Chapter 1 What Was Done
The abuse began as far back as my memory goes. It was my aunt’s husband.
I didn’t have the language for what was happening, only the understanding that my body was not mine and that resistance made things worse. He taught me things a child should never know. He crossed boundaries before I knew boundaries existed.
I was punished for repeating what I had been taught. I was scolded for being inappropriate without anyone asking how I learned it.
I remember my mother knowing. I remember the absence of surprise. The absence of anger. The absence of protection.
Once, she caught my stepfather's brother—my deaf uncle—with me in the shed. I was sitting on his lap, leaning backward, nearly upside down. She saw us. She said nothing that stopped it from ever happening again. He was still allowed around me.
The message was clear, even if it was never spoken:
This is not important enough to save you from.
The violence didn’t stop there. My stepfather was cruel always drunk or high, always angry. I wasn’t punished; I was beaten. Thrown. Choked. Hit in the head. Locked away. Tortured. Made to stand still until my legs shook and failed.
My mother never intervened. Not once.
Our house was infested; lice in my hair, roaches and mice in the walls. Neglect layered on top of violence, layered on top of silence. I learned early that pain came in many forms, some loud, some quiet—and that no one was coming to stop it.
I didn’t know I was being abused. I thought this was what childhood was. I thought this was what adults did. I thought survival meant enduring, staying quiet, and adapting.
The weight of it didn’t lift when it ended. It followed me into other houses, other beds, other years. Because abuse doesn’t stop when the hands stop. It teaches the body and mind lessons that take a lifetime to unlearn.
