#507

I suppose the beginning was when I was 5 years old and the 11 year old neighbor boy, who's mom was babysitting me, wanted to show me porn and then act it out. I was confused and had no idea what any of it was, but looked up to him, so let him do what he wanted. This led to the dirty dark secret of masturbation, which I continued to do with tremendous guilt until I became an adult and learned that pleasuring oneself was okay. I don't know exactly what my parents did, but something in my upbringing made me not feel as if my feelings or wants/needs were of any importance, so when I started developing friendships and other relationships, I couldn't tell people "no" or to stop - I didn't trust my own thoughts and feelings. When I turned 6, I met my best friend, who soon became my only friend as she became very jealous of sharing me with others. I don't blame her at the time, she was also a product of her abusive environment, but it was the true beginning. As we got older she introduced me to drugs and older boys and often set me up with boys, like the drunk 16 year old who was always trying to feel up my shirt when I was 12, or the cute, sweet boy whom she would purposely undress in front of to show of her much larger breasts. As I hit high school I would often date whomever was the most persistent and more often than not ended up with guys that only wanted one thing and only cared for themselves. I was told I was "crazy" when I finally got up the courage to demand to be treated better. I was hog-tied and dressed up, paraded around naked, and told I'd be the best girlfriend if I just didn't talk - I was dead inside. I even got to a point where I thought I was being sex-positive and that it was my idea - I was a brave rebel, all while my self worth crumbled to the ground. I became pregnant at 17 and didn't know who the father was...maybe it was my boyfriend who had sex with me then broke up right after saying he'd miss the sex but nothing else, maybe it was the guy who offered me a ride home from a party whom I decided to have sex with instead of going home to the black hole that was my home life - I didn't care what happened to me at that point, I faced each day indifferent to living or dying. However, though I don't recommend becoming pregnant in that situation to anyone, it saved me. I may not have cared about myself, but I cared about my baby. It was a short reprieve though as after she was born I felt a sense of responsibility to the potential father and got a DNA test. Turns out it was the one night stand and in my young foolish grew-up-with-divorced-parents mind I decided to take him up on the offer to be a "family". I spent 15 years married to someone who became an alcoholic and thought I was there for his pleasure. I didn't understand that rape could happen in a marriage as I'd been thoroughly brainwashed into believing it was my "duty" and that as an uneducated stay-at-home mom, I would lose my children if he decided to divorce me, so I did my "duty". It got to a point where changing clothes caused panic - I didn't want to be naked around him because that would turn him on and be me "asking for it", so I would frantically get dressed when he was in another room. He cheated on me and I still had to make amends, the fear of losing my children and them being alone with him was greater than my freedom was worth. I finally was able to enroll in college and a miraculous thing happened I made friends and discovered I had value as a human being and deserved to be treated better. I also discovered that I was more than capable to take care of myself and my kids without him, so I finally finished filling out the divorce papers that I had tried to fill out four times before that - it was terrifying and I never got child support from him because my kids (who were teenagers at this point) and I were scared he would request custody just so he wouldn't have to pay me. Plus, I was terrified to be in the same room with him...something my family will never understand because he was such a "nice guy". To be honest there's even more encounters than this, little things like being grabbed in the crotch at clubs and even roofied, though thankfully, my friends and the bartender were able to intervene and save me. With this many things it makes me feel at times as if I really was "asking for it" in a way, but then I wake up. No one deserves to be treated like a commodity or really like something disposable to be used up and thrown out, no matter what they wear or how they look or that they didn't protest loudly enough.