GOh that was the least of it. There's a lot more that happened. It's not just about like little things that happen it's about a whole climate that you grow up with that makes it impossible for you to trust another human. I'm in my mid '30s now and I still can't go to the shower without a rifle. The thing that's the most traumatic about the abuse is how everyone who is supposed to intervene for some reason almost universally sides with them or does nothing about it. Like every single person who is supposed to help you fails you. No one stops it. They just tell you to stop screaming so that they can sleep. The lasting damage really is the feeling of powerlessness. Like what the fuck was I going to do? I was fucking seven and he was twice my size and I would be severely punished for fighting back and trying to stop it. It wasn't just sexual. It was everything else too. It was watching him spit in my food at the dinner table and then making me eat it because 'we don't waste food in this house', it was being forced to sit back while he destroyed my toys, it was getting beaten on the front lawn after being ditched at a waterpark and driven home by the sheriff's deputy when I was six, not for anything that I did specifically wrong, but word for word 'because I came back and embarrass them by attracting the police's attention'. Then when I'd go to school I would be ignored. And when I wasn't being ignored I was being picked on by the administration. The damage is from not developing the healthy boundaries or not being allowed to develop them so that you can say no and draw that line in the sand and say fuck you I'm not going to fucking do that or no you're not going to do that to me. Like there's no healthy middle ground for me. It's always either total submission or intense rage that lasts for days and it takes everything that I have to not get overwhelmed by it but it's still gets through like every time and I don't really know what to do about it.

Oh that was the least of it. There's a lot more that happened. It's not just about like little things that happen it's about a whole climate that you grow up with that makes it impossible for you to trust another human. I'm in my mid '30s now and I still can't go to the shower without a rifle. The thing that's the most traumatic about the abuse is how everyone who is supposed to intervene for some reason almost universally sides with them or does nothing about it. Like every single person who is supposed to help you fails you. No one stops it. They just tell you to stop screaming so that they can sleep. The lasting damage really is the feeling of powerlessness. Like what the fuck was I going to do? I was fucking seven and he was twice my size and I would be severely punished for fighting back and trying to stop it.

Oh that was the least of it. There's a lot more that happened. It's not just about like little things that happen it's about a whole climate that you grow up with that makes it impossible for you to trust another human. I'm in my mid '30s now and I still can't go to the shower without a rifle

Oh that was the least of it. There's a lot more that happened. It's not just about like little things that happen it's about a whole climate that you grow up with that makes it impossible for you to trust another human