I remember being angry with women who didn’t just “get over their sexual abuse”.

I was in denial about what happened to me. When I was 5 years old, my uncle molested me.  He was supposed to be my babysitter, my protector while my mom was out working.  To this day, I am still not sure why they left me alone with him.  Something in me as a little girl just knew something wasn’t right about my uncle.  He was just weird.

I was reading a Heavy Metal comic book that he gave me to read.  I couldn’t understand all the words, but I remember the pictures, half-naked women being treated unfairly by big men.  This one picture I looked at was of a women being forced to perform oral sex on a cow with an extremely large and long penis.  I remember thinking to myself, “Ewww that is nasty!”  the words, “Gulp, Gulp” were in caption above the picture.  I was pronouncing it, Gee-ulp.  At that moment my uncle kneeled behind me and started to rub himself against me.  Then he whispered in my ear, my left ear to be exact, “Do you want to do it?” Now why at 5 years old I said yes is beyond me but I said yes.  He took me to the bathroom and laid me on the floor.  He took off my pants and then he pulled out his penis and began to rub himself on me.  At first he held my legs up and just rubbed his penis between my thighs and then for whatever reason, I guess that wasn’t good enough and he penetrated me.  I must have gone to a land far, far away because I did not remember any penetration until Reclaim.  I never looked at his face, I just remember my head going from side to side looking away from him, because I really didn’t know what else to do.

Paralyzed

He ejaculated all over my stomach and I remember thinking, “That looks like snot!” He wiped my stomach off with toilet tissue and told me to put my clothes back on.  He told me not to tell anyone, because he would hurt me, and then he said, “besides who will believe a 5 year old?”

That scared me because, I knew he was right.  I don’t remember where the blood came from in my underwear, but I remember hiding them and my mother found them.  I lied and told her that I hurt myself on the seat of my friend’s bike.  There was never any more inquiring.  When I was eleven years old, I told my grandmother what my uncle did, her response was, “Well you were stupid for going with him, you knew he was crazy!”  I remember after that being so angry when I heard someone talk about being sexually abused, and they were being comforted and counseled, I was like, “nobody treated me that way.”

Self-Medicating

I realized that my life insecurities, low self-esteem, were attributed to my abuse.  I just felt like nobody cared what happened to Nicole. I felt like I had to fend for myself. I remember for most of my life thinking I was an undercover lesbian. I was severely addicted to pornography, from the time of my abuse and for most of my adult life. I remember instead of associating with the woman in those videos, I would associate with the man, because I didn’t feel much like a girl, or a woman ever. I didn’t realize until Reclaim, that all those years I was self-medicating with the porn.

At age 13, I was raped by a 17-year-old neighborhood guy.  I remember over the years I told myself because I like this guy and I initially agreed to have sex with him and that this was not rape.  My friend at the time, told me this guy was her god-brother and that he “broke her in”.  When she told him that I like him, he said, “I don’t like her but I will f____ her!”  To this day, why I didn’t run the other way is … I just don’t know.  I wanted to be wanted, and if he wasn’t going to be a boyfriend-at least for that moment he wanted me. We went into my friends house, and I became afraid right away. When we got into the room, he told me to kneel down. I went for the door and I told him, “I don’t want to do this! I just want to go home.” He grabbed me and said, “You don’t get a man hard and then tell him no! Get on your knees!”  He was bigger than I was and I was so scared. So I did everything he told me to do so he could hurry up and get done. Two hours later, after he had his way with me, I left and walked what seemed like a 1000 miles home.  No one had ever asked me if I was ok or what happened to me.  I felt so used and mistreated, and I felt like it was all my fault. I swore off men forever and I delved deeply into pornography and severe masturbation. It was very difficult even after marriage to have a healthy sexual relationship. My whole life all I did was mask the pain and walked around being someone else. I met the real me in Reclaim and I like her!