I was just wanting to write to let you know that. I can relate to what you were talking about on your homepage I was just wanting to let you know.My father job has him traveling and my mother a nurse. My parents were going through some marriagale problems as all couples do,well I was sent to my grandparents to live with them until I was 18years old. When I was 9yrs old I can remeber as if it were today what had gone on in my grandparents house as I was little. My grandmother was a good woman and my grandfather I loved him as a grandchild would and I admire him because I was going to get my scuba diving license and I just thought he was the greatest.Well when I first came to live with them it was good and every thing, but my grandfather was always wanting to take me scuba diving and I just loved it. One summer after noon right after my birthday June 20 My grandfather didn't seem so grandfathery. He would say to my grandmother that I wanted him to read to me and I didn't. when he would come into my room at night he would pretend that he was reading me a book and he would start touching me in my no no places. I was told that no one should ever touch you in your no no places. I told my grandfather that I didn't like him to touch me that way, well he stopped and said he was sorry and then he said don't tell because your granny will think you are a bad girl. SO I never told anyone. he would do things to try to make me happy. But he would do the same thing when we would go scuba diving too. When I was 10 years old my grandfather then started to get really frustated and he and my grandmother was always arugueing about different things. He slammed the door to their bed room and I pretended that I was asleep,so when I heard my grandfather I knew he would be coming to my room. He slowly open the door and came into my bed room I was scared and was about to cry but I didn't. My grandfather locked the door so I knew I wouldn't be able to get out of my room. I don't know if my grandmother was asleep or if she was down stair. I knew something terrible was about to happen. My grandfather got into my bed with me and he started fondling me and then he kissed me and undressed me,I started to yell for my grandmother and he covered my mouth with his hand and with his other hand he took off his PJ and underpants and raped me. I was bleeding and I just layed in my blood crying. He told me if I told that my grandmother would think I was a slut. I didn't know any better so I didn't say anything I didn't want my grandmother being mad at me,and I didn't want a whippen, so I didn't say anything. My grandmother knew I was starting to change not wanting to do too much with my grandfather, so she took me around back with her and she started to talk to me in her sweet little voice. She said Tondra is there something that you want to talk about, I have my ears open to anything you want to tell me. She said she never wanted me to be afarid if something is going on and I just wanted to talk to her about it. She kept asking me,and I said no, because I remebered what my grandfather had said to me. I knew for sure she wouldn't love me anymore. It continued until I was 16 years old. I went scuba diving again this time was my last time because I would be able to take my scuba diving test to be a certified scuba diver and I wouldn't have to have my grandfather around me anymore I went out with him, and we put all of our stuff in his boat that looked more like a ship. I was so excited because this was something I had been looking forwards too all my life. We went out father than usual. He told me to go ahead and start putting on my scuba gear. I did,and when he told me to dive backwards into the water I did. He said I was doing good. He said he was going to jump in after I get use to going in the deeper part of the water. When I went down he came down on top of me, holding my oxygen cord so I couldn't breathe so I started fighting trying to fight him off and I knew I was losing more and more Oxygen,and he told me he would killed me if I didn't stop fighting him. I did, because I couldn't breath he didn't care if I could breath or not. He held me down in the water and raped me again. I was now starting to go unconcious. He took me up and put me in the boat, I kept going in and out of conciousness, he raped me,but I couldn't do anything a about it. I thought this was the day my life will end. He's determine to kill me. he raped me that day repeatedly and I kept going in and out of conciousness. When he finally decided to take me back to the house he told my grandmother to get his emerengecy bag. I had busted my he open because of my grandfather had made me hit my head when I was under the water. I was in so much pain I wish he would had killed me. Pain, grief, disbelief,shame, dirty, ugly, etc. I began to feel hurt even worst. my grandmother called the police and she told him to get away from me. She said it's his fault, just leaver her alone is what my grandmother said. I think she knew what really happened because she knew I was a good swimmer. I wouldn't have hit my head. She was cursing him out and calling him every name but his right name. She told him to leave.She was mad because he had let me be hurt. When the amblance came I went unconcious and went into a semi-coma when my grandmother had found out that I had been raped repeatedly and she found out who the person was she was going to kill him. I was ashamed and I couldn'tlook my grandmother in the face all I could do was cry,because I knew I had hurt her so much. She kept asking me why didn't I ever tell her. I was afarid to say anything, because I thought she was going to get onto me and hate me, but she divorced him and he was put into jail. I went to counseling but it didn't help me,becuase I felt so stupid that I let the abuse continue so long. I should have spoken up.But the fear he had inplanted in my head was still there. he haunts me in my sleep. I still can't always sleep well. I have good nights and I have bad nights, but I know one day hopefully I will be able to forgive myself and let myself know that I wasn't the blame. I can't convicence my self right now but one day I hope I can. I'm going to stop because I'm feeling really sick because of talking about this. I really have to go.

