Floating

After my “dad” used my hand to masturbate that first morning, it became the ritual for the next few months of winter when we could be hidden beneath a blanket. It may not have occurred every day, but it happened more often than not - until the day things progressed to something more. Things started to change sometime during the summer between fourth and fifth grade.

It’s not as clear to me when things moved beyond him just using my hand for his pleasure to him touching me. Because, in the beginning, he would simply touch me. Not that that is acceptable, but it seemed less harmful than what was to come. He would touch my vagina and breasts and comment on how soon I would become more of a woman and have bigger breasts and hair and how he was looking forward to when that happened.

There were times he would pick me up “like a sack of potatoes” over his shoulder and carry me into his room, lay me on his bed and get on top of me to start French kissing me. I hated when he would stick his tongue in my mouth. He used chewing tobacco, and it made me want to vomit every time he did this. I don’t recall ever kissing him back, but he continued to do this to me. I always thought this was the worst thing that could ever happen to me. I was wrong.

He eventually escalated to more than just kissing me and lying on top of me. Mind you, he was a big man, 300-plus pounds, so it felt like he was crushing me most of the time. He would eventually slide off of me, taking off my pants and underwear on his way. Then, he would either sit on his knees or stand next to the bed with my legs draped over the edge of the bed or lifted and wrapped around his head. Then, he would proceed to stick his tongue in my vagina and perform oral sex on me.

During all of these times, I never fought back or said anything. It was easier for me to pretend this wasn’t even happening to me. I would just lie there with my eyes mostly closed. I would open them every once in a while to see where he was and what he was doing, but I would shut them immediately if we happened to make eye contact. A part of me knew what he was doing was wrong, but I didn’t know how to get out of it, so if I just pretended like it wasn’t me, then I could get through it. I would literally imagine myself floating above my body and watching this girl have these things happen to her - over and over and over again.

The Day I Lost My Innocence

I’ve previously mentioned that my siblings and I suffered physical, emotional and verbal abuse - mostly from our own mother. However, that abuse never prepared me for a new kind of abuse, a kind I had never even heard of and had no idea was classified as abuse. To be honest, none of the abuse I experienced as a child felt like abuse at the time - it was just the way life was, and it was expected that I would take it and deal with it.

Because most of the abuse we endured came at the hands of our mom, I never thought our “dad” could do anything terrible to us. And I didn't consider anything he DID do to be really all that bad.

If you have been reading my blogs, you know my siblings and I were adopted when I was 8 years old. After the adoption, I was always looking for ways to truly feel like part of the family.

About a year after the adoption, I thought that moment had finally come! Every morning before chores, we would all sit as a family to watch the news, mostly to see what the weather had in store since we would be working in the elements. I remember perfectly how things changed on this particular wintry day. We were all watching the news like normal when my “dad” saw I was cold and put his blanket over me, so we were both covered by it. After a few minutes of sitting under the blanket together and warming up, he took my hand in his. What happened next shocked me and made me feel weird and a little wrong.

He put my hand on his penis. Then, he proceeded to use my hand while masturbating. My hand was under a blanket on my “dad’s” penis, which I had never seen, let alone felt, before! When he was finished, there was weird, slimy goo on my hand. At the time, I wasn’t aware of what that was. It was his semen. There wasn’t a lot, so he kind of wiped it on his underwear, put his penis away and then took the blanket off of us. It was time to get dressed and start our morning chores.

This was the first of many times this happened over the next year. I never told anyone. A part of me finally did feel different - special. I now had this secret that connected only me to my “dad” and helped secure my spot as “daddy’s little girl.” I was 9 years old and had officially lost my innocence.