I learned to not tell the truth.

Tell the truth.

A concept we are all taught as children, right?

“If you tell the truth, you won’t be in trouble”. I remember my mom telling me this beginning at a very young age. Little things that kids tend to lie about… did you eat the rest of the cookies? Did you spill that drink on the couch, who broke the lamp? As children, we do not comprehend the extent of what the truth really means, and how hard the truth sometimes is to tell.

As a woman, the truth is sometimes harder to talk about. Especially in situations where you being a women might be the exact reason your truth is less important, or the exact reason why your truth may not be heard or believed.

Society has created a norm that has determined that woman in most situations are asking for the bad things that have happened to them. The way we dress is “asking for it” we were “too friendly”, and they thought you were flirting. However, what if you were too young to even understand what that meant? What if you were to young to understand that bad things happen to women just because they are women? And what if the people we who were meant to protect you were the same people allowing bad things to happen to you? What happens then?

Burned into my brain are the memories of what it felt like to not be able to tell the truth. Hearing my mother’s footsteps on the ground above me while the weight that was holding me down on the bed frantically tried to remove the duct tape from my mouth and the string of Christmas lights that were wrapped around my wrists dominantly whispering, “get the fuck upstairs before she knows”, pushing me off the bed like the trash he treated me like.

Burned into my brain is my mother finding me at the top of those stairs with no pants on, holding my breath because I was scared that if I let out any oxygen the tears would come with it. Knowing that I would need to explain what was going on, but I could not tell her the truth because I knew she wouldn’t protect me. Sitting on her bed while she asked “did something happen to you” I wanted to scream at her, I wanted to say “yes, yes something happened to me, the strangers you allowed to move into our house are raping me, molesting me, mentally, physically & emotionally abusing me” but I knew it was a pointless cry for help. I knew that she would choose them over me.

And so began the fear of telling the truth.

Years past, years of experiencing the same torture in the place that should have been my safe haven. Years of dreading the moment I needed to come home from school, the days I needed to return from my friend’s house, and the fear of the inevitable being grounded to my house.

Until finally one day…I told the truth.

There's a lot that happened that day, but what is most important is the family meeting we had that night. Not just my household, but a meeting with my grandparents, my aunt, my mother and the very man that was the cause of all of this.

As clear as the day it happened, I can still hear the conversation that they had. As if I wasn’t even in the room. My family: “Did you do these things to her?” Him: “well yes, I did, but only to see if she would tell, I thought something else might have happened to her, so I just wanted to see if I did it, if we could trust her to tell.”

The panic sent in moments later when the reaction I wanted from my family, the reaction I needed from my family wasn’t the reaction I received. I don't blame them for their lackluster response, however, overtime I have learned that my mother made things extremely difficult for them, and although I forgive them, I will never forget. There was no-we are calling the cops, there was no - we need to get her help, there was no - we are contacting children family services. What there was, was a “don’t ever do it again” conversation and then a car ride back home with the very man who had admitted to sexual assaulting me.

After many more years of torture in my home, after cutting myself for years, turning to drugs to numb the pain, after taking off at 15 years old with 30- year-old men I thought were my “friends”, after many attempts to take my own life, and after my mother catching him in bed with his daughter. She finally left. But the damage had already been done. There was no going back to the girl I used to be. There was no trusting men, no trusting the people who should have protected me. There was no return from the drug use or the self-harm. All of these things had already happened. All of these

things had already made an impact on who I would be going forward, the trauma I had gone through, and the fears I would have as I grew into an adult.

These pictures show just how quickly everything going on in my life altered who I was and how quickly trauma can cause someone to change entirely.

All of these things taught me to never tell the truth because even when you do you aren’t safe