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Survivor story

Secrets of 2008

Original story

Message to a Survivor

If I can share a positive message with you, it would be that the worst is behind us, we survived and we can thrive. We are NOT alone, and our stories are all uniquely similar. There is someone out there (like me) who knows what it's like. We can begin our healing journey together with love and kindness to ourselves and others.

Message of Healing

What healing means to me is, learning to detach her name from my pain so I don't get a rise in my chest when it's mentioned. So I can have a real connection with my cousins (her brother) daughter who I call my niece. Healing to me is not defaulting to remembering painful thoughts when im alone. I've just started my path on this, but I hope I can achieve these goals someday.

When I was around 7-8 years old I was being molested and raped by my older cousin. She was around 11-12 at the time. We grew up in the same home together with mine and her brothers and sisters, we grew up kind of rough. Lots of drugs and drug dealing/using going on around us. As well as violence. We played together alot and I looked up to her as a big sister and she took care of us younger ones. I'm not sure if this is the first instance of abuse, but it's the first one I remember; we were upstairs at night and it was just us two. I remember her taking off her clothes and telling me to put my fingers inside her, I didn't know what it was so I did. She told me to keep it secret 'because family keeps secrets'. After that I can remember us playing 'games' like hide and seek, doctor, and house. All of it was to get me alone with her looking back with hindsight. We would build blanket forts and that is where I was first raped and was told 'this is what daddies do to mommies'. I'm not sure how long this went on, but for me the most shameful part was that I eventually came to expect these games and actually sought out that attention, I was part of my own abuse. I have still kept this secret, I want to talk to someone about it but I can't. Her father took her and my other cousins away, and that was the last time I saw her. She died shortly after she was taken. It really messed me up because on one hand she took care of me in my broken home, but at the same time she was sexually abusing me and set me up for a life time 'prison' sentence. I will get no resolution or confrontation. I just have to cope. It's affected my whole way of thinking my whole life. I'm happy now days but I often wonder what I would be like if I was subjected to that abuse.

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