As a young woman, I never thought I would be able to share this story or care to. Still, even to this day, I must remain anonymous, because my sexual abuser was a member of the community, celebrated for his contributions to the education system and involvement in extra-curricular activities. My choice to remain anonymous is not a result of my own personal shame, which I had felt for many years, but my choice to protect myself in a time where women are still victim shamed for faults that are not their own.
This person was someone who others admired and celebrated as a top-notch educator. For a while, I believed it too, until I came to realize the reality of the situation. With all the #metoo statuses being posted to Facebook lately and the accusations towards Harvey Weinstein finally coming to light, I have felt more inclined than ever to be vocal about my sexual abuse experience.
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This went on for almost five years of my middle and high school career. It started as innocently as I can remember. At first, he probably did just see me as a student, but when puberty hit, I remember a sudden shift in dynamic that I was unaccustomed to, but accepted, because I trusted him. I assumed the respect and platonic friendship was a mutual trust. I trusted the man that others knew by nickname and community members celebrated as a beautiful soul.
I was fooled into believing the same. When I began to realize what was happening between us, I considered that good people do bad things and he wasn’t in fact a bad person. I thought it was my fault. I thought my personality was to blame for his response to my body. I am still unsure what I believe in. I believe in the power of forgiveness, and I have forgiven him within myself, though I haven’t talked to him since after I told the school about his abuse. Through therapy, I have learned to let go and realize that I am a survivor. I have realized that though my past has made me a product of my present, my story can be changed according to my ability to release my past and change my outlooks.
I remember an evening we had practice. He was sitting at a desk. I had come back from a week-long trip. He was excited to see me, and shoved a ton of papers across the table, flipping it over dramatically. He ran towards me and picked me up. I found it odd and was a bit scared by the advance, but accepted it as I let him carry me in his arms and guide me around the room.
There were other times when he would kiss me and tell me that it was okay, but that others didn’t need to know. I thought I was special to him, like a daughter. That’s another reason I blamed myself for the relationship for a long time. Though I might’ve been special or talented, I second-guessed it for many years after until I recently sought out therapy. I questioned my true abilities, wondering if his praise had just been a result of my physical being.
I remember asking the police officer who was involved in my case, “Was he in love with me?”
“I believe yes,” he said.
I was stunned. His agreement made me sick to my stomach. I had not asked for this. I had always truly believed this man was a mentor and friend to me, nothing else. I was so young. I was not even thinking about sex. I had always been career-focused. I barely knew what sex was and I thought kissing was gross. Shared saliva with my first boyfriend literally made me break up with him and cry. I wasn’t ready for anything outside of friendship with anyone. I didn’t have the ability to recognize that sort of relationship, nor did I want it at that point.
I wondered why I let him grope me and didn’t question it. I wondered why I let him stare at my crotch and breasts. It didn’t feel good any of the times these things happened. I wondered why I didn’t let him know that I saw him doing these things. It made me feel sort of sick, but I was scared that if I said anything to him about it, or anyone, that he would expel me from the extra-curricular activities I so enjoyed, which is why I waited until the end of my high school experience to say anything. That, and he began to involve a person I loved in the abuse whenever I started to ignore him. I wasn’t about to let him do what he was doing to me to someone else. I didn’t want them to feel the pain I was feeling too. I felt protective of my friend. Why couldn’t I have done the same for me earlier? Why couldn’t I have seen it earlier? Would it have made anything better, though?
I took an independent study session with him. I remember him treating me to lunch, bringing me coffee from the teacher’s lounge, cheering louder at my name than other students in his class when it was announced I had made it on prom court and giving me special gifts throughout the year. I remember the times he stalked me home and approached me about it later, asking why I didn’t let him give me a ride to my house. I remember being in his car and feeling chills down my spine when he said, “Why don’t we just drive away together? Wouldn’t that be great?” I remember him forcing me to write an essay about my feelings for a grade when I refused to tell him about my feelings. I remember hiding in the computer lab when I should’ve been in his class and not feeling any remorse for it, a feeling I would’ve otherwise had with a respectable professional.
