*TW* SA, Rape, Religious Abuse

Hi I’m new here. I found this after hitting a low point last night and needing to call crisis on myself. So here we go

everyone has their own story and mine begins at multiple points. I had quite bad anger issues as a child but I also always remember having such strong boundaries. I knew what I did and didn’t like and I didn’t care who thought what. I was so free and funny and adventurous. When I was 5 I got angry with my brother for telling me what to do and so I threw a pipe at him, it ended up cracking his head open, I never saw so much blood. I just ran as fast as I could and hid because I thought my parents were going to disown me. With a religious upbringing guilt and shame are things I’ve dealt with since birth. “You should be ashamed of yourself” what a thing to say to a child. So after that traumatic day I was scared of myself. I was scared of the power I had and then it also made me scared of the power others had because if I just slipped up and almost murdered my brother as a 5 year old then what could adults do?

i was always forced to hug and shake hands when I hated being touched. Taught me great physical boundaries as a child. So 7th grade was the first time I was SA. One of my closest guy friends was in computer class and slid his hand up my shorts and began touching my vagina. I instantly felt super hot and nauseous. I never told the teacher because how fucking weird. I didn’t want to deal with it. And that was the unfortunate start to a never ending loop. In HS they were fucking foul people. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know women had a place in this world, I just knew to be “subservient” to men. I was touched by at least 10 boys without consent throughout my hs career, most of it being within school grounds. I never really hung out with people or dated bc i wasn’t emotionally available. So here comes senior year. I worked hard on myself that whole summer, dieting and working out trying to feel on the outside what I did on the inside. So I lost 30-40 pounds and that’s when it got shitty. The guys I once knew as friends saw me as an object. I wasn’t someone they could talk to anymore I was someone to have sex with. So one night I lost my virginity to the most popular boy in school, he wrestled and played football. We started fooling around and it was great until it wasn’t. He would get aggressive during sex and not in a good way. So that’s when it gets worse. The wrestling coach was also my English teacher and he began grooming me. He would start by giving me a ton of attention in class. It was 2017 and “girl you’re looking thicker than a bowl of oatmeal” was a popular thing. So any time I would walk into class my teacher would say that and the class would laugh. Then it turned into touching my shoulders, or offering shoulder/neck massages. Then I found out the boy (let’s call him J) told every explicit detail of our sex life to the coach and all his teammates. I had other teachers at the school say so many awful things to me, one male teacher asked me if I got the blood stains out of my car from getting my “cherry popped” another female teacher told me I better get an STD check and then laughed. So back to the OG Groomer. He finally crossed a line when he told the team he wanted to have a threesome with me and another student. He also saw J and I watching wrestling tapes and he asked me if J ever pinned me down with wrestling moves. So fast forward a lot and it’s time to graduate. I was alienated completely by my school. Everyone hated me because I slept with J who was also sleeping with another girl (they were not dating) so then I find out I’m moving. So J and his friends threw me a going away party. I pregamed with my best friend at the time. She and I were inseparable. I was depressed so I drank too much and that’s about all I remembered. I woke up the next morning with my phone broken and not working, I had no car because my bff drove me, I had bloody scratches down my body and bruises everywhere and finally blood in my underwear. J was there so I just assumed it was him. I knew nothing so I texted him when I got access to a computer. He told me I was so fucked up he had to hold me up to have sex with me. I found out when he was “done” with me he left with my best friend and they had sex then left me behind incapacitated. So after they left another boy decided to also indulge. I had to be told about that one when I heard rumors and said they weren’t true just to be laughed at. The second guy was on again off again friends with J. I found out later that J offered me as a “peace offering”, if he let him use me they would consider their beef squashed. I feel like I’ve written a lot but it’s still nothing compared to what lived in my head and that’s just until age 18.

so I moved the day after graduation. J snuck up to see me before leaving, his dad was sick though. His dad ended up dying and J blamed me. He said if he didn’t come to say goodbye to me he could have seen his Dad one last time. So that made an awful situation worse. I felt so fucking guilty. I was alone. I was scared. I was so many things. So I tried going back to religion to help me maybe navigate all this new trauma. So I went on a missions trip to the Dominican Republic. I thought connecting with people would help me, seeing other places and other lives. Nope. The bus driver from that trip drove us to and from and lived in the compound we did. That was supposed to be a safe place for me. But it wasn’t. One night we stayed up late to make some fresh limeade, that was the night that as I turned all the lights off and went to the girls side of the compound I felt someone come up behind me. He pushed me against the wall and was trying to hold me down and shove me into the bathroom. I got away and locked my door and cried myself to sleep. So that’s when I really gave up hope. I felt like something was wrong with me. This is an awful thing to say but I felt like a rape magnet.

It’s been 4 years since the attempted rape and 5 years since the rape and sexual assault. I struggle constantly. But still keep growing because I know that it’s not my fault, just some days it’s hard to believe.