*Triggers Possible* My whole truth.
Zangetsu
Registrant
Note: This was written in pieces over many months. I got out what I could, when I could. If it seems like it jumps from one subject to another, it's because I had to stop when it got too heavy—and I picked up again wherever I felt ready to continue. This is my truth, told in fragments that finally found their way back into one whole.
You think you know what survival looks like.
You think it’s strength, maybe—resilience.
You think it’s someone who made it out.
I didn’t.
Not really.
I’m still there.
I walk and talk and laugh like I’ve moved on. I work, I hold conversations, I even fall in love sometimes. But deep inside, under all the things I do to seem "functional," there’s a boy in a room who never left. And he still screams.
He’s the reason I’m writing this now.
You’ve probably seen me drop pieces of my story before. A line here. A vague reference there. The one I always defaulted to: *“He took me to a room and he broke me.”* That’s the line that always stopped the bleeding just long enough to breathe. Just enough to keep going. But that sentence is a cage. It’s not false, but it’s nowhere near the truth. It’s a whisper when what really happened is a scream.
So this time, I’m not whispering.
This is the truth I’ve never said in full—not to friends, not to partners, not even in therapy the way I’m saying it now.
Because it wasn’t just him.
It wasn’t just one man.
It wasn’t just one moment of betrayal.
It was a system of horror. A machine built from manipulation, silence, and opportunity. And that machine ran for years—starting when I was five. Long before I understood what a boundary was. Before I had the language for pain. Before I even knew I was being destroyed.
He groomed me.
He made me feel seen. Heard. Important. All the things I didn’t get at home. My home life was filled with shouting, control, and walking on eggshells. A father with fists. A mother who fought but never stopped the bleeding. My brother took beatings harder than I did, but when he got hit, he made sure I did too. So I grew up knowing violence as normal. That’s how love looked in our house—if it looked like anything at all.
And when someone from outside offered warmth, I chased it like a starving animal.
He gave me attention. Listened to my chatter. Gave me space to exist.
At five years old, I didn’t understand grooming. I just knew someone was paying attention. Someone saw me.
And then, over time, he started reshaping me.
At first, it was small things—testing boundaries, normalizing closeness, praising silence. He knew exactly how to keep me off balance. And when he decided I was ready—when he decided *he* had broken me in far enough—he took me into that room.
And everything changed.
I need you to understand something here: it wasn’t just him in that room.
That’s the part I’ve never been able to say. Not out loud. Not in therapy. Not in the mirror.
That room was his domain, but I wasn’t the only one who walked through its door.
He brought others there.
Men. Women. Different people at different times. Some of them laughed. Some stayed silent. Some were cruel. Some acted like it was a game. But none of them—*none of them*—saw me as a child.
They didn’t see a boy.
They didn’t see a person.
They didn’t even see a name.
They saw an object.
I was a thing they could use. A toy. A prop for their sickness. A body without a voice. And they did whatever they wanted.
They didn’t ask if it hurt.
Some wanted tears. Some wanted silence. Some wanted fear. Some just wanted to break something innocent.
And they did.
They broke me.
I wasn’t taken to another city. I wasn’t moved in the dark. I wasn’t “trafficked” in the traditional sense. But I was used. Repeatedly. Routinely. In a room that was less than a hundred yards from my house. The same house where my parents fought. Where I was ignored. Where no one asked why I kept disappearing across the street.
I didn’t leave the room because that was the plan. They didn’t need to take me far—they had me exactly where they wanted me.
And over the course of years, I lost everything. My innocence. My identity. My ability to say no. My ability to even *want* to say no.
I became compliant because resistance brought more pain.
And then one day, I wasn’t wanted anymore.
Because I got older.
Because I stopped being whatever fantasy they needed me to be.
Because I aged out.
And just like that, it stopped. Not because I was rescued. Not because anyone intervened. But because I was no longer useful.
I was discarded.
He died shortly after. The man who groomed me, broke me, and brought others to break me too. He ended his life by his own hand. But there was no relief. Just silence.
I didn’t get justice. I didn’t get to confront him. I didn’t get to ask why.
All I got was the wreckage.
And the wreckage? I
carried it into everything...
I didn’t leave the room.
Not really.
My body got older. My skin thickened. My voice deepened. But inside? Inside I was still six years old. Still bracing myself. Still gagged by silence. Still an object in a room full of monsters. And the monsters didn’t just live across the street. They lived in me.
Because when that kind of thing is done to you—when you’re taught that your body is something to be taken, shaped, controlled—you don’t just snap out of it when it stops. It becomes a blueprint. A script. The only version of touch you’ve ever known.
That’s what I carried out of that room. Not just the memories. Not just the pain.
The programming.
The learned helplessness. The belief that love is earned through submission. That affection is dangerous. That connection only ends in control. That your worth is in how well you stay silent.
So I didn’t run from the abuse. I folded it up and took it with me.
It showed up everywhere.
In school.
In the way I watched people from a distance, always wondering what they really wanted.
In the way I over-talked or under-responded.
In the way I never really let anyone close—not all the way.
Not even when they said they cared.
