I started telling my story last week. I began with this: I was sexually abused by my brother.

After my parents found out, a memory I have since blocked out is of the police coming to my school and pulling me out of class to the principal’s office to ask if I felt safe in my own home. I, still to this day, have no recollection of this happening. And like I said before, I have always had this feeling around the whole situation that it should not be talked about. I remember someone telling me that I shouldn’t tell anyone what happened to me, and could eventually tell my husband when I got married. But I have no idea who told me that. A vivid memory I have is of my counselor’s office. I’ll refer to her as Mary. My first meeting with her I literally peed my pants on her couch. We made a scrapbook and I haven’t looked in it since I brought it home from her office, but I still have it. It has some of those paper dolls that are all linked together by the hands in it. The doll that represents me has a band-aid on. It was to show myself that I was the one who got hurt and that it wasn’t my fault. I remember making guacamole with Mary and not liking it. I remember Jack’s counselor Don whose office was next door. Don was really heavy. I remember we had a meeting at the end with all four of us so that Jack could apologize to me. I don’t remember what he said, though. I remember I used to leave third block early in seventh grade on Thursdays so that I could see Mary. I used to tell everyone I had dance class. As far as punishments, I don’t remember much for Jack. I know he was restricted from electronics for a while. When the six months were up, I guess things just went back to normal. It was under the rug, so why uncover it again?

I have always had this feeling around the whole situation that it should not be talked about. I remember someone telling me that I shouldn’t tell anyone what happened to me.

I know that I have painted a certain picture here. My reality at the time was slightly different. You see, I loved my parents and I loved my brother. I honestly never thought anything was wrong. The anger that is conveyed in my voice is truly a consequence of recent events and the rediscovery of what happened to me. Two years later, I spent a week at a YoungLife camp with friends in Oregon. My family drove down to Oregon at the end so that we could go camping for another few days along the coast. While venturing around Seaside, we stopped at a view site to take some pictures and my dad had a seizure while trying to get off of the motorbike he was sitting on. I was the one to call 911 and put my jacket under my dad’s head. Turns out my dad had a brain tumor that was about the size of an egg and it was located near his left motor strip. The left motor strip controls motion for the right side of your body. I know this has nothing to do with my abuse, but it shaped me immensely and is a really important piece of who I am. My dad had surgery to remove the tumor in Portland and was completely paralyzed immediately after. He slowly regained his ability to move as the days passed and relearned how to walk about a week later. It was really hard to almost lose your dad at the age of fourteen. Also, it was one of those “grow-up fast” kind of situations. But it strengthened my relationship with my dad greatly. I went on to write poems and papers in school about the experience and how my life had changed. I had always been a mature child, but my maturity level increased during that period of time. I lost so many friends at the very start of high school because I had to grow up and they didn’t. Fast forward again to three years later, the summer before my senior year of high school. I flew out to Montana alone to visit my cousins and take my senior pictures, and while I was gone, my mom went missing. I remember she was supposed to be meeting up with a friend. I had called my dad to ask where she was and he said he didn’t know. My brother didn’t know. I remember feeling like no one was worried about her but me. I called all of the hospitals in the area to see if she had been admitted but no luck. My dad and brother were finally worried about her and my dad called the police. I told my aunt, and she called my other aunt. No one knew what was going on and I just wanted to cry. In typical “everything is fine” fashion, I was told to just go to bed and not worry about it — that she would be fine. She was found around 2 a.m., in the parking lot of a movie theater about five miles from my house, asleep in her car. She had driven there to watch the sunset, and her car ran out of gas and phone out of battery while she was sitting there. Too scared to leave the car, she just stayed there. My mom had a mental breakdown. In the next year, my mom was cycled through twelve different antidepressant drugs and nothing was helping. She was on a leave-of-absence from work and basically slept all day. In the fall of my senior year, I regained a friendship with a guy that I had kind-of dated in my freshman year of high school. Eventually, I asked Jones to homecoming. We went in a group with my best guy friend and his date. We went to a fancy dinner, then to the dance, and afterwards we got slices of pie at our favorite all-night diner. When I took Jones home, he kissed me and asked me to be his girlfriend. Things were confusing at this time. I was really happy in my relationship with Jones, but my mom was not doing well. My mom did not want anyone to know what was happening. She was paranoid, to say the least. I lost all ties with the friends that I did have because I was either at home trying to get my mom to get up, working on the school yearbook, at work or school, or hanging out with Jones. My dad and I would go out to dinner at a local taco place probably once a week to talk about my mom and finances. Things were not the greatest since my mom was not working and my dad took off work most of the week to take care of my mom. Eventually, my dad started researching a treatment called ECT or electroconvulsive therapy. It was pretty controversial at the time as it is basically medically inducing a seizure in a patient multiple times a week. My dad wanted my mom to try it, but she wasn’t too fond of the idea. She eventually tried it and in the end it is probably what saved her life. It took a year of the treatments before she was able to control her depression and anxiety with medication alone. I’ll spare you of the deep and dark details of this time as best as I can. What I will tell you though is that I lost my mom. She was not there, mentally or physically. And that drove me closer and closer to Jones. I am not joking when I say that I had no friends beside my parents and Jones. They were the only people I interacted with outside of work and school. By this time I had graduated from high school and put off my plans to go to school in Montana to be there for my mom while she was not doing well. While all of this was happening with my mom, I was sliding down a slippery slope in my relationship with Jones. He was getting high off of the attention that I needed in order to just operate every day. He was addicted to having my undivided attention. Our relationship became abusive in many ways. He was verbally, emotionally, and, at times, sexually abusive. I have memories of crying and asking him to stop while having sex, but he never would. His jealousy was so real. I would just give and give and give every little ounce of sanity I had left, only to be yelled at because I didn’t spend my work bonus on him. He was manipulative, always making me feel bad for the way that I felt. At times we would fight and his mom would try to moderate, or really try to calm him down so that he could see that he wasn’t always right. I didn’t realize that something was wrong. Sitting here today writing this, I am mad that I let myself be taken advantage of like that again. But giving myself a little bit of grace, I cannot imagine how I managed to make it through that time with my mom.

