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I've been trying to write this story for a very long time, but I think I've finally reached the point that I'm ready. I've always been a very strong person and have gotten myself through a lot of tough situations purely on the will to survive. But at this point in time, I just need to talk, whether or not anyone actually listens is a moot point. So I'm going to just vent on here... I suppose I feel like I'm running out of options. I will warn you, this is a long and difficult tale to tell (hence why it has taken me so long to get it on paper), so forgive the book I'm about to write, but it's something I feel I must do. So let's just jump right into it, shall we? When I was 13 I was molested and raped by a family friend. The abuse went on for months. I was forced to give my first blow job before I ever got my first kiss and was violated in my own home every other day. The situation finally ended with the man penetrating me anally claiming that "I wasn't losing my virginity that way". He left me broken and bleeding on the cold concrete floor of my family's barn and at that moment, I felt for the first time, what would soon become the very familiar sting of what I can only describe as dehumanization. I was just a child, so I didn't really understand what was happening until later on in my life, but alone and at a very tender age, I managed to pull myself through it. While it happened, the only thing that I had managed to hold onto or keep sacred was my virginity... The one ounce of innocence I had left. I attempted to date in high school, but with very little luck due to my massive distrust of males as a whole. It seemed like they only really wanted to sleep with me and I had no interest in that. It was unsurprising now and even then because even at that age I knew that sexual exploration is one of the most important essences of our teenage years. When I was eighteen and after I had graduated high school, I was finally starting to spread my wings and become comfortable in embracing myself and growing into a young woman. That fall, I took a trip up to one of our big colleges to visit my high school best friend and celebrate our first steps into adulthood. We went out to a few bars and had a really exceptional night before heading back to a house party that one of the girl's boyfriend was throwing. By this time, I was extremely inebriated, and only got more so throughout the course of the evening. I met a boy at the party who seemed to have taken a keen interest in me, and I spent the night talking with him. He seemed very kind, and was taking care of me in my drunken stupor. Around 4am, everyone started passing out, and the boy offered me the other bed in his room which he shared with a roommate who was away at the time. I graciously accepted, happy to not sleep on the floor, and exhaustedly passed out. I don't know when it was, but at some point, I woke up to him atop me, stripping my clothes from my body. Still extremely intoxicated, I tried to push him off and told him 'no' multiple times, but to no avail since I was in no state to be able to fully comprehend or prevent what was happening. I lost my virginity that night. After it happened, I managed to slip away after he had passed out. Hysterically, and quite drunkenly, I drove myself home, I didn't tell anyone that I wasn't leaving or even what had happened due to the extreme embarrassment and shock that I felt in the moment. It seemed almost ironic considering that I had held onto that one piece of me for so long, only to end up losing it the one way I had prayed I never would. After years of confusion and depression, I got myself through that too, growing from it and making myself stronger. I knew that it wasn't my fault, and that I could overcome it if I put my mind to it, and with sheer willpower, I did. I should preface this next part by telling you the whole story. I grew up in a very abusive household. My father is a very angry alcoholic, and my mother is very kind, but naive. I have two brothers, one older and one younger. My older brother is my half brother, and was the love child of my father and a woman he dated before he married my mother. We met my older brother when he was thirteen, he is seven years my senior. His mother was an addict and neglected he and his sister, leaving them for days on end, with no one to take care of them. One day, she showed up with my older brother claiming that he was my father's son. After a long and arduous battle for custody (at the request of my mother) we took him in and made him part of our family in hopes to give him a better life. Before my brother became a part of my family, my father was a relatively kind man. My early childhood was peaceful and from what I remember, happy. Once my brother came into the picture, life in my household changed drastically at the flip of a switch. My father hated him for a long time as he served as a reminder of his past and mistakes he made and being the angry man he was, his guilt drove him to violence. By the time my brother was 14 my father had become outrageously violent and began to drink heavily, taking his anger out on our family. He would beat my brother and on occasion, me as well. My younger brother (who is three years my junior) was too young to remember most of this, so my older brother and I bonded over our shared hardships and became very close. When he turned 18 he shipped off with the Marine Corps and spent the following four years touring in Falujia, Okinawa and finally in California. In the meanwhile, my parents underwent a very messy and very hard divorce. I was very alone in this, and became stuck in the middle of a gruesome battle which ultimately ended in a very prominent schism in my family. By the time my brother returned from