A Road Map To My Life : My Experience With Childhood Sexual Assault
Hey everyone — I’d like to explain something that has had a huge effect on my life, and that, after about a year and a half of sorting through the events of my life, I finally feel comfortable sharing. I hope that my story is helpful for anyone who finds themselves in a situation like my own, and even if you don’t, I hope you still take something positive away from it.
When I was 10 years old, I survived a sexual assault. Late in the summer between 4th and 5th grade, an older boy who lived up the street molested me, at least 3 separate times, in the basement and backyard of my childhood home. The boy threatened me, saying “Don’t tell anyone what we did.” He was much bigger and stronger than me, and I was terrified. I told no one. This boy was my friend, but he manipulated me, he manipulated my family, and he took away so much from me. It was my first sexual encounter of any kind, a moment that is supposed to be special, something you hopefully can cherish for the rest of your life, and he ruined that for me, he stole what should have been something beautiful, and he used it to make me feel unsafe, unloved, used. I will never know why he did what he did, I can only live with the consequences of his actions. When that summer finally came to an end, he moved away, and I never saw him again.
I was left confused and ashamed at what had happened. I was too young to understand any of it, and too afraid that he might somehow find out if I shared the details, so I kept quiet. In fact, my young mind eventually repressed all memory of the events, as a way to protect me from reliving the horror. Up to then, I had been playful, inquisitive, and social, but when I returned to school after the sexual assault, I began to change, to close myself off and act out in strange ways. I began to feel depressed. I was mean to my friends. I would occasionally feel deep, unattributable rage. In the 5th grade I remember dropping a potato-sized rock from outside off the top of the stairs. I don’t remember why. I knew that somebody could have gotten hurt if the rock had hit them, but I did it anyway. I had so many strange and intense emotions, and I had no idea how to handle them, that somehow it just felt right to let that rock fall. I was eventually caught, because, when the teacher lined everyone up to find out who had done it, I couldn’t help but start crying. Thank god it never escalated beyond that.
These feelings continued into middle school. I used to insult other kids and make them feel dumb. It somehow made me feel better about myself, to put other people down, but in the end, I just drove everybody away. Over time, I grew even more depressed. I had almost no friends, I didn’t want to talk to anyone, and my parents were going through the early stages of divorce. I was so alone. Sometimes I would go whole days without saying a single word to anyone. I even remember questioning, at one point, if I had any emotions at all, I felt so hard and empty inside all the time. My world was anger, loneliness, and sorrow. I never laughed, even when I thought things were funny. I do remember, however, that by being so emotionless, I felt a little more in control of myself. Feeling nothing actually kept me from feeling so sad all the time. At the same time, I craved attention. The only place I could get it was by going above and beyond in my schoolwork. I used to do more homework than was assigned just to show off. I craved my teachers’ approval and validation. I was that kid who would go out of his way to remind the teacher about the homework just to show off how well I’d done on it.
Looking back, I also hated my body. All lot of survivors have trouble accepting themselves and their bodies after the assault. For me, since I had repressed all my memory of my assault, I remember wanting so badly to find something, anything, that might explain all my pain and sorrow and self-destructive behavior. Subconsciously, I think that burden shifted onto my self-image. I used to think I was incredibly ugly and that I had an ugly face and that my teeth were so gross that even my smile was offensive. In some strange way, it felt good to believe that my body was the real reason I felt so awful all the time, the real reason nobody liked me. It was an easy answer to an otherwise unintelligible question.
I doubt that, at the time, I would have even had the self-awareness to express any of these thoughts or emotions, if I had even tried to talk to anyone in the first place. I’m very fortunate that, at what was the lowest point in my life, I never felt suicidal, I never wanted to hurt myself, or turn to drugs, or run away, or anything else survivors are often driven to do by their pain. I did, however, find outlets for that pain, outlets that happened to be quite healthy and constructive in the end, though at the time all that mattered to me was that they made the pain pass more easily. I consider myself beyond fortunate for the shape my life has taken.
In the 8th grade, some students from the high school started teaching Latin to us in an after school program. I took to it immediately, and began memorizing every single new word we saw, even though the high school kids said we didn’t have to. The older students were, needless to say, surprised at all my hard work. But they encouraged me to keep going with it, and it felt so good to finally have people believe in me. More than anything, I just wanted to escape from all the stress in my life. On top of all my other schoolwork, I learned as much Latin as I possibly could. I was a good noodle, and good grades were my drug of choice. When I got to high school, I was also admitted into the Classical Academy, a program of studies that required its students to take Latin for their foreign language requirement, among other things.
