Going back to the beginning..

I am going into therapy soon. At twenty eight years old, this will be the first time I will be coping with my past in a healthy way. I'm sitting here mentally going back to where I believe my issues began and my demons were born..

My childhood was relatively normal. I realize now that I don't remember my mother ever being affectionate with me, but that was normal to me. My father was a firefighter, so he didn't spend a lot of time at home, but I loved him, and whenever he was around he made me feel special. When I was in sixth grade, my parents separated. I always had the best intuition, so I knew it was happening. The day my dad moved out, he took my brothers out to the beach and broke the news to them. I sat in my room with a hole in my chest, confused as to why I wasn't included. As he came clean to my brothers, I wrote a page in my diary that said, "My dad is moving out today" and left the page on the floor to make it seem like it accidently fell out. I waited by the window for them to come home, and when they did, I saw my brothers walking out of the car crying. I ran back to my room, where I found the page missing from the floor. I knew my mom would take it without comment, hence why I staged it. (I was a clever child) I waited patiently, and after about ten minutes, my dad entered my room. All I remember was that he was crying, which is something I never remembered seeing him do before. He showed me the paper, and asked me why I wrote it. Then he began his speech about moving out. I looked straight ahead, most likely zoning into the pictures of animals I had all over my bedroom door. (This zoning out thing with my father became frequent as I got older, I'm assuming due to protecting myself from potentially getting hurt) He then asked me why I wasn't crying, and I shrugged my shoulders. To be honest, I was angry and hurt that he broke the news in my stupid room with everyone listening. (I'm still in that god forsaken room, btw) Long story short, he told me he loved me, and then he left. He moved to another borough and we started visiting him every weekend. Within months, his new girlfriend moved in. At the same time, my mom started dating her new boyfriend. Also, the two people they dated were people we were familiar with. (Go figure) 

My parents moved on with their lives, and in Oct of 2001, my father had another son, and ten months later my mother had another daughter. Everyone was so busy with their own lives, that they didn't realize I was starting to endanger my own. I started to go into chat rooms and do things that I was forbidden to do. One time, I met a cute guy, and he convinced me to meet him. I sent him a fake picture of another girl my age and told him to meet me at a local bowling alley. I asked him the day of what he was wearing so I can spot him. When I walked passed the bowling alley, he was there, only it wasn't the guy in the picture. It was an older man, really creepy. I walked passed him and once I got to the corner I ran home. I promised that I would never do that again. I spoke to a LOT of people online, mostly people my age, (or so I thought). I was only 11 at the time, and as smart as I thought I was, I realize just how immature I was. I met my soon to be best friend, (I will call her Amber) in a teen chat room. She lived in the city, about an hour train ride away from me. We hit it off immediately. We were two peas in a pod, and spent most of our time causing trouble in chat rooms. She was silly, funny, and bold, and I loved her. She was the first person I really felt was a true best friend. We were both turning twelve a couple months later, in March, and she wanted to invite me to her birthday party. We spoke on the phone a million times, so I knew she was young. I just didn't know how to convince my parents that we were actually friends in real life. So we came up with a plan that we were going to tell our parents that we used to be in the same school, but we moved. It sounded like a solid plan. When I finally brought it up to my parents, I was surprised that they didn't question anything. They were so busy with their new lives, that one less kid to worry about for the weekend was a god send. So we planned our weekend, and before I knew it, my dad was driving me into the city to spend the weekend.

One thing that I remember is that we didn't know what each other looked like. We didn't have cameras so we just described what we were going to wear, that way we could spot each other. That morning, I felt extremely nervous, mostly because I was spending the weekend in a new place, but also because I was afraid of getting caught in a lie. Suddenly, we were there, I saw a girl in familiar clothes, and we ran into each other's arms. My dad wanted to come upstairs to meet Amber's stepfather, (John). Amber lived with him and her five year old brother. Her mother lived in California. They chatted for a couple of minutes. John was friendly and seemingly decent. I remember watching my dad walk out of the apartment. Little did I know that once that door closed, my entire world would change.

There are many things that I was exposed to, things that I didn't understand, and things that terrified me. I am going to refrain from getting into too many details because it is too painful to go through them, and I know that I will eventually have to say them out loud in therapy, so I will attempt to write a brief description of the things that occurred. The first night that I spent there, Amber introduced me to her baby sitters. They took turns watching her brother, but one woman was there more often than the other. They each had two daughters that were fourteen and fifteen, and both had sons. One of them was six and the other one was only a couple of months. She then told me that we were going to take the train to meet their daughters. It was the first time I was on the train without an adult, and it felt dangerous but fun. I remember getting off the train in an extremely bad neighborhood, the projects, a completely different world than what I was used to. In short, I was introduced to people that were extremely dangerous. It was there that I met the two girls, who openly talked about sex and hooking up with the guys in the neighborhood. It wasn't long before I realized that sometimes they would get paid for sex. This also became apparent that her baby sitters were also prostitutes..

The first inappropriate thing that I experienced within the apartment was John making comments about my breasts. I was a little more developed than other girls, and he didn't believe that I was twelve. He then would put on porn and make jokes around Amber and I. His best friend really made me uncomfortable because he would stare at me a lot. One time, John put a dildo in between one of Amber's doll's legs, and propped it up on her dresser for us to find. I didn't know what a dildo was until that day, and still I was unsure of why there was one in the house when there was only a twelve year old girl in the apartment.

