This is my first time joining this prompt, but I do agree and know from experience your view on sex and all of its wonderful pleasures can be greatly affected by your mental health.

I was around 4 almost 5 when the first family member molested me. It happened till I was 8 when my mom overheard me and his 2 nieces from his blood sister talking about how he and his teenage son were abusing us. We compared notes if you will, who was getting it worse, it was me. Mainly because his wife, my aunt and mom’s sister was my bus driver and I would go home with her after the route until mom and dad got home. Leaving my alcoholic uncle ample time to abuse. When my mom confronted me about it I did not deny, she told my dad who said that I was young, perhaps we were taking things the wrong way. He wanted to put a tape recorder in the room and catch him on tape. I was young but I can tell you that I still remember the taste of Ivory soap on my uncle’s and cousins penises when they forced me to suck them. I can still smell the Old Milwaukee beer on his breath when he would put fingers in me and tell me how pretty I was, spit hitting my face as I lay on the couch trying not to vomit across the carpet and praying for someone to come in and catch him. He was never recorded or reported, my mom just told my aunt who sent me to stay with my memaw when my uncle or cousin was home.

Don’t tell! This stays in this house! Not the neighbor’s business, what would they say? You will be blamed. Oh it was driven into my head hard even then it was always MY fault. Generational curses are real and alive and well in the shame that is sexual abuse.

I spent my teenage years being abused by a circle of men, spent a year in a mental hospital before revealing to my mom that one of them was my stepfather. He spent 30 days in jail, she stayed with him. He was well off, retired commander in the military, more money than my mom had ever seen in her life. That little secret became her leverage against him till he died.

College years found me being the slut I was raised to be. Sex was a thing that was used to get a man. Suddenly it came on my terms. Only one ever held me down to tease me with toys and his hands to make me beg, and at first I was fighting with all I had, too many flashbacks, too many memories. He let me go, talked me down, explained what submission really was and that it was in my court not his.. no meant no. Period, end of story. I found myself going back. I also found myself searching for older men, far too wise for my years there were few college guys that I enjoyed spending time with, if I did they were upperclassmen and closer to graduation. A car wreck found me sleeping with an Army recruiter, I was 18 he was 45. He came and got me from the hospital that night, I was too afraid to go back to the dorm, I had my own dorm room and I didn’t want to be alone. Another man who wanted submission that was my choice not his.

Still sex was a tool, I could moan in all the right places, do all the right grunts and cries and walk away feeling nothing. But they didn’t know. One failed marriage later I was 22 and single, going to school at night, working third shift, sleeping the day away to do homework after and start it all over again. On the weekends I went to a local dance place and sang and ran into an old family friend. I truly cared about him. I could see forever with him and I am sure he could me, until I found out I was pregnant, and I knew it wasn’t his. That ended that. So I remained single until my son was three and ran into a high school friend and we have been married for 25 years this year.

One thing I never told anyone was the abuse.. what happens in this house stays in this house, people will talk, it is your fault. That lesson stuck well. Until I was married and 6 months pregnant with our first child together and my boobs were HUGE. Think JJ bra cup, I was miserable. We had gone to visit my mom and my husband had gone to the garage with her and my son to get something. I was standing with my back to the kitchen table and my stepfather came from behind and grabbed my boobs with both hands. His whisper in my ear at how good they still felt and he had never seen any that big. I was 27, not a kid, until that moment. I felt the bile rise, my pulse sped up, I stopped breathing and I was trapped. He kept squeezing and fondling and telling me he would love to suck on one when he heard the back door open. He jumped back to his seat and I stood there shaking all over. They came in and I grabbed my purse, put my cup in the sink and said I was ready to go home I didn’t feel well. I didn’t dare say a word. My husband is not an idiot, he had already questioned me after I kicked him in the face one night when he tried to wake me up by going down on me. I plead innocence, I really didn’t remember, but he knew there was a reason I instantly responded that way. We got to the car and I just kept saying go jut go but he refused to leave. He finally drug it out of me and he jumped out of the car, me right behind him begging him to leave it alone. He strode into the house and got in his my stepfathers face and said, ” If you ever put your hands on my wife again I will kill you, do you understand me? I know what you did to her and no one helped her but by God I will. I will kill you with my bare hands and bury you before 911 can arrive., ” turning to my mom he yelled, ” and you self righteous hypocrite, you knew, you have known and you have stayed quiet, his money bought your silence right. Well it doesn’t buy mine. I don’t give a fuck who knows. But trust me I will kill him and make you wish you were dead if he ever ever looks at her sideways.”

My mom turned ghost white and shot me a look, my stepfather sat there with no response, shaking all over. My husband yanked me out the door and to the car and drove, still shaking, still mad. I said nothing, I sat quietly in the car. I didn’t know what to say. He was not a violent or angry person, still isn’t. But that shook me to my core. When we got home he sat me down and made me tell him all of it, so I did. He was the first person to ask, listen, and defend. Not even my mother had done that. Sex became different. He was more focused on me now, he would see when I checked out, as I was so gifted at doing when it got too close or became too similar to before. He would stop and talk me back into the room with him, ask me what sent me away in my head, taught me it was ok to be present.

I went to school for psychology, never finished for many reasons. But to have someone after all those years defend me was earth shattering.

I was 27 when I had my first orgasm, 27!! I was 27 when I realized that I could enjoy sex. We have done a lot since then. Before the wreck made it impossible for him. We had an open marriage for many years. Mainly because my sex drive suddenly went into overdrive and I knew I was only the second woman he had ever been with and I wanted him to experience more. Something that would have bothered me before suddenly didn’t because we discussed it, the partners were people we knew and associated with daily and it worked for both of us.

What pisses me off the most is it took me caring for my mother the last years of her life to learn that she had been abused as well and her don’t tell policy came from her mom. Generational curses. Sometimes it takes one to stand up and say it stops here.. I was that one.

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