#6

When I was nine, my fifteen year old neighbor and I used to play together. Looking back on the games we played, I realize that I was the always losing member—I was always the one in the position to have broken my leg or smashed my head open, he was always the one to think up these sadistic games. But what did I care? There were no other kids in the neighborhood. And anyway, I was nine and there was a 15 year old who wanted to hang out with me. I felt special. And if there was something I didn’t understand that he suggested, it was just because I was younger than him. I was afraid that if I questioned him, he would remember how young I was, and would stop playing with me. So I chose not to question; I wanted to appear older than I was.

The first time that he proposed that we be tied together was while jumping on the trampoline. A few weeks later, we went into his room to play video games as usual, but this time he shut the door, and asked if I wanted to play something else-- the same game but without the trampoline. On his bed, he tied my hands together, tied my body to his. He would slide his hands into my pants, feeling my soft baby hair, and rub my tiny breasts—really nothing more than swollen nipples. We played truth or dare, and he dared me to take off my clothes. He took off his, and held his erect penis in his hands. These events took place a few times a week probably over a year (it’s hard to remember exactly). The strange thing is that I never really understood what was going on. I knew that I couldn’t tell my parents, but I didn’t really know why. Since I only ever saw his penis when it was erect, I came to the conclusion that some penises stand up, and others lay down. I didn’t really understand what sex was until maybe a year later, in fifth grade. I didn’t learn much about sex from these closed-door encounters—I could only imagine what my nine-year-old brain could think up. But what I did learn was how to stay silent, how not to say “no.” This lesson I took with me.

When I was twelve, a sixteen year old boy pressured me into giving him a blow job in a storeroom at a church. That was when I learned about ejaculation. Still, no one had taught me how to say “no.”

When I was 16, I fell asleep sharing a tent at a music festival with a friend, a 50-something year old man, who I assumed would not touch me. (That was at an age when I still I thought being “adult” involved some sort of higher moral standard—I assumed that he wouldn’t break the rules.) But I woke up that night with him on top and inside of me, saying, “I am such a lucky man.”

Of course, these are only a few of the hundreds of instances that have reinforced my inability to speak up for myself. Like Sarah, I thought that being held was synonymous with being held down—I had never experienced anything different. Even now, many years later, it was only after reading this blog about a year ago that I realized that events like the ones I’ve mentioned were sexual abuse. I knew that when I was nine, I was abused. I was child—I had no way to consent. But what happened when I was 12, and the events onward from there, I believed to be my own moral degradation.

Even now, it seems that every time I make headway in empowering myself, in speaking up for myself, I find myself tacked against a wall again, unable to say what I’m feeling, laughing nervously as unwanted advances are made. And each time this happens, all the moments that I have stood up for myself, and all the times that I have said what I needed to say—those times become irrelevant, because I know that no matter who I try to become, the person that I will always be is that scared little girl, backed up against the wall, hoping that maybe this is the time that he will just forget and walk away.

-Anonymous