his duty, I was at high school age and had fought some of my own incredibly difficult battles of a very different nature. It was amazing to finally reconnect with my brother and have someone I could tell my secrets to again... but he was a very different person. He was broken by what he had seen in Afghanistan. I was also a very different person, broken by trauma, divorce and high school. I tried to be there to support him, and he tried to be there to support me, but as afformentioned, we had fought very different battles in our time apart. We still stayed close even though we were both struggling through different stages of adulthood, and after the incident at the college party, he was the first person I confided in. He was there for me, and supported me through the hard times that would lie ahead. During the next few years he met a girl who he impregnated with his first son and my first nephew. They decided to start a family and he decided to grow up and go back to school in order to support them. Meanwhile, I was blossoming into womanhood and beginning to embrace my sexuality because, finally, I was in control. I moved out at 18 to escape the emotional insanity of life with my parents and began supporting myself to make my own way in the world. I lost my virginity, by choice, at the age of 19 to someone I trusted, never counting or accepting the fact that it had been stolen from me, since in my opinion, it was still mine to give. I fell in love for the first time, and the second and the third, and my scars from the past finally began to fade away and I began to regain my faith in humanity. By the time I turned twenty-two, I had met a boy that I was quite smitten with. He was intellegent and kind and we began dating. My brother and I saw each other when we could, but he was very busy with a second baby and a new career, and I was busy with my new relationship and crappy restaurant job. On July 4th of last year, my family threw a party and I was not able to attend because of a late shift at work. That night, when I got off, my brother called me to tell me that he had the night off from his family and would be sleeping at my father's house. He asked me if I wanted to go out to a bar with he and my cousin. I agreed, excited to finally get to spend time with him and party together like we did before he had a family and responsibilities. I picked them up from my Uncle's house and we went to the local haunt to grab drinks and celebrate independence and all that jazz. They were both already quite drunk from the party, so I played catch up, trying to join them in their crazy stupor. Once we were all nice and intoxicated we decided to leave the bar and go hunting for some magic mushrooms in the cow field next to my father's house. My cousin swore up and down that he could find them and that they were definitely in season. Being as drunk as we were, we all seemed to think this was a fantastic idea, when really, it was quite dumb. We got back to the house and proceeded to sneak around the field in the dark searching for the elusive mushrooms without any luck. During the search, my brother kept coming up behind me and touching my back and occasionally brushing his hand across my butt. I decided to think nothing of this because he was drunk and it was probably just him being clumsy. This had happened a few times in the past, I just never thought that much into it either because it never occurred to me or because I didn't want to think it meant anything. Anyway, after our failed mushroom hunt, we proceeded back to the barn and before we went in, he grabbed me and told me that he needed to talk to me about "something serious" once our cousin had gone home. I think that in that moment I knew what was coming. Part of me knows I knew that it had been coming for a long time... My cousin decided to go home after about an hour of us sharing drunken stories as I kept face while trying to shake the ominous feeling of impending disaster. Once he was gone, there was a long silence and then he finally spoke up. He opened by saying that he had been debating whether or not to tell me this for a long time. At this moment, I was sure of what was about to happen and braced myself for the inevitability that my world was about to crumble. He began to tell me that he was attracted to me and wanted us to have sex if I wanted to try it. He told me that he knew that there was a time he had gone to far in the past, referencing an event from when I was about 17. (Just for context, I had a friend in high school who was very close with her older brother and when she got scared or had a nightmare, she would go sleep in his room with him, completely innocently, because they were very close and he made her feel safe. I spent the night at my brother's house one night and I got scared because of some weird noises outside and decided to go sleep in his room with him because part of me wanted to feel close to him in the way that she felt close to her brother. He had been drinking that night. I crawled into bed across from him, and tried to get some sleep, but was awoken a little bit later to him groping my breast and running his hand up and down my torso. I got really uncomfortable and went back to the couch. At the time he had just broken up with his girlfriend who had been living with him, so I justified the incident by telling myself that he was drunk and half asleep and mistook me for her.) He continued by saying that he didn't know why he felt this way towards me, but he really wanted us to have sex if I wanted to, as well. I sat there, listening, with tears welling up in my eyes, trying to maintain my composure as each word he said sent sharp cracks through my psyche. When he finished I sat there for a moment, still in shock, trying to collect my thoughts enough to respond. I