My fwb assaulted me. We were just in our feelings one night. And I was happy because he finally came over for more than sex. I never had feelings for him but he always said he did for me. I think he was fetishizing me. I’m a black girl and he’s white. There aren’t many black girls here. But I was getting tired so I turned around on the bed and tried to sleep. He asked me if I wanted to have sex. I said “no I’m too sad right now I just wanna go to sleep” and he said “or I could fuck the sadness out of you”. I told him no it wouldn’t work I’d still be sad after. And he said “fine I’ll just keep doing this until you say yes”. Then he started grinding on me and groping me and breathing in my ear. I was scared. I thought if I didn’t react he would stop, but he didn’t. So I turned around and let him do what he wanted. It was back in November of last year. And I still live in the same town as him. I cut him off in December. I don’t know what to do.

Starting from when I was about 10 years old I would be constantly beaten by my mother, my dad didn’t care or even care to know she would sometimes do it in front of him and he would act like he didn’t see anything. I had bruises on my legs and arms that I would have to cover up in middle school. This one time I was in my bed my dad already went to work in the morning and my mom came in my room and started screaming for me to get up so she could beat me with the belt. I screamed back at her telling her I did nothing wrong I did nothing wrong but she dragged me out of bed and hit me with it multiple times. When I was in elementary school my older sister molested me telling me that we could play a game and I didn’t realize what the game was until high school. My sophomore year of high school my mom got mad at me and grabbed my hair and hit my head into a chair causing a concussion. My middle sister reported it because she was scared for my safety and my mom went to court for it but they let it go. My senior year of high school my mom confessed she’s been seeing another man for six years, I told my dad after about a month and he didn’t do anything about it. Before my mom confessed I already knew. Whenever my dad went out of town she would take long nights out of the house staying with someone and wouldn’t tell us where she went. She leave at like 10 at night then come home around seven in the morning. My junior year I dated a 20-year-old because I thought he was nice but he turned out to be very toxic and would blame me for all his problems. When I broke up with him he set all his friends on me and they harassed me for a year until I almost killed myself. They still don’t know that to this day. The same man raped me on December 31, 2020. For about a year and a half after that I was very depressed I would cry every single night hoping that life would get better and it didn’t for a year and a half. This is a short version of my life story, maybe someone can relate to this and see there are other people like them. There are millions of people that are going through it worse than I am and I pray that they make their way into an amazing future.

• July 21, 2023