The first..

This is where I have to say that the twelve steps of PTSD which I believe to be true, don't always happen at separate times. You can experience several and even all of them simultaneously. This is the story of the first time I experienced what that is like. I have to warn you, it is graphic and may not be easy to read.
 Shortly after that first incident with my father my parents divorced and I moved with my mother.
Life wasn't easy after the divorce, my dad moved to Arizona with my five older brothers and I stayed in Utah with my mom, two younger brothers and my younger sister. I had suddenly gone from middle child to oldest in the house and I wasn't prepared for the expectations and responsibilities that came with that.
It is hard to keep exact facts straight at this time because I was young and while my siblings and myself usually stayed separated with the parents we initially left with after the divorce, there was still a lot of going back and forth that went on.
I can't always trust my memory these days because my mind likes to play tricks, but I believe I was about 14  when the next and probably most traumatizing event happened in my life.
In the little town I grew up in there was a water park with a yellow slide that we would spend a lot of our time at in the summer. I went with my friends, family and often the families of my mom's friends.
We were at the midnight session at the park and everyone was having a blast. We hiked up the stairs, sped down the slide and splashed around in the pool. There was one local guy there, the son of one of my mom's closest friends. He had been giving me extra attention that night and I was loving it, I had never really been a recipient of attention from boys my own age and this guy was cute and older than all of them. His name was Jesse and he was twenty at the time.
We had been laughing and joking around for quite awhile when he caught me off guard by asking me if I would show him my breasts. I was very self conscious about my appearance at the time and had no desire to remove my bikini for him, but I was afraid that if I said no he wouldn't want to hang out with my anymore that night. Instead I told him that if he could catch up to me in the waterslide then I would show him, knowing very well that no one was as fast as me at going down the slide.
We hiked up the cold, wet staircase. It smelt strongly of chlorine and an old musky smell from the aged carpet. He kept his hand gently placed on the base of my back, just above my bikini line. The contact made my skin buzz and I felt my face flush red every time we made eye contact. As we came closer to the top of the tower I started to doubt how wise it was to make the deal I had. I felt dizzy, my mouth wet with excess saliva caused by the uneasy nausea stirring in my stomach.
We walked to the mouth of the slide and without saying anything I thrust myself into it with as much speed as possible, determined to keep distance between myself and the man following closely behind me. As I burst out of the end of the tube I felt the cool water rush over me with relief.
The relief vanished with the color from my face when there were suddenly hands around my waist, pulling me close to the large man behind me. I felt a hardness against my back that made my entire body freeze. Jesse turned me around and stared down into my eyes, his face looked like stone in the dim light reflecting off the water.
With one disturbingly sharp move he grabbed my hand and slide it into his shorts, I felt the same hardness that was against my back seconds before suddenly brush the palm of my hand. My insides turned into knots, I wasn't sure what he was thinking but I was sure it was something I didn't want to do. Before I even had time to react to where my hand was, I suddenly felt his slide into the back of my bikini. My fight or flight immediately kicked in and I pushed him off and rushed away without a word.
As painful as these memories are, the events afterwards were much harder. You can read about what happened then in my post "What You Don't Know Can Hurt You".
What I carry with me the most from this time is the pain that came from the absence of support from my family and the indescribable anger and resentment it created.