--- title: I THOUGHT I CHOSE HIM! ~ Our Wave Community description: I was 15. He was 25. And somehow, for years, I remained submerged in blame, drowning in questions that never should have belonged to the 15-year-old girl in... url: https://community.ourwave.org/en/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969.md --- {{customAnalyticsScripts}} [\[Image: Our Wave Logo\]\[Image: Our Wave Logo\]](/en/) [ Community ](/en/)[ Questions & Answers ](/en/learn)[ Find Support ](/en/resources) Share story Post a message 0 Users 0 Views 0 Reactions 0 Stories read ##### Need to take a break? 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Send it to us 🇺🇸 ###### Survivor story # I THOUGHT I CHOSE HIM! Original story ##### Message to a Survivor If you're struggling right now, I want you to know that there is no deadline for understanding what happened to you. Maybe you haven't found the words for it yet. Maybe you still question whether what happened was “bad enough.” Maybe you loved the person who hurt you. Maybe you defended them, went back, missed them, or spent years believing you were somehow responsible. I did, too. Please give yourself the compassion you would give someone else telling you the exact same story. You survived with the knowledge, resources, and understanding you had at the time. Don't punish that version of yourself for not knowing what you know today. You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to grieve. You are allowed to heal slowly. You are allowed to have good days followed by terrible ones without believing you've somehow failed. Most importantly, you are still worthy of love. Not love you have to earn. Not love that controls you, frightens you, hurts you, or asks you to become smaller. You are worthy of love that feels safe. It took me years to understand that. So if you can't love the person you see in the mirror yet, start smaller. Be patient with them. Be curious about them. Stop blaming them. And one day, I hope you can look at the person who survived everything you did and realize: They were worthy of love the entire fucking time. So are you. ##### Message of Healing Healing is not one size fits all. There is no detailed manual with step-by-step instructions telling you exactly how to heal or how long it should take. To me, healing begins with simply wanting to do and feel better mentally, and then having the courage and patience to navigate what actually works for you. For me, that has meant therapy, learning to understand my experiences instead of blaming myself for them, and slowly learning how to genuinely love myself. Not just saying that I love myself, but actually believing that I am worthy of love, respect, safety, and happiness. Healing has also meant allowing myself to feel things I spent years avoiding or minimizing. Some days it looks like growth. Other days it looks like grief, anger, or finally understanding something about my past that I wasn't ready to understand before. I'm learning that progress doesn't mean never struggling again. Sometimes progress is recognizing why you're struggling and responding to yourself differently than you would have before. I don't think healing means becoming the person I was before everything happened. I'm not sure that person exists anymore. For me, healing is learning to love the person who survived it, while becoming the person I want to be. And I'm finally beginning to believe that she deserves that. I was 15. He was 25. And somehow, for years, I remained submerged in blame, drowning in questions that never should have belonged to the 15-year-old girl in the first place. I thought I chose him. I thought I loved him. I thought because I begged to see him, went back to him, defended him, and eventually had his baby, that what happened between us was a relationship. It wasn't. I was 30 years old when I sat in therapy, unraveling pieces of my past, when my therapist looked at me and said: “So, you were groomed.” Excuse me, what? The word felt foreign, and my immediate reaction was defensive. Groomed? No. You don't understand. I loved him. I wanted to be with him. I fought to see him. I had spent 15 years calling it a relationship. Calling it love. Accepting the word grooming meant confronting the possibility that the story I had told myself for half my life wasn't what I thought it was. And I wasn't ready for that. Not yet. It was 2006. I was growing up with an emotionally immature single mother struggling with alcoholism, a father who had been absent my entire life, virtually nonexistent supervision, and this aching, desperate need to feel wanted by somebody. Then a grown man made me feel chosen. He made me feel seen. Beautiful. Wanted. Important. And when you've spent your childhood wondering why you weren't enough for someone to stay, being chosen can feel a whole lot like being loved. The second time I met him was Date. I fought my mother HARD to let me see him that day. I begged her to drop me off while she went to the store. I argued. I pushed. I was stubborn and absolutely determined to get my way. And she gave in. At 15, I thought I had won. At 35, I wish she had let me hate her that day. I wish she had planted her feet and said, “Absolutely fucking not.” I wish she had been willing to endure my teenage anger because she understood something I couldn't possibly understand yet. I wish she had been the adult. Because I was not one. Instead, Date became what he called our “anniversary.” It was the day a 25-year-old man ignored my no. Two months later, I was pregnant. I was still 15. I later learned he had another teenage girl pregnant, too. And somehow, I still believed he loved me. He tried to choose what I wore. He corrected the way I spoke. He decided which friends I could see. Slowly, his opinions became expectations, and his expectations became rules. That's the twisted thing about grooming. Control can feel like care when you've never been properly cared for. Possessiveness can feel like protection when you've never felt protected. And attention can feel intoxicatingly like love when you've spent your whole life starving for it. So when my therapist finally called it grooming, my brain fought back. But I wanted to see him. But I went back. But I loved him. None of those things changed the one painfully simple fact I had spent years trying to reason around: I was 15. He was 25. Eventually, the control became suffocating and his behavior increasingly violent. When my daughter was nine months old, I knew I had to get us out. So I packed up my baby, moved to another state, and we never went back. He died in 2018. There will never be a courtroom. There will never be a verdict. There will never be that definitive moment where someone looks at the terrified, confused 15-year-old version of me and says, “What happened to you was wrong.” For a long time, I thought that meant there would never be justice. Then I realized something devastating. I'd spent years putting the wrong person on trial. Me. Why did you go? Why did you stay? Why did you love him? Why didn't you know better? Because I was FIFTEEN. That's why. I had been interrogating the choices of a child using the wisdom of the grown woman she somehow survived long enough to become. And I'm done doing that to her. She didn't