TRIGGER WARNING: Underage sexual content
Daily life at this facility (my home) was so extremely different than anything I had ever experienced. There were rules.....very strict rules. And there were consequences...which were something that made me pissed off on a daily basis. I pushed the boundaries as far as I could and more than once I pushed them too far. I lived literally on the streets before this. (Well, and at our county jail) you just don't push the rules in jail if you want to get out to get high anytime soon. But here, ya, I pushed. We could smoke cigarettes but only at allotted times. I always tried to reason with the staff about this... "Dude, I just fucking quit heroin and you want to limit my nicotine intake!?" I never got the response I wanted from that. I got caught i don't know how many times sneaking out either my window or out the back door to smoke. I got my name put on the board. Just like in elementary school. Beside my name would be a chore or an assignment I had to complete before my name would be taken off the board.
There were women with children living upstairs (mom's dorm), women without kids or who had kids, but they weren't living with them at the facility, downstairs, and men in a dorm unattached. I HATED the moms with baby's. Especially baby girls. I made it well known to the moms that the very presence of their children sickened me to the core. The sounds of a baby crying sent me into hysteria. I had been numb since my baby died and being sober for the first time and being around babies was keeping me In a very dark place. They picked women to be what they called "angels" meaning if one of the moms had a court appearance or a trial to go to or something an angel would watch their child while they were gone. I was not allowed to be an angel. I hadn't processed anything yet, and though I was 32, I still did not know how to act like a proper adult. Though I had thought my heroin addiction in the last three years was why I landed myself in rehab, it really was so much more than that. I had been using off and on since I was 11. My first drug (other than alcohol) was meth. I honestly to this day don't even know why. I mean other than it was there and I just wanted too. I remember walking to school one day (maybe 13) I was a freshman. (A young freshman) My birthday fell right at cutoff. Anyway, I had left my cigarettes at a girlfriends house the day before, so instead of walking to school I walked to her house downtown to grab them. My friend was there with her mom. I lit up a cigarette and her mom pointed to the coffee table and asked me if I wanted to do a line. I didn't know what it was but there were white lines of powder lined up all over the glass table. I said sure. Oh my GOD!! It hurt so freaking bad!!!! I don't remember much in the moments directly after snorting my first line of meth. However, I do remember that I had never felt so amazing, happy, and in control my entire life. (Ya....my entire 12 or 13 years) school was amazing...everything was. That night I remember laying in bed and wondering why I couldn't sleep. I didn't sleep the next night either. I learned in rehab that whatever age you are when you start using is the age your brain stops maturing. Looking back now, I believe that to be 100% true. I was a 32 year old (12 year old) acting all hood and bad ass being sneaky and breaking the rules, talking back, and had zero respect for anyone but demanded it from everyone. Don't even fucking look at me wrong because I'll kick your fucking ass. But really I was just so fucking sad and broken. I know how cliche that sounds...but it was so true. I didn't want to drop the "act" and get down to business. But it was inevitable.
