Seven years of the most formative years of childhood I was sexually used. Age 3 1/2 when Carl recruited me until age 11 when I warned Reed off. Carl passed me on to Keith who eventually passed me on to Joey, my older nephew. Reed clued his friend Fred in, “She won’t mind,” was the message. I was 15 then and hunting desperately for “love,” having no clue what that felt like.

I did mind. Nobody cared. I met my first full grown penis in my brother’s bed at 3 1/2. Of course I minded. I minded the use of my body, the dark silence I sank into, and the way each of these people discarded me when they were done with me.

Joey apologized immediately when I began to cry. I’d thought I was free of that particular activity. I was 12 then and gathered the hopelessness about me like a cloak hiding my pain, my shame, my uselessness as a person, other than my body parts.

Then at 16, dear old Dad, gave it a try. Renewed trauma sent me running for my life into marriage.

It is still hard to be me at 66 still working on the mess I became. I internalized so many wrong messages about me. Marrying Fred was a continuation of the messages I learned about me. I had no notable value. He discarded me repeatedly.

Can anyone tell me at what point I ought to have been able to turn my life around? Was there an age that I passed by when the light should have filtered in and shone my wrong messages for what they were? Sunk in silence and shame and self hate, was there a way to “just put it behind me?”

Now at 66 I do therapy twice a week in an attempt to finally be free of the baggage accumulated from sixty+ years of headed in wrong directions. Yet people try to say my life did not happen. I had a wonderful childhood. The worst thing to happen was poverty.

If I could have been someone else, I would have been. I did the best I could with what I had to work with.

I am no longer ashamed. I respect me. I am proud of my efforts, my courage, my getting up the dozens of times I fell down. I no longer judge me for a life flung out of control by a childhood filled with alternating bouts of sex and rejection.

Before anyone judges my badly lived life, my “crazy” behavior, or deems me unworthy, try putting on my shoes and walking a few feet in them. Tell me if you could have done better.

Of course, you have to believe my life happened first. As the person who lived it, am still living it, I can assure you, it did. I am the only person I can live as.