This is a hard post to write. I'm not sure where to start. I guess I'll just start at the beginning. Please be advised the following is disturbing and absolutely true.
I was molested as a child of about 4 years old. A young man, a cousin by blood to my older half brother who was living with us, came into my room in the middle of the night and performed oral sex on me. I knew what he did was not right, but I didn't know how really, really wrong it was until I was much older. It changed me immediately though. I have distinct memories of starting to be leery of men and very uncomfortable with attention from them. Being around non-family men made me feel anxious. I wouldn't let my uncles hug or kiss me, it's still a joke in my family about how shy I was as a kid...if they only knew. You see, I have never breathed a word about this to anyone until just a couple of days ago when I pointed out my molester to my husband in a picture on Facebook. I am friends with this man's mom & sister on FB so it was inevitable that I would "run into" him. He requested me as a friend, I thought hard about for a while then denied the request. Tonight I got a message from him pressing me to friend him.
Part of me wants to ignore him but part of me wants to call him out on what he did to me. I think I put on weight in my teens years as a way to insulate myself from boys and their sexual attention. This is where the full circle question comes in, now that I'm losing the insulation a stronger more confident me is emerging. A strong enough me to finally face what happened and put it to rest once and for all. What he did has been bouncing around in my head for 30 years, no one else has to know but I think confronting him would be therapeutic, even if he denies it, which I expect he would.
Any advice and or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Edited to add that just after I posted this I talked to my rock, my super fabulous husband and told him about the message pressing the friend request. I said, " I just want to reply, "I'd rather not be friends with the man who molested me, thank you."" He said, "Do it." So I did, just like that short and simple and maybe even a little sassy.
10 comments:
How incredibly brave of you to post this. I like the way you handled the friend request. I think you confronted and moved on all at the same time. I do think you should be prepared for this to resurface, I doubt he will let it go. Don't let him drag you down! Saying a prayer for you today.
Wow. I am so sorry you had to go through that. I would NEVER be his friend! You did good my dear!
I'm so sorry this happened to you, but thank you for sharing your heartbreaking story with us. I'm so glad you got to confront him finally. Congratulations, sweetie.
wow. you are so incredibly brave to not only talk about your abuse, but to CONFRONT your abuser. just wow.
I am so sorry you ever had to experience this pain. It hurts to know that you have been hurting for 30 years. I am so glad you have such a wonderful husband. I like the reply you sent to his friend request.
You are stronger and wiser and oh so much better than he will ever be!! Good for you!
Sarah, how brave of you to post this and how brave of you to confront him. You are breaking out of the shell that your horrible exerience has put you in and in doing so you are becoming stronger! Can I also point out that even though this event has put you in a shell maybe you have also managed to have a successful family and life. Therefor you are already there. Now you are working on you!
Brave of you to share that with us! I am glad you responded to him the way you did!!! I hope you can some how move from this point and let him squirm for a while...hopefully you'll never have to see him again!
~S
How can he live his life acting like what happened never existed? I am shocked. I would think that he would avoid you...of course I don't think like a molester. I am so sorry that you had to live through this. No little girl should have to experience that. I too was molested as a small child. I was about 3 or 4. A teenager made me give him a bl*w j*b. I remember throwing up all over him. That is absolutely ridiculous. How can someone even think of a child in that regard??? I do not know who my molester was - it was my babysitter's son. We were in Oklahoma at the time. We are in California now. I am sure I will never see him. I recently shared this information with my mom. She didn't really have much to say. I am sure she died a little bit inside. I know I would if my kids told me 38 years later.
Thank you for sharing this horrible experience with us. Thank goodness you have such a wonderful husband.
Tracy
bandedadventures.blogspot.com
It is horrifying how evil people can be and acts against children are the worst. You are really brave to write about this and I wish I could say that I believe it will make you feel better to confront him. My thoughts are that he will deny it and/or anything that comes out of his mouth won't be nearly enough to make up for what he did. I do like what you said, but don't expect much from that bastard.
Then I hope you blocked him! He won't be able to contact you again.
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