It has taken me a very long time to be able to write these words. I have pushed publish several times but I end up taking it down almost as fast as I put it up. I know very few people will even read these words. But it is still so hard. I have to ask myself why I want to do it?  The answer is : For my girls. For any girls. Any woman. For me.

______________TRIGGER WARNING__________________

 

The first thing I remember is a pencil sticking out of the end of his erect penis. I was three. Previous to this trick show, I had been forced to kiss his lips, which were covered with white bumpy warts. When we wrestled, which was often, he would lie on top of me dead weight and refuse to let me up, no matter how loudly I screamed.

I hated him.

I hated the way his room smelled. I hated the music blaring. I hated the too rough tickling, and the yelling. I hated the sexual jokes and innuendos.

“Do you like the way that feels?” He once asked when I was playing with the stick shift of his car. These kinds of comments were common and even though I wasn’t sure what the question meant on this particular day, it made me feel dirty.

I didn’t realize how I had internalized these experiences or even that they had a lasting impact on me until a late morning when my boyfriend stood at the bedroom door with an erect penis and said jokingly, “You have to pay a toll if you want to leave.” I burst into tears and fell to the floor. “Hey, I was only joking,” he said.

Later a man on campus stalked me, following me around and threatening me.  He found my number and called repeatedly, breathing into the phone.

Another night a boy came in my dorm and demanded to have sex and when I said no he said, “I think my yes is more powerful than your no.”

Years later I was waiting to make an entrance on stage when a fellow actor, and older “gentleman” who was well-known in theater circles, grabbed my ass cheeks and jiggled them up and down for several minutes while I stood paralyzed, unable to cry out or move because the audience would see and hear us.

Later still I agreed to go to dinner with a mentor who had volunteered in my classroom. He took me to a bluff overlooking the city where he put his hands on my body and pulled me in to kiss him and touch him.

There are more stories. Some are too personal to share. Some too difficult, too complicated to explain.

But here is the truth-

I can understand why women who have been abused or intimidated by Trump are only now speaking up.

I am 46 years old and I have never told anyone these stories in a direct way.

I share this now out of solidarity to the brave women who are speaking up.