Navigating College as a Survivor of Childhood Sex Abuse

TW: This blog post contains material about childhood sexual violence and substance abuse.

Hi everyone,

Very glad to have found this link and page - I’ve been thinking about sharing my story for a while now to encourage others to seek help, begin their healing process, or to just know that they’re not alone. I stumbled upon #DeacsToo via an Instagram story, and thought this would be a great way to protect my identity while giving back to/supporting the WF community, as a recent alumnus.

Shortly after the start of this New Year, I decided to open up to my immediate family about some incredibly painful events that occurred during my childhood. Up until that point, only a handful of my closest friends (whom I met at WF) were aware that I was sexually abused as a young child. I can confidently say that speaking up was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made: My relationships with my parents, siblings, friends, God, and myself are stronger than they’ve ever been. Before I go too far into what my healing process has been like, I’d like to share some information about my past struggles.

To begin, I’m not sure what specifically compelled me to share my story at the time that I did, but I do know that it was a combination of deeply-rooted insecurities, relationship woes, substance abuse, self-hatred, and a general disdain for life itself. I suppose it all festered over the years, and I finally reached my breaking point.

Now that I’ve set the stage, here’s my story: When I was in second grade, I started to endure sexual abuse by a boy who is and was a few years older than me. I still don’t know exactly how many years the abuse occurred, but I do remember the instances when it occurred (but probably not all of them). I’ll spare a lot of the details about the abuse, and I’ll spare a lot of the details about my elementary/middle school experiences - after all, the main thing I want to discuss in this blog is how my abuse manifested in extremely unhealthy habits and dysfunctional relationships in college.

Nevertheless, I believe it’s important to mention something profound that I realized after I began my healing process/opened up to family and mental health professionals: It took me until the age of 23 to fully realize that I was indeed a victim of sexual abuse. In my mind, for years on end, I subconsciously attempted to justify what took place, shift blame onto myself, and make sense of why the abuse happened on multiple occasions. Essentially, I was in denial for practically my entire life, searching for ways to rationalize the abuse and somehow make it MY fault, or make it out to be something I wanted to do. I now know that it wasn’t my fault and that I didn’t want to engage in those sexual encounters. I now know that, at an age when I was still taking baths, there was no way I could’ve consented to any of the sexual behavior that was occurring. So, to all of you other survivors, I really hope that someday you’ll be able to realize these things about your own circumstances, if you haven’t already.

So... I was abused at a very young age, never told anyone, and then went off to college at WF. Well, looking back on my experience there, I coped with the pain from my past in ways that I am not proud of, in ways that damaged others, and in ways that I am still working through. The most notable examples involved using illicit substances and having sexual relationships with females I knew I’d never be able to become emotionally attached to. In fact, I often questioned whether I even had the emotional capacity to become attached to another woman, or have a healthy romantic relationship at all. I became addicted to drugs and substances I never wanted to touch, but did because of a lack of self-respect and resentment towards life. I would have casual sex with women who sometimes developed feelings for me, and would run away whenever I sensed they were becoming attached. I’m still deeply regretful and ashamed of the ways I acted towards these people, and hope they’ll forgive me. I’ve forgiven myself, because I know that this conduct was rooted in deep trauma I had ignored since I was roughly 8 years old.

I don’t want my story to be about me. I want my experiences to demonstrate the importance of confiding in loved ones and mental health experts (when you’re ready, of course). I want to be an example of how out-of-hand life can get - and how unhealthy your thoughts and behaviors can become - if you keep your traumas to yourself and drown your feelings in things like drugs and alcohol. I want to encourage others to know that when sexual abuse or assault takes place that it’s not your fault, and to not feel guilty about bringing it to someone else’s attention. Most importantly, I want it to be known that finding God has been the #1 thing that’s been letting me heal, accept my past, and keep moving forward. My relationship with God has brought me a newfound love for life and has shown me that a happy and sober is possible.

I’ll be praying for all of you Deac survivors, and pray that my story encourages at least one person out there to begin their healing process.

Much Love

-c/o 2021