And when I hit adolescence, nothing made sense. My body didn’t develop like other boys. I have Klinefelter Syndrome. One extra chromosome. One small genetic difference that meant no testosterone surge, no deep voice, no facial hair.
My body stayed soft. Round. Feminine.
And the whispers started. The confusion. The teasing. The shame.
But what no one knew was that I had already been called *less than* long before that. I’d already been made to feel like I didn’t belong in a male body. Like I didn’t own it. Like it wasn’t mine to begin with.
So when my body refused to become what people expected of it, it felt like confirmation. I wasn’t a man. I wasn’t anything. I was just *there.*
Unclaimable.
Unwanted.
Unformed.
And it made the silence worse.
It made the shame deeper.
Because now the inside didn’t match the outside, and both were screaming.
I developed a skill for disappearing without ever leaving a room. I could be in a conversation and not hear a word. I could go hours, sometimes days, without remembering what I did. It wasn’t drugs. It wasn’t a fugue state. It was dissociation—chronic, deep dissociation that kept me from feeling the full weight of everything.
And if you’ve never lived in that space, let me explain: it’s not like sleep. It’s not like numbness. It’s a hollowing. A drifting. You are *there,* but also... not.
People would talk to me, and I’d smile. Nod. Respond. But nothing was going in.
Because if it did—if I let myself be present—then I’d feel. And if I felt, I’d remember.
And remembering?
That was unbearable.
So I went blank.
And that blankness became my personality.
I could be charming when I needed to. Social. Engaging. But only in fragments. Only in bursts. I learned to perform normalcy like a role I had to memorize.
No one could tell I was acting.
But I was.
Every day.
Sex?
Let’s talk about sex.
It took me years to figure out that I was demisexual—someone who doesn’t feel attraction unless there’s a deep emotional bond first. But even when I had that bond, sex was still a battlefield. It was never about pleasure. It was a test. A threat. A tightrope walk through a minefield of memory and fear.
Because in my body, sex had never been a choice.
So even when it was offered with love, with patience, with care—something inside me recoiled.
I didn’t know how to stay *in* my body during it. My brain would shut off. I’d go numb. I’d do what I thought I was supposed to do. I’d perform. But it wasn’t real for me.
It was survival.
I didn’t want to be touched. Not really. But I didn’t want to be alone either. And that tension—that war between needing connection and fearing it—followed me into every relationship I’ve ever had.
Some partners tried to fix me.
Some tried to use me.
Some wanted me to be the hero that saved them from their own wreckage.
Others wanted to be the hero that saved me.
But no one—no matter how kind, how loving—could carry what I carry.
Because the boy in that room? He never left.
And he never let me forget.
Attachment?
That’s a mess too.
I used to think I was securely attached. That I had done the work. That I had healed enough to trust.
But deep down, I was always waiting for people to vanish.
I’d open up, and then immediately start bracing for the goodbye.
I’d give love, but struggle to believe I was worth receiving it.
I’d sabotage things I wanted just to prove to myself that it wasn’t going to work anyway.
I have anxious-preoccupied tendencies. Sometimes disorganized. I crave intimacy but fear abandonment. I want to be close, but when it happens, I panic. Because being close means being seen.
And if someone sees *all* of me—sees the broken pieces, the rage, the shame, the blankness—how could they stay?
They wouldn’t.
That’s what my trauma told me. Over and over.
So I did what a lot of survivors do. I gravitated toward chaos. Toward people who were also broken. Who mirrored my pain. Because at least there, the wreckage felt familiar.
At least there, I didn’t have to pretend I was whole.
But chaos doesn’t heal chaos.
It just feeds it.
And I kept bleeding.
And then came the marriage.
I stayed married for decades.
We built a life. A routine.
I gave everything I had. But that’s the thing—when you grow up having everything taken from you, it’s hard to know what’s yours to give.
So I gave too much.
I performed stability. I pretended to be okay.
But I was never fully *there.*
Not because I didn’t love her. Not because I didn’t want the life we had. But because a part of me was always split—always disconnected from the present. Because the foundation of who I am was shaped by absence.
I wasn’t in my body for most of my childhood. And it’s hard to suddenly start living in it just because you say “I do.”
And when the marriage ended, it didn’t feel like a failure.
It felt like confirmation.
That I’m too much.
Too broken.
Too complicated to stay with.
Now I try.
I try to connect.
I try to trust.
I try to believe that I’m more than what was done to me.
But some days, I still feel like an echo. Like the boy in the room swallowed me whole, and I’ve been trying to claw my way out ever since.
I’m not healed.
I’m
not whole.
But I am still here.
And that counts for something.
Even if I’m the only one who knows it.
I shouldn’t have survived.
Not just physically—though even that’s a miracle considering what was done to me. I mean emotionally. Spiritually. On a soul level.
Because when you’re broken that early, that thoroughly, you’re not supposed to come out the other side intact. You’re supposed to fracture into something cold. Sharp. Dead-eyed. Unreachable.
You’re supposed to become a monster, or fall into a pit of addiction, or disappear completely.
I didn’t.
And I still don’t know why.
I didn’t have some grand awakening. I didn’t meet a savior. I wasn’t rescued.
