Sexual assault stories pop up more and more in the media as we progress forward. There is a bittersweet feeling tied to it. The positive to take away is that more people are able to find the courage to speak up despite the ramifications of being ostracized. The negative is that so many victims were never heard and there are so many instances of assault that happen every minute I'm sure.

I'm going to skip that statistics because we all know that anyone and everyone can be assaulted in some form or another at any time. Harassment and abuse is not limited to women, children, skin color, social status, etc... if there is a sick minded person out there, there is a victim and it seems like everyone around me has been a victim of something at some point in their lives either professionally or personally.

When the "#MeToo" began to trend, I wasn't going to get involved. Let me explain. I most certainly support and appreciate the individuals who can join in and share their stories and show support for other victims of this negative scar that weighs over the world. I personally did not feel connected to it though. By connected, I mean - personally connected in a way where I had something to say or share. Of course, I know tons of people who have fallen victim to these horrors and so I could show my support by being there for them, which I have been. To my friends who have been posting the #MeToo messages or posting their own stories, I've liked/favorited etc... to show my support. But there was nothing inside of me that felt compelled to share my own experiences until today.

Between the memes, cute animals, and delicious recipes, a large majority of my feed was devoted to #MeToo and the people I know expressing themselves. I sat in silence for a moment thinking about my life and how every woman in my family has had some instance of rape, abuse, molestation, assault, harassment, etc... at least once - sometimes on multiple occasions.

I admit that I took pride in being "the girl who didn't get raped" the girl who "didn't have an abusive relationship" and I'm sorry, it is a lie. I took pride in a lie that I convinced myself to believe but as I reflect on my younger years and childhood, I am far from innocent and whole. Even I have had my own share of nightmares. So I thought about what I've been through in my life and have repeatedly come to understand that I am extremely desensitized from what happened much like I am with most things these days. I am full of heart and heartless simultaneously. When I see a tragedy my two thoughts are "oh another thing happened" where it feels like nothing more than a scene from a movie. The other thought is me full of tears thinking "I cannot imagine what kind of pain these people are going through right now."

I have pushed these thoughts under a rug and have never taken a good hard look at them until today. I wasn't planning on making a post about not being a victim because I feel like that is extremely insensitive to those who are victims. Now is not a time for a pat on the back but rather joining hands and uplifting those who feel down and weakened.

While I personally do not feel like a victim and while I do not have any negative emotions or feelings about what happened to me. The more I look at what happened, the more I come to realize that I am a victim but I don't feel like a victim and I don't live or think as one. Perhaps all of this is subconscious or maybe I am so desensitized that it just has no effect on me. I honestly don't know, but I feel compelled to share my story. After spending the last week or so constantly telling myself I was not going to get involved with this, now I feel like it's something I should do for closure. I am not looking for any kind of support or pity. I'm just sharing this because I feel like it's the right thing to do. I guess it's my way of participating more than just a "I'm here for you" empty message.

So I'll go ahead and share what happened to me.

As a child I spent most of my years in Gettysburg where I played with all of the neighborhood kids in our development of townhouses. There were very few kids my age, maybe 1 or 2 at most. The majority of the kids were teenagers and college students. So while I was in elementary and middle school, I hung out with people twice and triple my age. If I were a parent and found out my kid was doing that, I'd probably be a little freaked out but I have always been more mature than my peers so to me it felt like where I belonged. Kids my age were way too careless and wild whereas the teenagers and adults were organized, driven, and secure in who they were and what they liked and that always appealed to me.

I believe it is natural for kids to become curious about their bodies and other peoples bodies and how they operate and what things are used for. I recall being very young and playing with one of the neighborhood boys across the street from me. For some reason we decided to hide in my moms closet. After moments of giggling and talking I remember the boy asking me if I wanted to see his penis and that he can show me his penis and I show him my vagina. And I didn't think anything of it. I was only 7 - 9 years old at the time. I was unaware  of the purpose and meaning behind my vagina. I didn't understand the importance and value that it represented for myself, my safety, my sexuality, and my place in this world. I don't know how far we got with it until our parents caught is in the closet alone together and we were grounded for a decent amount of time from playing with each other. Ever since that day, we never spoke of it again and nothing else happened. Around that same time span was another neighborhood kid. This time, it was a teenage girl. She was a troubled teenager with horrible parents. She smoked and did drugs, she vandalized peoples belongings and was just a horrible person and influence on us youngsters. I remember one day she was riding a skateboard up and down the street and at that time I was obsessed with skateboarding and bmx even though I wasn't allowed to participate. So the neighborhood girl saw that I was interested in her skateboard and she let me try it out and showed me how to ride it. I started to get to know her and realized that she was a lot of fun to hang out with. She never smoked or did drugs near me but I could smell the cigarettes drowning on her because I recognized the smell back from when my mom smoked cigarettes. The idea of her being the bad-girl of the neighborhood and that I shouldn't mingle with her slowly began to fade as she gained my trust. She liked the same things I liked from music to movies, to video games, to ideas about the world etc...

