“People don’t talk about it…”
“Between the ages of 3 and 4, my uncle and I would play his version of hide-and-seek. When we played, he would always make me go hide with him. There was a closet in my grandparents' dining room and he would always pull me into that closet, which was always junky. He’d make me sit between his legs. I remember it down to what I was wearing. I remember wanting to just leave but he wouldn’t let me. And whenever I tried to get up he would just pull me back.
In the black community, people don’t talk about it. They sweep it under the rug and it just ‘is what it is’. I even talked to my grandma about it. She said that if I admit it, then it just makes me weak; which I of course know now isn’t the case. No one realizes why people wait so long to say anything, and they assume you’re lying because I mean, why wait 20 plus years?
It’s funny because I remember as a kid hearing on the radio what a celebrity had done to a fourteen-year-old girl. I said ‘yeah that’s kind of like what happened to me’ and my family turned around and just looked at me in the backseat of the car. Then it hit me like ‘okay, that’s not something I should talk about’.
My uncle was 12 when it happened, which leads me to believe that the same thing happened to him. People that are in their twenties or so when it happens to them, actually know or at least have a sense of who they are before it happens. With me being four, It opened doors to so much more than what a girl that age should be exposed or subjected to. There are just things you shouldn’t ‘explore’ until your late teens. It took my parents until last year, when they sat down and apologized and said to me ‘we dropped the ball’”
“I had dealt with so much low self-esteem, so much of just looking at myself in the mirror with no confidence. It got to the point that I was very depressed. I always put a smile on, but it was just a mask for how I was really feeling. I’ve been vulnerable before and I was hurt because of it. I felt that If I didn’t allow myself to be vulnerable, I wouldn’t be able to get hurt. You don’t know how many times I could just be driving in my car, and I’d say to myself ‘you know what I’m just going to close my eyes, and it is what it is’ but God would always tell me ‘no, you can’t do that’.
Now, I want to get to a point where I can be an advocate for those that can’t advocate for themselves. I survived yeah, theoretically, but I was only existing through it.
And then it’s always ‘her’ fault. But how can it be a four-year-old's fault? Was it the sweats I was wearing? Did my toes come out of my shoes too much? Or was it the barrettes?
Last year, I came to terms with the fact that, because of being molested at such a young age and then being in that spell of pure darkness, I can fully appreciate the good times and the happy times way more than someone that just takes those moments for granted.”
-Cheyenne C.
