What people don’t talk about enough is the mental, emotional and sexual chaos sexual abuse creates once experienced at a young age. I don’t remember my vagina before that experience. It was no different than my ears, elbows or my toes, but after that experience it was a driver of the revolving and exchanging roles of protector, predator and prey for years of my life. Sometimes I was one of each but more often the prey.

At 5 years old I experienced a feeling not meant for me. Paralleling Adam, Eve and the shameful nakedness they could feel and see when it was not meant for them to. Innocence high jacked and not one person tried to explain to me what I lost and now gained. Figuring it out myself meant embarking on what I now believe is where predators originate. How I explored to find understanding and if I triumphed is what makes the difference in which role I (and many others who experience this) would remain.

That very cousin that stood between me and my first predator became my second. Warren was 3 years older than me and soon began to routinely touch and rub his penis on me inappropriately. I saw him 5-6 days a week from the age of 5-10 years old because our mothers were close and they were my ride to school. I remember not knowing what to make of it. Trying to figure out was it a norm or just something that was happening to me. I concretely knew it meant trouble for everyone if I told. He was two different people, the model loving and protective cousin when others were around and the wolfish predator circling for more opportunity to get me alone when out of sight.

He made opportunities out of childhood games like Hide & Seek and Tag. I was his prey and everyone’s protector. In turn for sometime I wondered if this was the case for others. When I would interact with other friends and cousin’s I would reenact what he was doing to me. I would see their discomfort and shift to the role I hated playing and felt shame for causing them the same pain and conflict I was suffering. I didn’t like it or want to do that to them so I stopped and I wanted him to stop doing it to me.

Finally when I was 10 I mustered enough courage to tell him to stop and that it was wrong. I told him I don’t like it and didn’t want him to do it anymore. It worked! He stopped until I was 13 and he was 16 then he started again. This time more relentless. He was playing football in high school and would walk past my house everyday on the way home. He would almost chase me from room to room trying to corner me. I could tell it was like a game to him and he wouldn’t stop until I gave in. So I would, pined down or against some wall or object he would finally trap me and coarsely grind his heavy sweaty body on me. Crushing and smothering me sometimes to a point I couldn’t move or breath. Grabbing and biting my nipples so hard that they would hurt for days. Thrusting until he came in his pants. I would freeze every time he caught me. I’m not sure if it was just fear of him hurting me more or the fact that I just wanted him to hurry up and finish so I could pretend it never happened like he did once done.

This went on for a year. I would often be successful at hiding in my locked house when I knew he would be on his way home but then he got clever and bold enough to come when my mom was home. She would let him in unaware of his intent. One day she left us there to run an errand. I remember thinking I would just let him and that I knew his belt and pants would hurt me because I had on a skirt. I thought it would be like other times but it wasn’t. This time when he pinned me he unbuckled, this time I said no and tried to fight like I hadn’t before, this time he took my virginity.

When he finished, he didn’t try to stick around and play his cousin role as if nothing happened like he would normally do. He got up, buckled, stepped over me and left. I laid there in shock with my flowered panties soaked in semen until I heard the front door close. I went in the bathroom fully clothed and sat in the shower for what felt like forever until I heard my mom come home. I stepped out the bathroom back in to my protector role. It surely would kill her and my family was all I could think for the months that followed.

I kept it a secret until it out grew my body. Being a 14 year old virgin and only having a menstrual cycle for 2 years, I knew nothing about the female body until my body began to teach me. I had only been to a pediatrician up until this point and we had one medical book in the house in which I read every page that mentioned menstrual cycles and what could cause them to stop. In the 3rd month of my cycle not coming I did what I couldn’t bare. I called my rapist for help because I didn’t know what to do and I was all alone in what I was sure was pregnancy. His response was “tell your mom your boyfriend did it” and hung up the phone. This was certainly an issue for a virgin however.