For the Record

I don't normally post twice in one day, but what the hell. I suppose I started this blog just because I wanted to see how I would fair with the whole column thing. I think that I really just want to somehow make a difference using this wonderful tool we call the internet. Even though there are MILLIONS of blogs out there like mine with people managing them who are a million times smarter than me.

I was watching Oprah today (a treat I don't normally get) and she was doing a very powerful piece on child molesters. You can find it here

There was something about it that just really got to me. Maybe it was the sheer honesty of the sex offenders or maybe it was the tenacity of Oprah herself. I myself being a victim of molestation, was torn between turning it off or sitting there and watching it; between sitting there listening to men so much like the one that took advantage of me 9 years ago or watching a rather dull documentary on PBS.

I ultimately decided to watch it. There were so many unanswered questions I had, and while I had moved on for the most part I still harbored feelings of fear and filth. I wondered how I had allowed myself to be taken advantage of like that? Why I didn't see what he was doing sooner? How could a teacher (A BIBLE teacher) betray my trust the way he did? How could he take advantage of my vulnerability after the devastating loss of my mother just five months prior?

Their brutal honesty...the way they talked about what they did...how they showed remorse...
I had a hard time hearing it because I never got the chance to hear my molester say that. He just disappeared...as if it never happened. I don't even know where he is now, part of me doesn't want to; part of me wishes he's buried in some cedar box with a crumbling tombstone, but a small part of me wants to confront him. I want to look into those eyes that I trusted, the same eyes that lustfully yearned for me and tell him exactly what he did to me. How he damaged me.

The one thing that really got to me was this: "I killed who she could have been..."
Part of me wonders what I would be like if this hadn't happened to me. Would I be paranoid in large crowds? Or nervous in line at a supermarket when a man steps behind me? Would I be able to actually date and get close to a boy without wondering what his intentions are? I would like to say the answer would be 'no' but I'll never know.

I suppose I'll eventually be able to move on, after all I've come so far since then. I'm now able to be a strong woman at the expense of intimidating many of the opposite sex because I do not hold back.

Its going to take a special guy I suppose.