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It took me years to come to terms with what was really happening. When I was 9 years old, I met a boy online, and we quickly became friends. We knew everything about each other - He was 15 when we first met. When I was 10 and he was 16, he asked to be my boyfriend. Being a naive 10 year old girl I said yes. I can’t be mad at her for that. It was innocent at first. Just what you’d expect from a childhood relationship - “I love you, goodnight.” “Hope you’re doing okay.” “Let’s play some games together!” The only difference was that one of us were nearly an adult. Someone who should have known better to not even THINK about being romantically involved with a 10 year old girl. However, it went sour. He started talking to me about sexual subjects. Stuff I wasn’t at all familiar with. He’d make us roleplay situations, what he’d do to me if he got ahold of me in real life. Asking for photos. Guilt tripping me for seeming “off” or uninterested. I began to feel distressed at the time, but I was so young, that wasn’t really an emotion I had felt before. I told myself, this sick feeling must be love. That must be why I feel so nervous, why I feel knots in my stomach when I see his name pop up on my screen. I was very attached to him, at least I thought I was. I was always picked on in school and the few friends I had were awful to me, so he was my only real friend. My worst fear was somehow losing him, and he must have known that I thought that. He took advantage of that, and would guilt trip me at any opportunity to make sure I did whatever he wanted me to. After a while, he broke up with me, but we were still very much so “friends”. We would talk everyday, and he was still just as inappropriate and creepy with me as he was before. Throughout the years, he would begin to talk to me about worse and worse stuff. He explicitly told me about his attraction to children, and that he worked as a teaching assistant in a primary school. I tried to brush it off and keep it at the back of my mind, but I got to tipping point last year when he started to pressure me into meeting with him in real life. It went on for 7 years. I hate to say it, and it makes me sad for the little girl that I was, but the rest of my childhood was stolen from me. I’m 17 now, about the same age he was when we met. The thought of EVER saying the stuff to a 10,11,12 year old that he did makes me feel physically ill. I still haven’t fully processed what happened to me, but I’ve been working on it. I’m yet to cry, at least properly, about it. The thing that sucks about this is that this went on for so long, that it felt completely normal. The people in my life who know all cried when I told them. It felt unfair, really - that they could cry about it. And I’m just stuck in a mindset I’m desperately trying to get out of where this is normal, and I feel completely numb. Recently, I decided I wanted to do something about it. I went to the police. This night, I sent off old screenshots of conversations between us to a detective working on my case. It’s terrifying, being that vulnerable. But I feel obligated to do it. The thought of him being around children all day makes me sick. I don’t care if he doesn’t go to prison - as long as he’s never near a child again I’ll be happy. That’s why I’m doing it. I won’t let shame and embarrassment stop me from doing this, and I especially won’t let my brain tell me he doesn’t deserve punishment. Because that’s exactly what he’d want me to think, too.

The bitterest truth that I had to face was understanding the depth of trauma. Not just the type of trauma that forms after an injury but the ones that are under the surface, winding through veins, in the dark places of a soul...in the parts of the mind that we lock away. The kind that hides. Goes dormant. Waits until you aren't ready and makes you face the reality that you've lost something you'll never get back. Innocence. I grew up sheltered, protected, and a little misguided. Intelligence didn't skip me but street smarts certainly did. I didn't have a road map to navigate through the ins and outs of the bad things that could lurk around corners...and it left me open to grooming at fifteen. He changed me in a permanent way. The internet let him in and my yearning to feel important, needed, and wanted, kept him there to imprint on a psyche that wasn't emotionally or mentally mature enough to understand the repercussions of actions. Mistakes were made and spirals became trainwrecks. I carried the burden of a closeted life into my college years and it left me exposed to the unfathomable. A predator saw me from a mile away--cloaked in something that resembled friendship, disguised by a pretext that ripped away the last shreds of dignity. I had no reason to doubt them but I should have. The drink in my hand, the fuzziness floating through my head, and the spilled champagne gave me no warning. That's when the lights went out. That's when it went dark and every action that followed was no longer my own. He took my memories. My self-worth. My sense of security. My dignity. Bruised, broken, and confused...I spiraled. I tried to cover the marks on my face and scrambled to find what was left of my clothes, but he'd done his homework. He destroyed everything. He made it look like a blackout gone wrong and was already telling me the opposite of the truth. I already knew the truth. I felt it in my gut. I was raped. Another light within me flickered and went out with a smirk on his face. This man actually wanted to touch me after violating my body. I backed into a corner. I shrank. I sobbed. I kept repeating the word "why" like it was a singular mantra, without refrain. He had no answers. Just excuses and justifications for his actions. I heard every word that no one ever wants to hear. "No one will believe you", "I have her, why would I need to drug and force you?", "It's your word against mine.", "You know that this is all in your head, right?" I believed him. I did not seek justice out of fear. Out of humiliation. Out of a lack of faith in myself. It nearly killed me and, despite scars that haunted me for six years, part of me wondered if I deserved it. That was my rock bottom and it followed me for a very long time but the choice to rise from the ashes has stuck with me. I refused to let him take me down. I refused to let his ghost take away what remained of my spirit. Seventeen years have passed and I'm alive...but he isn't. He blamed me for a life shattered but a guilty conscience never fades. He chose not to live with the consequences that I bear the weight of every day of my life. There's a part of me that regrets the chance to report him but I know that I look at my life as a series of experiences (traumatic or not) that have permanently etched into the darkest parts of my heart. I lived. I can hold my head up high and know that I overcame more than anyone should. My rapist might've taken away something that I can never get back but I refuse to drown. I refuse to give up. I refuse to give in. I refuse to see my broken pieces as less than incredible; lined with gold.