I was just a kid who held onto something small and quiet and stubborn inside of him. Something that refused to let go of humanity, even after the world ripped it away again and again.
I stayed kind.
That may not sound like much.
But to me, it’s everything.
After years of being treated like a possession, like a toy, like nothing more than a vessel for someone else’s sickness, I could’ve chosen to become cruel. Detached. Apathetic. Self-serving. I could’ve decided that the only way to survive was to turn off every soft part of myself and just mimic human connection without ever feeling it again.
I didn’t.
I still cared.
Even when I hated myself. Even when I wanted to disappear. Even when I couldn’t feel *anything*, I still noticed when other people were in pain. I still wanted to help. I still wanted to be good.
Not for approval.
Not to be liked.
But because some small part of me—some ember that hadn’t been snuffed out in that room—believed that kindness was a rebellion. That being gentle in a world that abused you was the most defiant thing you could do.
So I stayed soft.
And that softness saved me.
It didn’t heal me. But it kept me from going numb forever.
Because numbness is always lurking. Just beneath the surface.
You don’t go through years of systematic abuse, grooming, objectification, and torture without learning how to shut your body down like a switch.
That’s how I survived the room.
That’s how I survived the rest of my childhood.
But numbness has a cost.
It doesn’t just dull the pain—it dulls everything.
Joy. Love. Intimacy. Pleasure. Meaning.
Even laughter starts to feel like a reflex instead of something felt.
So when I say I stayed human, I don’t mean I was whole.
I mean I fought to *feel*, even when it hurt. Even when the safer option was to stay behind the wall of dissociation.
I forced myself to connect.
I practiced being present, even if it only lasted for a few seconds at a time.
And sometimes that presence brought grief. Sometimes it brought terror.
But other times—rare, fleeting times—it brought peace.
And that was enough to keep going.
I held onto identity. Barely. But I held on.
This one’s complicated.
Because I don’t know who I would’ve been if none of this had happened.
Would I have been more confident?
Would I have had a clearer sense of masculinity?
Would I have understood my body as *mine*, not a thing people take from?
I don’t know.
But I do know that I am who I am *because* I lived through hell and chose not to replicate it.
I’m demisexual. I don’t feel attraction without deep emotional connection. It’s not a label I wore early on—I didn’t even have words for it growing up. But once I found that word, I cried. Because it explained something I’d carried in silence for decades.
I’ve never been able to separate sex from emotion. Not because I’m romantic or idealistic, but because sex without safety feels like being used again.
Even when it’s consensual.
Even when it’s gentle.
Even when it’s with someone I care about.
My body still tenses.
My mind still floats.
Sometimes I dissociate without realizing it.
Sometimes I panic afterward.
Sometimes I cry in the shower without knowing why.
But still—I keep trying. Because I believe that somewhere out there is a version of intimacy that isn’t tainted by memory. That isn’t wrapped in guilt or shame.
And maybe I’ll never fully feel it the way other people do. Maybe I’ll always carry the weight of what was done to me.
But I *am* still trying.
And that effort? That refusal to give up on love?
That’s human.
I chose honesty. Eventually.
For most of my life, I lied by omission.
Not because I was dishonest—but because I didn’t know how to tell the truth and still be safe.
If someone asked me what happened in my childhood, I’d say: “It was rough.”
If they asked about my body, I’d say: “It’s complicated.”
If they asked why I flinch when touched, or why I go silent during sex, or why I stare at walls sometimes for hours, I’d say: “Just tired.”
But deep down, I wanted to be known.
I wanted someone—anyone—to really *see* me.
Not the mask. Not the polite version. Not the well-spoken survivor who’s done therapy and can articulate his pain in clean, packaged phrases.
I wanted someone to see the damage. The ugly. The raw.
And *stay.*
That’s all I ever wanted.
But I was terrified that if I told the full truth—the truth I’m telling here—they’d run. Or worse, they’d stay for a little while, then leave once it got hard. Once it got messy.
So I kept hiding.
Until the hiding started killing me.
And eventually, I cracked.
In therapy. In forums. In quiet late-night text messages that took me hours to type.
And what I found wasn’t always comforting.
Some people *did* leave.
Some people *did* try to fix me.
Some people said the wrong things. Gave the wrong advice. Pulled away when I needed them to come close.
But others?
They stayed.
They listened.
They didn’t flinch when I said I had been used by *more than one person.*
They didn’t look away when I said I was taken to a room, over and over, and that it was the same hundred yards from my childhood home.
They didn’t question why I went back.
They *knew.*
And in those moments, I wasn’t alone.
Being a survivor isn’t an identity. It’s a condition.
It’s not a badge I wear. It’s not something I chose.
It’s something I live with.
Like a scar that never fully fades. Like an echo that never quite dies out.
Some days are okay.
Some days I can breathe.
Some days I even laugh and mean it.
Other days, I feel hollow. Distant. Fragile. Like a single word could undo me.
And that’s okay.
That’s what healing *actually* looks like.
It’s not a straight line. It’s not a checklist.
It’s survival. Every damn day.
I’m still here.
