I was allowed to eat with the other kids and I was allowed outside, but I had to sit at the bench and watch them – I couldn’t go out and play.

I told my mom that he gave me a bath, she didn’t say anything.

We went back the next day.  It just kept happening, but it progressed.  J washed me.  J rubbed my back and my stomach.  Things happened outside of the tub.  It just…was bad.

This went on for years.  My dad left my mom when I was 3.5 and it got worse.  We were there all the time.  I was terrified.  I don’t know that my brother knew what was going on, but I later learned that my mom and T both knew.  T had a son when I was 5ish.  It got worse.  Now I was put on display in front of a toddler.  I was told to look at his penis.  I wasn’t told to touch it, but I was made to look at it while I was in the tub.  I hated that fucking tub.

Around 9 it stopped.  At this point, I was wetting myself in class (at 8) and I tried to stab a girl at school.  My brother’s best friend raped me when I was 7.  I think everything stopped because I was getting scary.  I was violent.  I was out of control.  I was a fucking train wreck.  You can only take so much.  Only so many men/boys can abuse you and use you before you can’t take it.  My mom got remarried when I was 8.  My step dad spanked me – just once – but hard enough to leave a big bruise.  I hid from him for weeks.  I was terrified.  J had hit me when I didn’t do what he wanted.  He said the bruises were from other kids when my mom asked.  I just KNEW my step dad would do the same thing.

We lived out in the country and I would go out in the woods and cry for hours.  No one looked for me.  I was pretty damaged.  I still am.  I hurt myself on purpose, but didn’t realize it for a while.  I would step on something or go somewhere that was dangerous and think “if it hurts its because i need to be hurt, if it doesn’t, then I’m ok”  it was more punishment for what I had already done wrong.  Afterall, I had to have done wrong for so many to hurt me.

I was drinking by 11.  Smoking too – neither on a regular basis.  By 13 I was doing both on a regular basis and on an addictive basis.  By 14 I was cutting myself with torn up disposable razors.

And you know what?  Not one fucking person asked me if I was ok, not one fucking adult noticed.

Around 14 I found a letter.  It was from T, to my mom.  Dated in 1989 – when I was 4.  It said that she was sorry for having the affair with my dad (What the FUCK?!) and that she only did it because J was molesting me and taking away from her time (WHAT?!?!??!)  and that she was going to try to get pregnant so that J would love her more than me (ok…seriously?).  The way she wrote about what happened to me was so casual, like I asked for it – I was seducing men at the age of 3.  Thats right, an undeveloped preschooler was a whore.  From that letter, I realized that my mom knew.  She fucking knew and she brought me back there.  She knew.  My dad fucked T because T wanted to get revenge on my mom for having me.  I was the fuck up that ruined everything – my parent’s marriage and T&J’s marriage.  Thats how she saw me.  My mom, who knows?  Maybe she saw it that way too since she kept bringing me back.

On a road trip that year (when I was 14) I told my mom about the molestation.  She said “No, you weren’t.  I’m a therapist, I can tell these types of people.”  Now, she is a therapist and she does work with sex offenders but I saw the letter – I know she was just in denial.   My uncle believed me though, he was the only one for years.

My mom sent me to therapy, but first she told every therapist that I was making this all up.  I can’t begin to explain how UNhelpful that was.  A fucking waste.

I’ve told a few people this story.  Not because I want or need sympathy, not because I need them to “get” me.  No.  Because I need to tell it.  Because somehow I heal a little bit every time I tell it.  I can finally type it without crying, but I can’t say the words.  I can’t say “I was vicitimized.  I was molested.  I was raped.”  I can’t.  I cry and cry.  This damn near ruined my life.

I used food to cope.  I have been so unhealthy for so long because when I’m upset, all I know is “eat.”  I try to change this habit, but its 21 years in the making.

As a teenager it should have fucking killed me.  When I wasn’t eating I was having sex with men I didn’t know that well – or that i did know, but I wasn’t safe.  Or I was doing drugs/drinking/smoking.

You think all I’m good for is YOUR pleasure Mr J?  I’ll show you!  I’ll fuck whoever I damn well please, and I’ll be good at it, and I’ll show you – someone out there DOES want me, even if its just for 20 minutes.  I’ll numb myself with meth and weed, I’ll drink my feelings far far away.  Fuck you, you didn’t hurt me (you just broke me into a million pieces).  And fuck you M (bro’s best friend who I still had to see on a regular basis until recently when he finally moved away).  FUCK YOU!  You didn’t take shit from me!!  Virginity?  No – you can’t TAKE that, it has to be given.  You did nothing (except break my soul).  You were nothing!!!

Until 2008, no one else but my Uncle knew it all.  I told my therapist when I was pregnant.  I cried, I shook, I threw up.  He said “How can anyone NOT believe you?  These feelings don’t happen from a lie”

Thank you Dr Smith, those words will forever comfort me.  Someone who doesn’t even really know me believes me and he understands it.

Maybe getting it all out now, a year later almost exactly, will help.  Maybe these feelings that are bothering me now are related to that.