He told me he had been in love with me. “Man, I was so in love with you. I told my wife. I had to get out of that place.”
I wanted to believe it. But I also knew that Me Too had been a thing. We were looking at sexual relationships differently.
Did I want him arrested? His life ruined? No.
Did I want some acknowledgment that what happened was wrong? Messed my life up? Yes.
Then I think of it as a mom. If it was my daughter. Well, I’d kill him, them. I’d willingly spend the rest of my life in prison. I’d kill them.
I try to think of it as me who it happened to and me as a mom and what I’d do.
Jesus. It is so different. The nuances. The fucked up-ness.
When he said he had been in love with me, well, I wanted that to be the truthful part, the reality. But how could it be? He knew me since I was a kid. He had dated my neighbor, the equivalent of my older sister. Was I ten when I met him? A little younger? A little older? I don’t know how old exactly. I just know that I was an adolescent when he met me.
When it happened, I had just turned legal. Coincidence? I think not.
He was married. Had two kids. It had been a holiday party at their house. It wasn’t my first taste of alcohol, but I had been given drinks.
I spent a lot of years saying I should have known better, but I had been groomed. At least, now I realize that.
Maybe he didn’t even realize it. Times were so different. No. Not trying to defend his actions. Just trying to figure out how someone I knew, had loved, had trusted, well, how did he think that was ok. That whole night was not ok.
One night created a narrative that impacted the rest of my life.
One night created a narrative in which I made myself out to be a villain.
One night someone in his 30’s should have known better, should have done better.
I hate classifying it as sexual assault. That’s what it would be considered today.
Grooming. It was grooming, even if he didn’t understand it as that.
It set me off on a path that wreaked havoc over my life. I tried reaching out to him a few times. When I finally reached him it was only because I found his wife and kids on social media. Then he answered. We had a phone conversation.
He told me he had been madly in love with me. I told him it was not something I would have ever wanted for my daughter. He acknowledged that while trying to make us out to be a love story.
We were not a love story.
I was a kid. He was a grown man.
I wonder what my life would have been had he not taken from me what he took. I also tell myself I can’t keep wondering. I have to move on. I’m 56, and something that was done when I just turned 17 shouldn’t define me.
But it had. It does.