I Was Being Groomed For Sex Trafficking

We had been best friends since junior year of high school. She was white and well, I wasn’t, but that never seemed to be a problem. Her family took me in as though I were their own. We made occasional black jokes from time to time, but nothing racist just simple things like “is it because you’re black” or “do you want some fried chicken?”

These jokes were harmless because 1. I was vegetarian and 2. I was black so there was no harm in it being said. I wasn’t afraid of who I was. It didn’t bother me that we didn’t look the same because they were still family to me. Things didn’t get weird until senior year. I got engaged and moved away with my ex fiancé, but it was strange that my best friend met her ex fiancé shortly after I met mine, then got engaged around the same time as me.

Long story short, both of our engagements failed, but hers failed after mine. I thought it was all fate. We moved towards love at the same time, so I thought I needed to return back to be with her so we could build one another up seeing as we went through the same things. But what I didn’t realize was that this was all planned. The way her life imitated mine. The way her family talked about me when I moved away as if I had done something wrong by moving on.

First there were little things. They only bought meat, and made me sit with them at the dinner table while I starved because I wasn’t working then. I thought they simply forgot about me, and I never spoke up, but who just forgets about someone? Who just promises to provide for someone then suddenly forgets that they don’t eat meat? They’d known me for years.

I started to feel more and more like a pet, and I’d hide in my room and try to find jobs but fate just held me at this stand still though I put in so much work trying to find a job but something always fell through. Either my transportation had an issue or my manager suddenly became very disrespectful or even sexualized me. I started to feel frantic.

Really it started to hit me when I went with her family to Georgia. We went to eat at a restaurant and I was the only person who never received my food. The rest of the people at the table put on a good show trying to act like they cared, but I didn’t receive my food until everyone else’s plates were clean. And I did in fact receive my meal on a to-go plate which told me that I wasn’t welcome.

Things got weirder whenever I was in a relationship. My best friend would get jealous and angry, but it’s not like she was upset that she was single. It’s like she was upset because I was hers and now she had to share me. Whenever I was with a guy I felt like he was playing tug-a-war with her. She’d let out these aggressive outbursts whenever guys were around then buy me little gifts the next day so I would forgive her.

Then I started to notice that her other friends were quite racist. They watched me undress with hatred in their eyes, or they called my skin “burnt.” One of them tried to play me a song about cotton picking and that’s when I knew. They were deliberately bringing me around people who hated me. They wanted me to hate myself too.

Things just kept getting worse when her father made references to how “hot” I was and how much he wish he could have one of me. They started to get upset when I relied on my own reaources, and they were even angrier when I spent the night outside of the home. I started to feel paranoid, almost as though there were cameras inside of my bedroom.

The camera situation was confirmed when I spent about twenty minutes searching for my phone both inside and outside of my bedroom and though no one else went inside of my bedroom her mother literally told me the exact location that it was in. I know this was a mistake because after she said it she looked at me in surprise then walked away in shame.

I started to lock my bedroom door at night after I saw a person standing outside of my bedroom window with a camera. When I told my best friend she told me that I was overreacting and that it was just my imagination. But I saw a red beam as clear as day, I know that I looked into someone else’s eyes.

I stopped going to sleep at night which her mother commented on once, and this confirmed again that yes there were cameras in my room because all I did was lie awake but I never really made any noise. I started to cover my body more around her father, and I started to keep my friends from coming over because whenever people I cared for cake over the entire house would watch me in silence.

When they realized that I had my own money and didn’t need their food, they hid the keys to the family car we all shared so I couldn’t leave in order to get myself things. Her mother started to read my texts over my shoulder and I whenever I caught her she’d simply talk to someone else and change the subject. Then I knew something was very wrong.

Things went missing out of my room and my best friend continued to place her belongings in there for a sense of control. I simply removed them but found them returned by the end of the night. As though she needed a reason to come inside whenever she pleased. And any friends I had she tried to pin me against them, and she would block them for no reason.

Finally things got so much rough that I hid in the woods from her while she searched through the trees screaming at the top of her lungs. She said that she was weak and I needed to be strong for her. Which was terrifying because there’s such a misconception that black woman must be strong and white women get to be weak and fragile. “Ain’t I A Woman?”

While I was lying I’m thorns because I tripped into a rose bush, she begged me to come and save her.... but what did she need saving from? I packed my things that next day and lived in a soft ball park for 3 days until my real family sent me money for food and I could finally eat a meal after starving for four days. One bite and my throat was raw, and my body was shaking.

I bought a bus ticket home, spending every penny I had so that I could run, and I will never look back.