Not because I’m brave. Not because I’m strong.
But because I refused to let them win.
They didn’t take everything.
They took a lot. My innocence. My sense of safety. Years of my life.
But they didn’t take my empathy.
They didn’t take my ability to care.
They didn’t take my soul.
They tried. God, they tried.
But I’m still here.
And I’m still human.
And that matters.
There’s a boy in a room.
He’s six years old.
He’s small, even for his age. His voice is quiet. His eyes are watchful. He has a scrape on his knee from falling off his bike in the driveway. He talks too much. He asks too many questions. He laughs with his whole chest—when he still knows how to laugh.
And he trusts too easily.
That’s his greatest sin.
He trusted someone who smiled at him. Someone who offered him attention, kindness, safety.
And when that person opened the door to a small, plain room not a hundred yards from the boy’s home, the boy walked in willingly.
Because how could he have known?
He didn’t know that inside that room, he would stop being a person.
He didn’t know that others would come. That adults—grown men, grown women—would use that room as a place to turn a child into an object.
He didn’t know that they wouldn’t even ask his name.
That they wouldn’t care.
That they would take, and take, and take until there was nothing left but obedience.
And when they were finished—when he had grown too old, when the fantasy no longer fit—he wouldn’t be freed.
He would be discarded.
And left alone with the wreckage.
That boy is still inside me.
He never left that room.
Even now, all these years later, when I close my eyes, I can see him.
Curled up. Silent. Waiting.
Sometimes I hate him.
Sometimes I want to scream at him for not running, for not fighting harder, for going back, for trusting.
Sometimes I want to hold him. Wrap my arms around him and tell him it wasn’t his fault. That he was a child. That what was done to him was unthinkable.
Sometimes I just want to sit on the floor with him and cry.
Because he’s still there.
He’s the part of me that never grew up. The part that doesn’t understand why his body betrayed him. The part that still feels the shame, the confusion, the ache of something stolen so thoroughly that it can’t even be named.
I’ve tried to leave him behind.
I’ve tried therapy.
Tried silence.
Tried writing it out.
Tried screaming into pillows.
Tried pretending I was over it.
Tried pretending I was never in that room to begin with.
But none of it worked.
Because healing doesn’t mean forgetting.
It means remembering without disappearing.
It means reclaiming what was taken.
It means going back for the boy—not to relive it, but to let him know he doesn’t have to be alone anymore.
So here I am.
At the end of this story.
Not tied up neatly. Not resolved.
But standing at the doorway to that room.
And this time, I’m not afraid to walk in.
Not to be used. Not to be hurt.
But to say what he was never allowed to say.
You were a child.
You didn’t ask for this.
You didn’t deserve this.
You were manipulated, violated, used, broken, and discarded by people who should never have had access to you.
They were the monsters.
Not you.
You weren’t disgusting.
You weren’t complicit.
You weren’t a participant.
You were surviving.
Every reaction you had—freezing, complying, numbing out, even the ways your body responded—none of that makes you guilty.
You were surviving.
You stayed alive in the only way you knew how.
And that’s not something to be ashamed of.
That’s something to *honor.*
I see you now.
I see the bruises they couldn’t see.
I hear the screams no one heard.
I feel the weight you carried when no one believed you, when no one *even knew* what had happened.
And I’m sorry.
For every time I abandoned you.
For every time I blamed you.
For every time I called you weak or broken or disgusting.
You weren’t.
You were strong.
You *are* strong.
Because you’re still here.
And I’m still here because of you.
Because you held the pain when I couldn’t.
Because you stayed quiet when I had to survive.
Because you waited.
And now?
Now you don’t have to wait anymore.
You’re allowed to feel.
You’re allowed to grieve.
You’re allowed to rage.
You’re allowed to say, *What happened to me was wrong.*
You’re allowed to take up space in your own body.
You’re allowed to love. To be loved.
To be touched gently.
To be held without being taken.
To be wanted without being used.
To be safe without earning it.
To be whole, even if it takes a lifetime to get there.
This isn’t a happy ending.
But it’s a *true* one.
And for me, that’s enough.
I don’t need to be fixed.
I don’t need to be “better.”
I don’t even need to be okay every day.
I just need to be *real.*
And this—these words, this story, this truth—is the most real thing I’ve ever written.
So to the survivors who are still silent...
I see you.
To the ones who only made it out physically, but not emotionally...
I believe you.
To the ones who still carry shame that isn’t yours...
You didn’t deserve what happened.
To the ones who think they’re too broken to ever be loved...
You’re not.
And to the child inside me who still flinches at shadows and wonders if anyone will ever come back for him...
I’m here.
I came back.
And I’m never leaving again.
If you’re reading this and it feels too close, if you see yourself in these words and feel sick, angry, numb, broken—just know this:
You’re not alone.
You don’t have to speak if you’re not ready.
You don’t have to share if it doesn’t feel safe.
But one day, if and when you do...
Speak like you’re screaming for your life.
Because in many ways, you are.
And your voice is worth hearing.
Not in fragments.
Not in half-truths.
But in full.
In fire.
In grief.
In *power.*
Tell your story.
Even if it shakes.
