He Didn't Choose Me Because There Was Something Wrong With Me

For a very long time, I thought there had to be something about me that made him choose me.

I wondered what he saw.

Was I weak?

Was I too trusting?

Was there something about me that made me an easy target?

For years, I carried the shame of being the girl who was chosen.

He even reinforced that shame himself.

He would tell me how "lucky" I was that he had chosen me.

When you're a child who is starving for affection, those words can become incredibly powerful.

I didn't feel lucky.

But I desperately wanted to feel chosen.

And that is one of the things I have had to untangle as an adult.

Because I finally understand something I couldn't possibly have understood as a child:

He didn't choose me because there was something special about the way I could be abused. He chose me because of the environment I came from.

And realizing that changed everything.

I Wasn't Growing Up in a Normal Family

For a long time, I didn't have the perspective to understand that my family was different.

I was a bastard child. I knew that I was resented for it.

My grandmother once, in a fit of rage, yelled at me that I was the reason my father left my mother. I got the message early on that I wasn't supposed to be here.

Some people in my family sympathized with me, but even the people who felt sorry for me seemed to walk carefully around my grandmother.

There were rules that nobody had to explain.

There were things you didn't say.

Things you didn't challenge.

Things you tolerated because challenging them would upset someone more powerful.

My mother was negligent and emotionally unloving toward me, while being well-liked by the people outside our home.

That distinction was incredibly confusing as a child.

Other people liked my mother.

I knew what she was like with me.

But it made sense in a way. I wasn't supposed to be here. I wasn't really part of the family.

So I learned very early that what people saw from the outside and what happened behind closed doors could be two completely different things.

I was constantly trying to earn affection.

I became an overachiever.

I tried to be good.

I tried to accomplish things.

I tried to be someone worth being proud of.

And somehow, it was never enough.

I was still put down.

Still criticized.

Still made to feel like I wasn't quite good enough.

And underneath all of that was a little girl who was desperately hungry for affection.

I have memories of being left alone when I was very young, wondering where everyone was.

My earliest memory is of trying to climb onto a chair in the driveway. I must have been very little because I remember trying to lift my knee onto the seat to climb up. I stood on the chair, wobbly and afraid.

I fell.

I cried.

I yelled.

I wanted someone to come to me.

But no one did.

I remember walking back toward the house, and no one was there.

I must have been about three or four years old.

When I look back at that little girl now, I don't see a child who was asking to be abused.

I see a child who was starving to be loved.

There is a difference.

He Saw the Family I Came From

This is the part that took me a very long time to understand.

I used to think he chose me.

Now I believe he chose the circumstances around me.

He could see what I couldn't.

He could see that affection was something I desperately wanted.

He could see that my family cared deeply about appearances.

He could see who had power.

He could see who would be believed.

He could see who would be protected.

And he could see who wouldn't.

That doesn't mean I believe there is some checklist of characteristics that makes a child destined to be abused.

There isn't.

But predators can pay attention to the people surrounding a child.

They can learn who trusts them.

They can learn who is willing to defend them.

They can learn who would rather deny something than admit that they allowed a dangerous person into their home.

And he knew my family.

He knew exactly what kind of family I came from.

He Knew Who Would Protect Him

Someone in my family eventually admitted that they knew about the sexual abuse early on.

And instead of protecting me, they blamed me when I became pregnant.

It was my fault.

I should have been ashamed of what I had done to my mother.

Read that again.

What I had done to my mother.

That fact is difficult to write.

It is even harder to accept.

Because when you are a child, you expect the adults around you to protect you.

You don't expect them to calculate what your abuse might make them look like.

But that's what I eventually came to understand.

Years later, well into adulthood, the abuse became too much. The physical violence had escalated to the point where I genuinely felt that my children and I could die at any moment.

I finally made a police report.

My mother, who at that time I hadn’t seen in years, defended him to a police officer.

I was upset, but I wasn't surprised.

She claimed she had never seen anything suspicious.

But she had allowed him to sleep in my room with the door locked every night.

And instead of standing beside me, she protected herself.

She protected him.

She protected the image of her family.

And he knew she would.

He had already figured that out.

He even told me to my face that the police wouldn't believe me.

He told me my mother wouldn't defend me either.

Think about what that means for a child.

He wasn't only telling me that he was going to hurt me.

Anytime he felt like he was losing control, this reminder was what he needed to slap reality in my face: no one was coming to help me.

He was telling me that nobody was going to stop him.

He had already convinced himself that he was untouchable.

And, tragically, he had reasons to believe that.

The Abuse Wasn't the Only Thing That Was Wrong

This realization has been painful, but it has also been freeing.

Because I used to think the central problem in my childhood was that one person sexually abused me.

It wasn't.

