Why Speak Up Now?

Two things

1. This is about sexual assault and may trigger those whom have fallen victim to it as well. T

his is my story, in detail please read on with caution.

2. I am dedicating this blog to my dearest friend Marcy who has created and is hosting an event this month called "Why Now" for those who have been sexually assaulted or abused to come together in a safe space to begin or continue the healing process.

She calls it an event, I'm calling it a fucking movement

Why am I choosing to speak up now?

Why am I choosing to deal with my sexual assult(s) now?

Well to be fucking honest, it wasn't until the #ME TOO movement began that I realized what happened to me was even assault.

I didn't know I was being abused until almost a decade later.

Growing up for me everyone in middle school talked about sex, and the majority of the crowd I was surrounded by was at least having oral sex. I lost my virginity when I was going into my freshman year of high school.

But I was sexually abused long before that.

It didn't even happen just once.

But you never forget the first or the last time.

The First Time:

I was in 8th grade the first time it happened...

It was a chilly fall Friday night as football season was wrapping up.

I was dating this wanna be quarter back for quite some time now. We had fooled around plenty times before. But this night was different. This night I was planning on breaking up with him. Over the year of us being together I ignored one red flag after another. His anger issues. His alcoholic parents. His ability to control and manipulate me. My intuition started speaking up, and something inside me decided to listen to her that night.

There was a carnival taking place just down the street from his house. All of my friends were there, even the the cute kicker from the football team which may have been half of what I am referring to as intuition here (insert wink face emjoi)

I wanted to be there. I didn't wanna be shacked up in a dark bedroom with black lights and lava lamps with a smelly football player. But he didn't want to go. He wanted to stay in. A.k.a. he wanted his dick sucked.

Any other night I would have conformed (which looking back, that is still a form of abuse, mental abuse, manipulating me into doing things I didn't want to do all the time) but not this time. This night I said no.

As the words rolled across my lips I saw the rage ignite in his dark demon eyes.

I felt the room engulf in flames of tension and I knew he wasn't going down without a fight. I started to stand up and walk out of his room... he grabbed me by the wrist and shut the door while quickly shoving a chair under the handle to prevent anyone from coming in..

I was screwed.

This is when it goes dark for me.

This is where it has taken me years to piece it all together.

Because for the longest time all I could recall was a pounding headache,

giving an unwanted blow job, and making it to that carnival to see that cute kicker after all. In fact, the Monday after that weekend my life radically changed.

I began dating said kicker, who turned into my first love, whom I actually ended up losing my virginity to and spending multiple years of high school with off and on.

So reality didn't seem so bad. I knew something bad happened to me, but the outcome was amazing so I convinced myself whatever happened I must have deserved, and it must have been worth it.

Well I didn't and it wasn't.

Its taken me almost 2 decades of nightmares, others sharing their stories, lifetime movies, and netflix binging to trigger me about a million times before realizing the truth in its entirety.

That night, as an 8th grader, I was forced into giving a blow job for a boy with anger issues. The headache I recalled was from him sitting on his weight bench he had in his room and holding a bar bell down across my neck so that I couldn't get up until he was finished. I left his place by calling my mom to have her come get me, and I didn't want to go home, because I was to scared to be alone so I had her take me to that carnival where I knew I could walk, fragile, directly into the arms of that cute kicker, and thats exactly what I did.

The Second Time:

Towards the end of high school I began dating an upperclassman.

I had never had more chemistry with anyone the way I did with him.

Our relationship was very sexual, very early on. In fact we even had a sex notebook where we would tally and keep track of how many times we had done it (insert covered eye monkey emoji here)

We were both completely obsessed with one another, in the most unhealthy way.

He was so controlling, and extremely manipulating.

Our relationship got to the point where I would have to check in with him,

approve my outfits by him, and became selective on who I hung out with when I wasn't around him. He even began altering the relationship I had with my mother at times, pulling us apart.

To say this boy had a hold on me, is the understatement of my life.

I was controlled, consumed, and living in fear of him.