Even if it bleeds.
Even if no one believes it but you.
Because the boy in the room didn’t die.
He’s still here.
And his voice matters.
So does mine.
And so does yours.
You think you know what survival looks like.
You think it’s strength, maybe—resilience.
You think it’s someone who made it out.
I didn’t.
Not really.
I’m still there.
I walk and talk and laugh like I’ve moved on. I work, I hold conversations, I even fall in love sometimes. But deep inside, under all the things I do to seem "functional," there’s a boy in a room who never left. And he still screams.
He’s the reason I’m writing this now.
You’ve probably seen me drop pieces of my story before. A line here. A vague reference there. The one I always defaulted to: *“He took me to a room and he broke me.”* That’s the line that always stopped the bleeding just long enough to breathe. Just enough to keep going. But that sentence is a cage. It’s not false, but it’s nowhere near the truth. It’s a whisper when what really happened is a scream.
So this time, I’m not whispering.
This is the truth I’ve never said in full—not to friends, not to partners, not even in therapy the way I’m saying it now.
Because it wasn’t just him.
It wasn’t just one man.
It wasn’t just one moment of betrayal.
It was a system of horror. A machine built from manipulation, silence, and opportunity. And that machine ran for years—starting when I was five. Long before I understood what a boundary was. Before I had the language for pain. Before I even knew I was being destroyed.
He groomed me.
He made me feel seen. Heard. Important. All the things I didn’t get at home. My home life was filled with shouting, control, and walking on eggshells. A father with fists. A mother who fought but never stopped the bleeding. My brother took beatings harder than I did, but when he got hit, he made sure I did too. So I grew up knowing violence as normal. That’s how love looked in our house—if it looked like anything at all.
And when someone from outside offered warmth, I chased it like a starving animal.
He gave me attention. Listened to my chatter. Gave me space to exist.
At five years old, I didn’t understand grooming. I just knew someone was paying attention. Someone saw me.
And then, over time, he started reshaping me.
At first, it was small things—testing boundaries, normalizing closeness, praising silence. He knew exactly how to keep me off balance. And when he decided I was ready—when he decided *he* had broken me in far enough—he took me into that room.
And everything changed.
I need you to understand something here: it wasn’t just him in that room.
That’s the part I’ve never been able to say. Not out loud. Not in therapy. Not in the mirror.
That room was his domain, but I wasn’t the only one who walked through its door.
He brought others there.
Men. Women. Different people at different times. Some of them laughed. Some stayed silent. Some were cruel. Some acted like it was a game. But none of them—*none of them*—saw me as a child.
They didn’t see a boy.
They didn’t see a person.
They didn’t even see a name.
They saw an object.
I was a thing they could use. A toy. A prop for their sickness. A body without a voice. And they did whatever they wanted.
They didn’t ask if it hurt.
Some wanted tears. Some wanted silence. Some wanted fear. Some just wanted to break something innocent.
And they did.
They broke me.
I wasn’t taken to another city. I wasn’t moved in the dark. I wasn’t “trafficked” in the traditional sense. But I was used. Repeatedly. Routinely. In a room that was less than a hundred yards from my house. The same house where my parents fought. Where I was ignored. Where no one asked why I kept disappearing across the street.
I didn’t leave the room because that was the plan. They didn’t need to take me far—they had me exactly where they wanted me.
And over the course of years, I lost everything. My innocence. My identity. My ability to say no. My ability to even *want* to say no.
I became compliant because resistance brought more pain.
And then one day, I wasn’t wanted anymore.
Because I got older.
Because I stopped being whatever fantasy they needed me to be.
Because I aged out.
And just like that, it stopped. Not because I was rescued. Not because anyone intervened. But because I was no longer useful.
I was discarded.
He died shortly after. The man who groomed me, broke me, and brought others to break me too. He ended his life by his own hand. But there was no relief. Just silence.
I didn’t get justice. I didn’t get to confront him. I didn’t get to ask why.
All I got was the wreckage.
And the wreckage? I
carried it into everything...
I didn’t leave the room.
Not really.
My body got older. My skin thickened. My voice deepened. But inside? Inside I was still six years old. Still bracing myself. Still gagged by silence. Still an object in a room full of monsters. And the monsters didn’t just live across the street. They lived in me.
Because when that kind of thing is done to you—when you’re taught that your body is something to be taken, shaped, controlled—you don’t just snap out of it when it stops. It becomes a blueprint. A script. The only version of touch you’ve ever known.
That’s what I carried out of that room. Not just the memories. Not just the pain.
The programming.
The learned helplessness. The belief that love is earned through submission. That affection is dangerous. That connection only ends in control. That your worth is in how well you stay silent.
So I didn’t run from the abuse. I folded it up and took it with me.
It showed up everywhere.
In school.
In the way I watched people from a distance, always wondering what they really wanted.
In the way I over-talked or under-responded.
In the way I never really let anyone close—not all the way.
Not even when they said they cared.
And when I hit adolescence, nothing made sense. My body didn’t develop like other boys. I have Klinefelter Syndrome. One extra chromosome. One small genetic difference that meant no testosterone surge, no deep voice, no facial hair.
