...See more
I was physically and sexually abused as a teen and the full story has been a dark secret but I want to purge it and set myself free. I think this should be shared. Maybe someone else can learn from it or what to look out for. Maybe I'm not the only one. I just have to let it out and sort of exorcise this demon that's been haunting me.
It started in high school. I was fifteen and I thought I had a crush on someone who wasn't who I thought he was. I was innocent and he was a monster.
I wish I knew this when I saw him in the lunch line, when we seemed to connect instantaneously with one look that literally ruined my life. At first, I thought he was being cute and playful or flirtatious but I saw a darker side to his intentions (my finger pads are tingling as I type this). He would smear food or something edible in suggestive places (my inner thighs when I wore short shorts in the summer) to spontaneously lick it off, or spill something on my shirt to make it transparent or see my bra. I didn't really know how to process that because it was unexpected and I was never quite socialized, always a loner so I didn't really know what was "normal" or how kids acted. I didn't react because I was so ???????????? confused and disconnected. The days went by and the physical contact became more audacious. He would take my inner wrists...... and BITE me. That's right. Then he would ironically say that he was a vampire. The weeks went by and I was dazed, not quite all there. One day at lunch, he took me behind a corner out of sight and lifted up my top... and my bra. He used his teeth more than his lips and as I type this it wouldn't surprise me if I have any scarring that I've never paid attention to. He touched me in other places, too... But then he kissed my lips once and said "I have a girlfriend, I can't do this" and walked away. I never initiated this. I was a babe in the woods and I let it happen because I didn't know how to react and my perception was blurred by loneliness, low self esteem and things that were quickly taken advantage of. I was so shocked and I told my friend and I can't remember if she started after him to kick his *** or stayed to flirt with his friend, but he was already gone when she showed up. I was just so... so.... confused. The next day I was wandering the unfamiliar hallways (it was summer school on another campus) and he happened to be there. He gestured for me to come and talk to him privately, so as naive as I was, I followed and he apologized for everything, admitting he "messed up" and "shouldn't have done that" (I agree, but an apology would never be enough for the things that happened months later and how he destroyed my innocence). He hugged me and asked if we could still be friends. As LONELY and socially inexperienced as I was, I agreed. That was that, we still hung out... the bizarre (and disturbing) biting and flirting didn't stop, but it didn't escalate from that. However, he would make strange comments about wanting to take me over his shoulder and throw me across the parking lot. I didn't know how to interpret that, but for once in my life I felt like the cool girl everyone wanted to hang out with because he and his friends would walk with me after school and talk to me in a way that I wasn't ignored or passive aggressively speedwalked away from. It was kind of like a dreamlike haze, looking back like something that would happen in a music video or weird indie film or something. My emotions and self esteem were taken advantage of and manipulated in that way, and it makes me sick to think about.
I find myself still in that headspace often, feeling like the sexy precocious but at the same time lost and dazed girl that I was, wanting to feel wanted but not knowing how to interpret other people's intentions or actions and traumatized in ways that didn't get to me until I was alone with my thoughts and the puzzle pieces fit together. I still want to feel youthful and vivacious again, pretending I didn't have a care in the world, the way I did before things got bad.
His friend was also violent and scary. One day I was walking out of the school's entrance alone, and someone wrapped an around me, pressed to my chest and pulled me flush against them sharply from behind... with an unsheathed knife held to my throat in the other hand. That's right. In the middle of the high school in plain sight, everyone around... and what's chilling is that no one did a thing. Nobody reacted. Of course, everyone saw but they went about their business like nothing was wrong. He made a sickening sound with his mouth imitating my throat being sliced horizontally. Then he let go of me, put the knife away and laughed. I didn't think it was funny. I was just lost and confused with a sky high adrenaline rush. He also talked about mutilating animals for fun in casual conversation with my girl friend and I didn't like him. He would hang around us, but I remember feeling vaguely uncomfortable/annoyed by his presence until I got used to him. I also heard that the main guy (let's call him A, even though his name doesn't start with that)'s girlfriend came to campus with a knife. I assumed she must have heard about me. Someone warned me to lay low.
I that summer, I learned that it's terrifying what teenagers are capable of. I should have never, never given A my number when he asked for it.
I never heard back from him and because I was so bent and skewed, I missed him and the wild, unexpected experience. I remembered the first feelings of feeling beautiful and desirable and I wanted that back. When he called again out of the blue unexpectedly in the fall, we got back in touch... but that might have been my worst mistake.
We got smoothies together and talked for a while... and then he called it a date, told me some story about his girlfriend dumping him and making out with another guy to make him jealous... kissed me by surprise... and then he sexually assaulted me in public. He had me up against a wall, right outside a grocery store with his hand down my jeans and I received an offended, dirty look from an elderly woman who otherwise did nothing, but I was frozen. It's like I couldn't react because there was a haze over my mind and I just kind of paused. It happened again somewhere else, but this time it was more intense and during a time it shouldn't have happened. I knew it wasn't right, but I clammed up and tried to relax. I knew it wasn't normal, that this was something that would be in edgy shock horror fiction or something but... that happened. There I was. It wasn't the last time.
