I am 18 years old. When I was 11 years old mt favorite thing in the
world was horses. I got in a fight with my sister so naturally I went down
to the horse stables to get away. That was my safe place. I didnt feel
like going home yet so I decided to go for a walk where I usually ride
my horse. I dont remember the exact time it was but it was getting dark.
I had to walk under this over pass where there is differnt colums to walk
under. After i walked under it I heard some guys yelling to me so I started
to walk faster the next thing I know they are right behind me and I try
to run but they grabbed me. It all happened so fast it was like a dream
that i was watching and I couldnt wake myself up. I wasnt there. There
were 4 of them and I dont think that they had done anything like this before.
There was a leader who was trying to be a bad ass pushing the others to
go further. It became a compitition on who would go the furthest on who
could come up with the worst thing to do to me. They fucked me up my ass
they fucked me with sticks and we it was all over with the meanest one
kissed me on my cheek and said ill see you later baby. I went home took
a shower and went to bed. And didnt remember for like 3 months and it came
back to me in peices. I was already manic depressive but when this hit
me i kind of went insane. If any thing happened i slit my wrist. it was
the only way i knew how to deal with things. I went to a couple different
mentle hospitols. I fell in love with someone and he killed himself and
things only got worse. I am better now i havent cut my wrists for over
a year. but i hurt. i hurt bad. I dont talk about it. this is the first
time that i have told my story. I try to hold it all inside but i feel
like im going to explode.
Hi. I really appreciate your site, thank you so much. My name's Erica. Please put that in. I'm not ashamed, I know I did nothing wrong, but it took me a long time to understand fully that I was blameless. My story's got a bit of background in it, so bear with me, ok?
When I was eight, my dad left. My mom did her best for a couple years to raise me and my brother Travis, who's almost two years younger than me, on her own. I changed a lot when my dad left. My happiest memories are of my mom, dad, Travis, and me walking through the woods in the fall, having snowball fights in the winter, or swimming together in the summer. When dad left, I started playing guitar and bass, stopped leaving my room pretty much. I never will understand how he just walked away and never came back. Travis and I get birthday cards every once in a while, but that's it.
I was eleven when my mom remarried. "Great guy" is what everyone
called him. And I really shouldn't complain, I guess. He moved his
two year old daughter and his ten year old son in with us. I hated
that. He was an ok guy, overall, aside from the fact that any small
thing that happened he blew way out of proportion. I can't tell you
all the times my brother and step-brother
and I went to bed with welted backs, butts, and legs because of some
stupid little thing he said we'd done wrong. Even accidents.
He didn't care.
When I was twelve, he and my mother had a son together. He moved us to New Orleans when I was fourteen. I was dreading the move at first, but once we got there I was in seventh heaven. For the first time in my life I could go with my mom to see live bands play, I could see people play music in the streets, for Christ's sake. I loved it. Music was and is my life.
I got into a band when I was fifteen, and I was having so much fun.
We played out places and it was kind of like even if I never felt fully
alive and pumped up any other time, that did it. All the people.
I can't describe the feeling to you unless you've experienced it yourself.
All my band members were older than I was. I thought I was just hot
shit, hanging out with all of them...but to tell you the truth, I've never
gotten along well with people really close to my age, with the exception
of my brother. The next youngest of them was two and a half years
older than me. The oldest was four years older
than I was.
When I was sixteen, practice got cancelled one night, and the lead singer
and I set off to party, which wasn't an odd occurrence with us. We
were always off doing something. Parties were fun, I thought.
And what could possibly happen with all of those people there. But
to be completely honest with you, I had no reason to distrust anyone.
Life was full of possiblilites for me,
and I couldn't wait to be out in things, out in the flow of people.
We went to a party at a house neither of us had ever been to. My band member introduced me to a guy he knew who played drums in a band farther downtown. He seemed like such a nice guy. I felt an immediate affinity for him, because we were both musicians...we both lived and breathed sound. I thought he was safe.
He asked me to go upstairs and see his drums, and I did. I didn't even think twice about it. A year and a half ago, I'd have told you that was a stupid thing for me to do. But now I know that it wasn't my fault. Maybe going alone upstairs with a guy I didn't know wasn't too smart, and I can live with that. But what reason did I have to distrust him? He led me to a room at the end of the upstairs hallway, and raped me.
