When I was 13, I had entered a new school district. My parents separated and I moved to a rural area with my mom and brother of 8 at the time. We grew up in a closed off environment, socially and emotionally. My brother and I didn't openly express our emotions, ourselves, and we didn't know how to be vulnerable or confident in speaking openly our truth. It was hard for me to lose the love and support that my father had provided, and I felt vulnerable once I began living alone with my mother and younger brother, especially at 13. I had been dealing with bullying at school, among many other issues, like falling into the father figure energy in the household, while trying to be a big sister, and a young girl, and a teenager, and a daughter, and whatever else I was.
Down the street from us, there was someone who I had met briefly while riding horses with my mother that year. My mom had grown akin to his father, someone who influenced my mother's exit from her suburban life and marriage. She held their family in high regard, and my opinion of the person who lived down the street was high from the beginning of our first interaction.
Without a father or a close relationship with my younger brother (I didn't realize that my relationship with him was abnormally distant until recently) I sought out companionship and someone to support me from a wiser point of view.
We didn't have many neighbors or friends close and growing up in the suburbs I was used to hanging out with my neighbors. I began going down the street to this person's house and hanging out with him regularly. It didn't mean anything to me that I was 13 and he was 28, I thought it was cool that he was down to hang out with me, to teach me skills he had learned riding horses, to guide me and support me a little bit since I was alone living up the street and didn't have my dad around, in a new environment, not many friends at school.
This became one of my favorite things to do after school, a common habit of growing up hanging out with the neighborhood kids every day.
It was a few months of us hanging out that one night I woke up around 2 in the morning. I couldn't sleep, and decided to go down to see what he was doing. It was normal for me at 13 to go on adventures in the night with my friends, but we would usually end up climbing trees or wandering around in people's yards, and I thought it would be fun to hang out.
I went to his house, and walked into his sliding door that was unlocked normally. In sleuth style, my toes touched the carpet softly, drowned out by light snoring coming from the next room. I had this funny silly feeling, one of childness and ignorance, full of play, full of love. I opened his door softly and stood by his bed for a second contemplating how I was going to wake him up in the funniest way. I decided that I would jump attack him. This seemed obvious, and weighing 110 lbs it was the greatest card I had to play. So, in an instant, I leaped onto his sleeping body that tore awake in a startle, with some deep breaths of shock and my pleasing laughter.
Writing this story gives me a B&E vibe, but he was the one who opened the invitation to come over whenever I was bored, including at night. He was the one who told me his door was open. He planted this idea. I was bored, and it was 2am, and I accepted the invitation gladfully.
Anyway, I had no idea what was going to come of me going over there, but I assure you it was something simple, like looking at old photos, or going to look at stars, or telling stories, or something random.
I had been sitting on his breath-recovering body laughing while he was holding his hand on his heart saying that I scared him. I felt triumphant in a second of this vulnerability since he had been teaching me so much about life, horses, riding, everything. The student becomes the teacher. I had gotten him good.
It was then, that he sat up while I was still sitting on him and he kissed me.
He didn't do it in a romantic way, or put his face close to mine to see if I wanted it too, he just kissed me. He kissed me hard, and kept kissing me, with his tongue in my mouth and some hard passion. I was utterly confused, completely. I was expecting a wide array of hilariousness for that night but not this, not at all. No one had kissed me like that, ever, and I didn't know what it meant or what it was, why it was happening, and where it was going. I at all points figured it would stop and then something would come out of it like an apology or a conversation or anything, but it didn't stop, and it escalated quickly into touching, etc. etc. (full story on Medium), until he had sex with me, at age 13.
I walked home that night under the stars confused. It was shock, and nothing really settled in. It took a few days for things to seem understandable, but he had told me not to tell anyone and my complete nonunderstanding of the situation made me listen to him. It's not like anyone knew I was there, or asked me anything that I needed to answer.