My body stayed soft. Round. Feminine.
And the whispers started. The confusion. The teasing. The shame.
But what no one knew was that I had already been called *less than* long before that. I’d already been made to feel like I didn’t belong in a male body. Like I didn’t own it. Like it wasn’t mine to begin with.
So when my body refused to become what people expected of it, it felt like confirmation. I wasn’t a man. I wasn’t anything. I was just *there.*
Unclaimable.
Unwanted.
Unformed.
And it made the silence worse.
It made the shame deeper.
Because now the inside didn’t match the outside, and both were screaming.
I developed a skill for disappearing without ever leaving a room. I could be in a conversation and not hear a word. I could go hours, sometimes days, without remembering what I did. It wasn’t drugs. It wasn’t a fugue state. It was dissociation—chronic, deep dissociation that kept me from feeling the full weight of everything.
And if you’ve never lived in that space, let me explain: it’s not like sleep. It’s not like numbness. It’s a hollowing. A drifting. You are *there,* but also... not.
People would talk to me, and I’d smile. Nod. Respond. But nothing was going in.
Because if it did—if I let myself be present—then I’d feel. And if I felt, I’d remember.
And remembering?
That was unbearable.
So I went blank.
And that blankness became my personality.
I could be charming when I needed to. Social. Engaging. But only in fragments. Only in bursts. I learned to perform normalcy like a role I had to memorize.
No one could tell I was acting.
But I was.
Every day.
Sex?
Let’s talk about sex.
It took me years to figure out that I was demisexual—someone who doesn’t feel attraction unless there’s a deep emotional bond first. But even when I had that bond, sex was still a battlefield. It was never about pleasure. It was a test. A threat. A tightrope walk through a minefield of memory and fear.
Because in my body, sex had never been a choice.
So even when it was offered with love, with patience, with care—something inside me recoiled.
I didn’t know how to stay *in* my body during it. My brain would shut off. I’d go numb. I’d do what I thought I was supposed to do. I’d perform. But it wasn’t real for me.
It was survival.
I didn’t want to be touched. Not really. But I didn’t want to be alone either. And that tension—that war between needing connection and fearing it—followed me into every relationship I’ve ever had.
Some partners tried to fix me.
Some tried to use me.
Some wanted me to be the hero that saved them from their own wreckage.
Others wanted to be the hero that saved me.
But no one—no matter how kind, how loving—could carry what I carry.
Because the boy in that room? He never left.
And he never let me forget.
Attachment?
That’s a mess too.
I used to think I was securely attached. That I had done the work. That I had healed enough to trust.
But deep down, I was always waiting for people to vanish.
I’d open up, and then immediately start bracing for the goodbye.
I’d give love, but struggle to believe I was worth receiving it.
I’d sabotage things I wanted just to prove to myself that it wasn’t going to work anyway.
I have anxious-preoccupied tendencies. Sometimes disorganized. I crave intimacy but fear abandonment. I want to be close, but when it happens, I panic. Because being close means being seen.
And if someone sees *all* of me—sees the broken pieces, the rage, the shame, the blankness—how could they stay?
They wouldn’t.
That’s what my trauma told me. Over and over.
So I did what a lot of survivors do. I gravitated toward chaos. Toward people who were also broken. Who mirrored my pain. Because at least there, the wreckage felt familiar.
At least there, I didn’t have to pretend I was whole.
But chaos doesn’t heal chaos.
It just feeds it.
And I kept bleeding.
And then came the marriage.
I stayed married for decades.
We built a life. A routine.
I gave everything I had. But that’s the thing—when you grow up having everything taken from you, it’s hard to know what’s yours to give.
So I gave too much.
I performed stability. I pretended to be okay.
But I was never fully *there.*
Not because I didn’t love her. Not because I didn’t want the life we had. But because a part of me was always split—always disconnected from the present. Because the foundation of who I am was shaped by absence.
I wasn’t in my body for most of my childhood. And it’s hard to suddenly start living in it just because you say “I do.”
And when the marriage ended, it didn’t feel like a failure.
It felt like confirmation.
That I’m too much.
Too broken.
Too complicated to stay with.
Now I try.
I try to connect.
I try to trust.
I try to believe that I’m more than what was done to me.
But some days, I still feel like an echo. Like the boy in the room swallowed me whole, and I’ve been trying to claw my way out ever since.
I’m not healed.
I’m
not whole.
But I am still here.
And that counts for something.
Even if I’m the only one who knows it.
I shouldn’t have survived.
Not just physically—though even that’s a miracle considering what was done to me. I mean emotionally. Spiritually. On a soul level.
Because when you’re broken that early, that thoroughly, you’re not supposed to come out the other side intact. You’re supposed to fracture into something cold. Sharp. Dead-eyed. Unreachable.
You’re supposed to become a monster, or fall into a pit of addiction, or disappear completely.
I didn’t.
And I still don’t know why.
I didn’t have some grand awakening. I didn’t meet a savior. I wasn’t rescued.
I was just a kid who held onto something small and quiet and stubborn inside of him. Something that refused to let go of humanity, even after the world ripped it away again and again.
