Betrayed!

Someone I regarded as a brother betrayed my trust. This is honestly quite difficult to write but I believe there are many out there who have also been in the same situation. This is for you if you've been hurt in this way. 

I was molested. 

What hurt the most was not the act in itself, it was a sense of disbelief. A sense of hatred, of betrayal, you name it, I felt it. A sense of loss; my trust had been betrayed, what did I do to deserve this? Was I just an object to be played around with, to satisfy some male species' curiousity? Hatred reigned, communication came to an abrupt halt, I was fuming inside. 

Yet, if I came out with my story, what would come of it? Could I bear to see a family that I knew being broken to pieces because of a few minutes? Could I live with the knowledge that there was a possibility of him going behind bars? Would the hurt heal faster? The fact is, nothing would have helped and I knew it. Better give him a second chance than ruin all that I had left around me. 

It was terrible. It was living in hell, reliving the scene night after night. To see everything played out again in vivid detail, to experience the disbelief, the shock of someone you trusted with your life doing something like that against you. It was those few minutes that changed the next 3 years of my life. 

To everyone else, he was the perfect child, dutiful son, doted upon and cherished. I knew otherwise. But if seeing him was torture enough, it was much worse to hear friends and family sing their praises about him continuously, seemingly 24 hours a day. I could get no rest from hearing his name, being constantly reminded... and with the number of times his name was mentioned, hatred escalated and unforgiveness anchored itself in my heart. 

I grew out of friendships and I learned not to trust. There was not a soul in the world I could rely on. Reports after reports in the papers had victims of sexual abuse, but how many more went unreported? How many more out there are still suffering from such acts? It may have been a hasty five minutes of pure lust, curiousity, you name it, there's an excuse for it... but these five minutes can sometimes carry hatred to the grave. 

For the three years that followed, I could not forget. I could not forgive. It was beyond me, I had succumbed to fear and hatred. Bitterness reigned.