I started seeing the school psychologist soon after that. I was severely depressed and suicidal. I was having a recurring nightmare almost nightly which was the beginning of my remembering the lost six months when I was seven years old. My rainy day box was getting pretty full and looking better every day. My poetry was dark and angry. The psychologist wanted to know the reason for my depression, she thought it was due to the move and adjustment and part of it may have been. But as I evolved into a teenager, my body evolved and the sex between my Daddy and I became more frequent and more forceful. I told her about this and made her promise she wouldn’t tell anyone. She didn’t for three long years.
In the middle of my sophomore year of high school, I took my first boyfriend. He was popular, I was beautiful and seductive; we made a good pair. People laughed at first because the popular boy was going out with the redneck girl, but they didn’t laugh for long. Soon I was popular too and it was wonderful. Originally I took “Sean” as a boyfriend to try to deter my Daddy. I thought if he knew I was having sex with someone other than him, it would turn him off and he’d leave me alone. It didn’t work that way. It made him angry; he called me horrible names during sex then tried to discuss sexual positions with me to make things better for “Sean” and I. When I refused to discuss my sex life with him, he got very angry and the physical abuse escalated. I was able to hide the bruises with make up, thank god.
When I was sixteen, I decided I’d had enough and went to my mom about my dad’s nightly visits to me. I didn’t know what to expect, but the response I got was definitely not what I expected. She told me she suspected all along he had been having sex with me, but since she hated him sexually, it was easier to let him come to me than go to her. But she said she’d talk to him and ask him not to do it anymore. She wanted to talk to him privately, so she sent me to church with the neighbor boy who lived across the street. It was the first time I’d ever been allowed to go to church since before my dad turned away from the church. When I got home that night, dad was crying. He promised he’d never touch me again, he promised he’d get help and he promised he’d start going back to church. He broke his first promise within a week and never followed through with the other two.
