The Cool Girl

When I was 12 years old, I had a friend whose boyfriend was in high school. Being middle schoolers ourselves, this made us SUPER cool. We would go hang out at one of his friend's houses, also a high school student, who lived with his father.

The father was a middle aged man who lived with his son in a nice neighborhood near my school. We loved to hang out there because the father let all the kids drink, smoke, curse, and even supplied some of them with drugs.

Another thing he supplied an endless amount of was porn. There was a tv in the backroom that was constantly playing a porn video. You have to understand, I was so young that at this point in my life, my parents had only told me that sex was a man and a woman lying close together. Imagine my shock when I walked in that back room and saw what I saw. This, pornography, was how I learned about sex.

Sometimes my friend would disappear with her boyfriend for awhile, and I would be left alone on the couch. Little bad ass 12 year old me, sipping on my wine cooler and trying not to let on that I didn't know how to smoke the cigarette in my hand. At some point, the father at the house took an interest in me. He'd sit next to me and ask me about boys. He didn't talk like a normal dad, he was cool and never asked about homework or school or parents. Nope, just wanted to know about boys. Which ones I liked, if I liked to be kissed. Many times when these conversations started, the son, who was a few years older than me, would come "rescue" me and usher me off to another room. I never understood why, just thought at the time that he had some sort of crush on me or was embarrassed by his father (which OMG why?? He's so cool!)

And then one day, the father sat right next to me on the sofa and put his arm around me. His hand was on my shoulder as he asked me about boys and girls and what goes on at school. I suddenly realize that his hand has slipped down on top of my breast, but he is still talking , and I am absolutely positive that he doesn't realize it. I'm too scared to tell him about it because it will embarrass us both. I figure eventually it will move on it's own. Then, as suspected, he does realize it. "Wow, look at that!! My hand was on your boobie that whole time, and you didn't even move it. Wow! ha ha ha, you're such a cool girl!!" To prove that I'm a cool girl, he went ahead and actually grabbed it, and what can I say at that point, because I want to be liked and would never want to be banished from this house. I laugh it off, stand up, and walk away, completely unsure of what has just happened. I never told anyone.

I avoided the father at all costs every time I was there from then on, but instances like this occurred many times over the time I spent there. Finally other girls began coming over and he seemed to lose interest in me.

I didn't think about what had happened and somewhat blocked it from my mind, until one day we were at his house and he wasn't there. When i asked where he was, the son informs me that he has been arrested. One of the other girls was undergoing the same situation with him, and had gone forward to her parents, who called the police. The mood in the house was outrage. Everyone was angry at the molested girl for turning Dad in to the police. That was just messing with someone's life, no matter what he did to her, and she must have wanted it anyways because she kept coming over here, she could have just said no thanks.

As an adult, the repercussions of those few months as a pre-teen affect my life every single day. Although I have tried intense therapy for the effects of the abuse I received, and I have made some progress, I have somewhat given up ever being "normal". He robbed that from me, back when I was just a child. Because of him, everytime I have had sex, every single time, since I became sexually active, I enter a period of panic and black-hole like neediness. I can't shake the feeling that I have just been used, abused, degraded, and dismissed as a person. Because of him, when I try and discuss sex or what happened to me, I glaze over and my mind wanders. My protective instincts kick in and I numb out. Just while typing this blog post, I've stopped multiple times and forgotten what I was even writing about. That survival skill that kept me sane as an abused child just won't go away.

Sometimes it's manageable. Sometimes it's so bad that I have to just shut down and wait for it to pass. I cry, I want to be held tight like a child, I want to feel accepted and loved and safe, but most of the time I just can't. All I can do is apologize to the one I'm with and hope that he understands.

Let's face it. It's not easy to understand. I don't always. It gets old, to me and to my partner. I try to put on a brave face and hide it as much as possible. But sometimes, it is so overwhelming, that it takes over for days at a time. I slip into a needy depression. I shut down because it's easier than explaining again. I hold back tears and blow up at odd things.

I hate it.

Because really, who wants to have sex with someone when you know that afterwards they're going to act like that???

I found out recently through Facebook of all things that my molestor passed away several years ago. I can't say in my life that I have ever been happy to hear of someone's death. But for some reason, the world felt a little safer to me the second I heard it.