I have memories of crying and asking him to stop while having sex, but he never would. His jealousy was so real. I would just give and give and give every little ounce of sanity I had left, only to be yelled at because I didn’t spend my work bonus on him. He was manipulative, always making me feel bad for the way that I felt.

My mom began to improve, slowly but surely. Toward the end of my freshman year of college at a local school, I started to think about going to Montana again. It had always been my dream to go to school there because I would be close to my cousins. While perusing a school’s website one night, I discovered the school calendar and was able to go far enough into the future to see that if I stayed on track in my four-year degree that graduation day would land on my 22 birthday. It was my sign: I had to go. This also ended up being my motivation for not failing classes and taking summer classes when I switched majors to ensure that I would in-fact graduate in four years. At the same time, there was still something in my way: Jones. I knew subconsciously that it was him or Montana. There was no way that he could go with me because he was paying for college with no help from his family and out-of-state tuition is nuts. When I finally told Jones that I wanted to go to Montana, he was furious at first. But once he calmed down, he was sure that we could make a long-distance relationship work with a little bit of work. I wasn’t so sure yet. Everything happens for a reason, right? Well I believe that about most things, especially this situation. My brother was about to graduate from college in Montana at the beginning of May and my family would be attending the ceremony. It was the perfect “trial” for our “long-distance relationship.” Only four days, what could possibly go wrong? Well the trip wasn’t horrible, although Jones was very upset at many times because I hadn’t called him enough. After the graduation party, my family decided to play some cards in the lobby of the hotel and hang out. I ended up sharing a beer with my mom while playing, but that wasn’t a big deal in my family. My parents were always okay with us drinking if we were careful and definitely not driving afterward. After returning home, Jones came over to my house after classes one day to have lunch. My dad started joking about how I was drinking when we were gone and Jones freaked. I still have this memory etched in my mind in slow motion. My dad joking around, Jones looking at my dad and then at me, then just standing up, grabbing his keys and walking out the door. Muttering something like “I have to go home” under his breath. The look on my dad’s face was pure confusion. Jones and my dad had always joked around, and I know my dad didn’t understand why he just got up and left. I remember after he left, my dad looked at me with a concerned look and apologized if he had said something wrong or upset Jones. I told him that if he had a problem with what was said or that I was drinking with my parents that it was his own problem. In that moment, Jones made the choice for me. I wasn’t going to live with his stupid attitude for another moment. I went to his house the next day and broke up with him. His reaction to me drinking half of a beer in a controlled situation was absolutely uncalled for and ridiculous. For the next week, I experienced no regret, just the feeling of freedom. It was the first time that I had been happy after a breakup. I eventually felt some sadness, but not for him. I felt sad that I had lost someone who knew me so well, and that I had wasted so much time with someone like that. I was not sad that I lost Jones.