Let's just call it a toxic, false "relationship". I was wronged and he sugarcoated it as romance but we weren't dating or exclusive. He just wanted to get me into trouble and he was completely inappropriate, uninhibited and didn't care about decency or respect or boundaries or even place and time. The biting continued on my inner wrists, popping blood vessels and leaving vicious red bruises where my veins were.
My parents contacted his and unearthed some terrifying secrets about him, things that nobody else would have told me. His parents told mine to protect me and keep me away from him because that "girlfriend" he had? He impregnated her... and beat her violently, physically abused her, actually beat her up so badly that she had a miscarriage.
At first I was defiant, being immature and thinking I was a modern day Juliet Capulet. I kept trying to find loopholes because he was the only trash excuse for a male paying attention to me and I craved it irrationally like an addictive drug. It messed up my mind and I was acting as monstrous as he was underneath. But that didn't work out because fate intervened, thankfully, and I understood why. He was bad. I was sweet and led astray, and that wasn't the kind of relationship I wanted. I deserved so much better than that. I was used, manipulated and compelled in the most insidious ways and it's scary how people are capable of doing that to each other. I regret to say all of this because of the horrible mess it made of my life. It's like that 80's movie Endless Love. JUST like that. As a young Brooke Shields fan, I saw that movie recently and what's eerie is that it's the same story. THE SAME STORY... (both males share the same first name, now you know) and except darker.
A was also a neo-N*zi, a prostitute and a drug addict.
He told me to listen to terrifying music about murder, public indecency, disgusting and haunting lyrics I hope to never hear again even in the echoes of my memory. But it happens, and I wasn't always good at blocking it out. It's easier now with time and I've learned to switch the songs in my head.
I had dreams of my mother crying and heartbroken about this and that's when I realized all of this and wanted nothing to do with him. I purged novels in my diary and burned the pages, ripped up any photos of him I had, blocked him on Facebook, severed all cords and freed myself. I was 17 and I read The Hunger Games, and the story gave me so much hope and I thought it was so beautiful and it was the distraction I needed to heal and reconnect with my sense of reality, emotion, vitality and find myself again after that mess.
I had cramps mimicking carpal tunnel for a couple years after I would never see him again and still get them occasionally, an unwelcome reminder.
The full impact of the trauma didn't really HIT me until two years later, in the middle of the night and I had intrusive thoughts and unpleasant song lyrics that left me shaking and crying in the dark in the middle of my bed. Or in class, talking to my teacher about it when she asked if I was okay.
I still can't go a day without thinking of him, but it's not because I miss him. I don't. I never want to see him again but I find little traces of that story in everything. Music, his name itself. Certain songs are poisoned, even if they're not explicit. Sometimes I think I'll hear his voice saying my name in a public place, like a grocery store and immediately find my mom in a panic or hide in the car. I had a panic attack on Christmas Eve because I saw someone resembling him in a grocery store. Now, it's like a muted nostalgic feeling. It's too bad all of that had to happen to me. I wish I could have erased him from my life before it all started and spiralled into chaos, because my teens should have been filled with hope and delight and happiness and all of those good things he took from me. There's a shadow cast over that time in my life now, an ink blot, a void.
But this version of Jade escaped and never looked back or changed her mind again.
My parents say I changed. I don't like to think that I did, because all I want is to pick up where my life left off before I met A.
I don't remember what inspired me to write this, but I wish I could forget. Sometimes I do. I can talk about what happened to me in an apathetic, unattached tone because time has healed me. I took some time after high school graduation to be a teenager, to celebrate the color back in my life and to have fun because I was still sixteen in my mind. Now I'm turning 24 in two days and I still feel like I'm eighteen, nineteen or twenty. I lost so much time and I want it back, and I'm kind of shocked at how old I am. I had a grand mal seizure and when I woke up in the emergency room, the doctor asked me how old I was. I couldn't remember anything or even having the seizure, but I counted on my fingers and guessed "eighteen?" when I was 22. My life is passing me by faster than I would like.
It just makes me sad. I learned that you never know who a person really is. People hide their identities and you'll never know things about them unless someone else is trying to protect you. I never, never, never want to fall into this trap again and now I have severe trust issues. I won't date, I won't even let guys close to me. I have an emotional wall of ice and marble, best of luck to anyone who tries to break through because I'm terrified of opening myself and becoming vulnerable to get hurt and abused again. I don't trust men.
At the same time, I want to be a mother. I want to have a biological child. I don't know how I'm going to do that if I can't trust any man, and I fear that by the time I find someone, I'm going to be past the reproductive age range and no longer fertile. I'm not afraid of being sexually active or even falling in love, I'm just afraid of someone getting in my head and turning out to be someone much scarier than I could ever imagine. Because it DOES happen as young as 17, 18, 19. It's scary. People can lie or show you one side and hide the one you SHOULD be seeing that sends you running for the hills and screaming. I'm angry that A had the audacity to twist and color my life the way he did and to hurt me on such a level.
I'm sad for the sweet, soft girl inside me that got hurt. My mom says a part of me isn't her kid anymore and that HURTS. IT BREAKS MY HEART. I still want to be that girl and who I was before this happened, and I try. I layer distractions over layered distractions over layered distractions until I'm too distracted to think about it. That's how I cope, that's how I survived what A did to me.
