ZONE:

I’ve never told anyone this. My best friend knows there is something wrong with me but I don’t dare to even tell him. Everyone thinks that I am this incredibly confident and independent person but deep down I am broken.

I ran away from home when I was 17 and I have never gone back. I keep in touch with my mother some times but she has never asked me to go back. She knows or suspects why but I can never tell her either. How do I say something so shameful?

So here goes. My father has been touching me since I was a child. I don’t remember when or how it started but it began when I was young. Very young. I remember him telling me it was our special game, just between him and me. I remember the first time he stuck his finger in me and it hurt so bad I cried. But I believed him when he said he didn’t do it to hurt me, just that he love me so much and this was the best way for me to feel it. And like the stupid fool I was I believed him. But I hated that feeling and gladly took his stinking penis in my mouth just to make it stop.

I came to dread the nights because he would climb into bed while I was sleeping and I would wake up feeling his weight crushing me and his alcohol breath smothering me. I didn’t understand what he was doing that one time when he was hugging me tight, his hand over my mouth and this hard sharp pain was going through my body. Only years later did I understand that I was being fucked. I was only 8 then.

Then he started putting me in my elder sister’s clothes. He told me I have a pretty face and I looked better than my sis in them. Again this was our secret and I had to do it to make him happy. Wouldn’t I like to keep daddy happy? I hated those dress up sessions because it always ended with his penis in my mouth and then that sharp pain down there all over again. He would apologize after that, stroking my tears away from my face and telling me how much he loved me.

Those play sessions with daddy stopped after I entered secondary school and I learned to block them out. Years later I came across this newspaper article about a sex abuse case and it began to dawn on me that that might have happened to me. I fell ill with a fever and didn’t go to school for the next few days. I started hating the sight of my father and refused to be in the same room as him.

I blamed myself for what had happened. What did I do wrong that my father would be tempted to use me like that? I started cutting myself and watching my blood swell out fascinated me. Then one time I cut too deep and I fainted, only to be rushed to the hospital when my sis came home early and found me. Counsellors came to talk to me but I still didn’t tell anyone the true reason.

All that was years ago and now, I am living on my own and working. I came out as gay long ago but I can’t find it in me to love another guy. Sex for me is both a guilty pleasure and torture. I cannot do it with the lights all off because it brings back all the terrifying memories of my father holding me down and doing all that to me. Another thing that is broken about me? I like wearing women’s clothing too under my normal clothes. What a freak I am.