lit up a cigarette and took a drag of it as best I could due to my trembling hands that shook from a mixture of rage and horror. (What happened after this is a bit foggy, so I will do my best to retell things as I remember them.) At first, I attempted to respond to him as calmly as I could, but it didn't take long for me to completely break. I asked him how he could say that to me knowing all of the things that he knew about my past. How could he betray me when he was the only person I had that I trusted implicitly? Why would he say this to me? Why? Why? Why? Why was this happening to me? I devolved into hysterics and began screaming nonsense at him because my thoughts were no longer coherent in my brain. I was having a full fledged breakdown and my world was falling to pieces before my very eyes. I got up (I'm honestly unsure if I was still yelling at this point) and stumbled out to my car, wiping the tears from my eyes, trying to start the engine with useless, fumbling hands. I think he tried to stop me from leaving, but at this point, even the chance of death seemed better than what was going on in my brain. I got on the highway and headed towards my boyfriend's house because that was the only place I could think to go at the time. I was still really drunk and was also having a panic attack, so my driving was horrible. I knew I shouldn't have been driving, but in the state of mind I was in, I didn't care. I wanted to die. I wanted to crash my car into a tree and end it, to end all the years of pain and hurt... but I couldn't... I wasn't ready to give up like that. I managed to get myself to my boyfriend's house in one piece and quietly let myself in. I went directly into the bathroom, stripped myself naked, lit a cigarette and got into his shower, hoping to wash it all down the drain. I laid in the bottom of the tub and violently sobbed till the water ran cold. I woke up the next morning on the couch, with a newfound numbness. My brother texted me later that afternoon saying that he was sorry and that he shouldn't have told me, but not to feel bad because I wasn't the only one. I still don't know what that meant. I haven't been able to bring myself to speak to him since. It's been a little over a year since this happened and I've been struggling desperately on how exactly to handle this. If we're being honest, I'm not okay. I'm very far from okay. I can't really talk to anyone about this because I live in a very small town and word spreads fast. I've been put in an incredibly difficult situation with this knowledge... If my father were to find out about this, it would completely destroy my already very broken family. In all probability, my nephew's would grow up without a father. My younger brother (who looks up to him and is now, very close to him) would lose his only brother and best friend. My father, who has finally warmed up to him and accepted him as his son, would blame himself and in all likelihood drink himself to an even earlier death. My family will forever see me as the victim and will never look at me through unclouded eyes again... on the other hand, I'm barely keeping it together. I'm tearing apart at the seams. I have ostracized myself from my family because he's always present and I can't be around him and pretend that everything is normal... I'm torn between saving myself and saving my family. And it seems like I should put myself first, but I can't justify the chaos and carnage that will ensue if this knowledge were to ever come to light. It is so much worse and more complicated than any adversity I have faced before and I'm falling apart over a choice that I will inevitably have to make. This isn't just some random asshole I will never have to see again... this is my brother. This is someone that, if I choose to stay silent, keep this knowledge to myself and somehow learn to live with it, I will have to be around for the rest of my life. I don't know where to go from here. Every path leads to nowhere and is paved with the shards of my shattered reality. And maybe it's stupid that I'm sharing this story... I've lost a handful of my closest friends over how much I've changed this past year. I know that I'm not the same person, but that person died with what was left of my humanity. And that is the biggest thing that I have lost in all of this. I no longer feel human. I feel like an old toy that has been passed around and played with... but now my cracks are beginning to show, and I've been tossed out and left alone to rot. I look back at that girl I once was... that strong, fiery, passionate girl, and I wish she would come back to me. All that I am now is a broken doll with a cracked face. I've lost my friends, I've lost my family, I've lost myself. Yet, still, I keep going, set on autopilot, floating in an endless abyss. Unable to move forward and unable to step backwards. I just can't seem to wrap my brain around why all of these terrible things have continuously kept happening to me... I've kept my head up all these years, through everything that has been thrown at me, never letting the darkness put out my light. But, as they say, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. I don't think I can piece it back together this time... at least not yet. I'm rambling... I'm sorry. I guess I just needed to tell my story, in hopes that someone may hear me... feel me. I wish I could encapsulate everything I feel in this writing, but I don't think I could find real words to convey it. I don't think there are real words to convey it... Well, I guess that's it then. I don't really know how to end this, so I guess I'll just thank you if you actually read it all. I know it's a lot and it's pretty depressing, but I appreciate you if you managed to get through it.
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