He touched me. I was only two years old, and he touched me. My mom married him when I was one, but he wasn’t my father. I thought he was nice at first, but I have never been so wrong. I thought I could trust him. He ruined me; he corrupted me, and he still haunts me.

The apartment we lived in was, if anything, well kept and always clean. I watched Care Bears and My Little Pony on TV in the living room all day while lying on the big fluffy couch. I can still smell the cigar smoke coming from the kitchen, which filled the house when mom started smoking with him. I always hated the way that the smoke lingered and stuck to my clothes. My room was my favorite with all of my toys and blankets that helped me feel safe.

The sound of his voice and the way he spoke to me still burned in my skull. With the deceivingly kind but coarse voice, he would use when he said, “Don’t be afraid” or “Everything is going to be okay.” He scares me more than anything now, yet back then I was too young to understand. I was way too little to see that what he was doing would end up ruining my life and leaving me scarred forever. I still don’t even understand how he could do it. I was only a baby.

When he threatened me because I wasn’t listening, which was the majority of the time, he always scared me. Once he grabbed and shaved off a chunk of my hair with his clippers to show me that he wasn’t joking. “I told you I was serious, didn’t I?” There were even some nights that he would make me stay up and watch scary movies with him so that I would learn my lesson or the monsters from them would come to get me. Sometimes he left bruises or welts that were painful to even touch on me and sometimes on mommy, too.
I was always asking myself, ‘Why me?’ or ‘Why am I here?’ but most of all I asked myself why my mom didn’t believe me. When I tried to tell my mom what he was doing to me when she was gone, she thought I was lying. My own mother didn’t believe what I was saying to her. She didn’t believe that the man that she loved could ever do something like that to her daughter.

When I told my grandmother, she knew it was true. She wanted to get me out of there, and she did everything to do so. One of the days I went to her house, so she could watch me. We sat in her dining room with her floral patterned wallpaper (that is still there to this day), and she videotaped me saying what he had done to me and where he touched me. Mom, still in denial, finally saw the truth when his daughter walked in on him hurting me. He had hurt her, too.

I cried so much then, and I still cry about it. I’m numb. Most of the time I have very little feeling, if any at all. I started cutting myself when I was eleven because I could still feel the sting. I now have PTSD and chronic depression and paranoia. I still have the nightmares that just won’t go away no matter how hard I try to make them.

Even though I’m in counseling now and I stopped hurting myself, very few people can put me in a good mood. My boyfriend, mom, and my baby brother are the only people who can truly make me happy. I still barely sleep most nights in fear that he’ll find me. I can’t be at home alone anymore, and it’s so hard for me to trust people. I still have trouble talking about it, even with the guy I’ve been with for over a year now. I’m just still terrified.
Mom and I finally moved out after I had turned four. She wanted to file for divorce, but she couldn’t because she was pregnant with his baby. There was an investigation, and they recorded my statement, so I wouldn’t have to testify. I don’t remember if I ever went to the courthouse or if I ever saw him after that. I’ve tried to block most of it from my memory. 

He was never put in jail for what he did. The court ruled that I wouldn’t remember any of it when I grew up, so they didn’t see it as a problem. I do remember and they were wrong. Now I have a restraining order against him that mom and I went back to get a few months later. I hate him for this. I think the scariest part of it all is that he’s still out there, and he’s probably going through the same routine on other little kids now. I just hope he knows how much I wish he had to feel how I feel. I will never forget what he did to me.