I Was Seven When I Told My Mother

My trauma started when I was seven years old.

That was the age when I first tried to tell my mother that something was terribly wrong.

I didn’t have the words to explain everything.

I was just a child.

I knew I was afraid. I knew I didn’t want to be around that man. And I knew something was happening to me that no child should ever have to experience.

But when I tried to speak, my mother didn’t protect me.

Instead, she told me:

“What goes on in this house stays in this house.”

Then she told me to get off the school bus and go straight home.

So I did.

And every day after elementary school, I walked back into the place where I was supposed to feel safe.

But I wasn’t safe.

I was being abused.

And while the adults around me continued living their lives, I was learning how to survive mine.

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Years passed.

I carried what happened quietly.

Sometimes I tried to bring it up again.

But instead of being believed, I heard excuses.

One of the things my mother said was that he cared about me because he paid for things like my hair and nails.