A Small Piece of Me

There is quite an age gape between my older brother and I. Nine years. I guess that my mother felt it was okay to leave him in charge of me while she worked and went out. I remember her being gone a lot after I was about five years old. A LOT. Not just for work but for other things. Business trips, vacations, nights at her boyfriends’ houses. I don’t remember my father, but as my mother’s absences increased my brother began to fill the role. He was in charge. He would make me do the chores and clean up, much like I think a parent would have. He cooked the meals and was basically an adult at fourteen.

He was tolerable when he was sober. Hell, sometimes he was even NICE. I was really young and didn’t know what alcohol was, but as I remembered, he would smell real weird and act even weirder. By weird I mean he would touch my face and kiss me on the mouth and tell me I was a faggot. I didn’t understand what he was doing. I did understand that when he drank, he got mean and he would hit me a lot. I can’t even begin to put a time frame on this… it was like one day he was “acting weird” and the next day I was laying bloody on the floor. He often told me I was stupid and a worthless and that I was a pain in the ass. Things like that, only worse. He would go into long detail about how I never did anything right and I wasn’t good for anything. He said that mom was gone all the time because of me! I was young, so I believed him. He was my brother. He wasn’t supposed to lie to me and he wasn’t supposed to hurt me. After years of this things progressed so that at some point, he began to get drunk, then pissed of, and then he would tell me to do things for him. He made me touch him where I shouldn’t have and eventually, it wasn’t enough. He started touching me. I didn’t say no. I didn’t know what abuse was but I knew what pain was and I knew that he made me feel sick when he did it.

Eventually, he went further. Pushing me down, always on the dirty floor and without much talking or delay. Just like that. Drink. Push. Shove. Come. Leave. I remember thinking about anything else when it would happen. Anything at all. Sometimes it seems like I took it a little too well. I mean I didn’t say no and I didn’t fight. Once, when I was thirteen, he hit me and kicked me down to the floor again. But this time he sat on my back with a knife and carved into me. He was really sick. He tore a large “x” across my back and told me he was going to rub ink into me. Told me it was to mark me as the worthless piece of shit that I was. I didn’t move when it happened. I laid there with my cheek and chin pushed into the floor and tears streaming down my face and didn’t say a word. It stung like old fashioned surgery. And then he took off his pants and I still said nothing. That hurt even worse than the cuts and the ink. He raped me. I was a child and he was my fucking brother, but he raped me. It wasn’t the last time. When I was sixteen, my mother left the apartment and moved in with someone else. Now it was just the two of us. I didn't leave and I never told anyone. I just tried to forget about it and hoped it would stop. It didn’t stop. It was just a normal routine in my life. As I got older, I tried to be gone and away from him as much as possible but I had to go home sometime. He never changed. Even when I was eighteen, he was still my older brother and I honestly didn’t think I could or deserved to fight for myself. I did deserve to.

