While we were there, we would stay at the main house where my grandfather was and that is where the first sexual abuse occurred between me and my grandfather. My grandfather was very perverted. He did things and said things only to me, and it was basically kept a secret.
Eventually, she [Mom] remarried. She married her third husband who was a policeman. He was very mean. That marriage lasted for a few years. She confided in me that she was going to divorce him and that it was my responsibility to keep that secret. I did. Her plan was to just leave him, so she decided to take her two children and leave me with a family friend. She did so, and that was where another sexual abuse took place. I stayed with them for the summer and actually had fun. It was the only sense of stability that I had with this family. For the most part, my mom stayed away to hide from this husband, for he was a policeman, and he had lots of resources.
When that blew over, I moved back with my mom, and we fell into the same roles. My brother and sister, by this time, was full time with my dad. I was probably fourteen years old, and these feelings began to grow even more. I was not noticing girls. I liked girls. I had girlfriends. But they were only friends. I was not attracted to them in any way, but I was noticing guys. I was being drawn to them and wanting more from them than I was wanting from girls, realizing that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what to call it. We lived in small southern town. There was really no one I could talk to about it. I just decided to keep a secret.
As time progressed, and I got older, my hormones and puberty came along, and I started realizing what I was dealing with, and that was homosexuality. I knew I could not open up and discuss it with anyone because we were in the South, and I was already having a very difficult time in school. I was bullied because of being feminine, being overweight as a child, and I had no support at home. My mom didn’t have a clue. My brother was this macho kid who played sports, who was popular. My sister was popular, so I sort of just fell through the cracks.
As I go about the process of healing, self-discovery, realizing that there was sexual abuse, forgetting that there is sexual abuse…
The mind is a wonderful thing. It blocks out things, as a child, that you do not want to experience or relive. The Lord walking you through those things, not to remind you or torment you, but to acknowledge and to say, “This is what happened to you, and I want to heal you from it,” which He did.
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