My family, and my husband, M, harbor hurt for me not telling them what was going on. I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to vocalize the reasoning. I’m willing to bet there are others like me out there, and I want you to be able to learn something from me, and not make my mistakes. So here is why I kept quiet.

Instinct. The first time I was sexually abused I was just a young child. Not even school age. He wasn’t the last, in fact the abuse continued throughout the majority of my life, by different people. From that young age, I was told to shut up. Not only was nobody going to believe me, but it was my fault. What was happening to me at that moment was all my doing, and if anyone found out, they’d blame me too. Just in case telling me that wasn’t enough, many of the abusers threatened to hurt my family. Kill them, light the house on fire, or just a vague ‘If you tell anyone I’ll come after your whole family’ type of threat. I love my family, I’d do anything to keep them safe.

When you hear the same things over and over for decades, by different people, you tend to internalize it. Now, there have been times when I’ve gone to my folks and told them about someone touching me, and they believed me. They loved me through it, they helped in every way they could. So, that brings me to the second reason I kept quiet.

The things E did to me, didn’t come as much of a surprise to me. I’ve been abused many times, by many people. I’ve seen the pain that my pain causes my loved ones. My hurt breaks their hearts, and they blame themselves. The what-if game gets played. I see the devastation in their eyes. I wanted to tough it out, and deal with it on my own. And that’s how I caused my family the deepest pain. One day I just left.