I stayed kind.
That may not sound like much.
But to me, it’s everything.
After years of being treated like a possession, like a toy, like nothing more than a vessel for someone else’s sickness, I could’ve chosen to become cruel. Detached. Apathetic. Self-serving. I could’ve decided that the only way to survive was to turn off every soft part of myself and just mimic human connection without ever feeling it again.
I didn’t.
I still cared.
Even when I hated myself. Even when I wanted to disappear. Even when I couldn’t feel *anything*, I still noticed when other people were in pain. I still wanted to help. I still wanted to be good.
Not for approval.
Not to be liked.
But because some small part of me—some ember that hadn’t been snuffed out in that room—believed that kindness was a rebellion. That being gentle in a world that abused you was the most defiant thing you could do.
So I stayed soft.
And that softness saved me.
It didn’t heal me. But it kept me from going numb forever.
Because numbness is always lurking. Just beneath the surface.
You don’t go through years of systematic abuse, grooming, objectification, and torture without learning how to shut your body down like a switch.
That’s how I survived the room.
That’s how I survived the rest of my childhood.
But numbness has a cost.
It doesn’t just dull the pain—it dulls everything.
Joy. Love. Intimacy. Pleasure. Meaning.
Even laughter starts to feel like a reflex instead of something felt.
So when I say I stayed human, I don’t mean I was whole.
I mean I fought to *feel*, even when it hurt. Even when the safer option was to stay behind the wall of dissociation.
I forced myself to connect.
I practiced being present, even if it only lasted for a few seconds at a time.
And sometimes that presence brought grief. Sometimes it brought terror.
But other times—rare, fleeting times—it brought peace.
And that was enough to keep going.
I held onto identity. Barely. But I held on.
This one’s complicated.
Because I don’t know who I would’ve been if none of this had happened.
Would I have been more confident?
Would I have had a clearer sense of masculinity?
Would I have understood my body as *mine*, not a thing people take from?
I don’t know.
But I do know that I am who I am *because* I lived through hell and chose not to replicate it.
I’m demisexual. I don’t feel attraction without deep emotional connection. It’s not a label I wore early on—I didn’t even have words for it growing up. But once I found that word, I cried. Because it explained something I’d carried in silence for decades.
I’ve never been able to separate sex from emotion. Not because I’m romantic or idealistic, but because sex without safety feels like being used again.
Even when it’s consensual.
Even when it’s gentle.
Even when it’s with someone I care about.
My body still tenses.
My mind still floats.
Sometimes I dissociate without realizing it.
Sometimes I panic afterward.
Sometimes I cry in the shower without knowing why.
But still—I keep trying. Because I believe that somewhere out there is a version of intimacy that isn’t tainted by memory. That isn’t wrapped in guilt or shame.
And maybe I’ll never fully feel it the way other people do. Maybe I’ll always carry the weight of what was done to me.
But I *am* still trying.
And that effort? That refusal to give up on love?
That’s human.
I chose honesty. Eventually.
For most of my life, I lied by omission.
Not because I was dishonest—but because I didn’t know how to tell the truth and still be safe.
If someone asked me what happened in my childhood, I’d say: “It was rough.”
If they asked about my body, I’d say: “It’s complicated.”
If they asked why I flinch when touched, or why I go silent during sex, or why I stare at walls sometimes for hours, I’d say: “Just tired.”
But deep down, I wanted to be known.
I wanted someone—anyone—to really *see* me.
Not the mask. Not the polite version. Not the well-spoken survivor who’s done therapy and can articulate his pain in clean, packaged phrases.
I wanted someone to see the damage. The ugly. The raw.
And *stay.*
That’s all I ever wanted.
But I was terrified that if I told the full truth—the truth I’m telling here—they’d run. Or worse, they’d stay for a little while, then leave once it got hard. Once it got messy.
So I kept hiding.
Until the hiding started killing me.
And eventually, I cracked.
In therapy. In forums. In quiet late-night text messages that took me hours to type.
And what I found wasn’t always comforting.
Some people *did* leave.
Some people *did* try to fix me.
Some people said the wrong things. Gave the wrong advice. Pulled away when I needed them to come close.
But others?
They stayed.
They listened.
They didn’t flinch when I said I had been used by *more than one person.*
They didn’t look away when I said I was taken to a room, over and over, and that it was the same hundred yards from my childhood home.
They didn’t question why I went back.
They *knew.*
And in those moments, I wasn’t alone.
Being a survivor isn’t an identity. It’s a condition.
It’s not a badge I wear. It’s not something I chose.
It’s something I live with.
Like a scar that never fully fades. Like an echo that never quite dies out.
Some days are okay.
Some days I can breathe.
Some days I even laugh and mean it.
Other days, I feel hollow. Distant. Fragile. Like a single word could undo me.
And that’s okay.
That’s what healing *actually* looks like.
It’s not a straight line. It’s not a checklist.
It’s survival. Every damn day.
I’m still here.
Not because I’m brave. Not because I’m strong.
But because I refused to let them win.
They didn’t take everything.
They took a lot. My innocence. My sense of safety. Years of my life.
But they didn’t take my empathy.
