Back in August, 2025, repressed memories from my childhood started coming back.
I had always felt...broken.
That part of me was missing.
That something substantial was wrong.
That something horrible had been done.
I had ways felt some sort of...comradarie with rape victims. Not necessarily assault. Rape. Specifically rape.
When I was about 3 or 4, a man from my family church started grooming me. He posed himself as a kind man. A family friend. We were close to him and his wife.
When I was about 7, the grooming then started being oral rape. He'd force me to perform oral on him. If I resisted, he'd slap me. Or punch me. If I resisted in any way, he became violent. This resulted in lifelong jaw damage and the muscle now braces constantly.
When I was 8, I remember (and this is the one thing I've always remembered), I was walking with him outside his house. My grandma often took us to his house. She and my brother were inside with his wife. He had his arm around my shoulder, and I was wearing overall shorts and a yellow T-shirt. He slipped his hand in between the overalls and the shirt onto my breast and said, "I like touching small breasts." I couldn't say anything. I was uncomfortable, but I couldn't pull away. Everything after that moment is completely blank.
I think that was his confirmation that he could escalate. Because it was after that the rape started.
I won't go into details. But it lasted until I moved away when I was almost 11. I was 2 months away from turning 11.
There are fragments I remember. Of being led into rooms, the blank looks on my face, this...fog. Of bits and pieces of the assaults. Of the...sensations. Yes. My body reacted. That's what a body does. Even a child's. Even at 8...
This happened at his house. At our church. On a minimum of 3 times a week. And I couldn't escape it. I couldn't stop it. I couldn't resist.
This is called closed circuit trafficking. Because only one perpetrator was there. But it was bad enough I would have died from it.
I'd like to believe my dad saved my life.
At the same time, I was being mentally, verbally and emotionally abused by my stepmom. Sometimes even physically. She singled me out. My brother's room had a bed with a bedframe. Not one, but two dressers.
My room had a mattress on the floor, and a stereo on a milk crate.
My dad told my mom, that if she didn't come get us, she'd never see us again. That it couldn't wait. That they were moving.
They never moved.
Part of me wonders if he knew something was wrong. That I was...less. And he chose an immediate solution.
If I had been there for 6 months longer...I wouldn't be here.
I healed here. I became angry here. Suicidal. Depressed. I dissociated for HOURS, staring at a wall.
But I'm still alive.
When I was 16, I moved back in with my dad and my new stepmom.
I got into a relationship with a boy 2 years older than me. Our first sexual encounter was rape. By then, I was too emotionally invested. Then another encounter involved rape. Overall, it was a sexually and emotionally abusive relationship, and that also left lasting trauma.
The childhood memories were repressed because, even though it was enough to be considered trafficking, it wasn't my everyday. My stepmom was everyday, so my system prioritized that abused over the sexual abuse.
And then last year, when I was dealing with another traumatic incident of a man following me home for a second time two years after the first time, it got me thinking. And the thinking started bring the memories back.
I'm in therapy every single week.
And then I quit my job that was also causing me trauma, and went to another that was just abusive. Now I'm at one that I feel heard at, and included. And it's so different.
It's tough. But I'm making it. I'm okay.
I don't expect anything to come from this.
I just want people to know that you're not alone. I hear you. I see you. I love you. You deserved better, and you *deserve* better.
NONE of what happened to you is your fault.