I had the most hard ass most amazing counselor there was. She put up with my shit and humored me as long as it followed her plan. She knew what she was doing with me from the second we we're introduced. One of the major rules were there was zero interaction between the women and the men. That was something I did not like. I needed that attention. My boyfriend was out there somewhere getting loaded and sleeping with other women and I was stuck in here. And I had always gotten attention from guys. It made me feel good. They liked me if I did and acted how they wanted. I needed to be liked and wanted. So, naturally that became the first real topic during my sessions. Was I sexually abused as a child? No. I really wasn't. If men want to have sex with me, did I do it? Yes. Did it feel good? Well, no, not all the time.... So then why did I? I didn't know.....because .....then they liked me? I don't know. Those questions pissed me off. I didn't know why I did anything. Drugs, sex, any of it. I just did. Well, that didn't fly with her. She insisted that I was sexually abused. I just told her I must not remember it then. We talked about this often. Me telling her about my experiences and then me having to really think about them. When I was a freshman I had a friend who was a Sr. We partied and had sex and partied and partied and partied. He gave me my first acid trip. (I had already been doing meth whenever I could since that first day with my friends mother) He would take me to parties at his buddies house. They had a room mate named.....lets say, Shane. We would get all fucked off, to an extreme level. I remember sneaking into my friends buddies room and having sex with him while my friend was sleeping. Then it turned into the room mate calling me to come over when my friend wasn't there. He would get me high as fuck and then do whatever to me. We were friends. One night my friend showed up and I was in Shane's room. He picked me up and threw me into his closet and slammed the door. I don't know why I never questioned the reason Shane was always hiding me. It was pitch black in there and I didn't even know what was going on. I was naked sitting in a tiny closet by myself laughing. My leg rubbed up against something cold....I started feeling around and realized it was a gun. A pistol. I thought it was hilarious. I just kept laughing and then the lights came on and he threw my clothes at me. I got dressed and he told me to go home. I did. I walked all the way back to my home in the middle of the night not even knowing my own name. This became routine. Shane was sleeping with a couple of other girls from our high school as well. One night he called me and asked me to sneak out and come over. He said he had called we will say Sally first but she was on her period and he didn't want any of that nasty shit. I said okay and went right over. This time he got me so high (I don't even know what all he gave me) I didn't go home for a few days. We were sitting in the living room and some of his friends came over. I started to get up and go hide in his room and he told me to stay. He sat me on the floor and sat behind me with his legs on either side of my body. He was visiting with his friends and started rubbing on me.....blatantly...right in front of his friends. They didn't say anything....so....okay. I just sat their and stared at the TV. Then we heard another car pull up. It was my mom. Looking back now she had probably been looking for me for days. Shane ran to his room and grabbed his gun and grabbed me by the shoulder and we ran out the back door and up into the woods. We could see down through the trees my mom knock on the door and look around for a while. The whole time he's got a grasp on me with one hand and gun in the other. After she left we went back down to the house had sex and I went home. (I'm so sorry mom....I can't imagine the worry I put you through) My counselor asked me if I had ever thought that any of that was strange. No, I hadn't. We were just partying. She asked me how old he was. 34. She asked me again....how old were you? 13. She said Missy, you were sexually abused as a child.
After that the weirdest thing happened to me. Weird because I was fully conscious of it but couldn't control it. She had me make a collage about the bad things in my life. I spent hours cutting pictures out of magazines and gluing them onto poster board. There was only one male counselor at the facility and I had never wanted to talk to him. He intimidated me. Well I got done with my art project and ran straight from my room and to this male counselor and showed him my collage. I could hear myself talking like a baby...and giggling and pointing out pictures and telling him all about it. He spoke back to me as was fitting to the very awkward situation. He told me "good job, Missy. You did a great job making this". He smiled at me and I immediately wanted to die. I went to my room and sobbed. I mean sobbed. What in the actual fuck just happened? I was so ashamed and embarrassed that I had tried to get this man to praise my art project and pat me on the head like a 4 year old. And my voice? I had spoken like a 4 year old as well wanting to be a good girl. Ugh. Kill me now. I put in a request to speak with my counselor . I told her what had happened. She said it was some reverting blah blah blah thing. I remember thinking great....I'm a drug addict with multiple personalities. She assured me no.....it was a very normal very real response to making such huge realizations about my childhood. I believed with my whole heart that I was a nasty slut when I was a kid. I also had never thought as myself as a kid when I was 11, 12, and 13. She told me Shane was a child molester. It shocked me to my core. He was a 34 year old man who found an 18 year old boy to room with him and got all the underage girls who came to party to sleep with him. I just was mind blown. She was right. I wasn't a nasty slut. I was a victim to a sexual predator.