The last time he violated me was June 25, 1997. I remember it because he was supposed to go in to work that night, but had gotten really drunk and really stoned that afternoon. He called off work and decided to get high some more. The next day he didn’t wake up. I didn’t know he was dead for a couple of days. I only knew that he was asleep and I was safer that way.

I can’t ever forgive him. What he did was wrong and I did not deserve it. I never said no, but who the hell thinks that someone close to them is going to do THAT. I didn’t have to say no for it to be wrong. I don’t sleep at nights. I know he is dead but when I wake up I swear I am back at that shit apartment under my dirty sheets just waiting and scared in the dark. I have nightmares every time I sleep and I never ever feel clean. NEVER. I am twenty years old now and I have been in a relationship with my girlfriend for about nine months. At first I didn’t want to tell her, but somehow she seemed to guess. (Maybe it was from my pronouncing the word “brother” like it was a disease or my poetry about feeling helpless, who knows?) I wrote her letters and I was so scarred that she wouldn’t believe me or she might act weird about it. But she was wonderful and still is. She doesn’t treat me weird when I want to shy away from her or wake up crying at nights. She is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me, and I feel like the luckiest bastard alive to have met her. But I still don’t feel safe. I still see HIS face and smell HIS sweat when I close my eyes. Sometimes I don’t want to live… I don’t want to kill myself – that would be too much of an action for me. No, I just feel like I want to stop what ever it is I am doing and just stop being. Stop living and never feel again. Then there are days when I think that I am okay but the slightest thing triggers me into this deep depression. I can always feel it coming but it still shocks me and hits me like broken beer bottles. I can’t get away from it.

Yes, some people don’t think it’s a big deal and I should get over it (or is that ME that thinks that sometimes?) But I can’t. It happened for the last time two years ago, but it is still happening now in my mind. I have woken up after dreams about him and thrown up and taken three-hour long baths hoping I could wash everything I have felt away. I can’t do that either. IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY. It will never come undone.

I will always feel this pain, but I am going to try my damn best to make sure that it doesn’t destroy me – I can’t let that bastard win. Anyone who wants to can write to me… uh… at JonaMiguel@hotmail.com… There. That wasn’t so bad… *wince* … I know what it’s like to be silent and I know that it is hard to speak up. But after you do, there is something better about things. It’s like I’ve gotten some small piece of myself back and like maybe I’m not quite as helpless as I was before.
 

When I was 14, just before my freshman year, my then boyfriend and I decided to have sex. We didn't do a lot of planning, I just figured it would happen one day. One night when both of our families were at an event at the fairgrounds we snuck off to go make out. He had found one of the booths at the fairgrounds was unlocked and led me inside. We kissed and fooled around for a while, then he undressed me and took off his pants. I was completely ready to have sex with him until he actually penetrated me. I was in so much pain that I begged him to stop. I pushed my legs together, trying to deny him entrance. I shoved at him with my hands, begging him to stop. He was simply too strong for me to deter. I lay there crying as he had sex with me, praying it would end soon. Finally it did end. I was hurting so much inside, that I didn't want ever to have sex again.

I stayed with him for two more months, even though he was emotionally and physically abusive, and he cheated on me repeatedly. He would call me at two o'clock in the morning and demand that I let him into my house to have sex with him, and I always did. One time he even brought one of his friends to watch us. One time a friend of mine came to me in the hallway at school and told me that he had grabbed her breasts in class. He came up to us and started arguing with the girl and eventually shoved her down the hall. I was terrified of him. My parents were pressuring me to break up with him, and I finally gave in. I forgot about it after we broke up. I thought it couldn't have been rape, and to this day I'm still not sure it can be called rape. There were times when I felt so bad about myself and my life that I just didn't want to exist anymore. I thought dying would be too much work, what if there was an afterlife? Would I still carry this stain on my soul? I now tell this story to anyone I get serious with. I finally admitted to myself that it was a rape of sorts, "date rape" maybe, I don't know. I just want these people to know who they're getting involved with and what kind of baggage I'm carrying. Some get the cut down, edited version, and some get the whole story.

