Normal- For Me

Sexual abuse began in my life around the age of five years.  A female relative ‘played’ with my vagina sometimes with a washcloth or towel, sometimes with a powder puff.  This continued from time to time until I was eleven years old.  During this same time, I was physically and/or sexually abused by my younger brother, on a near-daily basis.

He was so violent.  I was so frightened of him.  His treatment went from one extreme to the other. He exposed himself, fondled me, and often beat me up.  I wondered why my Mother would leave me at home with him, and why somebody, anybody in my family would not do something about his treatment of me.  It was as if it was all ‘normal’.  My family knew he was weird, but nobody did anything. If I dared to tell my Mother she’d sometimes scold him, but the next day I was in for a beat down.  Because of his violent nature, he was often in trouble with the law, so he spent a lot of time in juvenile detention centers, and later in jail.  These were the times I felt safest at home.

Nowhere is Safe

On one occasion, one of our neighbors asked me to go to the store for him.  I went into his house to get the money and the list of what he wanted.  He came out of the back of the house with his penis exposed.  I screamed and ran out.  I went to my aunt and uncle’s home and told them what had happened.  My uncle became enraged and went to his closet and got his shotgun.  By this time my mother had come in, and she and my aunt pleaded, begged, cried, and wrestled with my uncle until they were finally able to get the shotgun from him. I was reprimanded for ‘going into our neighbor’s house’, and told that if anyone ever did anything like that again, I was to tell the woman in the family, and they would handle it.

From the age of 9-11 years, there were two other perpetrators, both female, who also sexually abused me.  Ironically, one was a friend of my youngest brother, and the other was a friend of my older brother.  One of them groomed me by engaging in conversations about lesbians, and one day ‘showing’ me what they do. This consisted of her open-mouth kissing me and putting her fingers in my vagina. It was horrible.  I was so scared and didn’t know who or what to tell. The other one, would lure me upstairs to her bedroom and take my hand and make me touch her vagina.  It was awful. I was scared to do it and scared not to.  Who could I tell what she was doing to me?

There was another neighbor and his wife and daughter who lived next door to us.  He would write notes to me and ask me to meet him down near the railroad tracks.  I never did, but have often thought about what could have happened if I’d gone. Why didn’t I have someone in whom I felt safe in reporting him?   I never told anyone.

So Many Questions

As I got older, I realized that while I hated what had happened to me, at the same time there was a level of physical pleasure derived when I was being touched.  How could such a horrible experience have any pleasure?  Was there something wrong with me?  Was I gay?  Bisexual?  I knew I liked men and had no desire to have a same-sex relationship, so how could all of this be explained??? What was wrong with me?

I’m so grateful for ReClaim. I carried the burden of sexual abuse almost all of my life.  Until ReClaim, I NEVER TOLD ANYONE.  ReClaim helped me to finally find my voice; the voice that was stolen from me and silenced in my childhood.  Secondly, ReClaim helped me connect the dots and gave clarity to the years of mental anguish, confusion, and torment. There was nothing wrong with me.  I was innocent.  I was a child experiencing early childhood sexualization through the sick lives of those perpetrators.  And finally, ReClaim helped me to gain healing for my wounded soul, and RECLAIM my life.

If you have experienced ANY form of sexual abuse, you too can know the same freedom.  Please, please, allow ReClaim to do for you what it has done for me.