Things started to get worse. John would have "parties" that I didn't understand until later were "drug parties". He would invite his friends over and give Amber and me money to stay out for a couple of hours. We were after all kids, and loved the freedom. When we did go out, we had fun. We were innocent. We got ice cream, went to the movies, and bought clothes. The doormen started realizing that we were staying out late and threatened to call the cops on John if we weren't in the apartment by 8PM. That is when he started locking us in the room. One night in particular, he made us go to sleep early. We did, but I woke up in the middle of the night because it was so hot in the room. I couldn't open the window, and I had to pee. When I tried to leave the room to use the bathroom, the door was locked. I heard a bunch of people laughing, music playing, and then eventually light moaning. My stomach hurt so badly from having to pee, but I just went back to bed, cried, and somehow fell asleep. That morning I woke up to John's friend eerily staring at me from the opening of the door.

That's not even the worst part: One woman stood over once. She must have gotten too high and couldn't leave. Amber I went to make breakfast and saw her asleep at the table. She had marks on her arms. The sad part is that we were so naive and used to this behavior that we made up a "crack head" song. We sang it around the woman as we made breakfast. Then John's friend took her into the bathroom and put her in the bath. It made me uncomfortable, but I didn't understand why.

John also used to let Amber's friends come over. I learned that she hosted a lot of "make out" parties, where she would turn off the lights and play loud music and everyone would kiss. It was the first time I kissed someone. It was uncomfortable, but I liked the boy I kissed and would only kiss him. I remember John coming in and laughing, then turning off the light as he walked out.

A lot of bad shit happened, but I think John really got hit with reality when his son was affected. Amber's little brother was sexually assaulted by the baby sitter's six year old son. The saddest part is that the kid was not a monster; he was repeating what he was exposed to. I remember sitting in the bathroom crying that night, realizing how truly fucked up this family was. I didn't want to be there anymore, but I couldn't leave Amber. I honestly put up with everything because I didn't want her to go through things alone. John fired the babysitters and started dating someone who we used to call, "Fruitloop". We hated her because she was trying to bring "order" to the apartment. She started trying to control Amber, even me, and we rebelled. Amber started stealing money and cigarettes from John and his GF. Things were very quickly going downhill.

The last horrible thing I remember is being introduced to her friend, Maurice. She told me that he really liked me and thought I was beautiful. We chatted online for a bit, and he told me that he was going to come over to have a movie night. Amber dressed me up and we walked to the train station to meet him. On the way there, she came clean that she met him online. I was so angry with her, and to be honest, terrified. Her stepfather wasn't home, and this guy, who I thought was a young boy was spending the night. We met him, and he was creepy. He was tall, skinny, and looked unhealthy. He was definitely not our age. I was angry the whole time, and did not want him to stay. We put on a movie and got into pajamas. I decided to wear the most hideous pajamas in hopes that he would find me unattractive. I still remember that outfit: An extremely bright green shirt and red and white striped Adidas pants. We went to lie down and Amber made me sleep in the middle. He kept trying to hold my hand and I kept pulling away. Eventually the movie ended, and I knew she was going to turn everything off. Once the lights were off, everyone went to sleep. (Except me) I realize now that the man was waiting for me to fall asleep before touching me. Once he did, I pretended to move in my sleep. He kept trying and I started to push away. I realize now that he was hard, which is something I didn't understand back then. Eventually he held down one of my arms and grabbed the other one aggressively to touch him. That was when I broke free and ran out of the room. He didn't follow me. I went to lie on couch, and I knew that he was doing something to Amber. There was nothing I could do.. I stayed awake all night, scared that he would come out of the room and hurt me. He never did.. That morning he left and I pretended to be asleep. Amber and I never talked about what happened..

Soon thereafter, it finally ended. One weekend, Amber stole John's debit card. We went crazy. We bought new clothes and went to a fair by my house. The next morning, we went to the beach. We were exhausted. We took the train all the way back to apartment to find John, his girlfriend, and an EXTREMELY angry woman. It was apparently Amber's aunt, and she was screaming at us, mostly me. She blamed me for everything, saying that I was taking advantage of a ten year old girl. That was when I found out that Amber had lied to me about her age. She was in fact two years younger than me. Within minutes, her aunt was screaming and telling Amber to say goodbye to me because she was sending her to California. She told me that I needed to get my ass back on the train and go home. I never took the train home alone, and I was scared. It was getting late, and I didn't know what to do. Amber begged them to let her walk me to the train station, but they refused. They gave us five minutes to say goodbye then I had to go. We cried and cried, and then I left. I have not seen her since.

We kept in touch for a little bit. She started her new life in California, and I stayed back, not realizing that what happened in that apartment would haunt me for the rest of my life. We made plans a couple times to visit, but it never happened. Right now, according to Instagram, she is still in California, married with three kids. She seems happy and her life seems unaffected by what happened. I saw a video of John and his son once, who seemed to have a lot of problems. In the video, they were smoking weed, and John was talking like a crazy person. Once I heard his voice, all of the memories came back..

There were many things that I experienced in that apartment, a lot of it that still to this day is hard to admit, and I sure as hell can’t put into writing--things that I have seen, heard, and experienced. No child should have to experience what I did, and I have never really come 100% clean with everything that happened. 

Looking back on what I experienced in that apartment, in the surrounding neighborhoods--the absolute horrors that occurred in a single year, I realize, in a strange way, that things could have gone a LOT worse. I am grateful that it ended the way it did, because I believe that if Amber DID stay, things would have only gotten worse. I think that a lot of my issues in my adult life have happened because I never came clean with what happened to me and what continue to happen to me in the next couple of years. In the months before she left, I was introduced to the girl who would be my best friend for the next thirteen years. Again, little did I know that a man who was supposed to be a safe and responsible adult figure would take advantage of me.

It's hard to put into words everything that I have experienced in my life. This is sixteen years that I have to make sense of. I am hopeful that therapy will help me to live my life without this constant suffocation of memories. Now that I know how my pain began, maybe it will help the healing process. But despite it all, I am still here, fighting every second of every day, trying to find a way to forgive my past, and give myself a healthy and happy future…