I froze, confused, immediately aware that something was wrong, and looked up at him slowly. Out of the blue, he took my hand, and he put it on the bulge in his pants. He began tickling me, and I squirmed and squealed and fell across his lap. We were sharing a room at a campsite where my family was staying there weren’t enough beds in the rooms for us to have our own rooms, and my mother was off doing something else on the camp. I clearly remember the first time he made me uncomfortable.
I think this is the first time I’ve ever written in full detail about what he did to me. When I was eleven, another monster entered my life. I really am not yet ready to talk much about that yet. There was a brief brush with another monster he was however, a young, troubled boy who did to me what I’m relatively sure someone was doing to him. My first abuser taught me that I was a victim, and gave me the necessary insecurities that would let my second abuser run roughshod over my childhood.Įventually, that relationship ended for my mother, and that monster left my life. He taught me that no one would believe me, and that adults had the power. This abuse was minor, but I think it primed me for what was to come. She would look at me and say, “What did you do to?” So from a very young age I was taught that what I suffered was my own fault. He would carefully call it “spanking” instead of “belting” or “beating” because then when I went to my mother to cry, I would tell her that he spanked me. When he did it, he would tell me the whole time how I deserved it, and how I shouldn’t have made him do it. He would find the most minor infractions and make me stand there while he thrashed me with his belt. When I was four years old, my then-stepfather took to beating me.