First of all, I haven't really gotten my thoughts together, so there will be some major rambling. I apologize for that! Please bare with me!

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I have a hard time coming to terms with the sexual molestation I was subjected to as a child. I was young 5-10 years old, and the perp was my then stepfather and a friend of his. It was never violent, but it was rather frequent. And this is where it gets so confusing and fills me with shame.

For a bit of backstory; my parents married very young, I was born 11 months after the wedding and my sister exactly one year later. My mother resented me from the get go and told me often how she never wanted me and that I was a constant source of embarrassment to her. My dad was away for work a lot. I spent a lot of time with my paternal grandparents, and my grandpa loved me to bits. This made my mom resent me even more. When I was 4, my parents decided to move about 1200 miles away. Shortly afterwards they were divorced and my sister and I had to live with our mother. I still remember vividly the day I watched my father leave, and I knew it was for good. I didn't see him for about 2 years and in the following years only a few times a year.

When I was 5 my mother met my stepfather and they moved in together. He was a much older man, quite sophisticated and in many positive ways, opened new worlds to us. He was also very hands on with his "affection". I didn't understand what he did and I was even more confused when he asked if I liked what he was doing. It felt weird and off, but having been completely starved of any affection or attention by my mother, I craved it, and if "the weird things" was the price I had to pay... Classic child molester stuff in other words. His behaviour and language was highly sexualizing and my mother either didn't care or was oblivious.

By the time I was 10 he stopped molesting me. Most probably because by then I understood that what he did was wrong. He didn't think so though, as he "never hurt" me. In all of this I learned that my only value was as a sexual object.

Somehow I managed to completely block out any feelings about the abuse and continued to see him as a friend well after he and my mother were divorced. I think a lot had to do with mine not understanding, that what I went through was sexual abuse, because it wasn't violent and I never fought back. I just let it to happen. I, like many other people, saw sexual assault as inherently violent. If it wasn't violent, it wasn't assault.

I had a string of boyfriends in my 20's and made sure that I was in charge of any sexual acts. I used it to punish them (drive them mad and gasping for air and leave them hanging) and to punish myself. Sex was instead of drugs bascially. For a moment it was gratifying as it proved that I was sexy and desirable, but also that I wasn't anything more than an object.

As I said in the beginning, this text is barely coherent, but I'm trying to put words on what happened.

It was in my mid-20's that I couldn't bring myself to see my stepfather anymore. I started becoming violently ill if I encountered someone iwho used the same cologne as he, even if I had no interaction was so ever with them. The memories started coming to the surface and filled me with shame and even more self-loathing. I told my mother about it when I was about 28 or 29, and she refused to believe it ever happened. That pretty much put the final nail in the coffin of the relationship.

My sister was very angry with me for not wanting to see my mother or my stepfather anymore. She called me a liar. The tragedy is that she too was molested. Not as frequently or for as long, but it happened. I saw it with my own eyes. She's had major ED all her life, and for the longest time shied away from any physical contact with people, so it did affect her too.

I've had a hard time coming to terms with actually socializing with my stepfather, out of free will, for several years, even after what happened. I've had a hard time coming to terms with liking him and enjoying his company. (he was quite intellectual and taught me a lot, listened to me and took me to art shows, museums, the opera and ballet etc). Only lately I've come to forgive myself and stopped blaming myself for what happened. I don't hate him anymore, I don't miss him and i don't care that he's dead. Maybe one day I'll be able to completely free myself, but that day isn't today, not yet.

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If you have read this far, and didn't get a stroke doing so, I want to thank you! I don't know what I wanted with this rant. A kind of venting I guess. Take care all!