the aftermath

after the first love.
⚠ trigger warning ⚠

taking it back to late 2009, early 2010.. i was in my senior year of highschool. at that time in my school, the seniors would be visited by recruiters. marines, navy, army, etc. they would all come to talk to the senior class about what they actually do and then they would leave the door open for recruitment. the recruiter from the marines who came to talk to my class was 38 years old. keep this in mind for later throughout this blog.

they all passed around pamphlets with contact information and more info on what each branch does. i was legitimately interested in learning more about the marines because the recruiter did so well explaining what they do, what all it entailed, etc. plus my dad used to be in the army so i wanted to kind of follow his footsteps but in my own way. so i sent the recruiter an email once i got home from school that afternoon. 

knowing what i know now, the emails we exchanged were very grooming related, and at this time.. i'm only 16! i had no idea about anything grooming related or that how he was emailing me was very unprofessional. i just assumed what was being said to me was fine because no curse words were being used and hello he was a seasoned marine.. so i trusted him.

now this was all after freshly ending things with matt officially. i was emotionally hurting because as stated previously, matt was my first love and this was my first breakup i ever experienced. 

regarding the emails, the recruiter asked me if i had a boyfriend. i did tell him about matt and how he was in bootcamp but we did end things. i assumed this was a normal question so, once again, i trusted what he was asking me. and he knew i was only 16.. let's get that very clear.

after exchanging emails for i think about 2 days.. he told me that he could come pick me up in his recruiting car to take me to his recruiting office. once again, i trusted him so i agreed. i even told my fucking parents about him coming to pick me up to take me to the recruiting office to further discuss my options for the marines and they didn't bat an eye. they pushed me to go never ever meeting this man.. they never asked for his name, his contact info.. nothing. now through our emailing, he told me to meet him at the exit about 5 mins walking time away from my parents house so we could easily jump back on the highway to go to the office. me thinking nothing of it.. i did just that.
 i really wish i seen the red flags.

small talk endures throughout the car ride to the recruiting office.. nothing weird was talked about during the ride and i never once felt uncomfortable in the car. once we are at the recruiting office there was another person there, but once him and i arrived he told them that they could leave and he would "take it from here". again, i didn't think anything of it. we go over alot of information about the marines, he goes over some paperwork for me to take back to my parents, i did some testing on the computer and then that was it. he was driving me back to my parents house, or so i thought. 

we go past the exit to my hometown and i let him know he passed it. he tries reassuring me that he has something to take care of real fast and that he would take me straight home afterwards. i didn't think anything of it. we're now about 40mins away from where i live. it is now 10pm on a school night. back then i didn't have a cellphone, i was only able to be contacted via myspace, email, aim messenger, yahoo messenger or if i was somewhere with someone who had a cellphone or a house phone. so if by chance my parents were giving half a shit about where i was.. there was no way for them to get ahold of me. they never even asked me this recruiters name or asked me to leave his information for them incase they needed to reach me.

the recruiter pulls into this house and tells me to come inside real quick because he might be a while. i agree and go inside. bad idea.

once inside he offers me a water and then disappears for a few minutes. i never questioned any of this at the time.. and i really wish i was warned about this type of stuff and about these situations. i was a young, dumb girl with her head in the clouds who never knew much about how someone with his title could have bad intentions. having what was done to me when i was younger, i knew evil people existed but i never thought someone like a recruiter would ever do something similar. i was a dumbass.

he comes back into the kitchen after a few minutes and tells me he has to show me something.. i stupidly follow him. we enter this bedroom and he instantly starts kissing me.. i freeze. he then throws me onto the bed and i'm sure your minds can lead you to what happened next. i tried to fight him off of me. i kept saying no.. it didn't matter to him. he was stronger than me. i couldn't fight him off of me. it was eventually like i was having an out of body experience.. like i wasn't even in my own body. i went numb.. i was scared.. i was crying and telling him to stop. he didn't stop. he didn't fucking care.

once he was done he demanded i get a shower and that i got dressed so he could take me home. i didn't look at him or speak a fucking word to him. i got a shower and then i got dressed. he drives me home, parks by the exit which don't forget is a 5 minute walk from my parents house and tells me that if i tell anyone what happened he would deny it, he would find me and he would kill me. i nodded that i agreed and he told me to get out and walk to my parents house. so i did. i now know why he didn't want to come to my parents house. he had this planned the whole fucking time.

once i actually got to my parents house it was 4am. i had to get up at 7am for school. my parents never waited up. i showered again once i got into the house. i remember feeling so gross and no matter what i did i didn't feel clean. i finally laid in my bed and just stared at my ceiling until it was time to go to school. i couldn't even tell you anything about who talked to me that day or what we learned in school that day because i was still in shock and disbelief that this actually happened to me. this is up until history class at the end of the school day when that same fucking recruiter walks in. i instantly look down at the floor and i feel myself getting numb again.

my friend who sat behind me tapped my shoulder once she realized my demeanor changed and kept asking me if i was alright. i kept telling her yes i was fine i just wasn't feeling good. the whole time he was in the classroom i could feel him occasionally staring at me.. but i never once looked at him or in his direction. how the fuck could you walk into a school knowing you fucking raped a student. what a piece of fucking shit.  

i never told anyone about what happened because i was terrified and too ashamed to. as i got older and had more bullshit happen to me, i began to realize that what happened to me wasn't my fault and that i shouldn't have ever felt ashamed. i also realized that i never should have showered and if i spoke up about what happened to me once it did, i could have easily destroyed this mans fucking life. i really wish i would have. 

i prayed to god that what happened to me would never happen to anyone else. i prayed he would never do this to another person ever again. i prayed i was the only one he did this to because i never wanted another person to feel or go through what i was going through. it was a living fucking hell for me mentally. it was even worse going through all of that alone because i just couldn't bring myself to tell anyone back then.

eventually though, years went by and i did end up confiding in a few close friends who all helped me through the bullshit and the damage that the recruiter did. im still so thankful they were so understanding about why i didn't come to them sooner and how much they were truly there for me after me finally telling them. 

i couldn't tell you where the recruiter is at now in life or if this happened to anyone else.. but i do hope he's living a very fucking miserable life if he's still living at all. i was fucking 16.. he was 38!!!!! he knew better and still did what he did to me. he had no remorse. he heard me tell him no. he heard me beg him to stop. he seen me crying. he seen i was in pain. he didn't fucking care. if anything it made him get off even more on the whole situation.

this whole situation has made me open my eyes to alot and had me realizing that i couldn't trust anyone in this world.

i'm so sorry if this was triggering or a hard read for you.. but i am glad that you all support me through all of these blogs. i wish i could tell you that this would be the worst one.. but it isn't. 

♥