They didn’t take my ability to care.
They didn’t take my soul.
They tried. God, they tried.
But I’m still here.
And I’m still human.
And that matters.
There’s a boy in a room.
He’s six years old.
He’s small, even for his age. His voice is quiet. His eyes are watchful. He has a scrape on his knee from falling off his bike in the driveway. He talks too much. He asks too many questions. He laughs with his whole chest—when he still knows how to laugh.
And he trusts too easily.
That’s his greatest sin.
He trusted someone who smiled at him. Someone who offered him attention, kindness, safety.
And when that person opened the door to a small, plain room not a hundred yards from the boy’s home, the boy walked in willingly.
Because how could he have known?
He didn’t know that inside that room, he would stop being a person.
He didn’t know that others would come. That adults—grown men, grown women—would use that room as a place to turn a child into an object.
He didn’t know that they wouldn’t even ask his name.
That they wouldn’t care.
That they would take, and take, and take until there was nothing left but obedience.
And when they were finished—when he had grown too old, when the fantasy no longer fit—he wouldn’t be freed.
He would be discarded.
And left alone with the wreckage.
That boy is still inside me.
He never left that room.
Even now, all these years later, when I close my eyes, I can see him.
Curled up. Silent. Waiting.
Sometimes I hate him.
Sometimes I want to scream at him for not running, for not fighting harder, for going back, for trusting.
Sometimes I want to hold him. Wrap my arms around him and tell him it wasn’t his fault. That he was a child. That what was done to him was unthinkable.
Sometimes I just want to sit on the floor with him and cry.
Because he’s still there.
He’s the part of me that never grew up. The part that doesn’t understand why his body betrayed him. The part that still feels the shame, the confusion, the ache of something stolen so thoroughly that it can’t even be named.
I’ve tried to leave him behind.
I’ve tried therapy.
Tried silence.
Tried writing it out.
Tried screaming into pillows.
Tried pretending I was over it.
Tried pretending I was never in that room to begin with.
But none of it worked.
Because healing doesn’t mean forgetting.
It means remembering without disappearing.
It means reclaiming what was taken.
It means going back for the boy—not to relive it, but to let him know he doesn’t have to be alone anymore.
So here I am.
At the end of this story.
Not tied up neatly. Not resolved.
But standing at the doorway to that room.
And this time, I’m not afraid to walk in.
Not to be used. Not to be hurt.
But to say what he was never allowed to say.
You were a child.
You didn’t ask for this.
You didn’t deserve this.
You were manipulated, violated, used, broken, and discarded by people who should never have had access to you.
They were the monsters.
Not you.
You weren’t disgusting.
You weren’t complicit.
You weren’t a participant.
You were surviving.
Every reaction you had—freezing, complying, numbing out, even the ways your body responded—none of that makes you guilty.
You were surviving.
You stayed alive in the only way you knew how.
And that’s not something to be ashamed of.
That’s something to *honor.*
I see you now.
I see the bruises they couldn’t see.
I hear the screams no one heard.
I feel the weight you carried when no one believed you, when no one *even knew* what had happened.
And I’m sorry.
For every time I abandoned you.
For every time I blamed you.
For every time I called you weak or broken or disgusting.
You weren’t.
You were strong.
You *are* strong.
Because you’re still here.
And I’m still here because of you.
Because you held the pain when I couldn’t.
Because you stayed quiet when I had to survive.
Because you waited.
And now?
Now you don’t have to wait anymore.
You’re allowed to feel.
You’re allowed to grieve.
You’re allowed to rage.
You’re allowed to say, *What happened to me was wrong.*
You’re allowed to take up space in your own body.
You’re allowed to love. To be loved.
To be touched gently.
To be held without being taken.
To be wanted without being used.
To be safe without earning it.
To be whole, even if it takes a lifetime to get there.
This isn’t a happy ending.
But it’s a *true* one.
And for me, that’s enough.
I don’t need to be fixed.
I don’t need to be “better.”
I don’t even need to be okay every day.
I just need to be *real.*
And this—these words, this story, this truth—is the most real thing I’ve ever written.
So to the survivors who are still silent...
I see you.
To the ones who only made it out physically, but not emotionally...
I believe you.
To the ones who still carry shame that isn’t yours...
You didn’t deserve what happened.
To the ones who think they’re too broken to ever be loved...
You’re not.
And to the child inside me who still flinches at shadows and wonders if anyone will ever come back for him...
I’m here.
I came back.
And I’m never leaving again.
If you’re reading this and it feels too close, if you see yourself in these words and feel sick, angry, numb, broken—just know this:
You’re not alone.
You don’t have to speak if you’re not ready.
You don’t have to share if it doesn’t feel safe.
But one day, if and when you do...
Speak like you’re screaming for your life.
Because in many ways, you are.
And your voice is worth hearing.
Not in fragments.
Not in half-truths.
But in full.
In fire.
In grief.
In *power.*
Tell your story.
Even if it shakes.
Even if it bleeds.
Even if no one believes it but you.
Because the boy in the room didn’t die.
He’s still here.
And his voice matters.
So does mine.
And so does yours.
