Hello to my beautiful friends, I hope you're all doing well and enjoying your weekend. I've taken the past few days to give myself the time to mentally prepare to bring up all of the trauma and be completely honest with not only myself but all of you. There is so much that has happened, that with some situations I end up trying to make excuses for what the other person has done to me. There is one in particular that I would like to start with.
Trigger Warning: This story has to do with sexual abuse from a family member.
When I was around 11-12, I had two family members, cousins, who had been adopted when they were children come back into the family, for my sake, I'm going to change their names for this story, so we'll call them Jack and Sally. Jack is older than I, by 11 years, and Sally also older, by 9 years. Jack and I ended up becoming close, as I saw him as the older brother I never had and had always wanted. Over the next year or two, I ended up going and visiting him and his girlfriend quite often on weekends, going with them to his baseball games and tournaments. When we would get back to the house, and Jack wasn't around, his girlfriend would give me alcohol and let me get drunk. Of course at that age, I thought it was so cool and I loved the attention of feeling like they saw me as a mature young adult (who the **** was I kidding). Sometimes I'd bring my best friend with me, but up until this point, every time I had been there, his girlfriend was always there. Well, one weekend his girlfriend wasn't there, and my friend hadn't come with me. He and I just hung out at the house, watched movies and ordered pizza. Again, up until this point his girlfriend had always been there whenever I was, so I would either sleep on the couch or the spare room if it was set up. Since she wasn't there, he had said we could watch movies in their room and I could pass out in there. I didn't think anything of it- why would I? We're family. I'm supposed to be safe in this environment. I was just a kid, I didn't think things like this could/would happen. Silly me. I passed out, and woke up, with his hands, between my shorts, feeling my bikini area over my underwear. I kept my eyes closed, I was terrified. I pretended like I was still asleep. I didn't know what to do, what to say. I didn't know how to react, or how he would if he knew I was awake. I was crying, SCREAMING, inside. How could this be happening? Does he know what he's doing? I instantly started making excuses, he must be half asleep and used to sleeping with his girlfriend so doesn't realize what he's doing. Anything to make me feel like what was happening wasn't what it was. Until I felt the bed moving and heard his breathing and moaning to him pleasing himself. Once he was done, he finally stopped touching me. He never stuck his fingers inside me but touched all of the outsides. I was frozen. Confused. Scared. I laid there for an hour waiting to make sure he was asleep and ran out of that room and to the couch as fast as I could and had put track pants on over my shorts. After that visit, I never went back. I never told anyone, I just buried it down. Years later, my mother and I were living with my grandmother, and Jack and his girlfriend had broken up, so he moved in. At this point, I still hadn't told anyone about the incident from years ago and convinced myself it was a mistake and he didn't realize who it was and what he was doing. I acted normal with him like nothing had ever happened, which now looking back I think has a lot to do with my father not being in my life at the time and wanting an older male in my life (****** up, but the truth). So I would still hang out with him while others were around. One night I was upset about something, I can't remember at this point what it was, but he was in his room watching a movie, so I went to join, stupidly thinking what the **** could happen when there's other people in the house. Again, silly me. I had passed out during the movie, and this time, woke up with his hand in my shirt, completely under my bra, cupping my breast. Again, I was frozen and confused and so upset that I had again put myself in this situation. I didn't say anything, but this time I just got up and walked out of the room. I didn't say anything afterwards, he didn't say anything. For the second time, we both acted as if nothing had ever happened. Knowing this had happened a second time, I knew it couldn't be a mistake this time. There's no way it happens two times as a mistake. He was single and had been sleeping by himself for months at this point, there was no excuse. This time, it ******* me up mentally. I was around 19-21 at this time, and started drinking excessively and doing drugs.
That summer, I was at a family cottage and had been drinking and ended up opening up to my mother, but making it extremely clear that I wasn't yet ready to make this public within the family and deal with it, and that I needed her to respect that. She and I have a rocky relationship, so the fact that I opened up to her about this was huge. And unfortunately, she didn't respect me at all, made a bunch of drama mostly making it about herself. Because of the way she dealt with it, it never even got dealt with properly and I was left with most people not even believing me, so I just dropped it and stopped talking about it. Her betraying my trust, and then not even being genuine about the situation and just using it to benefit her, made it even worse for me, and made me shut down even more.
This is the first time I've talked about it since, it's the first time I've let myself think about it. But finally admitting that what he did was wrong, and knowing that it was not my fault, feels good. I know I need to speak with a professional and dive deep into the trauma, but this is a big first step for me. If you're still here reading this, thank you. Thank you for allowing a safe space for me to be genuinely honest about this situation. I will slowly start getting more and more out, and am glad you are a part of my journey.
Sending love and positivity to all of you xoxoxo
is anyone following the sextrortion case in Michigan? Trigger warning! Suicide, sexual extortion 
Last thought ***warning, trigger warning***
Death - TRIGGER WARNING
Crisis Trigger Warning
