Started With My Father

I apologize for how long this is and how graphic if graphic descriptions are going to be hard for you consider this your warning to stop now.

However, I wanted to be frank about what I’ve done and what’s happened to me. I don’t want to pretend things weren’t the way they were and that they didn’t get as bad as they got.

Anyway…

My mom died when I was 12 years old. My dad and I both took it pretty hard.

You get all those people telling you how sorry they are and you just look at them because you don’t know what to say.

Anyway, my dad just kind of ignored me after that. I mean he made sure there was food in the fridge or whatever, I always had enough money, but I was basically on my own. He sort of checked out.

And when he looked at me it was like he saw something that he hated.

He’d go to work and then come home, grab a bear and then retreat to his bedroom and watch TV all night. I’d make myself something for dinner or get something from McDonald’s and we just sort of existed like that for a year or so.

Then one day, I think I was 13, he came up to my room after I’d gone to bed and started touching me, running his hands along the insides of my legs and feeling my butt. And I just laid there and pretended I was asleep.

I knew him touching me like that was wrong. I went to school, they told us about that sort of thing. But I can’t explain how nice it was to have my dad touch me. To have him notice me and his touching was so gentle and nice at first.

After a few days of that he started touching in on my vagina and my breasts (I’d actually started to develop a little bit by that point).

Again I knew it was wrong, but I let it happen. And after awhile that first time my body started to react and he realized I was awake.

When I looked up at him he just looked shocked and immediately left the room.

But after a couple of nights he was back at it and it progressed to him taking me to his room and watching porn on the TV. He was old fashioned enough he actually still went to the porn store and rented DVDs.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I loved it. I loved the attention. I loved being introduced to such forbidden and adult stuff. It made me feel grown up. And most of all I loved that my dad looked at me again with something other than disgust.

It wasn’t long before we started having sex. I’d try to act out the things I saw on the DVDs we watched together and he was always happy to play his part.
And it made me feel so good. I liked how it made my body feel to have him touch me to have him inside me. I liked those feelings so much.

Then maybe a year later it just stopped. He quit responding to me again and eventually just told me that what we’d been doing was wrong and he couldn’t do it anymore.

I felt like someone had died again. My life went back to this horrible monotony.

Then I met, James. He was an older guy that hung out at the mall a lot and he was cool, and had money and he told me I was pretty. We started dating soon after that, I was 15 I think at the time.

He took me to restaurants and held my hand and told me how beautiful I was.

Before long I wasn’t living at home anymore I was living at James’s apartment. He bought me sexy clothes and nice high heels.

And I did all the things I knew a guy wanted from a girl. I let him use me however he wanted and whenever he wanted. I was convinced I was in love and that he loved me too.

It wasn’t very long after that that James started bringing friends over. And he’d ask me to make his friends feel good.

Which meant I was supposed to give them a blow job or sometimes let them have sex with me.

I figured out pretty quick that I wasn’t James’s girlfriend, I was his whore. He was selling me to these guys and I learned that I wasn’t the only girl that James had done this with.

His computer was full of photos of other young girls having sex in his apartment. I even recognized some of the guys in the photos as one’s I’d been asked to please.

I know a normal person would have just left. But I felt like I didn’t have anywhere to go. I hadn’t spoken to my dad in a long time and James did provide for me.

And it was pretty clear to me at that point that I really was a whore. I felt like I deserved to be used that way. And I was good at it. The men I had sex with often praised me for my ability or told me I was pretty. They said things that weren’t nice too.

I got called a whore and a bitch and some of the men were mean and liked to slap me while they had sex with me.

They all wanted to have anal sex with me and they wanted me to deep throat. And those things hurt but I also got good at doing it and convinced myself it wasn’t that bad.

I decided I would be proud of it and embrace it so I did.

As time went on James got mean too though. He started hitting me sometimes when he was upset about things. I didn’t even know what he was mad about all the time. And the things that I was supposed to do for the guys got worse and worse.

They didn’t want to use a condom and if they paid James more money than normal he’d let them.

They wanted ass to mouth, they wanted me to swallow. They wanted me to lick their butts. Some of the guys would choke until my vision would fade and then slap me to wake me up.

I did and allowed many very disgusting things.

And the craziest thing, the thing that makes you feel even more like a whore, is that your body gets used to the abuse. And it starts to like it.

Then one day James came home very angry about something, I’ll never know what, but he was so mad he grabbed me and started hitting me with his fists and then he had sex with me very roughly while choking me and for the first time I was honestly afraid I was going to die.

This is it, I thought. He’s going to kill me and this will all be over.

He didn’t kill me obviously. After, he went to bed. And something in me snapped. I put some stuff in a backpack and walked out of that apartment and went to a shelter and here I am now.

I’m actually in college after getting my GED and I’m hoping to get a nursing degree. Things are good.

But things are bad in some ways too.

I still have a lot of difficulty with sex… I’ve had a few boyfriends but we always end up having problems because, I have trouble getting aroused unless I’m being hurt or abused in some way.

Nice guys have trouble hitting you during sex, go figure. And when you ask that nice guy to slap you around a bit while he has sex with you he gets all uncomfortable and breaks up with you because obviously there’s something wrong with you and he’s right.

Mostly I just have sex with strangers. I’m the queen of one night stands. But I know that’s unhealthy and I’m trying to get better.

I don’t know where I’m going with all of this.

I guess I’m trying to say that, if you’re in the depths of whatever personal horror you’re going through, you CAN get out. Trust me I’ve been there.

Sometimes all you have to do is walk out.

It doesn’t just all get better at once. But it does get better all the time. You don’t have to let what’s happened to you destroy your life. I’m doing my best to make that a reality one small improvement at a time.

— Melissa, age 19