Letters never written (pts 2).

Trigger warning: Sexual abuse, Assault, under-aged sexual assault, minor assault, abuse. Please read at your own discression. No sexual details or descriptions are made. Only an incomplete account by memory and the afterthoughts of the abuse.

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He was right. This letter fixed nothing. But I needed to read it.

It was painful to reprocess these early moments of my life. I had suppressed a lot of the details of this relationship if I could even call it that. I knew it was bad but I had such guilt and shame for years so I told no one. I did not want to face the reactions. Because women were not comforted when they confessed these things. They were blamed.

I felt to blame alright. I went willingly out with someone I did not know at all. I did not ask for I.D. at first and when it was finally shown to be I was naive enough to not study it. To not realize it was a fake. To not realize he was fake. His friends knew and that was a big achievement to them.

I was the sum of pursuit at only 15. On my actual birthday of turning 15. Walking around the mall with my cousin, getting attention from strangers and thinking it was not inappropriate at all. After all, none of the guys gave me the time of day at my school. The tiny experiences with boys I had at school made me feel so invisible and irrelevant. I was not a pretty or popular girl.

I was not respected and the only interactions I had before him were from boys who wanted to manipulate and use me. In secret. No one wanted to publicly be with me. The shame around this.... it has run deep and it has followed me. I had not healed from this yet.

" Dear Jean,

I know I am the last person you would want to hear from and I don't blame you. I would want me to be in jail and I am writing to you because I am. I was brought in on charges last year and will be here for several years to come. I have done unspeakable things and I deserve to be here. I am not looking for remorse or to be forgiven because what I did was absolutely unforgivable. I lacked the ability, guts, and know-how to be better back then. I wish I could say I was not in my right mind. But what I did to you I did with full awareness. I took something from you that you could never get back. I lied about myself completely. My age. My name. My identity. I was at the time hanging out with really bad people but I also was just a bad person. I knew you were underage. I knew you were too young to understand what my intentions were and what I did to you. It was illegal. It was immoral. It was one of the worst things I have ever done. I did not plan it all out intentionally. I liked you and I was way out of line pursuing someone so much younger. I was not 18. I was 22.

You were only 15 and I knew fully what was going to happen between us once I took you out. I knew it could lead to what happened. I've tried to force myself to remember all the details and still that is not near good enough compared to what you must feel and remember. It was your first time and I robbed you of something you should have looked forward to with someone you loved. Someone who protected you, made you feel safe, made you feel loved. That person was not who I was. I was not worthy of what I did and worse, I know you told me to stop but I did not listen. I did what I wanted to anyways. I will not blame weed or drugs for what I did. I was just an asshole. It was not just a crime. It was a sin. I don't mean that religiously. I mean it was all around evil to physically and emotionally hurt you the ways that I did. The ways I bribed and manipulated you. You did not know better. It was not your fault and you did not deserve it. I wish I could go back and undo that all. That I could give you any sort of honesty early on and not pursue anything with you. I should have never taken you out, touched you or allowed anything to happen between us. I was the adult in the situation but it is more

than that. I robbed you of something that might have ruined years of your life. Even now, I do not know how those things I did hurt your future relationships. It is hard for me to admit it and say the words out loud. I raped you. That is the truth... I know you know it but I wanted you to hear it from me. I did that and I had no remorse back then for doing it, I had no regrets. I went right on living my life on a bender and messed up so much. But it does not matter what happened to me. I am receiving a lot of what I deserve. I wish I could change the past but I can't, I can only tell you how sorry I am and how awful I am for what I stole from you. How I made you feel about yourself and what I likely damaged for you way after. I wish I could say it was the only time I did that but I took advantage of different girls who likely felt the same. That I was offering a relationship and safety. I have already confessed and given names. You will likely be contacted but I wanted you to hear from me how sorry I am. Even if my sorry means nothing at all, I need you to know that none of it was your fault. You are safe to tell the truth and tell them everything you know. I am facing whatever consequences come next.--"

I did not know what to do. I finished the letter and slid down from the chair to the floor. I laid flat looking up at the ceiling. I just laid there without tears or much breathing at all.

I was never waiting on this letter. Or any explanation at all. Because what can someone say after they have robbed something so monumental from you? It was not just because it was my first time. No one had known this was how I lost it. No one heard about it afterward. It was like it just never happened at all. I only told one person a half version of the story and for the worst reason possible. To make them think I was even a little bit valuable or desirable. I confided in one single person about my first time and made it sound like I was just a person who had chosen to engage in something everyone else my age seemed to be. I acted unbothered that following week when I told that story and that person received it with one clear reaction. To pursue me next. Someone my age. Someone who wanted to take credit and say they were the special person I was with. We both knew it was a lie and both knew the shame would seal the truth - air tight.

I had no ability to really examine what happened to me and WHY it was so terrible. Even now, over 15 years later, I am barely scratching the surface of how bad these events were to my self-esteem and emotional health. Something was robbed from me and it was more than physical. It was psychological.

I did not cry after it all happened. I interacted with that man for two weeks and he took me out after all those days since we met - calling and texting me. Telling me about the date we were going to have. All I knew as a young girl was that I was being paid attention to and courted by someone who was only a little older. Only just graduated from high school, as he said. While I was in the 10th grade and had already survived a lot of traumas at home that I did not talk about. I felt older. I lived like someone who was much older, more capable, and more responsible. So it felt okay to agree to go meet a man, for only the second time, and get into a car I had never been in before. It felt okay to follow him as we arrived at a motel. That was as deserted and scary as every other motel I have ever seen in any movie ever.

NO ONE knew where I was. I did not tell my absent and abusive parents, who never really cared to know where I was. I did not tell any friends. I was alone with a stranger and I cannot remember most of that night. I only remember being thankful the next day that I made it home.

I did not cry. I held onto the words that I still remember leaving his mouth after what happened happened. He told me "I was now a woman. I was now like everyone else."

I convinced myself that my wanting to change my mind every step of the way, me wanting to leave, me begging it to be over, and me crying in the shower after was not the truth. I convinced myself that telling anyone what really happened would tarnish my name forever. No one would ever believe me.

As I sat up on my elbows, I realized what I needed to do next. I needed to make a call.

So I did.

I called and reported something awful that happened 15 years earlier and I told the truth about that night. What I did to end up in that situation and what it did to me. Then I called my therapist.

Because I was not over it or passed it. And I was not okay. I just did not know how to go beneath the surface of really feeling and dealing with the repercussions of what happened. And there was no way to do that all alone.

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Hello! I'm Jean, a mental health blogger who creates content from home about trauma and abuse. I created this series to write letters to myself from my abusers. Letters that do not actually exist and I have never received. I am writing this to make a potent statement about abuse, forgiveness, and acceptance. I do not believe we need to seek or give out forgiveness when it comes to abuse. Instead, I think we should strive for education, self-awareness, and acceptance (like I wrote about here). These letters are a form of therapy for me as I write things I imagine my abusers would say if they were actually mentally and emotionally capable of realizing their past actions.

Often survivors of abuse cannot comprehend what the person they loved did and wish they could have an explanation + apology from that person. But the abuser(s) are sociopathic, very mentally ill, very abusive, narcissistic, or completely incapable of providing any valuable thoughts or apologies to their victims. It is painful to wish your abuser had remorse or a viable explanation for their behaviors. It is therapeutic to explore what that might look like in a fiction letter. What you might feel, imagine, and experience if you had read a letter from your abuser that says all the unspoken words they could never provide. I am exploring this exercise to find that exact notion out for myself.

Thank you for reading, for the subscribers who follow my work, and for the tips that help support my content! - Jean Grey