My abuse started roughly when I was about 7 by my father. He was never nice. I have pictures of me as a baby and him holding me and I was screaming. I knew THEN, he wasn't very nice. I remember the first time he touched me. He had me in his bed and I thought he was sleeping, he just reached over and started touching my chest. I was shocked and made the excuse for him that he thought it must have been my mom. But now I think about that, and why would that be my first thought and not please stop and leave me alone. I laid there until he was done and he left his bed and went into my own room. But soon touching wasn't enough and he moved on oral sex.

At the time my parents had a water bed and he would throttle my little neck and make me do these awful adults things and I couldn't understand. He'd kick me out of bed tell me that I better not get sick. That I better not make a mess on the carpet. In the same years, those things were still not enough and he moved on to actually raping me. I can remember waking up with him on top of me and my legs were asleep and my hips hurt and he was making me hold his cross necklace so that it didn't make any noise.

All these things happened almost every night. I got a break every now and then when my grandmother came into town or he went out of town for business. My life was doing all these things that my father wanted. I became great at hiding and learning how to cover things up. I can remember sneaking the bloody underwear to the trash in the morning. I can still feel the cold ground my bare feet hoping that the door wouldn't make any noise and wake anybody up.

The same year, the neighbor started abusing me. Looking back, I think my father may have known or even set it up. But at this point, I'm not sure that it matters or if I'll ever know for sure. The neighbor had this big red van and he was always taking us somewhere on the weekends and we were at this little park, I was collecting little tadpoles and having so much fun. It was beautiful outside. He called me over to the van and took off my shorts, and raped me in the back of the van and the bean bags. I can remember looking out the window and seeing the beautiful sky and this huge tree. Big beautiful tree, swinging in the breeze and I couldn't understand why this was happening on such a beautiful day. He was done, told me to get dressed and he just left.

I put my clothes on and went back to the table to get my bucket of tadpoles, and he kicked them over, started stomping on them and saying that the next time he would make sure I wouldn't fight.
My entire life, I felt guilty that I couldn't pick them fast enough, that I couldn't save them. I didn't care about me, but I couldn't save those tadpoles. He was... When I think about it, he was in his early twenties and I was 11.

How much could I have really fought him?