There is life after Sexual Trauma

I am a woman now at the age of 41, but my trauma started at age 9. I loved spending the summer with my Granny and Papa because it meant I got to drive the riding mower or pickup out to check on the cows. I got to be a free spirited little girl with the world at my fingertips. All the girls in my family was always told to not sit on Papa's lap or watch out for Jay when he is drinking and as an innocent soul I didn't know why. Now I do. My grandfather sexually abused me from the age of 9 to 12. Every summer. He said it was how he showed his love but even at such a young age I knew that was not love. Love does not make you feel that way. It first started with him just touching me on top of my clothes and by the time I got my voice and said no my innocence was gone. He would let me drive the pickup to the store to get me alone and secluded from everyone so he could touch me and when I would tell him no he would force his hands down my pants. One summer he created a project for me to do with him so that he would insure that I would be alone with him for hours in his shop. There was an old 50's model Mack dump truck that needed to be restored. I remember being so proud when he asked me to help him and he would name the truck Rachel, after me. I also remember sanding the rust off and getting it ready to be painted as Papa was under the hood working on the motor. It took all summer, many hours of being alone with that evil man. Every time that I looked at "Rachel" throughout my life I would get physically sick thinking of the horrors that I had to endure to get the right to have that truck named after me. Now, every time I go back home to visit and drive that damn truck I think of how much I have changed, grown, and moved on from that timid little girl to a strong woman with a voice. This was not an easy task by any means. I have years of counseling, therapy, depression, anxiety, nightmares, thoughts of suicide, self destructive behavior, battling addictions and demons, but I am whole again. I've learned who I am, that the trauma in my life does not define my life. Even after he was incarcerated for sexually abusing 6 little girls in the neighborhood the family stood behind him. We would go on family visitation days to the prison and Granny would have this delicious homemade food all in clear containers so we could bring the food into the prison. The other inmates who looked after Jay would always get to eat with the family too. You see I never told anyone about those summers except for my sisters best friend when I was 12. I was 14 when he went to prison. My friend told her mom who told her friend who was my other Granny's hairdresser who asked her how I was handling Jay's trial. That was how my family found out...thru the grapevine. By then I was already showing signs of severe depression and couldn't think of a time when I was ever really happy. I didn't feel anything but soul wrenching despair that was so strong my heart constantly hurt and was always on the verge of tears. My mom always had us involved in the local church and I was able to be a normal teenager when I was there but youth group couldn't last forever. I had to go home to my thoughts. My thoughts were about to break me when I found out that I could write my emotions out into poems. I was actually pretty good at it and I felt a tiny bit lighter every time a journaled or wrote down my feelings and emotions. I was healing but didn't know it. Now, as I sit here writing this, telling my story, I realized not only am I healed but I have never written down that story. I've played it out millions of times in my head. I've criticized myself for not saying anything and maybe those other 6 girls may have been saved from his horrific actions. He was an old man that only had one leg but he destroyed so many girls lives. He supposedly was saved by Jesus and now a Christian man when he was released from prison on his deathbed. I was 20 and found myself with no where to go so Granny took me in until I could get on my feet. Granny was a true angel from heaven who I love so much still today. She is the kindest most generous person I know. She is from the era that you stand by your man no matter what, and you never betray family.(ironic I know) I was grateful but a little scared of being around him. One night they went to bed and I was watching TV, I had alot of restless nights where my mind would not shut off. I heard him get up and heard his wheelchair take him to the bathroom. Before I knew it he was next to me in his wheelchair and reached out and grabbed my boob and said how they got bigger than before. Well I wasn't that timid little girl from before either. I looked him straight in the eyes and let him know how much of a sick man that I thought he was. I got to tell him he would never touch me again and if he did it would be the last thing he would do alive. He hung his head and wheeled into the dining room to have a cigarette and that was the last time a saw or spoke to him again. I moved away from my hometown and fell in love and got married and had kids of my own by the time he finally died. I did not travel back for his funeral, I did not mourn the loss of him. My kids will never know the evilness of Jay. I'm grateful for that. I will never be able to know what my life would be like if I didn't live with CPTSD from long term exposure to childhood trauma, but I wouldn't be this strong either. There is life after sexual trauma.