“I was bombarded with numerous questions. ‘What were you wearing?’ ‘Did you make them think you wanted it?’ ‘Why were you walking by yourself?’ For years, I recoiled at anything that made me feel sexy.”
‘Look at that fine a**.’ He followed me down the sidewalk. I felt that familiar tension in my chest and a knot in my throat. I was disgusted by my own skin.’
‘I bet all the girls at school have a crush on you,’ he said. He tore a receipt and wrote his phone number down. I walked out of my front door on a school night and hopped in his car.’
“My mom was distracted when he passed the information to me and said, ‘I would love to help you figure out what you want to do when you grow up.’ Then my mom chimed in about how great I was at sales. That was his siren. That was his bridge. That was his free ticket.”
‘I had a vivid dream someone broke into my house. At 5 a.m. the next morning, I awoke to a man crouched on the side of my bed with a knife in hand. My gift began at an early age.’
“I warned him, ‘Something horrible is going to happen.’ He wrote down my dream in his journal and carried it in his backpack. I received his call later. ‘Everything you said was true!'”
‘At first, Mickey’s grooming was very subtle. I knew it was something I just had to deal with. He granted me a new home and this was my life now.’
“When I cut my hair short she said, ‘Only old women and dykes have their hair short.’ There is no doubt in my mind that any disclosure would have only solidified her disgust with me.”
‘My father secretly recorded videos of me naked. I wanted nothing but my mother’s love and support. ‘Get out of my house,’ she told me.’
“I wouldn’t allow him to have power over me any longer. I stood up and walked out of the house. No one followed, no one cared. I had angels flying over me that night.”
‘Your sister is missing! She was last seen days ago wandering downtown. The police won’t file a missing person’s report!’ I got on the next plane home, determined to find her myself.’
“After years of searching for my sister, my stepdad asked me, ‘How long are you prepared to keep looking for her?’ She was gone, without a trace.”
‘I asked to borrow his Walkman. He said, ‘Sure, if you let me touch you.’ I could hear him breathing heavy in my ear, and I was frozen. He told me not to tell.’
“All of a sudden, we heard my uncle’s car pull up. He opened the door quickly. There was a smashed lamp on the floor. He looked at me and asked, ‘What is going on?’”
‘He had the neighbor watching me. ‘Bet you weren’t even raped.’ ‘Were you drinking?’ No one knew who he really was. I never thought these were red flags.’
“I found out he had been cheating on me. He convinced me it didn’t really happen and he went back to being the perfect guy. I couldn’t escape. I pushed on his chest and said, ‘No, I don’t want to.'”
‘Just lay there, be still, your Daddy’s good little girl.’ I stared at the ceiling, remembering his breath on me. Finally, he left the room to start my bath. ‘You wouldn’t want us to go away, would you?’
“There was a window behind the bed. A woman came out of the building. I waved violently. ‘HELP!’ The woman stood there, looked at me, and walked away, going to her car to leave. My safety, my possibility of help, was gone.”
‘I was about a mile away from my parents’ house when I saw a pair of headlights coming at me in my lane. I was so scared it was going to burst into flames. I sat in front of the car screaming.’
“I brushed it off and thought, ‘Oh there’s no way I’m pregnant.’ I went to Tennessee for a week for my birthday. I had my cousin buy me a bottle of Jager and I couldn’t even drink, it made me so sick. When I got home, I took another test. Sure, enough I was pregnant.”