Metallica was playing really loud in the room. Metallica was playing downstairs really loud too. But to tell you the truth, the thought of screaming never entered my mind. Before I knew what was going on, he had me on my back on the bed that was in the room, and with one of his hands he managed to pin both of my wrists behind my back. It hurt, I mean, I couldn't even move my arms, because my wrists were grinding together, and he had my arms at such an angle that it pulled at my shoulders.
I wasn't a virgin, at the time. I had a boyfriend who I'd had sex with a couple times. Not because I loved him, just because it was what we did...I don't know how to explain it any better than that. I guess I used him, because he loved me. It still hurt, the guy was so rough with me. The whole time, I was staring alternately at the wallpaper and at the moon. A half-moon, out the window.
When it was over, he pulled his pants back up and left. I laid on the bed and fell apart, I couldn't believe what had happened. I got myself dressed as well as I could, my shirt was really torn up. I found my friend downstairs and said I was tired and wanted to go home.
He took me straight home. I showered, then bathed, then showered,
and then I went to bed...I didn't feel quite clean enough yet, but in my
house, with all the people there, someone was bound to notice if I took
another shower. I slept all of the next day. I stopped going
out of my room again, quit my band, stopped talking to my boyfriend.
Cut off most of my friends, and
the ones I kept around I didn't tell.
For a year I was quiet. I didn't say anything. I had awful
nightmares, and sometimes I would have flashbacks when I was sitting around
doing nothing. That was scariest, because I didn't know what the hell was
happening. I didn't know what flashbacks were, or that that was what
was happening. I thought I was crazy a few times, I mean, really,
just out of the clear
blue sky they would come.
My mom left my stepfather and moved me, my brother and half brother back to Illinois. I was glad to leave. The "nothing's wrong" facade was getting harder and harder to keep up. I got a counselor when I got back up here...I'd been quiet about the whole thing for a full year. It was more than I could handle on my own all of a sudden. My counselor and I have made definite lt;BR>progress, but I know I still have a long way to go in order to get where I feel like I want to be.
As I said, music is my life, always has been. I don't know that
I would have lived through the first few months were it not for Tori Amos's
music. I wanted to honestly just curl up in my bed and become part
of the bed, never leave, never be looked at or talked to again. It's
hard to explain how I can find comfort in someone else's experience.
I guess it's kind of like walking
through a dark room you've never been in, and someone has been there
before you, and has left some candles burning so you can see where you're
going.
Things are better now. Most of the time. I still have days when I feel like I'm starting all over again, and I get really depressed and frustrated then. I'm a lot angrier than I was, needless to say. And I still have nights where I wake up at three o'clock in the morning drenched in sweat, crying, and on the verge of screaming. That doesn't happen as often as it used to. Maybe some day I'll be able to go to sleep and not worry about nightmares or night terrors at all. E-mail me everyone, ok? I know how it is to feel like you're all by yourself. You're not. Sometimes talking helps. Thank you all for listening.
my story might sound a little fogy because i cant remember what led up to that point or what happened days later. i was 10 yrs old, this was 4 yrs ago, and i knew my "boyfriend", i always loved to think about him, i had a crush on him and he was 16yrs old, i knew in my heart that he might like me and he liked me enough to hurt me like that. i was at a park by my elementry school and i was walking back from the swings because my friend went home a couple minutes before and there was 3 rows of thick green bushes on the side of me when i was walking. i remember walking and tripping over something black and as i fell he grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me into the bushes. he got on top of me and pulles out something silver and held it over my head, i am pretty sure that it was a knife but i couldnt tell. he said that if i screamed he would hurt me bad. i was to scared to scream even if he didnt threaten me, i was is a hysterical shock. he raped me twice and the whole time i was hypomitized by these birds in a nest in the tree above him. i can remember crying for days and days in the open and telling my mom and other people that asked the my tummy hurt or that i fell on my wrist and it hurt but i never told anyone the truth. i just moved and before i moved about 7 months ago he called my over and over again every night at 11:15pm for days at a timee. it was like he was makking the hole he created in my sould rip deeped and further apart. like he was proud of it and he was reminding me that he remembered and he wanted to make sure that i did too. when he called me he used to ask me to go back to the park and meet him in the bushes...then he would laugh and hang up. it feels like if i dont tell somebody that i am going to explode and all i want to do is take back that day and take back ever knowing him. now the only thing that helps me is numbing myself with what ever i can find. thank you for letting me tell my story...