I was only 16 years old. I was dating someone for 4 months, when all of a sudden he woke up one day, and had different feelings towards me. Little did I know, he video taped us having sex, without me knowing. I found out weeks after, that he sent it to his whole sports team, and parents. The cops took my phone and erased everything off mine but not the video off his. I am now 18 years old, and I just got out of a very emotional abusive relationship. Trauma affected me so much from my past, and I have never been worse than these last couple months. I did choose to leave the abusive relationship, but everyday is so hard. Living with that trauma, and not knowing what to do or how to live with it. Feeling likes it’s affecting my future relationships. With my anxiety it just keeps getting worse and worse each day.

TW: sexual violence, child abuse I was about 8 and at that time I used to live in a big house with my parents and my cousins. My oldest cousin was 12 and we never really talked to each other. One day I was alone with him and he asked me to come downstairs and then when I did he locked the door, proceeded to take my clothes off and then rape me. After I cried and cried he asked me to fuck off. I ran to my bedroom and cried. I kept all of this inside me for 6 years. I told my parents recently and they have taken legal action since. And I’m proud to call myself a survivor.

Dear K, I met you when I was only 11, I was lonely, vulnerable, and so sad. At the time, everyone was calling me a slut and a prostitute for simply having breasts and curves. When you would talk to me, you never made me feel ugly or disgusting, you made me feel appreciated and loved. Our friendship was "beautiful" at first, you would always ask me how I was, what I was going to do after school, but I never realized that you wanted to control every living moment of mine. At age 12, when I said no to you asking me out, you would ask me out every single day, first, it was a hand on the shoulder, then a shove into the lockers, then yanking my hair and hitting me and slapping my butt. I couldn't escape you because you were always there, at class, at lunch, in front of my locker, outside school, on the train, in the grocery store, and even on my doorstep. At age 13 I couldn't be myself without you, I knew how terrible of a person you were, but you were the only one who would talk to me, spend time with me. I felt like I deserved how you treated me, so I would do anything to make you happy, so you wouldn't hit me. I would wear the clothes you liked, smile and laugh when you wanted me to, let you touch me inside out, but that was never enough for you. You pushed me to my limit, you drove me insane that my body couldn't stop you from stealing from me. I couldn't scream, I couldn't wriggle around, I couldn't say no, I was just paralyzed, numb, but my brain was on fire because I knew I should've been fighting back. When my friend realized what you had done to me, he never let you go near me again, but you still stole from me. I can't sleep without having nightmares of you, without hearing you whisper how you would steal more from me, without feeling your touch and wincing whenever someone hugs me. I am scared that if I open up again, I will only be robbed again. Whenever I see you, I shudder at the mere reminder of how you owned and brainwashed me. I am still healing, and always will be. My promise to you is that I will never let you hurt another girl again and that I will forever be an advocate so that we survivors can have a voice. So that I can have my voice again!