It's A Long Story. (TW self harm, rape, bullying.. all the things.)

TW!! My entire story- As told by Ginger

Hi I'm new, so here is everything. I'm 24 years old.

This is pretty much what happened. I tried to recount it to the best of my ability. (all kinds of triggers here)

When I was in middle school I had a best friend, K. K and I were inseparable. In 9th grade something changed, she insulted me, made me feel dumb, "jumped down my throat" whenever she had the opportunity to create a misunderstanding when I thought I was being perfectly clear. I literally thought I was special needs or metally disabled and I thought nobody ever told me i was mentally disabled, and I thought that my friends were just people who were being nice to me bc I was disabled or something. She bullied me really hard. K invited all of my friends to hang out, excluding me. Leaving no friends to hang with. My parents would ask why I wasn’t hanging with my friends. I would tell them K was mean and and didn't inviteme. “You’re being too critical, give her another chance!” they said. By end of 9th grade I was so upset by K’s words and actions that I stopped joining the lunch table with my friends. Instead I went to the art room and pretended it was my study hall. My friends would ask where I was during lunch and I would explain. They occasionally convinced me to rejoin the lunch table, but I regretted it every single time. I would leave the table crying, and hold back tears even into the next class period where K sat next to me in Math continuing to torment me. Why didn’t my friends support me? They always would come up to me after bad encounters with K and say “I’m so sorry, I dont know why she’s so mean to you” but none of them ever stood up for me. When my birthday fell on the same night as homecoming, K invited all of my friends for a sleep over party at her house and I had nobody to celebrate my birthday with. My dad called her dad and got me invited so then I had to go, knowing full well the host (K) didn’t like me. I was so depressed I would come home after school at 5:15 pm (after sports practice) and go to bed without doing a lick of homework. My grades were suffering because I couldn’t find time to do my work. This lead my mom to bring me to the family doctor where I was prescribed 40 mg of adderall per day for my “ADD”. Now I had another thing for K to make fun of me for. Not only that but sleeping all day is 10000% not a symptom of ADD, and the ADD test was way too generalized to even be able to diagnose me properly IMO. My mom insisted that I had ADD when I clearly didn’t. She made me go to all kinds of ADD Specialists which I found to be humiliating. (After 8th grade my family took a trip to Italy and I stood up on the top of the railing of our 5th story hotel balcony thinking abt jumping.. was that not a sign of depression? They thought I was just being dramatic. I threw tantrums almost every single day. I was so irritable and upset it made me nauseous, screaming at my parents about grades, my messy room, and typical parent-daughter issues). Sleeping every chance I could get, and standing on a balcony railing are certainly not signs of ADD. Then in 10th grade I started cutting myself (I had expirementrd a few times before but this was the first reall start.) The very first day after I did it one of my teachers noticed and reported me to the guidance counselor. It was so embarrassing to be called out of class and have it announced to the entire class that I was going to the counselor. She asked me about my wrist and I said it was from my carrying sharp Skis during ski racing (my winter sport). She aparently didn’t believe me and she called my mom without telling me. When I got home my mom was crying and I didn’t know why and she asked if I’d been cutting my wrists and I gave the same story I told the counselor. I felt so put on the spot, thrown under the bus. Yet completely ashamed to have freaked my mom out to the point of tears. This instance was Never to be brought up again by anyone.

I took Adderall from 10th grade until my sophomore year of college when I stopped bc I hated it. (I couldn’t sleep at night and I would get migraines because I’d forget to eat throughout the day.)

Through out highschool a number of creepy boys harrassed me over the internet starting in 9th grade when a Senior Boy kept asking me via facebook messanger if I would have sex with him and if I was a virgin, and I barely even knew what that meant. Not to mention an 18 year old trying to hook up with a 14 year old is 100% illegal. This certainly wasn't the only time this happened. When I told my friends about it they thought I liked the attention, or would say that I was flirting back (I would always give sassy responses bc I didn't know what to say). Another time, a boy decided it would be okay to reach into my shirt and grab my breasts while I was sitting on the couch with all of our friends. He was talking to another girl at the time so I was super confused and when I told my friends but they didn't beleive me because they thought he was only interested in the other girl even though he was groping me in front of everyone. There were numerous other occasions like this too. How i wish I could confront these people now and be like WHAT THE F. Was. that. about.

