You Deserve to be Protected

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING BLOG CONTAINS SUBJECTS OF TRAUMA

I was 7 years old when I woke to my abuser standing over my bed for the first time.

I had never been approached in the night by him in that way and I was terrified. I remember being overwhelmingly aware that my little sister was in bed next to mine and I needed to do something to protect her from what I had already experienced.

I shoved the person away and ran to my parents’ room as fast as I could.

Before I could even finish stumbling over my words, my dad sprang out of bed and stormed down the long hallway to get to mine. He proceeded to grab the person by the neck and throw him up against the wall. As his feet dangled in the air, my father firmly spoke the following words with nothing but rage in his eyes:

“If you ever sleepwalk into one of my daughter’s rooms again—I will kill you.”

Tears ran down this person’s face in terror as he adamantly shook his head to show his understanding of my father’s demand. After a brief period, his feet were eventually placed back on the ground, and he was thrown down the hall in the direction of the room he was meant to be sleeping in.

My parents then moved forward to doing all the right things.

They asked me and my sisters all the appropriate questions, assured us of our safety and made efforts to find out whether anything like that had ever happened before. Though I regrettably didn’t have the courage to tell them at the time what had happened in the past, I knew confidently, with all my heart, that I was never going to let anything like that happen to me again.

And it didn’t.

I did, however, develop a deep mistrust and resentment for nearly every male figure outside of my own family.

I began to take pride in my ability to make my male peers cry, starting as early as elementary school. If a boy touched me in line, pushed me at recess, or even gave me a compliment I didn’t ask for—I would respond by kicking him in the shin as hard as I could.

Though the form of my response varied over time, the aggressive instinct to confront any sign of disrespect carried through junior high and even into high school.

Whenever I sensed that a guy believed he could take advantage of me, I made an intentional effort to hurt or embarrass him through my words or actions. A remark might even be yammered at the mall, and I wouldn’t dare let the moment go unaddressed without putting the stranger in his place.

I blamed myself for staying silent in the past and not acting sooner, and I was determined never to stay silent again. The way I saw it, my silence put my sister in harm’s way, and I spent a good portion of my life blaming myself for being too weak to speak. too scared to act, and altogether too ashamed to admit I hadn’t spoken up sooner. While it might have taken me a decade to tell my whole story, the trajectory of my life was changed by that night, nonetheless.

That night I realized something was taken from me when I was too young to know it had value. Something so important that my father would threaten to kill to protect, and I would never forget that.

Did I overcompensate with aggression? Probably.

Did I eventually learn how to set boundaries without violence? Yes.

Was there a healthier way to ask others for respect? Of course.

But that’s simply not how it went.

Is there trauma within trauma in this story? Maybe for some, but not for me.

For me, this is the moment in my life when I realized I deserved to be protected. What began as a fight to protect someone else became the moment I realized I deserved protection too.

And I’m here to tell you, you do too.