By the time I got to high school, I had gotten a bit better at handling my emotions. I remember making a resolution to become a better person and to make real friends. Little by little, things were going to get better for me. The first friend I made in high school was a kid named Ethan. Ethan was just the friend I needed at that point in my life. Over the course of that school year, we became really close. He also introduced me to his friends, encouraged me to take care of myself and to try to get out of the house more often. I have great memories of riding bikes around Haverhill that summer, going from one kid’s house to another until the sun went down. Ethan quickly became my best friend and he really helped me catch up on all the social skills that had atrophied in middle school. Ethan and I also shared a passion for learning, and we excelled in school and in the many classes we had together. We even learned to read Ancient Greek together, we were so driven. In the end, Ethan always accepted me for who I was, while still pushing me to improve and challenge myself. It’s amazing how a good friend can change your life.
Ethan also convinced me to join the swim team in my sophomore year, which I continued doing for the rest of high school, among a few stints on the track and crew teams. I had never thought of myself as an athlete before, but by doing sports in high school I made a lot of my most lasting friendships, and I also learned to appreciate and care for my body. The strength that I gained, both mental and physical, helped me feel good about myself in a way I hadn’t anticipated. That kind of strength, the strength to believe in yourself, has a lot of staying power, and I can feel that it is with me even now, all these years later.
I also fell in love for the first time in high school, and that initiated a number of serious changes in my life. Though we never dated, in my senior year I become very close with a girl who cared about me like no one had before. I realize, looking back, that she was the first person in my life I ever felt truly comfortable opening up to. I felt like I could tell her everything, and I did. For a while, I didn’t think I would ever fall in love. I didn’t think I deserved to, frankly. It just felt like something certain people were chosen to do, and that I was not one of the chosen few. But she was the perfect person for me to meet at that time. I began to uncover deep, hidden feelings, connected to these new feelings of love, and made possible by the deep comfort and acceptance I felt in her presence. They were feelings I had never given voice to before, never been able to tune in to, but which had always been there, lying just beneath the surface. At some point, the vague shapes of far-distant memories began to crop up. That long-dormant assault, a full 8 years later, was beginning to come to the surface. I guess I needed to fall in love in order to see how tangled up I still was with my past. Subconsciously, the words of my attacker must still have been circling around, ”Don’t. Tell. Anyone.” I was beginning to sense that something had happened to me in my childhood, but I couldn’t remember anything about it, and I began to have strong, complex feelings again, some new, some familiar, which I lacked the vocabulary to properly express.
It wasn’t until a full year later, on July 4th, 2017, that the memories fully returned to me. I was alone on the Esplanade that day, reading to pass the time while I saved a spot in the grass to watch the fireworks later that night. I met a girl while I was there, and we connected instantly. We had a really good time just killing time together, and we exchanged numbers after the festivities were over. Somehow that sequence of events knocked something loose in my head, and, during the drive back home on I-93N, all the memories of my assault came rushing back to me. This epiphany was the key that I had been waiting so long to find. I spent the rest of that summer piecing the story of my life together with all my newfound clarity, and, slowly, telling some of my family and my closest friends about my assault. Through this process, I was able to find the words to make sense of the way I had always been feeling, and this was the most important step of all, for once I was able to understand my life, I was finally able to decide what I wanted to do with it. That epiphany has been the most profound, impactful, and life-affirming thing that has ever happened to me, and if I were a religious person, I would probably attribute at least part of it to God, because that is truly what it felt like. Best of all, I’ve discovered that the playful, inquisitive, social little boy I used to be was actually still inside me the whole time, and now I take great pains to let him be free.
In the past few months I have made a lot of progress. I’ve been working out a lot more than I ever have before, I’ve been going to therapy at school, and I am getting better and better at expressing myself and just enjoying my time here on Earth. I’m not sure what I’ve gotten from all this, but it feels…it feels like wisdom. If anything, I want to say that great progress is possible, wherever you find yourself in life, and that if you ever need someone to talk to, I love nothing more than using what I’ve learned in my life to help other people improve theirs. I hope to have the strength to keep growing, and to become as good a person as I can possibly be in this life. Thank you for reading this road map of my life — -I hope it leaves you in a better place.
With all the love I can give,
Benjamin Roy
