The Aftermath

About the time that I started the dreadful therapy my mother came to me and told me, "it would never happen again", meaning my father would never touch me again. She also said that if I ever told anyone my father would be put in jail and I would end up in juvie. Nice way to place the blame for what happened squarely on me. My father never said a word to me about any of it.  From that day on I had one goal, to survive and get out of that house. 

My father did try to touch me again, once. About a year later I was standing looking out the front door of our home. He came up behind me and put his hand between my legs. I didn't even take the time to think, I just reacted. I came around swinging, he moved and I didn't connect. I don't remember what I said, I just remember the rage, my whole focus had narrowed in an instant to just the two of us. In that moment I would have killed him without a qualm. Whatever I said was effective because he never tried again after that.

A few months later I started high school, on the surface I looked like the typical high school kid. School had always been rather easy so good grades weren't a problem. I participated in many school activities and I started working just a few weeks into my freshman year. I spent most weekends sleeping at girlfriends houses and didn't have a steady boyfriend until my senior year.

No one bothered to look past the surface, no one ever saw the double life I was leading. I worked because I knew I would need money to achieve the goal I had set for myself to get out. I participated in activities because those along with working kept me away from home. The real reason I slept at friends houses was because it was a good cover story to tell my parents.

You see I had been left with an awareness. An awareness of the power of my body. It was clear to me that men wanted my body. That made me feel powerful and confident. I could use my body to get whatever I wanted or to do whatever I wanted. I realized I could use my body to control men. And I did. By the age of 14 I was regularly hanging out in bars, playing with the men I met. I would tease them, tell them I had a specialty, would they like to know what it was?  Sometimes I would tell them and then walk away. Sometimes I didn't walk away, sometimes we went somewhere and I showed them my specialty. This fed into the feelings of power I felt, I was the one in control and it felt good.
I never played with the boys at school this way, there was more then one whom I dated casually and tried to get me to give it up. I never did, until my senior year when I met a guy who just wouldn't take no for answer.