Trigger warning: Before reading this post, please be aware that it includes descriptions of childhood sexual abuse.
Okay so let’s just get started, just a warning it’s a very long story although we will be flashing through about 14 years of my life, so there might be some details that I miss. I’ll try to be as detailed as possible. (For your understanding this is very nerve racking because I have to be very vulnerable.) Okay so my mother has a boyfriend that she has been with since I was 2 years old so he basically raised me. When I was 7 my mom left and we moved to Waterbury, Connecticut without him. Eventually she let him back into our lives and that’s when it started for me. So my sisters used to make fun of me because I was going through a change in my life and my hygiene was terrible. My mothers boyfriend offered to help me by showing me how to keep myself clean or so I thought. It started that way at least and then it escalated to him having me in the back of the car with my pants down while he looked at my underwear. There was a new sound that I was introduced (I didn’t find out what it was until later on in life) this happened for years and I never told anybody because he told me if I did child protective services would take me away from my mom and also that nobody would believe me. I remember when he dropped me and my little brother off at school he would take us really early so he could drop my brother and then go and find parking around the block somewhere, where he would cover all the windows and have me pull down my pants to show him my underwear. When I turned 12 I remember he told me to take a shower because he wanted to see what I do in the shower. I remember being really uncomfortable because I was naked in the shower with my eyes closed because he told me to close my eyes while I washed my hair. Later that year I told my mom what had been happening to me and she confronted him and he threw a fit throwing things around the kitchen. That day he broke the microwave and my mothers coffee pot. The yelling and screaming made me very scared but my mother stayed with him still. After that he stopped whatever he was doing. But when I turned 13 I started gaining weight and started being uncomfortable with my own body. He pulled me aside and asked me if I wanted to loose the weight that I was gaining. He told me that I should gain some mussels because what if one day girls tried to jump me in school (which never happened because I am a very quiet person and didn’t even talk to many people). We started working out together and just like last time it started out okay but then escalated from there. We started sneaking off and not telling my mother or anybody. Now you may be asking yourself why did you go back after what happened last time and I would say I honestly thought it would be different and also he made me feel like I needed him in order to accomplish loosing weight and that I could never do it on my own and that stuck on me for a while. I would say a good 3 to 4 years. And through those years he had me lock my room door (which I shared with two of my sisters) and he’d climb through the fire escape. So I would have to wait for him and then do my workout which was working but it was weird because he had me do it in either tights or my underwear and once again the sound that haunted my childhood was back. He is a very manipulative man and he knew what to say to get you to not say anything. He told me not to tell anybody this time because he wanted people to compliment me. And that sounded great to me and when it happened I felt amazing. It felt like so what if you feel uncomfortable, sexualized, and embarrassed you’re getting the results you wanted stop complaining and people are noticing the work you put in. Also although he made me feel that way in that moment I still felt like I had to made him proud because he would compare me to my sisters whom he trained me to hate. We had many conversations because he made me feel I couldn’t talk to anybody else because they would never understand. When I turned 16 I started telling my siblings everything and they encouraged me to tell my mother. When I told her I had my little brother tell her with me because I didn’t feel strong enough. My mother dragged me and my brother to the police station and I made a report. We then went to my aunts house where we spent the night and in the morning we told everybody what happened and there were a lot of tears because they didn’t know, but how could they like I said he was a very manipulative man. My mother kicked him out of the house and everything was fine. Then one day I was walking to the bus to go to school and there he was I was terrified and he stopped and said “Listen I’m not mad at you but I just wanted to let you know right now I’m living out of my car so if you could just tell your mother that you made it all up that would be great.” (By the way I later found out he was not living out of his car he was living with his mother) Obviously I didn’t tell my mother that because I wasn’t lying. But I did go home and tell my mother that he had stopped me and I was scared so from then on she walked me to the bus and stood there until the bus came. That October my mother left and moved to South Carolina and took my little brother with her but I stood with my older siblings and only one of them actually took care of me. Until I got tired of it because I wasn’t eating because they told me not to touch anything in the fridge because it was for them and them only. I had lost so much weight I hadn’t weighed that much since I was 11 and I was 16 now so you can only imagine. So I messaged my mom and she bought me a ticket to go to South Carolina. I really enjoyed it was fun I got to spend a lot of time with my sister and my nieces and nephew. We had to come back to New York because it was really hard to register me for school and I was missing a lot of school it was almost 2 months. When we came back the plan was that I was going to sleep with my mother, but my mother had other plans after the first night. She decided that I should take the cushions off the couch and sleep in my brothers room on the floor because she wanted to sleep with her boyfriend. One day I got irritated because I couldn’t sleep well but since my sister was gone most of the time my brother told me I should just sleep on her bed. Then my sister walked in and asked why I was in her bed and I told her. She didn’t get mad at me but she dropped her stuff and went to the kitchen where my mother was and she just went off and started yelling at her coming to my defense. I started crying because I felt ashamed that I was pushed to the side by my own mother. In the next few months he slowly started to move back in until he came back completely and my little brother blamed himself because of it because he said he wanted to build a relationship with his dad and I didn’t blame him because I knew how manipulative he can be because I would do the same thing and blame myself for the situation I was in. When I turned 18 once again I got myself in the same situation as the second time because I was gaining weight and my self esteem was terrible. He fed off of that and had me believing that I was unable to fix myself without his help. I later realized that wasn’t true. Then I started going to church because it was a few hours away from my own personal hell. And this time was different because he had expressed to me that he wanted to have sex with me in exchange for him buying me things. I felt completely disgusting and I wanted to just kill myself so he couldn’t have me. Thankfully I was saved by god and I can say I feel like I can breathe and I am free and I am happy. Although some days I find myself crying because I’m so angry with my mother because to this day she is still with him after everything that happened. I’m saying all of this to say I am grateful for my life and I love me now but it took a long time for that to happen. Please read my story and if you’re going through something similar don’t wait so long say something.