Daily life at this facility (my home) was so extremely different than anything I had ever experienced. There were rules.....very strict rules. And there were consequences...which were something that made me pissed off on a daily basis. I pushed the boundaries as far as I could and more than once I pushed them too far. I lived literally on the streets before this. (Well, and at our county jail) you just don't push the rules in jail if you want to get out to get high anytime soon. But here, ya, I pushed. We could smoke cigarettes but only at allotted times. I always tried to reason with the staff about this... "Dude, I just fucking quit heroin and you want to limit my nicotine intake!?" I never got the response I wanted from that. I got caught i don't know how many times sneaking out either my window or out the back door to smoke. I got my name put on the board. Just like in elementary school. Beside my name would be a chore or an assignment I had to complete before my name would be taken off the board.
There were women with children living upstairs (mom's dorm), women without kids or who had kids, but they weren't living with them at the facility, downstairs, and men in a dorm unattached. I HATED the moms with baby's. Especially baby girls. I made it well known to the moms that the very presence of their children sickened me to the core. The sounds of a baby crying sent me into hysteria. I had been numb since my baby died and being sober for the first time and being around babies was keeping me In a very dark place. They picked women to be what they called "angels" meaning if one of the moms had a court appearance or a trial to go to or something an angel would watch their child while they were gone. I was not allowed to be an angel. I hadn't processed anything yet, and though I was 32, I still did not know how to act like a proper adult. Though I had thought my heroin addiction in the last three years was why I landed myself in rehab, it really was so much more than that. I had been using off and on since I was 11. My first drug (other than alcohol) was meth. I honestly to this day don't even know why. I mean other than it was there and I just wanted too. I remember walking to school one day (maybe 13) I was a freshman. (A young freshman) My birthday fell right at cutoff. Anyway, I had left my cigarettes at a girlfriends house the day before, so instead of walking to school I walked to her house downtown to grab them. My friend was there with her mom. I lit up a cigarette and her mom pointed to the coffee table and asked me if I wanted to do a line. I didn't know what it was but there were white lines of powder lined up all over the glass table. I said sure. Oh my GOD!! It hurt so freaking bad!!!! I don't remember much in the moments directly after snorting my first line of meth. However, I do remember that I had never felt so amazing, happy, and in control my entire life. (Ya....my entire 12 or 13 years) school was amazing...everything was. That night I remember laying in bed and wondering why I couldn't sleep. I didn't sleep the next night either. I learned in rehab that whatever age you are when you start using is the age your brain stops maturing. Looking back now, I believe that to be 100% true. I was a 32 year old (12 year old) acting all hood and bad ass being sneaky and breaking the rules, talking back, and had zero respect for anyone but demanded it from everyone. Don't even fucking look at me wrong because I'll kick your fucking ass. But really I was just so fucking sad and broken. I know how cliche that sounds...but it was so true. I didn't want to drop the "act" and get down to business. But it was inevitable.
I had the most hard ass most amazing counselor there was. She put up with my shit and humored me as long as it followed her plan. She knew what she was doing with me from the second we we're introduced. One of the major rules were there was zero interaction between the women and the men. That was something I did not like. I needed that attention. My boyfriend was out there somewhere getting loaded and sleeping with other women and I was stuck in here. And I had always gotten attention from guys. It made me feel good. They liked me if I did and acted how they wanted. I needed to be liked and wanted. So, naturally that became the first real topic during my sessions. Was I sexually abused as a child? No. I really wasn't. If men want to have sex with me, did I do it? Yes. Did it feel good? Well, no, not all the time.... So then why did I? I didn't know.....because .....then they liked me? I don't know. Those questions pissed me off. I didn't know why I did anything. Drugs, sex, any of it. I just did. Well, that didn't fly with her. She insisted that I was sexually abused. I just told her I must not remember it then. We talked about this often. Me telling