Skip to 11th grade now-looking at colleges, I met a boy (J) who went to a nearby college that I was interested in (for the photography major). He was a mutual friend of my best friend. We started secretly hanging out. J would drive to my house to try to hook up with me while watching a movie on the couch when my parents were out. We would make out and then he would start pushing my head down with all of his strength to force me to perform oral sex on him, and I would resist by pushing my head up against his hand (I was resisitng so hard his hand was shaking and my neck was shaking) because I uncomfortable. J cut things off with me when I wouldn’t partake in the desired activities. I was devistated. Then we started talking again Senior year of HS year and I had a car and went to visit him at college 1.5 hrs away. He was on the track team so my parents let me go visit to see what the team was like since track was my fall sport _Pole vaulting. On my first visit, he encouraged me to drink and I ended up taking 6 shots of coconut rum (never having drank before at all ever not even at prom) and blacked out. I threw up chicken mcnuggets in his bed and then he took my virginity. I was young and didn’t know things back then. He slipped himself into my back end for a few strokes and then put it back in my vagina. I shouted in pain and he said “oops wrong hole sorry” as if it were an accident. This literally tore my asshole to the point where it bled every time I pooped for a week after. He also came inside me and I was not on birth control. Then I got a UTI because my own poop was forcibly shoved back into my vagina. I had to tell my mom that I was peeing blood clots the size of a quarter. She threw up when she learned that I wasn’t a virgin (minus the rapey details). I went up to see J a few other times after this. I forgave him since he said it was an accident. Then the “accident” happened AGAIN but this time it was after J got me high for my very first time. I shouted “OW” and since it had happened twice now I told him to be more careful because that really really hurts and is not healthy for me to be getting UTIs. After that, he cut ties with me again so I moved on from him (kind of.. i mean how can you move on from rape really though...). I decided to go to the same school as J bc they had their major I wanted (only offered at one other school in the country). Then after I made my decision the J's friend , Ill call him M, reached out to me from New Hampshire to see how I was doing bc he knew I was hurt by the break up. When I went to accepted students weekend for the school, M said he happened to be in town that weekend and he wanted to take me to lunch. I agreed to go and got in his car. M took me to a vacant parking lot where we started making out. Then he started taking off my clothes and i told him I was on my period (I was and I literally had a tampon in.. don't know how he didn't notice the string while jamming his hands down my pants) and he said “what I drove all this way to see you and you’re not gonna F**k me? At least give me head.” I felt really bad since he drove 6 hours just to see me, so I gave him what he wanted. He pushed my head down his shaft just as he was ejaculating so that I was forced to either swallow or gag. It went all up my nose and everywhere. ** aparently he thought that was enough for lunch.- that was a bad joke-.. I had a friend in my grade who was dating a boy at the same college so whenever I would visit she came with me. I remember telling her on the car ride home how disgusting I felt, and that my stomach was unsettled so we stopped at a gas station for gum and ginger ale.

My freshman year of college I had moved on, pursuing people my own age. J, now a sophomore at the school, appeared high and drunk at my dorm room and told me he was in love with me and I believed him and we started dating**. I remember once while we were dating he told me that his parents found out he smoked weed and they were on their way to confiscate his bong and pot, so we smoked all of his weed in one sitting. After that I was in the shower at his house and my body went numb and tingly and I fell over naked in his shower and blacked out. I woke up in his bed soaking wet with him again “accidentally” in the wrong hole. By now I knew it wasn’t an accident because it had happened at least 4 other times including the two I mentioned before. This boy proceeded to cheat on me in coming weeks, and took advantage of me for the 3 long months we dated, and then HE broke up with ME (??? Wtf) and for some reason I was completely devistated. This is where I picked up self harm aggressively. Nobody at the my first college ever noticed my bad habit.

**M was my boyfriends roommate during his sophomore year. So Every time I went to J's house I had to see my rapist.

-side note one of the (many) times J took advantage of me he came inside me and I was not on birth control.

If you're still reading you're 1/2 way through.

After my awful freshman year, I transfered to a school 1000 miles away. The night my parents dropped me at my apartment, I balled my eyes out and had a full panick attack. I didn't know anybody in the new city. I got really really drunk and started SH- deeper every day. My arms were torn up.

I tried out for the sailing team and made the team! One day at practice the assistant coach saw my many open wounds and reported me to the athletic director who was old and wise. He didn’t take the legal action he was supposed to when he found out I was cutting. I think he knew how shitty the system is for dealing with this kind of thing at our school. I’ve always been grateful for that because later in my college career we had new coaching staff and it happened again- I got reported- and the new director knew he had a legal obligation to report me to the dean of students, so I had to explain that I was in therapy and recovery is not a straight and narrow path but cutting once every few moths is nothing compared to what I used to do and basically tell them what they need to hear and tell them to leave me alone. It was humiliating so I’m glad I only had to do that once.

Fast fwd to my 2nd semester at the new school. I had a new boyfriend (JT) of 8 months who was a senior. He treated me really really well and always expressed concern for my SH behavior. One day we went to a Darty and I blacked out on Andre champaigne. We must have gotten in an argument or something. I barely remember anything but I do remember sprinting home from the darty sobbing (i dont know why but I wish I did). I got home, grabbed my blade and did a hack job on my forearm. I was so drunk I don’t feel how deep it was but my arm was dripping blood on my sheets. It was one of those that doesn't immediately start bleeding bc it's so deep) I picked myself up and went to the bathroom where I cried myself to sleep on the floor. I must have realized what I had done because evidently I texted a picture of the pool of blood to my friend JW. Thank goodness he had my spare key. JW got into my apartment and found me on the floor passed out in a pool of blood in the bathroom. He picked me up and cleaned all of my blood and my gaping wound. JW sat with me and offered to call my boyfriend but I guess I didn’t want that so JW sat by my bed for like 4 hours while I slept just watching over me. I probs should have gotten stitches but we kept this secret to ourselves. I have 0 idea to this day what made me so upset. Unfortunately my boyfriend was blacked out too so he didn't remember.

I broke up with that JT and started dating JW.

Anyway, I’ve been dating my best friend for 3 years now and I’ve been clean for 1 year. That’s my happy ending so far. :)

If you read the entire thing, thank you.