A few days later I went back down there after an invitation and we talked about it briefly. I was still kind of in shock about the situation. It was hard because we had been hanging out and we reverted back into the way we used to hang out but things were different. It happened again. And again. It happened a few times, with some other things of various interactions mixed in as well. I don't remember when or how it stopped. I think that I stopped it, that I stopped going over there. He kept saying that it was wrong but that I was so hot, and that I had such a good body, and that I turned him on so much, and the nature of our relationship was a large teacher student mentor type, and I didn't know where he was going with all of it. Finally it stopped, because I quit going there and quit hanging out.
At this point I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to tell my family because of the pain it would bring my father and the shame it would bring my mother for not being able to properly care for me in her new life. I felt dirty, and at 13, still being in 8th grade, I didn't want to enter high school used or dirty, especially exiting years of bullying over such a similar topic.
I ended up telling a few of my close friends, later boyfriends, and close people years after, but I never told my family, and never reported it to anyone.
The full story on this will be up on medium, and I began writing something deeper on the effects that this has had on my life. It affected my sexual relationships STILL to this day, something that I am actively working on healing. It affected my relationships, with friends and partners, with my journey and story as a young girl learning how to express intimacy in healthy ways. It ripped my self worth apart, sending me on a decade long quest to understand sexuality, my worth in relationships, my duty to partners and males in intimate settings. Most importantly it destroyed my relationship with my brother, as the trust that I lost for this male echoed into my view of men and boys in general.
Girls, females of all ages from all places of the world: it's seriously not your fault, and speaking up is the only way that the shared perception will become more true to what is real. I now am lucky beyond my dreams to be part of a community that understands intimacy, non sexual relationships, true interaction and consent based boundaries. Still its not perfect, and often times I text my friends asking for a bodyguard, because still to this day I feel unable to release my true feminine energy from the results of this trauma and so many others after this.
I love the men who allow women to be goddesses, to be desired, to be beautiful, sexual, open, wild, free, alive, vibrant, and loving. Those are the heroes who allow us to exist. Those are my lovers and brothers and friends, and that man is inside every man. Thank you so much to all of the brothers who have come forward to respond to this movement, from their points of views, to all those who have explored a path of evolution in his ability to support incredible women, and to those who stand strong around us as we radiate our deeply sexual, maternal and earthy vibrations into the world, THANK YOU. THANK YOU THANK YOU.
This person, was Jimmy Kelly Jr.
I shared this to remind girls and women all over the world that you ARE BEAUTIFUL, you are SACRED, you are DIVINE. I support you in your goddessness and sharing your truth.
I shared this to release this trauma from my life, to accept my past and to share it so that the next time someone that I care about asks me about my closed sexual willingness they understand who I am and that this part of me is sacred.
I shared this because this man told me not to tell anyone, and I didn't. I even went back to his place 6 years later to allow him to apologize or show remorse. He did not. I asked him finally about it. I said that it was wrong that he shouldn't have done that, that I was 13, and he only said, "I try to leave things in the past, in the past. I don't think about it." Well I thought about it, and 17 years later I still think about it. I even considered waiting until I turned 28 to understand a different perspective. I shared this finally because in my socrates philosophy of multidimensions I considered the implications of me telling the truth openly and my understanding of the situation. I realized that it is not me to judge, just to share the story. The world will decide.
I shared this to protect the daughters, sisters, and young girls of the world from this person and experience and also from other experiences, to act out in a situation like that to protect yourself, or to speak out if something like this happens to you. We are sacred, let us keep that true to self.
Finally, I shared this because I had not told my family, or most of my friends, and I hope that this clears up some kind of truth behind who I am and what I was trying to deal with inside for so many years, finding "strength" but ultimately needing the reminder that we are all here to share and support each other, to speak out into our communities and to support our peers as we continue our understanding of how to coexist and bring ourselves and each other into our highest greatnesses.
Be unique, be true #beyou <3 Please let my story share light to kids to be strong, to speak openly, to share their stories, and to be proud of being themselves.
Me too. "If all the women I know who have been sexually harassed and/or assaulted wrote "me too" as a status... and all the women they know... we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem." #stopthesilence #stoptheviolence.- Jennifer Itani (Pittsburgh, PA)
Statutory Rape at 13- Speak Up & Speak Out- You are Beautiful and It's ok!