I Asked For It

Okay I’m not one to divulge all kinds of personal info to someone I’m not friends with, but I really feel like this absolutely needs to be said.

Last week at my school, there was an announcement that came on the PA about a club meeting to talk about “Teen Dating Violence” and the immediate response of over half the class was laughter. Like my own friends laughed. Maybe I wasn't in on the joke.

So I’ll give a very brief synopsis of my experience. When I was about 13, I had my first”boyfriend” (I use the term loosely). We hung out all 24/7 and he met my parents and we were really close. Then he started to try things. As a 13 year old girl when he was 15 (almost 16) I was very uncomfortable. I made it very clear that I was uncomfortable. It stopped for a while, but then we hit like a year mark and he got physical. I said no, and he began insulting me and calling me ugly names, and he hung out and constantly flirting with my best friends to try to make me jealous, so that I would do what he wanted. This resulted in a suicide attempt that I was hospitalized for. I broke up with him, obviously. I mean even as a 13 year old girl, I knew it was wrong.

That COULD have been the end but idiotically I kept in contact with him. (Maybe this is due to my daddy issues I have no idea)We talked on and off. When I was 14 I moved to St. Petersburg, Florida about two hours from him. But, every time I would go back I would visit him. Just this most recent visit over the summer for my 16th birthday, part of my gift was to spend a week with friends down there. I was having such an amazing time with amazing friends and I thought I would see him. So I told him to meet me & my friends at Wal-Mart (the local small-town hang out, pathedic, I know.) Upon meeting him I was in a really cute summer dress that I was in love with and he started lifting my skirt up and grabbing me in the store, and I told him to stop. Then I accidentally seperated from my two friends while I was catching up with him and he tried to grab my arm and he pinned me into a self. He grabbed me so hard, that I had a really nasty bruise for almost month. Ill leave out the details of what he tried to do also condcider a)I didnt want to and b) Ive barley ever even made out with someone and that was just recently

I went on for months thinking I was such an idiot and i did it to myself. Ultimately it made my depression and anxiety worse, because I just had this omnipresent feeling that everything was my fault. Around the beginning of September I FINALLY told people about it after holding it in for so many years. I spilled everything from my daddy issues to this. With the help of friends I blocked him from all social media (Facebook, Snapchat, Insta, etc). And I was fine with out him. But just this past weekend I logged into Ask.fm for the first time in months (which is a media outlet where you can harass people with anonymous questions) and I saw him on the top of my feed. I began sending him questions and he seemed like he was becoming a better person, so he asked me to tell him who I was, but I just texted him and told him. Since then, weve been talking up until today.

All the people Ive gone to with this have told me that it was mostly my fault, and I kept believing them. So I had a bit of a breakdown this weekend, I had no idea what was wrong with me. Why do I keep going back to such toxic people? I took a total risk and talked to someone who I’ve been becoming close with and she was the first person to actually reassure me that it wasn't my fault, and that I shouldn't be feeling this guilt.

I guess to wrap it up all I was really aiming to say was that if someone ever tells you that you asked for it, I guarantee you didn't (this took me years to figure out). I did absolutely nothing. In the end I have come out of this with so much self worth and I guess i just want that for someone else. And if explaining what happened to me could help anyone in any way, shape, or form I figured I really had nothing to loose. So dont listen to those people who laugh at the “Teen Dating Violence” announcement on the PA, you have every reason to go to that meeting. Don’t let people say that you asked for it. Don’t let other people normalize this for you. This is not normal, and we can’t keep carrying on like it is.

(PS I know Im not a great writer, but it took a great deal of courage to post this so please dont talk about my poor writing skills)