Completely honest

I’m going to use this to tell my story because I was never allowed to talk about it. I grew up in the 80’s with my parents and one older brother. We were raised in church most of my childhood. I was taught to call on Jesus’s name and rebuke the devil. That there was power in the blood of Jesus. I hit puberty at 11 and my brother would pretend like my Barbie and Ken dolls were having sex. Then he started sneaking into my room at night. First I just yelled at him and he left. Soon that didn’t work. He would pretend he was asleep and I’d go back to sleep. He started touching me and he could get my panties off while I was sleeping. I told my mom and she didn’t believe me. I got in trouble for lying and telling stories. I don’t know if she said anything to my dad or not. She didn’t believe me until I screamed bloody murder and she saw him leaving my room. The next day or so I had a chain lock on my bedroom door and my brother was going to a Christian school and having therapy sessions with the pastor. I was told to never speak of it to anyone, EVER.

So the chain didn’t stop him. He’d crack the door enough to slide his hand in and unlatch it. Sometimes I still wouldn’t hear him come in. I would wake up to him touching me and smelling me. I cried and begged and rebuked and tried to cast out the demon. I called on the blood of Jesus to protect me. Sometimes he’d leave and sometimes he wouldn’t. It was the worst when my body would respond because I didn’t understand. I didn’t tell my parents again. They didn’t believe me before, why would they believe me now. This continues for 2 more years. My brother starts dating at 16 and has sex with his girlfriend. He gave me a condom to go have sex with my boyfriend. I was 13. But he didn’t touch me anymore. He joined the military at 17 and I felt free. I didn’t have to worry about him anymore and I didn’t have to pretend that I liked him. But that’s not the end of my story.

Right before I turned 14 I got in a car with my (different) boyfriend and 2 of his older friends. They were 17 and 18. We went to a local party spot and listened to music and smoked cigarettes. The 18 year old started flirting with me and asked if he could kiss me. My boyfriend said yes and him and the other guy walked up to a railroad track bridge and looked down on the two of us. T asked if I wanted to get in the car and I said yes. This older boy liked me. We kissed and made out and he laid me down. He pulled up my shirt and pulled down my shorts. When he took his off he started taking my panties off. I saw his penis and said don’t I can’t do this and tried to sit up. He said sure you can baby, pushed me down and started raping me. Through the back windshield I could see the other two watching and high fiving each other. He came on my stomach, grabbed a rag out of the floor and threw it at me saying clean yourself up. I did. They dropped me off and I went straight to my room. I didn’t tell because I knew she wouldn’t believe me and that my mom would blame me. After all I went with them and I let him take my clothes off. You can’t change your mind at the last minute like that.

The first time I tried to commit suicide I was 12 years old. Between then and when I moved out at 18 I probably tried at least 2 more times. I got married and had a baby and then started having awful mood swings. I had lots of energy, didn’t need to sleep at all but I was extremely mad too. Everything made me mad and I came very close several times to hitting my husband. I tried to run him over once because he called me the B word. Told my doctor and he said I was depressed. I didn’t think I was. I said I’m not sad, I’m pissed off all the time for every little reason. It was like flipping a switch. So I wouldn’t take the medicine. Besides my husband was a big boy. So what if I yelled at him. At least I wasn’t yelling at the baby. My first husband was the first person I ever told about my abuse and rape. He actually helped me through a couple flashbacks. All of a sudden I started waking up to him having sex with me. Even if I had said no before going to sleep. The betrayal was devastating. How could he do the exact same thing that messed me up to start with. He saw first hand what it had done to me. And martial rape is how I got pregnant with our youngest child. A year later we were divorced.

My brother was gone for 20 years and during that time I didn’t have many flashbacks or really think about what happened. One day my mom complained about he and I not being close. I said we’d never be close. My mother said “you think you’d be over that by now”. I felt like I had been dismissed again. I shouldn’t feel these things. He’s the important one, not me. He moved back home and the memories came flooding back. As well as the flashbacks but nobody in my life knew anything about that so again I suffered in silence and pretended for my mother. Pretend to like my brother, pretended that being around him didn’t bother me. Pretending like he was a good guy. Pretended like we were one big happy family. Just like mom wanted.