Telling the story those times is like fileting my soul and laying all the spoil and rot out for them to gawk at. It's painful, but I know it helps me handle myself.
 

My name is Katie and I'm 16 yrs old. I'm a survivor of sexual abuse. To finally now say that is liberating and in the same breath extremely frightening.....because it makes it all REAL. When I was younger I would get sick alot. Ear infections, coughs and the like. One day my grandmother had to pick me up from school. She took me to her house and then left to get some groceries. I was playing in the living room and my grandfather came up from the basement. He stood in the hallway for a bit, and then told me to come with him to the bedroom. I was very scared because I knew my grandpa was mean. Like most children I was very intuitive and knew he was bad person. But I was scared, so I followed him. He closed the door and put a towel on the bed...which I didn't understand. He told me to sit down and proceeded to start touch me. Parts of the experience are blanked out because it was so traumatic. He took of my pants, put his fingers in my vagina and proceeded to rape me. Afterwards I was crying and he told me to shutup...that it was my fault that I was bad. I held the towel between my legs and proceeded to go to the bathroom. I was bleeding and terrified because I had no idea what I should do. My little shaky hands washed everything. My face, my mouth,between my legs. I just wanted to be clean. I was sore all over. Finally I stopped bleeding and put my clothes back on. Then, I just let all slip away as if I had zoned out. I went back into the living room, my grandpa went back to the basement, and all was back to normal. During the whole incident, I did everything I could just to cope....I looked out the window...seeing the birds pecking at seeds in the bird-feeder. I imagined myself a soft bluebird....flying through the cool breeze. I imagined myself an angel looking down at the whole world in wonder. Just fly away. That's all I could do. At seven years old I had lost my dignity....I had lost hope. Through the years I slipped in and out of depression. It's a constant struggle. I'm still just surviving. But know I feel comfort in knowing I'm not alone. It's organizations like PAAR(Pittsburgh Action Against Rape), and women like my mother, that have kept me safe and sane. For a long time I felt if my secret came out....people would be disgusted with me. But as I tell my story...everytime new ears hear it, I know that's just not so. I'm finally seeing that I AM strong and that what happened was never my fault. It's sites like these that help in my(and numerous others) healing. The scarres are still there, they do crack and bleed at times, but as we come together...it makes it easier to mend them.

Peace And Love,
~*Katie*~
 

I don't know what the word for it is. I don't know what the word is for having your father stick his finger inside you as your first memory. I don't know the word for being so deadly afraid of the sight of blood that you have to spend the first day of your period throwing up because for that one day you're BACK THERE. I don't know why he did it, I don't know why my mother never found out, I don't know why when I visited him after the divorce he would never let me out of his sight, made me shower with him and change my clothes in front of him until my brother started coming. I don't know why that made the difference. I don't know why he broke my brother's arm so that he couldn't come with me for a while. I promised myself I wouldn't censor this. I promised I wouldn't erase anyhting that I said, that I would keep typing regardless of misspellings, regardless of the voice (his voice) that says nobody wants to hear. Maybe nobody wants to hear, but I have to speak. He can't shut me up now, he's miles away and I haven't seen him in... two months? More? Time loses its meaning.

My mind blanks out sometimes... now. My hands are shaking. I can't type.

I don't know why I can't tell anyone.

My brother couldn't tell about the arm because he couldn't talk when it happened. Maybe he doesn't remember. I remember. I tried not to for a while. I used to find myself in strange places, or not-so-strange, weird time lapses when I didn't know what was going on... the other me knew. The other side. Rabbit, she's agreed to be called by me, because she is the keyholder and the gatekeeper.

