Coping with Sexual Abuse

Coping with sexual abuse...

When we are young we look to the adults in our life for support, love, and guidance. When someone you love begins to touch you in a way you don’t understand, you first wonder why they would do it? It is at first shocking, your mind is trying to process what is happening. How could this happen? Why would this happen?

This person was my protector, this person was my mothers husband, this person was my night and shining armor, this person was my stepdad.

The first time we were at a movie, I went from thinking how lucky I was, with this big strong man’s arm around me, protecting me, loving me, to him pushing his hand down my leg to try to touch me between my legs. I was twelve. I pushed his hand away as I hard as I could, then ran out of the theatre, he followed. He begged me not to tell, and he bought me a gift.

When you are put in a position of sexuality at a young age there is a shift. When someone that is supposed to be your protector begins to touch you, your perspective of what love from a man looks like changes. Your perspective of love changes. Your perspective of yourself changes.

How is a young person supposed to cope with something like this. Well, for me, I found drinking, and I was promiscuous. I sought affection from men in sexual ways, my body became my my armor and my weapon.

When you’re twelve years old, and the man that plays the role of your father begins to touch you inappropriately, you are at first in shock, bewilderment, and fear. You feel alone, you can’t tell anyone because then that would destroy the family that you now have.

You think it will stop and things will go back to way they were, but they don’t.

You then start to use your body as a way to find love. When a young person is promiscuous there is a reason. They are seeking attention. We all need and want love but love can look so many different ways to different people because you were taught what love looks like. Love to me looked like sexual attention. If I had a young man looking at me in a sexual way then I thought they could love me.

I started by perfecting my looks on the outside, well what I thought perfect look liked. My hair, my make up, and my clothes had to be perfect. I was trying to perfect the outside to hide the chaos on the inside.

I would start drinking to get past any respect I had for myself and then I would pursue the person that I decided I wanted to give me love. The pursuit of love started with me touching or showing a boy that I was interested and then very quickly I would give myself to them in a sexual way in hopes that a bond would start, that they would like me, that they would want to be my boyfriend. I didn’t care who I hurt in my pursuit of the person that I wanted. The problem with this is the more you do it the less people respect you, the less friends you have, and then the boys only look at you in a sexual way. They know you are the easy one. It’s tricky though because when you are the one pursuing what you think love is, you think you are in power, but you are losing your power. You are losing any ability to form a bond with someone, you are losing love by everyone all around you.

I always had a boyfriend, but I had no way of knowing how to bond. I would constantly try to change them, I would jump in but would soon become unhappy and look outside of a relationship to find attention. I had no idea what love or commitment was. I had a fantasy of what it was but how could I love someone else when I did not love myself?

The one thing we really seek is the love for ourselves first, but when you’ve been abused you don’t know how to love yourself, you only know how to sell yourself. Sell yourself short, disrespect yourself and hate yourself.

While someone is touching you you feel powerful and you feel loved but then you feel shame.You realize how much you are hurting everyone around you and then you really realize how much you are hurting yourself.

There is nothing wrong with being sexual, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be touched by someone else, but there is something wrong when you feel that being touched sexually or having sex is love.

It’s a journey to discover what real love is. There’s so much pain and shame and hate when you become that broken promiscuous little girl.

When that fantasy of the perfect childhood, having love and guidance is shattered, you are trying to figure out what it really looks like.

It normally takes a total breakdown for you to realize what is happened. That you’ve completely lost yourself in this pursuit of love. But I’m here to tell you as that broken little girl, someone who sold her soul to find love that it is possible to heal, to love yourself and find someone that teaches you what love really is.

When you see a broken young girl that is promiscuous, that is drinking, that is acting out, ask yourself why would this young girl disrespect herself in such away. Maybe it’s because somebody took that from her.

Promiscuity is a slippery slope. It feels good until is doesn’t. Sexual abuse is something most don’t want to talk about, but 1 in 3 girls are sexually abused and 1 and 6 boys are sexually abused. The numbers are staggering.

These are young people that trust someone in their lives, someone that they love and then that someone shows them that love is dirty. That is what you begin to believe. Love and sex are both beautiful things but they can be made to be the worst, to be ugly.

I am here talking about this because I want to change how people think about that young person that is disrespecting them selves, don’t judge them help them.

Look at someone acting out and ask yourself, why would that young person do that? Maybe it’s because someone taught them to be that way.

The blessing is is that you can move past it, that you don’t have to believe that story anymore. You don’t have to believe what that sick individual taught you love looked like.

Once you see what you have done to yourself, because someone stole the beauty of your soul, you can start to heal.

Healing is the most beautiful journey, and the hardest journey. Once you start, you commit, you do the hard work, you will begin to respect yourself, to love yourself and then truly love others.

I am here to tell you there is so much beauty in healing and it’s possible to change your story.