To the Men that Sexually Abused Me

I’ve wished I could rip my heart out a thousand times over the pain I felt.

But you don’t care about that. Your life went on as normal, unscathed by my pain. You didn’t have to feel empty, shattered, and completely defiled.

Did my silence fortify you to hurt someone else? God, the thought makes me sick. To know I could have saved some other little girl heartache by pointing my finger at the monsters who weren’t content to lurk under the bed, they had to climb inside it.

I know it protected you. My inability to speak was your hiding spot for too long for me to admit without shame.

And when the pain finally got too much for me to slowly let out through the cuts in my arms and legs, did you smile every time no one believed me?

I don’t hate any of you. I don’t say that to be Christlike or because I’m just a good person- I’m not. What you all did could never make me hate you. That's what makes you so good at what you do. The lights your wandering hands snapped off only served to make me hate myself. All the nights my subconscious hissed at me that I was worthless, you got to sleep soundly, never giving me a second thought.

Did it feel good to feast on my naivete and innocence? Did you savor the tears in my eyes each time you broke me? Did my vulnerability flash like a neon sign in your mind? When did you know that you could cross the line to hurt a child? It's fine, you don't have to answer. Nothing you say changes the past but damn, I want to know sometimes. Maybe it would help on looking back, to see what I could've done.

See, I didn’t know how to protect myself because you didn’t look like any of the villains I had been taught to be wary of. You didn’t skulk in the shadows, hiding your face. The light was all of your friends, illuminating the parts of you that you had carefully polished to present to those fortunate enough to only see your better side. Amicable, polite, golden, handsome, kind. You looked like everyone I'd been trained to trust.

So what did I do wrong? Why me? Why did all of you look in my direction, point your finger, and say: "Her. That's who I want to ruin."

And just when I thought I had healed, a new stage of my life showed me that you all left your marks on my life in ways I didn’t even notice. When I fell to my knees and thanked God that I was having a son and not a daughter, it was because of you.

You warped my view of sex, intimacy, and any form of a connection between a man and woman.

I’m still unlearning that.

But I’m not going to continue to vilify you. Even memorializing your pain through the thing that I love is more than you deserve from me.

I just want you to know that I’m better than all of you. It may sound cliche, but I am. It took almost a decade to realize it but I am better than any of you will ever be.

I wanted you to know that you lost. You didn’t control me and I did better than you ever thought I would despite everything you did. And now I get to revel in the blessed emptiness in my heart where I used to feel nothing but hurt and hatred for you.

If you ever find enough healing to feel even a morsel of remorse for what you did, that's great. But if not, I think I'll be okay knowing that you don't have a hold on me anymore.