One day she wanted me to hang out with her. At that time a construction company was finishing up the final stages of new houses they were building up the hill. The model house was already furnished and the doors were left unlocked. Or at least I assume they were left unlocked. This girl was crafty though so it's possible that she picked the locks and broke into the house multiple times and just left the doors unlocked. She asked me if I wanted to go look at the house. I told her that it was not a good idea and that we could get in trouble and that we shouldn't go on other peoples property without permission. She assured me that the model house was not for people to live in, which that much was true. It was for show purposes and their office area but I was still skeptical about the whole thing. She reassured me that it will be fun and that it's beautiful inside and that it will only take a minute and they won't even know we were ever there. So little me gave in and went up the hill with her into the model house. We walked right in through a set of double doors that opened right into the master bedroom. She turns on the lights and showed me around the house and I remember how cool it looked inside. The furniture was very classy and elegant. It seemed modern but definitely catered to more sophisticated and elderly people. We head upstairs into the spare bedrooms and they were mostly empty. For some reason the girl I was with wanted me to go into the closet with her. I don't remember what kind of conversation went down but it led to her taking her clothes off and I took mine off too. Perhaps the peek-a-boo with the boy came to mind and so it seemed "ok" to disrobe since we were both girls. She was far more developed than I. I barely even had mosquito bites, just two little flat dots on my chest and she had voluptuous curves that were impossible to ignore. Her body was covered in hair that mine was completely missing. She encouraged me to touch her body parts and she proceeded to touch mine. I remember she laid down on the floor and told me to get on top of her. I wasn't really sure what the point was but I did it because I trusted her and nothing was painful and nothing "bad" was happening so it didn't seem like a big deal. She encouraged me to grab her breasts and rub my body back and forth on her. I don't think things progressed too far because we heard a loud noise from the front of the parking lot and it spooked her enough to tell me to get dressed and leave. So we got dressed and snuck out through the double doors and went down the hill back to our neighborhood. I'm not sure what the girl managed to do but she ended up getting hauled into juvenile detention and now that I look back on it, I'm glad she did because she was one screwed up person. If I had continue to hung out with her, I don't know what kind of things she would have encouraged me to participate in.

A lot of people have this idea that when someone is molested it's always an older man molesting a little girl or a little boy. But this girl was in high school. She was baby-sitter age. I wanted to share this to reinforce that anyone can be a victim and anyone can be the assaulter.

My second situation happened during high school. AIM was a popular messenger that AOL recently decided to kill off the internet. RIP chatting online. On AIM I had tons of friends from school, games, and mutual friends via online and real life. I was always chatting with people on there and at some point I met a guy who was mysterious and intriguing to me. He was an attractive intellectual who was way out of my age range but it turned me on so much. I was already sexual active at the time from previous relationships and after talking back and forth with the guy we joke around about meeting up. Now in my 16 year old little head I thought that hanging out meant coming over and watching a movie, eat some snacks, talk and laugh, maybe hit first or second base and go back to our lives. But to a guy of his age, low 30's, hanging out was what you call netflix n chill without the netflix. So I agreed to hang out because I had feelings for this guy despite how old he was. I have always been attracted to older guys and so to me it was like fulfilling a mild fantasy in a way. I was accustomed to hanging out with people in their 20's - 30's as a kid/teen growing up so being on a one x one situation didn't seem like that much of a big deal. So it's the week of midterms and I was home alone after exams and he had free time before he had to go to work. So after briefly chatting online, I gave him my address and he said he'd be over in less than a half hour. I got the doorbell ring and then the anxiety kicked in. I was about to let a 30+ year old guy, let alone a complete stranger, into my house, without my mom present and without her permission. I was breaking a million rules in one swift movement of opening that door.

