The topic of abuse is confusing to me. I don’t even know if I experienced it. I know awful shit happened and I know it has had an effect on my life, but was it really abuse? I don’t believe I was sexually abused until I was a teenager, and then it was my boyfriends, but was it really abuse? Was being pressured into sex really abuse? Was being made to feel guilty if I didn’t give it up count? Was being pressured into unprotected sex count?
I remember hacking off all of my hair in defiance of that one. He turned it into a trust issue. If I didn’t do it then I didn’t trust him because he could control himself and if I thought different then I didn’t have faith in him and that made me a bad person. The fact that I went to go visit my mother in Colorado made me a bad person because he never would have done that. Obeying my father’s rules made me a bad person because he would have done anything for me and the fact that I wasn’t willing to meant I didn’t love him and that also made me a liar for ever saying that I did love him. Liar seems to be the common word, the common accusation.
My father used to call me a liar. He called me that the first time I told him about Ryan dragging me through the yard by my hair and telling me how much he hated me. He said that Ryan really didn’t mean that and that he didn’t believe me that he dragged me around. I never told him another thing. I talked to the school counselor instead and when he found out about that he got pissed and established the house rule of LasVegas—what happens in this house stays in this house. I knew better than that, I knew that was wrong and I kept talking. Eventually Mrs. North begged me to let her call CPS on the condition that they would come to the school and that they interview my brother and sister with me in the room. Michael wouldn’t talk to someone he didn’t know and Tarah was likely to make shit up because she wanted attention. Before we came into the picture, she was the baby, but not with Michael around. CPS showed up at the house though and dad and Theresa made it pretty plain that nothing was going on and we were exaggerating things. After that all I remember is dad coming in our room, lining us up and mostly yelling at me, telling me it was all my fault and that I was a liar while he held up with one hand around my neck on the closet door. I still flinch if people raise a hand to me.
