Me too.

Brene Brown says vulnerability is brave.

Well, here goes.

When I was 10, four older boys held me down on a bench, covered my mouth, lifted up my beautiful sundress and tried to remove my cotton panties - until they were stopped in the act. This also happened to a friend of mine at the same time, but hers is not my story to tell. I had buried this experience so deep in my psyche, it only came back to me last fall when I heard a similar story. To this day, I am a big fan of control and I don’t like to be in a restrained situation where I can’t see my way out of it. Now, I better understand why.

Later that same summer, my grandmother’s neighbor’s teenage son put his hand between my legs and tried to get his hands into my shorts. The shorts were red and white. His hands were huge. My heart pounded terribly. To this day I cannot hear his name without feeling sick to my stomach.

When I was 15, I fooled around with a boy I had a huge crush on. We’d gone back to my house after driving around celebrating his new driver’s license. It was like a dream come true that he was even interested in me. I pretended to be a bit tipsy because I thought (at the time) that made me more attractive and appear less uptight.

“Brene Brown says vulnerability is brave.”

I wasn’t drunk at all, but live and learn. He wanted things to go farther than they did, I didn’t. We stopped. He sulked as 16-year-old boys sometimes do. The next day, I told two of my best friends about that encounter — I was thrilled he was interested and excited at the possibility of becoming a couple. When they told him they knew what we’d been up to, he said I’d made it all up. That I had lied about the entire thing and he would have never have tried to be with me.

I was absolutely getting gaslighted - and it worked for a long time.

I am still often perceived as stuck-up, cold or uptight when I am anxious around people. It’s really just fear. Hi.

But I no longer use alcohol or an implied drunken state in an attempt to get past my anxieties around other people.

Still feel awkward a lot of the time around other humans, though. It’s just who I am.

A few years later, my college boyfriend and I were getting hot and heavy one evening, and I just wasn’t as into it as he was. I really just wanted to stop, but ultimately gave in and had sex because of… lots of reasons that women in new relationships will probably understand. We both knew what was happening in the moment: he said: “It’s not like I’m raping you.” I can clearly remember the plaid flannel bathrobe I wore.

“I’ve accepted what I can of all of this and am trying to work on the rest.”

Once I’d graduated from college, I got my first newspaper job. It was such a big deal. Our department manager was in his 50s, was an old ad man, and had a habit of giving unsolicited back rubs to some of my female colleagues — always his young, junior staffers. I slipped him an elbow when he put his arm around me one day, but I still quit that job within five months and never told a soul at the newspaper about the harassment.

This isn’t the first time I’ve really told anyone about this, but this is the first time I’ve talked about all of it publicly like this. My memory isn’t perfect — I don’t claim that it is. But there are elements of each of these incidents that are seared into my mind: smells, textures, clothes… but mostly the feelings. Confusion and panic and disappointment and nausea and hurt.

I’ve accepted what I can of all of this and am trying to work on the rest.

I’m not looking to call anyone out or embarrass anyone. In fact, the four people on Earth that I think probably know about the high school thing can continue on with their lives as usual. There’s no need to mention names here. Makes no matter to me to bring a reckoning or anything like it. That’s not what this is about.

I’m now working on not caring or worrying if others believe my truths. Telling them is still something I have to do.