I will be 25 on Friday, and I have 2 things I’ve kept inside for 10+ years I need to get out. Read it, don’t read it, just don’t comment on it. I just need other people to know about it. I need these to not be a secret anymore. I never plan on telling family, I never plan on them knowing any of this - I’m just tired of it eating up inside me.

• When I was 9 I was molested for almost a year. Though I don’t know if it’s really molestation. My mother had friends move in, this friend had 3 kids, a daughter my age, a son about 14, and her eldest daughter was 16ish. The youngest, my friend Cece, forced me to do sexual acts on her. Sometimes her brother would come in and watch, touching himself, but never us. They told me if I told they’d hurt Lindsey and Matthew. Lindsey was a toddler and Matthew was a newborn. I refused to do it one night and woke up to Lindsey and Matthew covered in bruises. No broken bones and no other damage, just bruises up and down their arms and legs. I never refused again after that. This ended after we moved in with grandma when I was 10. I saw Cece once after that, she was in my science class and group at Summer School when I was..12? We didn’t talk. I don’t even know if she remembered me. But I remembered her and trembled every day that summer when I had school.

• When I was 11, after we had moved in with grandma, she physically abused me for the first time. Mom was at work, Matt was sleeping, Lindsey was at the table doing homework, grandma and I were watching TV, I remember Friends was on - so it was about 7:30 at night. Grandma and I had gotten into an argument about something, I don’t even remember what it was. All I remember about it is that I didn’t want to be in the same house as her at that time. So I went out front - because the back yard was for the dogs only (she had 12 at the time). The only place was to sit in front of the door. It was cold, it was November in Tracy, at night. It was windy and freezing. I was in my jammies. Grandma had a comforter she had washed a week+ before that time and had left it sitting in the front yard, it was covered in snail tails, it was slightly damp from being outside, but it was thick. I picked snails off it and slung it around my shoulders and sat back down. It wasn’t long until Grandma opened the front door and saw me sitting on the other side of the screen door. She told me to move, I refused. I didn’t want to talk to her. I told her to just go away, give me space. She flipped. With my back still against the screen door she started pushing it open, throwing her wait against it, slamming it into my back, moving me little by little. I tried to crawl away but the slams kept coming, not giving me a spare moment to move because I was in pain. Once she had enough room to slip out the door, she held it open against my back, pinning me between the door and the brick wall that was behind it. We had a fence around the entire front yard, so the dogs could rule that area as well, so none of the neighbors could see what was going on. Once she was out the door she yanked the comforter from around my shoulders, pulling hair out with it. She started yelling, not yelling yelling, but the kind of yelling parents do in public places, getting real close with a tone in their voice. She punctuated each word with a slap to my head. When she realized I wasn’t listening to her, she grabbed onto my hair and started trying to pull me into the house. When that didn’t work she did the yelling thing again. That night was shower night, I had to go in and shower. I didn’t want to go in. If she did shit like that in public I was not going into a private area with her, I also couldn’t even get up if I wanted, I was in pain. After more yelling she finally just pulled the hose on me. She turned the cold water on full blast and hosed me down. I yanked the hose out of her hands after I was soaking wet. I wacked her in the ankle with it, she slapped me in the head again, and we went back and forth until she finally threw her hands up in the air, slammed the front screen open into my back and elbow, went into the house and locked both doors on me. I spent the next 2 hours soaking wet in 40* windy weather. When my mother got home I went to her crying, but she was pissed at me. Why? Because grandma called her and told her I did this to myself. That I got pissed at grandma and soaked myself with the hose, then I ‘beat’ her with the hose giving her a bruise (which was smaller then a dime). As a child I didn’t bruise, no matter what, I had no proof of what actually happened. And since grandma got to her first, grandma won. I’ve brought this up to her recently (sometime in the last year) out of anger, and she said she didn’t remember any of it. I don’t know if she’s choosing to ignore what she did to me, or if she really does have dementia.