Out In The Open

I posted a video by a 50 year old man the other day on my FB who finally admitted through his video about being molested as a child.  My friend shared it in an effort to say we REALLY have to be upfront in educating ourselves and others about stranger danger and molestation and the like.  It hit me hard because I also have a big issue that I want to educate my kids about, but realized, maybe I'd better share in the effort to help some parents out there.  Not to tell you to look for warning signs in your kids, because I exhibited none.  My grades didn't slip.  I did not turn to drugs.  I did not hang out with a different crowd.  I want you to share this story with your kids.  So they KNOW that it's not always strangers and it's not always obvious when it first begins.

My parents and/or close family may want to stop here.  This hurts to write.  It will hurt to read.

I was in an abusive relationship for a short time as a young girl in high school.  People are often amazed by that.  I've gotten "you don't seem like the type to let that happen" or "you were intimidating though" or "you seemed so together".

Have you ever driven home and then realized you have no idea how you got there?  Abuse is like that.  You don't LET it happen.  It's not right in your face.  It sneaks up.  Incrementally.  Small things. And the next thing you know, you're at your destination and you have no idea how you got there.  Or how to get out.  If he had started out hurting me right away, OF COURSE I would have left.  But that's not how it happens.

It's why now... when I hear a concerned parent talk about how their daughter's boyfriend asked her to wear her makeup only a certain way or a their son's girlfriend checks all his texts, the hair on the back of my neck raises.  They're worried about control.  I worry about what it can turn in to.

It started so small, really.  He asked me to try to be a little more affectionate.  Could I write more notes or give more hugs?  Could I show up to a couple more of his sporting events?  Could I not wear that outfit that made guys look at me.  Really, he was just trying to protect me.  He didn't want guys looking at me like I was an object.  That's what he said.

So I came to his events.  At first he was happy.  And then happy, but asked me not to talk to everyone.  And then one day he got angry, because I talked to the other athletes as well.  They were my friends too.  I didn't see anything wrong with it.  I'd never been an attractive girl, it was a new thing being considered attractive, so it didn't occur to me that I couldn't have male friends.  But he freaked out.  First it was just yelling.  Then I apologized and things went back to normal for a couple other visits to his sporting events, but then something would set him off.  And slowly the behavior went beyond yelling.  Then it was backing me up against a wall while he was yelling.  Or asking me to go somewhere with him, but he would be speeding and screaming and slamming his fist on the steering wheel or the dash.

Why didn't you leave then?  You're asking.  Again, incremental.  It was only a couple times followed by tears and "oh my God, I was so hungry and tired and jealous, I'm sorry" and then a long time would pass of nothing.  He wouldn't care who I talked to or what I wore.  And so you can excuse it.  We were young, learning how to do this relationship thing.  You know.  Excuses because I was a bright, straight-A together girl... I don't make mistakes.

Gradually, it happened more and the backing me up into a wall became a couple of times of holding me by the shoulders as he yelled and pushing me up against it.  And then slamming me up against it.  By the time this happens, embarrassment kicks in.  How do you get out without A) everyone asking questions and B) without him freaking out because now I'm afraid of him.  His temper is scary and no on sees it, so they don't know.  So now I'm wondering how to break up with him without setting him off or admitting what I'm going through.

In the middle of all this, the sexual abuse began.  Again, incremental.  His hands would wander while we kissed.  I would push them off and say "no".  Typical teenage boy, right?  He would listen, briefly.  Then try again.  But it was small and infrequent at first.  So again, it builds up so slow it's a long time before you look around and say, "wait! this isn't right!"  And, I'm not sure if it was by accident or design, but he only began to do it with others around, somehow knowing I'd be too embarrassed to speak up.  It would be at late night gatherings, in the dark rooms, everyone spread out on different couches and chairs all staring at the TV.  And we'd be on the last couch so no one was behind us and no one would turn around.  And then he would touch me and not listen when I said no.  We lived in Los Angeles.  It's not cold there.  I took to wearing LAYERS of clothing in the hopes he wouldn't have the energy to get through them all.  He did and by the time he was done, I was hurting.  I was tired.  I was embarrassed.  Sometimes I wouldn't fight.  I would just let the tears roll down my face.  And wait to go home.

I knew it was getting worse.  I didn't know how to tell my parents.  I thought they'd be ashamed of me.  Because by this time, you think it's your fault.  You've LET it happen.  Instead of saying no and pushing him away, I tell myself I should do more.  I should punch and kick and bite.  But that's stranger danger right?  And this is a boyfriend.  And I don't want to call attention to us.  And I'm scared. And because his words slowly eat at you.  "Guys only want one thing from you."  "No one knows you like I do."  "Your friends say the worst things about you behind your back, you can't trust anyone."  "I'm sorry."  "I'll kill myself if you leave."  And the worst night, the night I really knew I had to find a way out.  That night was the night I realized I was believing him.  We were at my parents, but it was late and they were asleep.  We were on the couch and he began kissing me and touching me hard.  We fell to the floor and he pinned me.  I thought, for the briefest second, he was being funny.  I said, laughing, "get off me or I'll scream."  But he leaned down and whispered in my ear and I knew he was serious.  "You will do nothing and you will say nothing because I can do ANYTHING to you I want and you won't wake your parents and let them see what you REALLY are."  And I believed him.  I believed I was the horrible person and I wouldn't want my parents to know what I was.

