From This I Ran Away

This post may have disturbing descriptions of sexual abuse... please proceed with caution if this might be a sensitive subject for you.

I have to tell a story today. I have told part of it. I just need to tell more, or tell it again. I'm not sure where I am with it. It has been haunting me for two days, since my last EMDR session. The story just lingers in my mind, wanting to be told.

He told me not to tell. Typical. He said that he would go to jail and that my mom and us kids would be left alone. Typical...it's the same story every goddamn abuser has told the child. Typical...but for a kid, it's just incredibly frightening. We would all be left "unprotected", and it would all be my fault...for telling.

So I kept letting him, even when I was old enough to tell. I kept letting his fingers probe me, inside and out and then listened with disgust as he told me how much he enjoyed me. I dreaded his oral sex...his head between my legs as he drank to his satisfaction. Sometimes, I pushed his head back, and as he resisted, I pushed harder. He would get angry and tell me that I was hurting his neck. Ha, ha...I should have broken it.

Those were times alone in his van...out in the sticks. Then, there were times with the house full of people. I guess he needed a "quickie", something to get him through until the next rendezvous. He would purposefully cross my path and put up his hand holding five fingers out, while mouthing the word "five". This meant that I was to go into the bathroom (yes, the one where all us kids had our favorite toothbrushes and sweet smelling soaps and towels) and wait for him to slip in. "Five" meant that he would slip his hand in my panties and touch my vagina for just five minutes. Then he would give me a candy bar or money that I could only spend at school, so that my mother would not know. Yes, the motherfucker paid me! To this day, I do not eat 3 Musketeers bars.

At fifteen, this is what I ran away from. If I could not tell, then I had to leave. If my mother could not leave him, then I had to leave him. I ran away with a fourteen year old friend. I brought food, and she brought a backpack full of cartons of Newport cigarettes.  We smoked until we were sick...vomiting. It didn't matter to me; at this point, abusing my body came naturally. After the movie theater closed for the night, we made our beds on the floor out of spread out newspapers...like we had seen the old bum do. The possibility of rape or assault during the night did not faze me, the likelihood would be greater at home.

An old bum sleeping on the floor outside of the movie theater is left alone...two teenage girls doing the same are brought in to the police station. When they found us, I wanted to keep running, but my friend advised me not to. I still don't know what made me listen to her. She must have physically held me, because all I wanted was to run as fast as I could away from harm, away from the smell of him and the feel of his tongue. They would have had to work hard to bring me back.

Back at the station, she gave her mother's name when asked. I did not. I refused to identify who my parents were. I don't even think I told them my real name. I was not going to make it easy for them. What did not occur to me was that my parents may have been looking for me since I did not get off the school bus that afternoon, that they might have even reported me missing. So I should not have been surprised when my stepfather came in to "claim" me in spite of my stubborn lack of cooperation.

My mother was furious, while he was kind and sympathetic. Of course he was...he was the only one who knew what I was running away from.

There is so much more to tell...I need to continue telling this story until I am completely purged of him and the feeling of him inside me...until I no longer want to vomit when I remember. I need to keep telling until my husband no longer feels like him between my legs...until I can no longer see his face looking up at me from between my young fresh legs.