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The first time I figured something was off with him was when he would take me aside and describe to me how he was only with Ashley's mother because she was the mother of his child. He would proceed to tell me that I was a smart girl and that no one understood him the way I did. This came from a man aged twenty-six, talking to a thirteen year old girl. But I would beg to be allowed to spend the night over there and eventually my mother allowed me. It was a group of us that stayed the night; myself, Ryan, AJ, and Katie to my recollection. We started out by watching movies and playing some games around the house. Eventually, his girlfriend went to bed and we all went up to the attic where we would be sleeping. It was there that he suggested we play another game. What the full extent is consisted of I honestly and completely can not remember. However, what I remember well was Dave first telling me to practice kissing on him by “French” kissing him. After that, I was told to take off my shirt so that AJ and then Dave could suck on my nipples. I seem to remember something going on with the boys as well but what that was I can not remember. Eventually though we got uncomfortable with what was going on and went to sleep. Strangely, to me at least, none of this gives me flashbacks. No, my flashbacks consist of one day when the song Run Away Train was playing and he told me that he didn't like that song because his brother had committed suicide by being hit by a train. That same day he didn't seem to be feeling well and screamed at me that I was worthless and to go home because I was being a downer and no one wanted me there. This is what haunts me.
Some months later, while Ashley was over at our house playing, a car came up our driveway and a couple got out and said she had to go with them. We told her that she had to go but that we would see her later; she was crying and screaming, begging us to stay. I didn't know it then but that couple was from Child Protective Services. It seemed that someone had called and said they suspected child abuse. They took her away and Dave was eventually charged with molestation. I told someone in confidence about what had gone on that night we stayed over but my mother found out. In that instance she went from believing that there was no way Dave could be guilty to believing he was the worst monster on the face of this earth. She was never quite the same again, always suspicious of everyone. Worst of all, she seemed to blame herself. This made me feel awful because it made me doubt what I was believing myself. Before I had been slightly uncomfortable but I hadn't felt “damaged”. With my mother acting as she did after she found out though, I constantly questioned myself.
But truth be told, he probably did mess me up. With all that I had been through in my life, what with my parents rarely if ever telling me that they loved me and no one to continuously count on for emotional support, I began to equate the idea of sex with love. I became every parents worst nightmare and one of the reason Yahoo closed down their “make your own” chat-rooms. I would enter chats and have extremely sexual conversations with men almost always over the age of eighteen. Sometimes I would lie and claim to be eighteen but even then someone would have to be dim-witted to have believed that I was. For others I told them the truth. It became my job to give men a fantasy that the majority of them knew they could never act out in reality. Of the vast number that passed through my IM window, three of those I had talked to at that early age I am still occasionally in contact with. One in fact I actually eventually met in real life this past January. But among the vast number of people who I had talked to, only one ever wanted to meet in real life knowing my age.
I don't remember his name, or rather the name he gave me, but I remember that he looked nothing like the picture he had sent me – in a good way – and that he reminded me of George Strait. He told me he was a doctor in a city and few towns over. I remember that he tasted like cigarettes when he kissed me. I was scared witless when I met his car in the church parking lot near our house. I got in his car and suddenly all the scenarios of being abducted and killed began to run through my mind. He had wanted to drive the car to a secluded spot but I refused. Told him that I couldn't stay long because my mother was going to be home in a few minutes. I lied, and got out of his car. Looking back, I truly do not believe that he was going to kidnap me or anything of the such. If he had wanted to, I was already in his car, I couldn't have really stopped him from doing so. I was lucky and I never met another person off the internet again. At least until I was over eighteen.
Along with my budding sexual promiscuity, I had had a few other problems that began to rear their ugly head. One of these is social anxiety. For years I had been the “shy” one, never talking to get to know a person until they talked to me first. But usually that was all it would take before I would let them in. However, one incident while in seventh grade changed that. I was in Middle School and considered myself part of a “group” of girls that would hang out together. Albeit I was on the outside of the group because I wasn't ever able to go anywhere with anyone and no one was allowed to come over to the house, but I was a part of the group. We would sit together and have lunch together and just stand outside together, until one day I supposed I must have said something wrong to one of the girls. It was a stupid and petty thing to say when I think about it now, but back then I was offended. We had a “snack time” in which we were able to go down to the lunchroom and buy little things like rice crispy treats. This girl asked me one day why I didn't go around asking for money to buy something like the rest of them did most days. I replied back “I may be poor but I don't need to beg for money, I still have my pride”. Not more than a week later, after lunch, on our way out for free time she pulled me aside and asked why I was always sitting with them and hanging around. She told me that no one liked me and that I was a nuisance, like a puppy dog begging for attention. She then told me to leave them alone. From then on I did.