I am so glad to have made it out of this situation without it progressing to rape or further sexual trauma. I realize many women have not shared this outcome in their sexual abuse histories. I have been traumatized by mine, emotionally, ever since it happened. My experience had ruined many relationships for me over the years, both with friends and romantically. I felt unable to trust. After the situation was finally made clear to authority figures, I had my first panic attack. I had many ensuing over the next few years that only got worse as time went on.
My history of sexual abuse made me unable to accept attention or gifts from men I actually cared about and wanted to love or be intimate with. It made me scared to receive simple gifts like flowers or candies. My experience made me shut down around authority figures and feel incapable of speaking to them without fear they would manipulate or abuse me. The toll my sexual abuse had on my psyche felt unchangeable, until I decided to seek help with therapy and anxiety medication. My sexual abuse made me think that sex of any kind was completely wrong and should not be enjoyed.
The first time I attempted to have sex, these feelings surfaced, and, from there, I let myself be manipulated further by my first sexual partner, because I thought it was what I deserved. At first, I believed he was good, and based my entire opinion off of a great first impression. So when he asked me to do things that were out of my comfort zone, I went numb and did so anyway. I sacrificed more of myself for his comfort.
I am not proud of my history, but I am not ashamed. I am no longer sad about the things I can’t control or what occurred in my past. I am angry it happened. He should be ashamed. Not me. What happened to me has led me to the present, and a new awakening within myself. My sexual abuse has made me stronger. I am not glad it happened, but I am glad that I have learned from it, reported it when I did, and to let go of it now so that I can help others overcome their own emotional traumas in writing.
Through therapy and meeting positive encouragers in my life that I now know I can trust, I now feel I have the capacities and tools to recognize bad situations and people. I know how to trust my gut. Though I am still overcoming years of trust issues, things are progressing for me. Progress is a lifelong journey. I will always be grateful to have started this journey in my early twenties, rather than later in life.
I went through a terrible depression earlier this year, in which the flashbacks of my sexual abusers came back and made all of the other things I had been going through worse: Overcoming bad relationships and flighty men, lacking purpose due to unemployment, losing passion for my work, and feeling like a failure after moving back in with my parents. I had everything I thought I wanted, and, yet, I was empty. I didn’t recognize myself. Now I finally remember the trigger point and have learned to disable it. He no longer controls me. My sexual abuse does not control me. I decide for me, because I am a survivor. I am not what has happened to me. I am not my past. What has happened to me is over. My danger is not present, and that fact relieves lingering anxieties. Some men are worthy of being trusted. Some people are. I just must be aware and care for myself first and foremost.
So many women are told to hide their sexual abuse. I know I was. While I was being told to hide, he went around telling peers I was mentally unstable, and I believed this of myself for a while. I wondered if it was true—am I bipolar? No, that was his excuse for his actions. It was what he chose to believe in order to not feel the shame he should so feel to this day. I will never receive an apology, nor am I waiting or do I expect to.
I questioned everything for a long, long time, falling into more emotionally manipulative situations as a result. My sexual abuse is not my fault. My truth is valid. Though I would imagine he would still deny his faults to this day, I forgive him for his inability to do so. Carrying any other feeling is an emotional burden I do not wish upon myself, nor anyone who has gone through similar histories. We don't all need to forgive and forget. We must face it. We must face ourselves, care for ourselves and nurture ourselves with conscious thought and beauty.
We must love ourselves and in the spirit of feminism and equality, our fellow womankind, now more than ever. While our president has been shown in media grabbing women by the pussy, we must will ourselves to fight back and not be silenced by people that refuse to face the reality of their actions or others’. The reality is that almost all of my female Facebook friends have written a “me too” status in the past three days. Those statistics are too jarring to ignore.
Do you hear me, Mr. President? I dare you to own up to your faults with womankind and ask for forgiveness for all of the “me too” statuses you may have caused across the world. I dare this of all abusers. Show your humanity and stop the vileness that is sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is not human nature. Sexual abuse is human crime.