need better judgment. She needed better adults. She needed a mother willing to let her scream, “I hate you,” if that's what it took to keep her safe. She needed a father who was there. She needed adults capable of recognizing the danger she couldn't possibly see yet. And when she said no, she needed her no to fucking matter. Then I look at pictures like this one. And gosh, I was so young. I thought having a baby made me grown. It didn't. I was a child raising a child. At 35, I look at that girl and I don't see someone reckless or stupid who should have known better. I see a painfully young girl desperately searching for love with absolutely no blueprint for what safe, healthy love was supposed to look like. I long to go back and grab her. I wish I could hold her face in my hands and tell her: You are not stupid. You are not difficult. You are not “mature for your age.” You are not responsible for the decisions of a grown man. You are a child. And none of this was ever supposed to be yours to carry. I can't go back and protect her. But I can stop punishing her. I can believe her. I can love her. And I can finally forgive her for every single thing she never needed forgiveness for in the first place. And if you've ever looked back at your younger self and thought: But I wanted them. But I went back. But I loved them. Please remember this: You're judging a child with knowledge they could only gain by surviving long enough to grow up. Stop asking why the child didn't know better. Start asking why the adult did. Sometimes healing isn't changing the past. Sometimes it's finally realizing that the person you've spent years blaming was never the person who needed to be held accountable. She was the one who needed protecting. And sometimes, years later, the person who finally comes back for her... is you. #grooming #teenagepregnancy #iwillnolongerbesilenced Random Story [ 0 Comment(s) Comment(s) ](/en/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969#comments) - Report ### Discard message? You have a comment in progress, are you sure you want to discard it? Cancel Discard ##### Similar community content Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate 0 Users 0 Views 0 Reactions 0 Stories read ##### Need to take a break? Try a grounding activity For immediate help, visit {{resource}} Show resources for \[Image: United States\]United States [\[Image: Argentina\]Argentina](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=ar)[\[Image: Australia\]Australia](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=au)[\[Image: Bolivia\]Bolivia](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=bo)[\[Image: Canada\]Canada](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=ca)[\[Image: Chile\]Chile](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=cl)[\[Image: Colombia\]Colombia](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=co)[\[Image: Costa Rica\]Costa Rica](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=cr)[\[Image: Cuba\]Cuba](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=cu)[\[Image: Dominican Republic\]Dominican Republic](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=do)[\[Image: Ecuador\]Ecuador](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=ec)[\[Image: El Salvador\]El Salvador](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=sv)[\[Image: Equatorial Guinea\]Equatorial Guinea](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=gq)[\[Image: Guatemala\]Guatemala](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=gt)[\[Image: Honduras\]Honduras](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=hn)[\[Image: Ireland\]Ireland](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=ie)[\[Image: Japan\]Japan](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=jp)[\[Image: Mexico\]Mexico](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=mx)[\[Image: Nicaragua\]Nicaragua](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=ni)[\[Image: New Zealand\]New Zealand](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=nz)[\[Image: Panama\]Panama](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=pa)[\[Image: Paraguay\]Paraguay](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=py)[\[Image: Peru\]Peru](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=pe)[\[Image: Puerto Rico\]Puerto Rico](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=pr)[\[Image: Spain\]Spain](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=es)[\[Image: United Kingdom\]United Kingdom](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=gb)[\[Image: Uruguay\]Uruguay](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=uy)[\[Image: Venezuela\]Venezuela](/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969?country=ve) English [English](/en/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969)[Español](/es/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969)[日本語](/ja/story/i-thought-i-chose-him-1969) For immediate help, visit {{resource}} Made with in Raleigh, NC | Read our [Community Guidelines](https://www.ourwave.org/en/community-guidelines), [Privacy Policy](https://www.ourwave.org/en/privacy), and [Terms](https://www.ourwave.org/en/terms) | [ #### Resources ](/en/resources) ### Post a Message Share a message of support with the community. 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Name the following out loud: 5 – things you can see (you can look within the room and out of the window) 4 – things you can feel (what is in front of you that you can touch?) 3 – things you can hear 2 – things you can smell 1 – thing you like about yourself. Take a deep breath to end. From where you are sitting, look around for things that have a texture or are nice or interesting to look at. Hold an object in your hand and bring your full focus to it. Look at where shadows fall on parts of it or maybe where there are shapes that form within the object. Feel how heavy or light it is in your hand and what the surface texture feels like under your fingers (This can also be done with a pet if you have one). Take a deep breath to end. Ask yourself the following questions and answer them out loud: 1\. Where am I? 2\. What day of the week is today? 3\. What is today’s date? 4\. What is the current month? 5\. What is the current year? 6\. How old am I? 7\. What season is it? Take a deep breath to end. Put your right hand palm down on your left shoulder. Put your left hand palm down on your right shoulder. Choose a sentence that will strengthen you. For example: “I am powerful.” Say the sentence out loud first and pat your right hand on your left shoulder, then your left hand on your right shoulder. Alternate the patting. Do ten pats altogether, five on each side, each time repeating your sentences aloud. Take a deep breath to end. Cross your arms in front of you and draw them towards your chest. With your right hand, hold your left upper arm. With your left hand, hold your right upper arm. Squeeze gently, and pull your arms inwards. Hold the squeeze for a little while, finding the right amount of squeeze for you in this moment. Hold the tension and release. Then squeeze for a little while again and release. Stay like that for a moment. Take a deep breath to end. Try another grounding activity I feel grounded and ready