The abuse was horrific.

But there was something else happening around it.

There was neglect.

There was emotional abandonment.

There was favoritism.

There was shame.

There was an obsession with appearances.

There was a family hierarchy where some people's feelings mattered more than others.

There were adults who knew things they should have acted on.

There were adults who looked away.

There were adults who chose their reputations over my safety.

And I didn't have the words for any of that when I was little.

I thought that was just my family.

I thought I was the problem.

I thought I wasn't lovable enough.

I thought something was wrong with me.

I thought maybe if I achieved enough, behaved well enough, or became good enough, somebody would finally give me the affection I had been looking for.

That made me especially vulnerable to someone who came along and told me that I was special.

Someone who told me I was lucky he had chosen me.

Someone who made being chosen sound like a privilege.

I Wasn't Lucky

I wasn't lucky that he chose me.

I was a child who deserved protection.

I didn't need to be chosen by him.

I needed to be loved by the people who were supposed to love me.

I needed my mother to notice when I was hurting.

I needed the adults around me to recognize when something was wrong.

I needed someone to believe me.

I needed someone to say:

"This is not your fault."

Instead, I learned that being chosen could be dangerous.

And I learned that the people who were supposed to protect me might not protect me at all.

When everything finally came out in the open, I reached out to the one person in my family I thought might help me.

But I was basically told to help myself—politely, of course.

I had a very solid response by the time the inevitable questions of "Why didn't you say something?" or "Why did you wait so long?" came along.

I knew they wouldn't help me, and I was right.

My mother had a chance to tell the truth to redeem herself, but she didn't.

I reached out to an aunt for help when he tried to kill me, but I was told to "just go to a shelter" and "surrender your pets."

As an animal lover, I had hoped that she could have at least taken my small dog and two cats temporarily.

But that was asking too much.

I also had an email from an uncle who blamed me for everything when she found out I was pregnant by my stepfather.

She told me I should be ashamed and that my daughter would be my living punishment.

That last part was what broke me.

If there was a single reason why I stayed with him as a young adult, it was that.

I love my daughter with all my heart, and no one was going to save us.

If I tried to leave, I feared they might try to have her taken away from me.

I believed my family might use her to punish me, and I believed my stepfather could use her to control and threaten me.

The best I thought I could do was continue to endure the abuse, make him happy, and try to give her the best life I could.

Understanding Why He Chose Me Doesn't Mean Blaming Myself

This distinction has become incredibly important to me.

Understanding why a predator saw an opportunity is not the same thing as saying the victim caused the opportunity.

My childhood did not cause my abuse.

My mother's neglect did not cause my abuse.

My grandmother's behavior did not cause my abuse.

My need for affection did not cause my abuse.

Being an overachiever did not cause my abuse.

Being lonely did not cause my abuse.

Being a child did not cause my abuse.

He made the choice to exploit those circumstances.

And the adults who knew and failed to protect me made their own choices.

Those choices belong to them.

Not me.

Sometimes Healing Means Changing the Question

For years, I asked:

"Why did he choose me?"

I thought the answer had to be something wrong with me.

Now I ask a different question:

"What did he see in the environment around me that told him he could get away with it?"

That question led me somewhere completely different.

It made me look at my childhood honestly.

It made me recognize that the family dynamics I had normalized were not normal.

It made me understand why his confidence was so terrifying.

He knew who would defend him.

He knew who cared about appearances.

He knew who wouldn't want to admit what was happening under their roof.

And he knew that I was a child who desperately wanted to be loved.

He didn't create that hunger.

But he exploited it.

And that was never my fault.

To the Little Girl I Used to Be

I wish I could go back and sit beside her.

I wish I could find that little girl who was left alone, wondering where everybody was.

I wish I could tell her that she wasn't difficult.

She wasn't unlovable.

She wasn't dirty.

She wasn't responsible.

She didn't need to earn affection.

She didn't need to become perfect.

She didn't need to understand why adults behaved the way they did.

And she certainly didn't need to carry the shame of what someone else chose to do to her.

I would tell her:

You were not lucky that he chose you.

You were unlucky that the adults around you failed to protect you.

And most importantly:

There was never anything wrong with you that made you deserve what happened.

It wasn't "fate," like he claimed.

You were a child who wanted to be loved.

That should never have been something someone could use against you.

But at least my story has a happy ending.

My children and I are alive and moving forward in our lives rebuilding.

People heard my story, saw the circumstances, and believed me.

He’s now currently in jail where he can’t hurt anymore children.

People stepped up and said what he did was wrong. Strangers did more for me than my own family.

If you were abused, it wasn’t your fault.

If you weren’t believed, it wasn’t your fault.

If you know of abuse, speak up.

If you didn’t in the past, it’s not too late, speak up.