her about my experiences and then me having to really think about them. When I was a freshman I had a friend who was a Sr. We partied and had sex and partied and partied and partied. He gave me my first acid trip. (I had already been doing meth whenever I could since that first day with my friends mother) He would take me to parties at his buddies house. They had a room mate named.....lets say, Shane. We would get all fucked off, to an extreme level. I remember sneaking into my friends buddies room and having sex with him while my friend was sleeping. Then it turned into the room mate calling me to come over when my friend wasn't there. He would get me high as fuck and then do whatever to me. We were friends. One night my friend showed up and I was in Shane's room. He picked me up and threw me into his closet and slammed the door. I don't know why I never questioned the reason Shane was always hiding me. It was pitch black in there and I didn't even know what was going on. I was naked sitting in a tiny closet by myself laughing. My leg rubbed up against something cold....I started feeling around and realized it was a gun. A pistol. I thought it was hilarious. I just kept laughing and then the lights came on and he threw my clothes at me. I got dressed and he told me to go home. I did. I walked all the way back to my home in the middle of the night not even knowing my own name. This became routine. Shane was sleeping with a couple of other girls from our high school as well. One night he called me and asked me to sneak out and come over. He said he had called we will say Sally first but she was on her period and he didn't want any of that nasty shit. I said okay and went right over. This time he got me so high (I don't even know what all he gave me) I didn't go home for a few days. We were sitting in the living room and some of his friends came over. I started to get up and go hide in his room and he told me to stay. He sat me on the floor and sat behind me with his legs on either side of my body. He was visiting with his friends and started rubbing on me.....blatantly...right in front of his friends. They didn't say anything....so....okay. I just sat their and stared at the TV. Then we heard another car pull up. It was my mom. Looking back now she had probably been looking for me for days. Shane ran to his room and grabbed his gun and grabbed me by the shoulder and we ran out the back door and up into the woods. We could see down through the trees my mom knock on the door and look around for a while. The whole time he's got a grasp on me with one hand and gun in the other. After she left we went back down to the house had sex and I went home. (I'm so sorry mom....I can't imagine the worry I put you through) My counselor asked me if I had ever thought that any of that was strange. No, I hadn't. We were just partying. She asked me how old he was. 34. She asked me again....how old were you? 13. She said Missy, you were sexually abused as a child.
After that the weirdest thing happened to me. Weird because I was fully conscious of it but couldn't control it. She had me make a collage about the bad things in my life. I spent hours cutting pictures out of magazines and gluing them onto poster board. There was only one male counselor at the facility and I had never wanted to talk to him. He intimidated me. Well I got done with my art project and ran straight from my room and to this male counselor and showed him my collage. I could hear myself talking like a baby...and giggling and pointing out pictures and telling him all about it. He spoke back to me as was fitting to the very awkward situation. He told me "good job, Missy. You did a great job making this". He smiled at me and I immediately wanted to die. I went to my room and sobbed. I mean sobbed. What in the actual fuck just happened? I was so ashamed and embarrassed that I had tried to get this man to praise my art project and pat me on the head like a 4 year old. And my voice? I had spoken like a 4 year old as well wanting to be a good girl. Ugh. Kill me now. I put in a request to speak with my counselor . I told her what had happened. She said it was some reverting blah blah blah thing. I remember thinking great....I'm a drug addict with multiple personalities. She assured me no.....it was a very normal very real response to making such huge realizations about my childhood. I believed with my whole heart that I was a nasty slut when I was a kid. I also had never thought as myself as a kid when I was 11, 12, and 13. She told me Shane was a child molester. It shocked me to my core. He was a 34 year old man who found an 18 year old boy to room with him and got all the underage girls who came to party to sleep with him. I just was mind blown. She was right. I wasn't a nasty slut. I was a victim to a sexual predator.
