#survivorsaturday #metoo #SAAM
April is Sexual Abuse Awareness Month, and I was asked if I wanted to share my story. It’s not something I’ve ever done, but I’m starting to learn that sometimes there is healing in sharing. I struggle with talking about it, and honestly didn’t know where to start when it came to writing this. I hesitate for the same reasons that so many others do. My experience doesn’t feel that significant. I feel responsible for it happening. I don’t want to be thought of as attention seeking. What happened to me really isn’t that bad. (And in the grand scope of things, it wasn’t.) But that still doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t make my struggle, my damage, my insecurities any less real. And I still struggle with that too. So today I share with you.

I share with you that at 19 I was in a relationship that would end up altering my entire being. He wasn’t violent, but the emotional and sexual abuse more than made up for it. He ruined my confidence, my self image, my relationships. My sense of self preservation. At 19 I was new to pretty much everything, and was a wide eyed willing target for a narcissistic sociopath. I was easily charmed, and they always know exactly what to say at first. At first. They make you feel wonderful. And loved. Important. And then slowly they invert it all on you. “Who are you dressing up for? I’d never do that to you. Do I really ask so much? You shouldn’t want people in your life that don’t support us.” It started with the inability to tell him no. If I wasn’t in the mood, there must be someone else. I was cheating on him. Why wasn’t he good enough? I should always want him. How could I tell him no? I should be comfortable enough with him to try anything. He’d never really hurt me. But the time – The time that broke me. The time that it finally clicked that it was wrong. The time I finally said stop; I NEEDED to stop. I couldn’t do this anymore – he held me there and said he wasn’t done yet. It wasn’t violent. It wasn’t brutal. But there are no words for what that feels like. From someone who’s supposed to be the only one in the world that would ever love you and want you anyway. There are no words. Though, I’ve wasted countless pages trying.

These are some of those pieces. This is me taking my voice back. This is me saying that what may seem like a small thing to some, took me years to even acknowledge, and I’m still working on it. It took a few years before anything intimate didn’t give me severe panic attacks. It took even longer to feel like I was worth being intimate with. Loved? We’re still working on that. But I learned so much about myself. And my strength. And how much control I do in fact have. And here I am, writing publicly about it for the first time. Mostly, I hope it helps someone who feels like maybe their story doesn’t count. Or that it isn’t important enough. Trauma is not a competition. We can’t control how things impact us. We only have control over what we do with it after, and how we choose to heal.