I don't know myself very well, but I'm slowly beginning to wake up and realize my life is miserable, and it doesn't have to be. I don't have to be. I don't know what's going to happen next.
 

thank you for your page and sharing your story. here is mine. it helps to tell it for some unknown reason.

i was on spring break with 3 other girfriends. they all were a little more spontanous and fun than i. i was the boring one, not looking to "hook up" with anyone, i just wanted to enjoy my time in the virgin islands. during the course of the week , i befriended a local named daniel who was originally from los angels. he looked like a hippie and basically he was. he was a carpender on one of the islands. one night, me and my friends went back to that island that daniel lived because of the guys they had picked up and a bar that we liked to hang out at. daniel was there and i went for a walk with him. in my head i knew i shouldn't go anywhere with him but i though i was being paranoid. so we went and he smoked up. we kissed and then i decieded that i should meet back with my friends so we could catch the ferry back to the island we were staying at.

when i met up with them they told me we missed the ferry and we had to stay on this island. daniel offered his place for a retreat for the night. my friends were going to stay a various locations with the guys they had picked up. i was really leary and said so but what had it in their mines that these guys were going to be any safer? i should of stayed with them but i went with daniel.

he had no car so we had to bum a ride from a friend. daniel said that his place was only a couple minutes from the ferry and that i would be able to meet back up with them at 7 am easily. so i went with these men. that car ride made me frightened and i almost said turn the car around and i'll stay with the others but i didn't, i was scared. they stoped about 10 minutes into the car ride and smoked up again. i was pitch dark out because we were heading toward the non-tourist part of the island. finally after 20 minutes we were at his house-if you want to call it that.

it was a shack the size of a dorm room made of wood. there were openings were the windows were but no glass. he had two mattress on the floor, a stove, and a whole bunch of stereo equiptment. i stood there in disbelief. i was frighted so i stood with body language that said go away. but i think he realized that and tried to make me more comfortable. i said that i was really tried so we laid down and he smoked up again. then he started to kiss me and put his rough hands all over me. i didn't want this but i didn't know what to do. he at one point put my hand on his penis. i did an awful job at what he wanted. he said to me "i bet you touch all the boys this way." he just kept touching me and at one point i just kept saying no. he said "relax, it not like i'm going to rape you." for him to say that only made me more unconfortable. i kept fooling around with him because i didn't know what he would do to me if i didn't comply. we did not have sex, or even oral sex, but i felt gross all the same. finally, i think it was about 4:30 in the morning, and i told him i was really tired. so he set his watch for 6:30, so i would make it to the ferry. but then he started to laugh because he had no car and he said that no workers would be going to town because it was sunday and that was an off day. then i said something smart and he patted me on the cheek and said "you want to keep your pretty face, don't you." i was quite after that. all the time i thought to myself- i'm stupid, i'm never going to see my parents again.

he fell off to sleep with his hand tightly gripped on my thigh. about a hour later, i woke from dozing and took his hand off my leg and go the hell out of there.

i started to run down the dirt road, not exacty sure where to turn to get back to town. i kept looking behind me to make sure he wasn't following me. my sandle broke the skin on my feet so i took them off and kept going.

i ended up going into a private driveway of a nice house. the owners dogs came barking at me. i was hoping that they would wake the people of the house. a older man came out and asked me what i needed. i told him i needed a ride to town. he let me come in and gave me some orange juice. his wife came out and then she drove me to town. i thanked her and she said something to the effect that now i know better. no kidding i thought.

my friends met me at the ferry, and shocked to see me in hysterics. they went back to the island that night and i stayed home all by myself, all night long. i called my parents and told them what happened and i started to cry and tell them i was sorry.

in the end, i ended up going to a support group and shedding my emotions. no one understood what i had gone through and they never tried to discuss it with me. i felt like hell for several months. i cried all the time, didn't smile and never went out. i was frightened that i might die everyday.

i spoke out at my school's take back the night. it was refreshing and i had lots of support from the people at the new school i transfered to. my boyfriend and my friend melaine have been an incredible duo at helping me be a survivor.

thank you for listening. we all heal, it just takes time.