Thank you for sharing...This NEEDS to be heard. As a victim of rape myself, i have a heart for women, children, and the sexually abused. As a former youth group leader, I got to hear stories from today's youth. I realized how often this still happens. 1 in every 3 or 4 women in a room have been sexually assaulted, raped, or abused. That is a ridiculously HIGH number. Many of the men i talked to...also lost their virginity at a young age to OLDER women. It's insane! There are always deeper reasons to addiction, and behavior. We as a society need to look deeper and listen to those who come forward. Many times victims are shamed, labeled, or dismissed. I know at least 2 Amazing women in my life who have beautiful daughters....but were outcast and mistreated because they had them young. Little did the rest of the world know, they were Rape babies. But they didn't tell anyone and they didn't want their daughters to know until they were old enough to understand. This article speaks raw truth from your heart, experience, and eyes of a child. Thank you for being so BOLD to share! <3 You are amazing!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you had (what it seems like) a good counselor. I didn't feel like a kid at 14 either. I was 13 turning 14 my freshman year. But now my son is almost 15, and he is DEFINITELY a child. Xoxo
ReplyDeleteMy girls were around this age when I was in rehab and though they were more grown up then they should have been (because of circumstances) they we're still very young....looking at a 13 year old child now in regards to this story, and I'm sure many many others like it, just makes me sad. I think this was one of the biggest eye openers I had ever experienced in my life. (And still is) This realization was the first step in my healing.
DeleteHe looks much older than 14. But he's MY baby. He's not mature like how I bet he feels and how I definitely thought I was. Even as teens, we need guidance, eventhough we/ they don't want it. You didn't have it. I didn't have much.
DeleteWhat a wonderful testimony to women who have believed societys judgement, that they are just "nasty sluts". No, they are victims, we were victims. Being so young and having your body abused, well, why would you respect it? It's tainted and dirty. Acknowledging your abuse is the first step to healing. I'm so glad you had that counselor who could show you what you did not see.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this. I am also a victim of sexual abuse but I was under five and it was from 1 -5 years old for me. I was adopted at age 5 almost 6. I always thought something was wrong with ME, but it's not ME it's my biological uncle. I was the victim. It was my birth mom, my two uncles and grandparents all living in a house and everyone was on drugs(meth,heroin, etc) well one of my uncles touched me and raped me at night almost every night and my mom had no clue or she was in denial. I'm so glad I'm adopted. I have a scrap book of pictures of my birth family and there's a pic of me in my PJs with one of my uncles and it still makes me cringe. It's very hard and something you never recover from.
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry for your experiences. You were so young and helpless....it just makes my heart cry for you. Though you will never get over it, it sounds like you have done some processing and are in a much better place today. All we can do is try to do better for our children and keep them safe from the evils we know are out there. You are strong and brave. Sharing your experience continues the healing process and can also touch someone else who has been through the same thing. Thank you so much for sharing. You are welcome to email me anytime. Keeping you in my thoughts.💓
DeleteThanks. It was bad and therapy never helped. I had nightmares as just a little kid about being raped. Assholes don't realize what they do to a child. I barely talked to men till I was 18. I was terrified. First kiss was 18 too. Then I went crazy and slept with so many people. People judged me but didn't a understand me. I craved love. I'm glad I'm over that stage of life. I am getting married to a good man. I'm glad I've grown up and realized there are good men out there.
DeleteI am so glad to hear that you found a great man and are starting a life for you and your family. Girl you are so strong. I cannot imagine going through what you went through. It's so horrifying and makes us so scared as mother's to let our children out of our sight. I am so sorry....so so sorry this happened to you. You touched on a very real subject as well, saying the therapist was not a good one.....that is also so scary to try to trust someone with something so horrifying...searching for direction and instead of helping it gets worse. Your trust was betrayed so much....my heart just aches for that little girl you were (are). You are amazing. I would love to visit with you more..... I think I know how to reach you....
DeleteAgain, thank you for sharing. Lots and lots of love and hugs.💜💜💜
Melissa, I'm loving this blog so much!! You are an amazing writer and I feel like I'm actually there when I'm reading it. You are going to help so many people with your raw, honest tone. I get so excited when a new one comes out. I remember when I was told that I hadn't matured since I'd first used. I was 14 until I was about 32. It's amazing how true that is. Love this and you so much
ReplyDelete