The End Of Innocence

I lost my virginity when I was seventeen years old, but I lost my innocence and ignorance to sexuality when I was just four. I guess this is where I should start, because it is the crux in my life; at least the first one.

It's funny what you remember......and what you don't.

My memories of being molested are like snapshots taken by a Polaroid camera. They are flashes in my mind captured so many years ago. I remember playing in my front yard with my dog. Then hearing my neighbor say hello to me. We'll call him, "J.B." I thought he was so nice to ask me to play a game with him, and he even said he had cookies for me. My initial thought was one of excitement and curiosity. I wondered what new game we would play. I didn't think twice when he said to follow him, because the game was inside of his house. As we entered J.B.'s bedroom, I asked for the cookie. He told me that he would get it after we played the game. Then, the "game" began. As he started undressing, he told me that I had to do the same thing. I don't remember what I had on that day, except one article of clothing......My socks. They were thin and white with lace around the edges......the kind that you folded down. I don't remember what J.B. was wearing, I just remember feeling very confused when I saw him standing there naked. I had never seen anything like it, and couldn't understand why we were so different. I only remember one part of him molesting me, but there is one thing that I remember vividly.......My mother frantically screaming for me. That was the first time I sensed that anything was wrong........really wrong. In her voice, you could hear fear, sadness, regret, guilt, and desperation. I also remember J.B.'s reaction when he heard my mother. I knew something was really wrong. He told me to hurry up, as he threw my clothes at me. Over and over again, he told me not to tell my mother what we had done. This only confirmed that something was really wrong. After haphazardly throwing my clothes back on, I ran out of that house the same way that I came in......All the while, listening to those horrifying sounds continue to come out of my mother's mouth. The only thing worse than those sounds, was the look on her face when I rounded the corner and saw her. All I knew was that I did something bad......something so bad that it upset my mother tremendously. That was my four year old mindset. Whatever I had just done was so bad, that I should be ashamed of myself.....It made my mother cry. This is when I took on the shame and guilt for being such a bad girl. This was the moment in my life that I became aware of sexuality.....Even if it was a skewed version.

My family met with attorneys, trying to decide what to do. After discussing their options, they decided not press charges and go to court, because they did not want me to have to get up on the stand and re-live it all again. They did the best they could do with what they had. It is the choice that my parents made. It is what it is. I only wish that J.B. would have had some consequence for what he did to me. Who knows? Maybe he has. The only things that haunt me now about him is this: Does he have any children of his own? Are any of them girls? Has he done this to anyone else? J.B. was a senior in high school when he molested me. My family knew that something had to be done.......we couldn't just live there. After all, we were next-door neighbors. So, my parent's solution was to move away to a different state.

I didn't understand what had just happened, and I didn't want to. So, that's exactly what happened. I completely blocked it out of my mind. It was like I had the whole ordeal surgically removed from my brain. I never again remembered anything at all about it.......Until I turned fourteen. I think they call this, "repressed memory." One day, out of the clear blue......bits and pieces of the molestation popped back into my mind. It was slowly unfolding, and I wasn't sure exactly what to think of it. Finally, I asked my mother if something had happened to me when I was young. That's as far as I got when tears began falling down her face. She said that she never planned on telling me, if I didn't remember anything. I believe that these memories came back to me at this time, because I was coming of age....into my own sexuality. At that time, after discussing it with my mother, it didn't really affect me. I just thought J.B. was a creep.

This situation didn't just affect me. It affected my parents. For years my mother suffered with depression, feeling as if my being molested was her fault......She thought it wouldn't have happened if only she had been watching me more carefully. My mother and father fought about how each of them handled the situation. Years of bitterness and resentment ( a great deal about my molestation) definitely played a part in their divorce much later. I never received any counseling about this matter, until I was in my twenties. That's because it really started bothering me then. When my oldest child was four, I had a very difficult time with the molestation, so I began counseling. My counselor didn't find it too odd that it only started bothering me when my own child was the same age as I was when it happened. In these counseling sessions, I was able to work through all of the feelings that I was having. The guilt and the shame that I had carried for so long, became a thing of the past. I'm so thankful that I did seek help. So many times, I believe we try to sift through our issues with no idea what to do with it. Just talking about it out loud with another human being was huge. I can say with full confidence, that I am not affected by the molestation anymore.

The only thing that I do feel is a sadness for a little girl.....innocence stolen from her.....from me.