#MeToo

My newsfeed has been filling up this last week. Stories from survivors. Memes and screenshots of trending Twitter conversations. Opinions and links and arguments and insults and support. Over the #metoo movement, over the Kavanaugh  confirmation, over personal stories, over the validity of victims that go public with their experiences years or even decades after an incident. Over whether most survivors go public, naming public figures as abusers, just to get their fifteen minutes of fame. Over how much damage survivors can cause with their testimonies versus how much damage abuser cause by their actions.

As a woman, it's hard enough to read these things, to see a society that is so easily able to brush away the violence with excuses that men have certain urges they will never have control over, and to see a society that condemns the process of trauma, recovery, and justice that a survivor of sexual assault needs. As a survivor from numerous abuses that affected my psyche, my self worth, my belief in my own value, I have struggled these last two years, especially, as the voices on either side of this movement get louder and more combative and more heinous, while at the same time I have seen strength and compassion and empathy come out from either side.

But what has pulled at my heart, my soul, my very spirit more than anything else is the courage that comes from the stories, from the witness that has been given by more survivors than I would have ever been able to fathom. Because we're not just statistics. We're not just numbers to be gathered by RAINN to try to convince people that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. We are survivors. We are not alone, as so many of us seem to think when or our abusers might have us believe. We have our own stories, our own experiences, our own voices. And yes, individually we might not be loud. But together....together we will be the blare of trumpets that brought Jericho to its knees.

And I'm not here, writing these words, telling these stories, for the limelight. I'm not baring my soul simply for the attention. I'm trying to find the strength in my own vulnerablility because it is needed. In this day and age, in this coming age, in the journey of my life, for myself, my daughters, my sons, for children that I will lead and affect and help...I cannot just sit by, with my own story never being told because that little voice in the back of my head keeps whispering that I'm not important enough for my story to have importance. So take this how you will, with however much salt or sugar you need to pour on it, or simply ignore it like so many do, but I don't do this for our generation. I have to do this for the generations to come.

WARNING: The following is my first recollection of sexual abuse. It will be graphic. I choose not to use proper names for anyone from this incident specifically, and with purpose. This does not

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It's been twenty-three years since my first experience with sex. And little over two years since I was first able to talk to anyone about it in an honest and safe space. I was five years old, and he was a friend of my oldest brother's, over at our house to spend the night with my two older brothers.

We were playing a game of hide and seek, and I had followed my brother under the decrepit house that used to stand beside my childhood home, nicknamed the "Dreamer" because of my mother's dream to fix it up and restore it to its former glory. The foundation was pure sand, and my siblings and I used to play for hours in the foundation, drawing designs in the dirt that had eroded into walkways  before we would erase them with our hands just to start again.

The friend followed me down under the house, and when I (in my excitement at playing hide and seek) tried to find a more concealed hiding spot, he put his hand on my shoulder, and told me that we both could hide together in the foundations. So I stayed, sitting on a cinder block in the sand.

After a little bit, when my heart had stopped pounding in my ears from running to find a hiding spot, the friend asked me if I wanted to see something. I remember nodding, a little curious at what my teenage brother's friend would want to show me. He stood up in front of me, unzipped his pants, and pulled his penis and his testicles out of his pants.

"Do you want to touch it?"

He moved my hand over the shaft of his penis, making me stroke him, before moving my fingers down to his scrotum.

"Feel that? It feels funny, doesn't it?"

He showed me his testicle, made me feel one, then the other. I didn't know what to think, because it did feel funny. It felt wrong, and I didn't know why. Weren't we supposed to be quiet and not talk during hide and seek?

"You want to taste it?"

"What??" For the first time, I was shocked.

"You should taste it. It tastes good."

"Umm....."

"Here." He let go of my hand, and I dropped it into my lap. "Stick out your tongue."

I did as I was told. He stood above me, his pelvis level with my face, and he put his penis on my tongue, rubbing it slightly.

It was hairy. And it smelled weird. I coughed, and said it smelled funny.

Then I heard my brother in the house above us, searching, and he hurriedly stuffed his penis back into his pants.

"Don't tell [my brothers] about this. You know it's wrong, and you'll go to hell if you tell."

I got up, running out from under the foundation and up the hill to my backyard. My oldest brother was right around the corner.

"Hey! Where were you?"

"NOWHERE YOU COULD FIND ME!"