I remember the panic settling into me when he said he was on his way to my house. I remember the sweat forming on my palms as I typed nervously during the online interaction. I remember picking out an outfit and putting on make up and using perfume and everything to make myself look and feel like a desirable person to be around. Little did I know the desire was turned up to 10. He greeted me with a warm and sincere hello and smile. The greeting relaxed me. We gave each other a tight hug that felt very homey and family like. The fears that I had about initiating the interaction melted away because I felt like I was okay and safe. I was in my own house and he wasn't doing anything bad. We made small talk for 5 minutes maybe not even and he put his arms around me like one would during a slow dance. I liked this guy so I tried hard to keep my cool and pretend that he was not getting significantly closer and closer to me as we talked. His hands grazed my body casually and he went in for a kiss and I turned away. He asked me what was wrong and I quickly blurted out that I had never done something like this before and that I was nervous and honestly was not expecting to be doing anything like this. He pulled away from me and we went back to talking until I was relaxed. There was a small spark in me that he ignited.

That carnal and sexual desire of wanting to be with someone sexually but my entire body was doing everything it could to block that signal because the situation was not playing out like how I had intended. I just wanted to talk and that was it. Sure, I wanted the touching and kissing and eventually maybe the sex but on the first meet up that was a no-go from me. But I felt bad because he spent 20 minutes driving all the way to my house  and he had to be at work in less than an hour so after talking for a few more minutes he made another advance to hold and kiss me and I gave in. I hit start on player 2 and gave in. But suddenly it was like my character was out of control. I was just getting to be comfortable with him touching and kissing me and he began to undo my pants and lift my shirt off and I had to stop him and pull him away. I told him that this was going too fast and too far and that I didn't think I could do it. He said that it was okay and that it will be fun and started over and kept going.

I grabbed his wrists and tried to pry them off me but he was significantly much stronger than I and I knew that he had a mission and there was no way I could back out of it now. So in the middle of kissing him and letting him undress me, I waged a war within myself to either raise my voice and potentially anger him or to put on a mask and be a sexual version of myself to please him and satisfy him to make this whole thing end quickly. I gave in and surrendered myself to him. Not even a few minutes went by and we were having sex. I can't count how many parts of the house he moved me to but I do remember that the sex was purely for his own enjoyment and none of it was for me. He never once tried to pleasure me or do anything for my sake. He was kind enough to finish himself on me rather than in me because I imagine we both were not interested in having kids. He was kind enough to hand me a towel to clean off. And as I was wiping the last memories of what happened off of my body, he said see ya and let himself out of the house and went to work. I got a shower and stood there under the hot water trying to grasp what had happened. It wasn't rape because I let him do it and I participated and deep inside of me where I had a crush on him, that part of me wanted this to happen but not on those terms and not how it played out at all. I was expecting our rendezvous to have more passion and depth to it. Not love or anything sappy, but I wanted a more personal connection with him before releasing my all to his presence.

I tried to wrap my head around the entire situation and then it dawned on me that he was just using me. He had no interest in me as a person, as a friend, or anything. I was simply just an easy piece of ass. And that's when I learned what a bootycall was. I still had feelings for him so I tried to mentally reinvent the situation in my thoughts and dreams to keep the spark I had for him brightly lit. But after we had sex, he talked to me less and made it quite obvious that he was not interested in me beyond hooking up so unless I wanted to give it up to him again there was no point in me speaking to him.

I can't sit here and say I regret it and I also can't sit here and say that these things damaged me. It's possible that they may have at some point but right now they're almost like scenes from a movie that only I have watched. I can't hate what happened because there was a part of me that wanted him to ravage me but because it happened in a moment where I was not ready for it or expecting it etc... it felt wrong in so many ways and I wish it could have happened on different terms. As far as what happened to me as a child I'm not sure what kind of effect it may have had on me. As far as my life is, I'd say I'm relatively normal.

I let myself believe that nothing had ever happened to me, that I was one of the lucky ones. But that's not true at all... I am part of the same shadow everyone else is under. You are a victim? #MeToo.

And it is so sad to see how many of us have had an experience with this.
What I can say, is that you are not worthless. You are not broken or tainted goods. You are not at fault for what happened. You were not asking for it even if you did have feelings or relationships with the people who did what they did. If you made decisions based on getting out alive and safe or protecting your career or advancing your career,  you were doing what you thought was the best decision for you and  your family/life at the time. I cannot blame people for giving in when I have done so myself.

But if you are someone who knows that someone is being sexually abusive or harassing people in your personal life or professional life and you look away from it, take this as your wake up call to speak up, to stand up, to support, and to progress forward from these sick and twisted horror stories. No means no and if it's not a yes it means no. And if it's not legal, don't do it because one day the world will find out and the aftermath is not pretty.