Now, I'm no angel here. In fact, up until I met my ex husband in 2009 I had cheated on every guy I had been with. Emotionally. But thats irrelevant.

Cheating is cheating in my eyes.

So while dating this guy, I was secretively talking to my ex, my first love.

My boyfriend at the time had found out about it, and instead of breaking up with me he decided to punish me.

He made me do unexplainable things. Things that the me I am today would never consider. One of these said things, was to make the entire school believe we were broken up and that we were just really close friends so that I could set him up with my own friends and watch them go out with one another. No really, the sick fuck made me go on his dates with these girls to watch them kiss and shit, while we would both get in separate cars and meet each other at his house afterwards.

Another thing he made me do, was have a threesome.

I have nothing against threesomes. However, as a 17 year old girl, being forced to lay there while another girl seduces you and your demented boyfriend sits in a chair fulfilling all of his Godfather fantasies, while you cry silently kinda ruins any chance of you enjoying a threesome.

However I blamed myself, for cheating.

The Other Times:

There are quite a few others that while in the moment I didn't think anything of them, but looking back on them... they were wrong. I said no, and my voice wasn't heard.

Like the times an ex of mine trapped me underneath him on his cold laundry room floor while his dad drank beers just steps away from us in the garage.

Or like the weekends spent at OU while briefly attending Hocking College.

I was 4 orange sparks deep, and too intoxicated to know who's bedroom I was coming out of while everyone giggled in the living room.

If I am being honest with myself, almost every man I have been with aside from my

ex husband has sexual assaulted me at some point.

The Last Time:

Was just this past New Years.

Remember that cute kicker?

Yeah, the guy I lost my virginity to?

My first love..

Yeah, well it was with him.

We had reconnected after my divorce began and had seen each other numerous times. The definition of our relationship was never black an white. Always gray.

So. Fucking. Gray.

Just like that night.

We had gone out for tacos, per usual.

We went to a couple bars, played darts.

And at the time we were both living with our parents....

We wanted the night to contiue so we decided to get a hotel room close to home.

I had driven that night so we rode there together. We stoped and got wine, snacks, and spent the first few hours just talking and catching up more.

Prior to this even taking place I had told him viz text, a couple nights before that if we ever got a hotel it would just be to hang out and that we would have to have some serious conversations about us and where we were heading before anything sexual happened.

So that is the direction our converstions went.

He started them. Saying all the right things with all the wrong intensions.

Being who he was to me, such a big part of me

I believed him. In fact I think he believed himself.

We did begin fooling around, and I was comfortable with it, I allowed it.

However the moment it started to cross a line for me I spoke up.

I said "no"

I said "I don't want to"

I said "stop"

and it continued...

I then pulled myself off of him and as I did, he got up and walked out of the room, thank God. Him leaving the room allowed me time to grab my things and gain enough strength to storm out of there, leaving him stranded at a hotel room at 3am.

The Next Time:

I hope there isn't a next time.

However, every one of my "attackers" were men I was dating, loving, and trusting in my life at that time. It's not always a stranger.

It's not always recognized behavior at first.

I hope that if there is a next time, I stop it before it starts.

I hope that by sharing my stories, it will shed light to others whom have simialr situations in their past. For those that have actually been assault or abused and they never realized it either, this is my open letter to you, yes YOU

Dear Friend,

It is not you fault. You deserve respect always, and to be assaulted never.

What you wore or how much alcohol your drank is not the reason, ever.

Your past actions are not an excuse or karma and you did not deserve this.

You did nothing wrong & you should not feel ashamed by this.

The person that harmed you is at fault, they don't deserve or respect you.

They used what you wore and how much you drank as a way for them to sleep at night. Their past actions have everything to do with why they are creating this mayhem. They did everything wrong. They should feel ashamed, those fucking fucks.

However, I am here. And now you know.

I will stand by you, I will stand up for you.

I will fight for you, I will cry with you.

I will never let you feel alone again.

Because just like this tragic event(s) that's happened to you,

It's happened to #metoo

Photo by Marcy Harris Ortiz