 I won't go into what happened that night.  He stopped short of sexual intercourse.  I'll say that much. And when he left, I couldn't stop shaking.  I went to my room and tried to sleep.   My dog, who always seemed to know, lay by my bed and let my hand stay on her.  I don't know how much I slept that night, if at all.  The next few weeks, I made excuses and saw him as seldom as possible.  I had a busy schedule with my classes and extracurricular life, it was easy to do.  The next time he got me alone I actually grabbed his hands at the wrists, twisted as hard as I could and burned his skin and said, "I'm SICK of this."  I think he knew.

I asked my friend and sister to be there at the house when I broke up with him.  Made some flimsy excuse about how then he couldn't cry and make drama.  But really, it's because I was terrified.  But I did it.  Told him I was done.  We were breaking up.

Unfortunately, it didn't stop there.  The abuse did.  But he began to threaten other boys who asked me out.  Tried to hit one with his car.  He would drive by my cheerleading practices slowly.  Wait outside class council meetings, just to say "hi." He would magically show up places I was.  We went to school about 20 minutes from my home.  Somehow, even at an event he wasn't at, he could find out someone asked me out and call me by the time I was walking in the door.  He would yell and berate me about how he KNEW who asked me out and that that guy had talked about me in the locker room.  Repeat the theme of boys only wanting one thing from me.

I didn't tell anyone.  I didn't let my appearance show anything.  My grades stayed up.  I dived into cheerleading, drama, class council, everything... just to seem perfect.  Only one friend had a sense.  My friend Wolf.  We could post poetry in our English class and whatever I posted, he knew I was struggling with a darkness.  Years later, we would talk about it.  I'm forever grateful he cared enough. Wolf and my friend Richard, in fact, were a shelter for me once without knowing it.  As we talked after drama rehearsal one day, that boy drove by.  Slowly.  He had already graduated.  I started shaking, but seeing Wolf and Richard, he kept going.  I'm forever grateful I was not alone waiting for my ride that day.  I'm forever grateful Wolf and Richard were with me.

This abuse has had an effect on me, even though the abuse was rather mild in comparison to the stories I know of friends who have fared far, far worse.  Friends, like me, who told no one.  And one friend who admitted to me, and he says only to me, that he was molested once when he was 10 and has not told a soul.  I don't know that he has admitted to himself the effect it has had.  He called it a homosexual encounter and I just wanted to let him know, it wasn't.  It was about power and control.  I think he has been shamed by that term and cannot talk about it.   Not to his parents or wife or son.  And it breaks my heart.

I have spent some time facing mine.  Finally talked to a therapist about it in my 20's.  Told my parents.  I've told some friends.  And I will tell my kids.  I will talk to them about strangers, but I will also talk to them about people you know.  About how it can start small and simple, but your gut will tell you.  Discomfort or confusion NEEDS to be heeded. I need to tell my kids if this starts to happen to them about how my own shame stopped me, so it CANNOT stop them from speaking up because there is NOTHING I should be ashamed of.

I'm still working on some of my issues.  I have trouble embracing my own sexuality.  In letting sexual intimacy with a loved one be a GOOD thing because it is tied up in my head as something shameful and horrible and ugly.  And it shouldn't be.  But that is my struggle and I am getting through it.

What I want you all to get from this is to TALK to your kids... about your story or mine.  About strangers and family and boyfriends and girlfriends.  About control  and predatory behavior and abuse.  That a boyfriend or a girlfriend should NEVER tell you how to dress or whom to talk to.  That the smallest bits of control or anger can spiral and you're in too deep before you see it.  And then about how you CAN get out.  I did.

I even talked to my abuser years later.  Told him what he did.  He admitted he knew why I wore so many layers.  He said he had followed some bad advice from friends and was a hormonal kid.  Said he didn't consider what he did abuse, but felt so horrible that it had affected me so.  He was being physically abused in his family and was messed up.  I told him my only purpose in talking to him was so that he could look at himself and get help.  And that I never wanted to hear from him nor see him again.  EVER.  The purpose of our chat was to educate him.

The purpose of my writing this is to educate you.  If you've been abused, you can release the control your abuser has on you by facing it and turning it to your own power.  It's what I'm doing now.  What I have been doing.  Childhood molestation is more difficult.  It's why that video I posted hit me so hard.  I thought of my friend and how he never told anyone and is carrying it around.  We have to talk, we have to be open and we have to empower ourselves.  Childhood molestation and the betrayal of an adult is so ugly.  I hope that video I posted helps others because I did not walk in those shoes.  But the shoes I did walk in can educate you too, parents.  Let you kids know.  While they're young.  Let's be open now... so we don't have to say sorry later.