One night in group things somehow went from meaningless check-ins like “I’m OK” or “Things have been better” to Amber sharing about the time her cousin sexually assaulted her. Hearing this triggered some deep rooted feelings inside me and I, for the first time told people (other than my therapist at the time) my secret. When telling the house, it almost felt like I was dieing. After, the previous weight of secrecy had been replaced by an even bigger one. Fear.

Amber’s story along with mine caused Mark to share a secret of his own. He told us how a few years prior to coming to the treatment center he had sexually abused someone very close to him. Hearing this changed everything.

Someway or another, in my brain Mark became my abuser. From there on the relationship, if you can even call it that, became this unconscious search on my part for clarity. He had owned up to his wrong doing, faced the consequences, and his family and he had begun to heal from it.
. . .

When I was around six I was sexually abused for about three years off and on by someone very close to me. I never told anyone about it until very recently, back then it didn’t seem wrong or even real honestly. He was older and he knew better. I used to think, “Why would someone so close to me want to do anything to hurt me?”

I know better now than I knew then. I used to convince myself it was all just a horrible recurring dream. But the “dream” was never the same as the one before it and I could only lie to myself for so long. At a more knowledgeable age I realized the truth and severity behind the situation. Still I suppressed the incidents best I could until they began killing me from the inside out.

After years of suppression, the unidentifiable childhood anger and angst I had, became too much for my parents and they had finally had enough. My parents were completely in the dark on why I was so angry and defiant, I wouldn’t tell my therapist anything and they were down to there last resort. Sending me away.

One night after a track meet, my Dad confronted me on some post I had made on Twitter, and how in it I had called my step mom Brenda a b****. He was extremely angry and disappointed in me. I guess his anger towards me triggered him to break the news. That my Dad, Mom, and Brenda were all sick and tired of my behavior and I was going to be sent away. At the time I didn’t think it was possible I could cry that hard; I’ve cried harder since. For the next few days I barely spoke to anyone about anything and just went through the motions of my everyday life: wake up, go to the s*** hole I called school, seven miserable and boring classes, track practice, dinner, sleep, and repeat.

During those few days all I could do was think. Turns out sending me away had been an empty threat. A sort of “scare straight” tactic that my Dad had no intention of actually following through with. But I had realized how miserable in life I really was, how in fact I actually wanted to go to treatment, and finding out that I was “diagnosed as clinically depressed now suffering with situational depression”.

After a two month battle with my parents and I - me trying with all my might to convince them to send me away, a daily regimen of prescription pills to “help manage with my depression”, and just sitting at home day in and day out ( I had stopped going to school for those two months due to depression and severe anxiety) and watching tv on the couch - my Dad decided he would send me to Colorado.
Two weeks later, I left Florida and went to residential treatment for about six months. There I finally told people about my childhood and the pain from it all became too much to bear. I found ways to escape the pain memories and replace them with a new - much more manageable - pain. Not coping became my specialty.

In the midst of trying to heal from the pain of a ten year suppressed secret I met Mark. This dumb, goofy, drug addict boy, who I fell completely into a codependent relationship with after the group where I found out he was an abuser himself, around my third month there. Now I realize it was not so coincidentally in the most difficult and painful parts of my recovery. It was a passionate fling filled with cuddling, hand holding, kissing, and completely no sense of consequences or regret.

Those rose colored glasses were quickly ripped off my face time and time again in an attempt to show me the unhealthiness of the relationship and that I was slowly sabotaging my recovery. I used to have really bad issues with guys and validating myself through being with them and this “relationship” with Mark was a HUGE step backwards in that aspect of my recovery. Aaron, the director of the program, would sit with me in his office for hours and try to explain this to me in an attempt to get me to start thinking clearly again. Try and try again he failed until one day it all just kind of... clicked.

But learning Mark’s story and that he had come clean about his wrong doings to his parents and family was everything I could dream of from my abuser. All I have ever wanted (and still want) from my abuser is to admit to what he did. Take the consequences he rightfully deserves and let our family fully heal. I realize now that will most likely never happen.

Mark was the apology I always wanted but never got. He was this never ending search for clarity inside my subconscious, only revealing itself to those viewing the situation from the outside in. That search only left me disappointed and in a way, heart broken. Now I know better. You can’t find clarity for your own issues and pain inside someone else. It has to come from within. For me it was coming to terms with the fact that my abuser wasn’t going to apologize, let alone admit to what he did any time soon or possibly even ever. I had to be satisfied with just knowing the truth of what had happened and so that’s what I did. Accepted and healed. Healing became a faster process once Mark graduated from the program and was no longer a part of my everyday life.

Still, healing was extremely difficult for me. I don’t think clarified or clarity is the right word necessarily for my feelings on the situation. Maybe more contentment than clarity. I can’t actually get clarity on the subject until he decides to speak truthfully about it - which would mean actually admitting to it - and I’m not holding my breath.

So right now I am content with my past and not even sure if content is the right word for it either. Basically I don’t feel the need to push or pry for any further answers. That would only tear open an old wound that the stitches have already been removed from and all that remains is a scar. Through it all- before, during, and after -I nearly tore my family to shreds. Thankfully today my Dad and I are closer than ever and my Mom.. well my relationship with her is strange but good. But that’s what happens when you rip open the closet door on all your family’s secrets. But I am not that scar anymore. I’m just me.