So my story is really two stories, about two different people

A seven-year-old girl and a twenty-five-year-old woman. Trigger warnings for both.

I should probably say up front: I'm usually reluctant to talk about them, not because they still affect me but because they mostly don't. I read stories about survivors who are still traumatized years or decades later, and wind up with a vague feeling of guilt and even sadness that I managed to recover. So I just stay mostly quiet, and listen to others, and give support, and feel very out of place among other survivors. I can relate, and yet at the same time I can't. If that makes any sense at all.

I should also mention: neither of my attackers were arrested or prosecuted.

The early attack was a one-time thing, by a neighbor kid; he was somewhere in his mid-teens, I think. He was disabled in some way. I remember seeing the special-ed bus pick him up and having to ask my mother why his bus came to the door but I had to walk to the corner. I would show him my books, and he couldn't read them. We would play card games and he would mix up kings, queens and jacks; I'd just pretend he picked the right card. My parents invited him over a lot because he had no friends, and I was under strict orders to be nice to him, but he gave me the creeps from day 1. I can't put a finger on why now, I just was never comfortable around him.

I think we must have been playing tag; I was running around the house and he was chasing me. I ran into my bedroom, and out of the blue he picked me up and threw me on the bed. I don't remember how long that went on and I won't go into detail; eventually he got his ear too close to my teeth and I bit him, and he let go. As odd as it may sound, I didn't think much of it at the time. It just added a little to the uncomfortable feeling I'd always had around him. After that day, though, he started waiting outside in the mornings and following me to the bus stop at the corner; my bus driver noticed and my parents were notified, my dad started walking me to the bus stop, and the family moved away shortly after that.

It was eight years before I, or more accurately my therapist, told my parents what had happened. It came up when I was in counseling for something else, and everyone was looking for something to blame my teenage problems on (read: "looking for a root cause"- they meant well...). Everyone seemed so excited to hear about it, and by then I was so tired of people trying to analyze me that I let them believe that was the "root cause" they were looking for... everyone felt better but me. My takeaway from that assault didn't come at the time it happened, it came when I was 15, when everyone tried to make it into something that was wrong with me. Like I was a broken toy that they could glue back together, but still wouldn't be as perfect as before. Even though I hadn't done anything wrong, and wasn't broken. I was really upset about that.

It hadn't ever been a major driving force in my life, and at that point I decided it never would be. I let the therapist and my family believe what they wanted, and in the meantime I moved on. I never really trusted my therapists after that, though. Or my family.

Fast forward ten years, I had been married, had been separated from my abusive husband for over two years. I had an eight month old baby- not his. We were on speaking terms at that moment although we weren't always. So he shows up at my door with his kids in tow, and tells me he's been locked out of his place and could they stay there for the night, and he could get his paycheck tomorrow? My roommate was home, I had my son's teenage sister over, there were enough people in the house that I felt safe. So I said fine, there's the floor, the couch is taken. Everyone went to sleep, I put the baby in his bassinet at the foot of my bed, locked my door and went to sleep too.

I don't know how he got in. He woke me up by slamming his arm across my throat. I thought about the bassinet at the foot of the bed, within easy kicking range. I thought about the other two women in the house, and how violent he could get. And I stayed quiet, and didn't move. At some point I managed to reach over and grab a condom from a box next to the bed; he laughed at me, but he used it, thank gawd. It was over quick, and then he just got up and walked out of the room without saying anything. I remember the door seemed very loud when he closed it; maybe he slammed it, I don't know. I threw my clothes on, grabbed my son and ran out of the house. When I came back a couple hours later with my boyfriend, he and the kids had left.

What I remember most was how angry I was. I was ANGRY. I was mad raging furious fucking pissed off angry. The feeling of helplessness didn't last very long, but that anger hung around for years- other than whatever my boyfriend may have done or said, there was no resolution. If I had thought I would have been believed, I probably would have reported him, but he'd spent less than a day in jail for beating me up and there'd been plenty of evidence for that one; what were my chances of getting a prosecution at that time on "My lawfully wedded husband who was staying in my house raped me wearing the rubber I handed him"? Slim to none, and I knew it. It made my blood boil that there was nothing I could do, and after the fact I was also angry with myself for not fighting back- something I still think I should have done. Eventually I did come to terms with it all, but that was the hardest part for me to get over and it took a long time.

I spent years hoping he'd die. I'm indifferent now. He is still himself, as much as he ever was, and as a result his life has sucked. One of my ex-stepkids contacted me awhile back, and told me so; chronically jobless, drunk, in and out of jail, kids don't speak to him. Just being him has really been its own form of hell. I will never forgive him, but I don't wish him ill any longer. It's over and done with, and I've moved on.

My best to you all on your paths to recovery, whatever they may be.