Hi everyone. I'm watching Brett Kavanaugh's opening testimony right now and for some reason, it's making it so this is the moment I need to talk about what happened to me when I was assaulted years ago. If you want to take a moment to read, feel free; either way, I think it's just something I need to write down. I have written about it before, to keep to myself, but the entire thing still has me so perplexed about what happened to me, maybe it'll be helpful to finally share with others. I've only ever shared with my ex-boyfriend, but never the whole story. It might be too long of a story to get in detail anyway.

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I met the man who would later sexually abuse me when I was a freshman in high school. I must've been either 13 or 14 at the time. I was over at my friend Lisa's* house for a sleepover for her birthday. She invited 3 girls over to her house, including myself. I can't remember most of the night, but I remember meeting her older brother, who was 11 years older than us, either 25 or 26. He was living in the house, selling knives door-to-door and a drunk. We all sat on the front porch of Lisa's house and talked for hours that night. Her brother, Matt*, drank alcohol and bragged to us that he was a master of mind-games and manipulation and tried to pry secrets out of the two other girls who were there with Lisa and I that night. I remember him telling us that he felt pathetic to be in his mid-twenties, living at home, and spending a weekend night with a bunch of teenage girls. We comforted him in that moment, but I also remember feeling creeped out by the way he bragged about being manipulative.

Lisa soon became my best friend and we were close throughout high school. We were inseparable. I spent the night at her house almost every weekend, in the spare bedroom, since she often kicked and snored in her sleep. Over time, I warmed up to her brother, who bonded with me over how we liked to go shooting at the nearby skeet range and went with Lisa and I to go country-line dancing on Sunday nights, when kids under 18 were allowed into the dance hall for Family Night. He taught me how to swing dance; afterwards, we'd all go to the Wendy's nearby and buy Frosty's.

I felt that Lisa's family was as close to me as my own. We went on vacation together, once to Vail and another time to Hawai'i. Matt and Lisa were there for my brother's 9th birthday. Lisa was the one who always stood by me, even in my awkward freshman phase when I was acne-riddled and dorky, and was the person who introduced me to Victoria's Secret and makeup. After the summer of sophomore year, I was finally able to figure out how to dress myself, style my hair, and wear contacts. I had friends who didn't recognize me - I remember one said, "Woah, Kat*, you got HOT". I had my first boyfriend and first kiss soon after, to be quickly dumped after a month. I had a rough home life during my high school years and the anxiety I had represented itself as anorexia. Part of the reason "I got hot" was undoubtedly because I had lost a lot of weight. I asked my boyfriend at the time to make sure I ate when we were together since a doctor had pointed out to me that I'd lost 30 pounds over the course of little more than a month. He had a look of shock on his face when I brought it up and he dumped me a few days after. Lisa was there for me during that time, too. So was Matt, saying that I deserved to be treated much better, that I was beautiful, and that he would be there for me, always.

The Fall of my and Lisa's junior year in high school quickly became the most difficult time of my life. In quick succession of one another, my mother left our house and divorced my father and Lisa's mother suffered an aneurysm that had her on the brink of death and in a coma for a week. At that time, I quickly assumed a parental role over my brother as my mom did not come back for months, and my father coped with the divorce by going on long, extended business trips for weeks. I was in school and working part-time to afford gas, and sometimes used my money for food and little treats for my brother, since my dad often mentioned that he was short on cash. At the same time, I was going over to Lisa's house to help with laundry and bring over dinners since I knew that neither Matt or Lisa knew how to keep up housework. At one point, the stress of it all led me to run away to Lisa's house for three days with my phone turned off and under the bed so I couldn't be contacted. Lisa was hardly ever there, she coped by spending time with her boyfriend. Matt was the one to comfort me.

I vividly remember the nights I spent at home, awake with fear. Whatever anxiety and depression I was suffering had also given me night terrors, which felt indistinguishable from real life. Alone in the house with only my brother, I dreamt that buglars had broken into our house to rape me, kill me, and kill my brother. Each time, it was a variation of being raped in front of my brother, him being killed in front of me and then me being raped, or being raped by several men while my brother was asleep in the next room, before being killed. I would lie awake at night, paralyzed by fear, especially when my dogs barked, alerting me that *maybe* they weren't barking at rabbits in the backyard, but at men who wanted to hurt my brother and I. There were nights I would sit in front of my brother's room with a baseball bat in my hands, fearfully waiting for buglars to come up the stairs and attack me. I at least wanted to protect my little brother, who I was raising like a son. I felt that there was no one I could call; my dad was states away and my mother was MIA. Until one night after months of this going on and I was overcome with terror, I called Matt to ask him to sleep on the couch. I told him I'd give him some of my dad's brandy for the favor.

Matt came over and I felt so much safer having a man in the house. He poured us each a glass of brandy and told me to relax. That night, he made out with me on the couch before we went up to my room and made out on the bed. He wanted to have sex, but I said no. The next day, I felt a mix of incredible remorse and love. I called Matt and told him that I wanted to tell Lisa what had happened. He told me that I could never tell Lisa or anyone what happened since, if Lisa found out, she would never be my friend again. He said that she would throw me away, but would never throw him away, since he was her brother. Because of this, I didn't tell Lisa, or anyone, but felt that it was our secret. I called him several more times when I was scared, and he'd come over. He'd pour us drinks and expect a blow job in return for his time. I didn't mind, since, in my mind, he was my future husband who'd always protect me. The nights I'd call him and he didn't answer, left me feeling desolate and terrified, but the nights he did, I felt safe and loved.

The first time Matt strangled me was when we were at his and Lisa's house. I remember being on a recliner and him asking me to blow him, since Lisa was upstairs asleep. I said I didn't want to since she was in the house. He got mad, and strangled me. I don't remember anything aside from knowing he did this, since I think I blacked out. When I woke up, I told him that he could never do that to me again or else I would never talk to him again and I'd tell his sister. This time, he told me that he'd kill me if I ever told anyone.

I have a better memory of when he strangled me in my parent's basement. We were listening to records and he told me to blow him as a birthday present. He grabbed me by the neck, picking me up off the floor by my throat. I remember grasping at my neck and freezing up with fear. He put me down before I blacked out and I said nothing. After that, I would still go out with him and treat him the same. Oftentimes, when I was sleeping over at Lisa's, he'd sneak into the spare bedroom and grope me and pressure me into having sex with him until he fell asleep.

I moved to California and started college and kept in touch with him, always regarding him as my first love and a close friend. Immediately after high school ended, though, Lisa stopped talking to me outright. She never returned my calls and wasn't there on the day I moved. However, with Matt, we'd spent hours on the phone. Once at college, he pressured me to invite him to my sorority's formal, which I felt weird about doing, but eventually agreed to. Soon after, though, some sorority sisters of mine pointed out to me how weird it was that a 18 year old would be taking a 29 year old to the formal. He also wanted to sleep in my dorm room with me, which was a small room where I had two other roommates. I called him and told him I didn't want him to come anymore. He responded by absolutely eviscerating me verbally. He threatened to kill me and then himself. I remember sobbing in my car minutes before I went to work. I called Lisa and left a message, telling her that I was scared for her brother and that he said he was suicidal. She never returned my call and I never heard from either of them ever again.

What's honestly most disturbing to me about all of this is that I found it perfectly normal for years. The same year Matt threatened to kill me for not taking him to a dance, I took a 12-week long class about sexual assault and still did not connect the dots. It wasn't until I was 20 years old and I went through a 65-hour certification to be a crisis advocate that someone described what grooming is and how strangulation is a form of assault that I finally realized that what I went through was sexual abuse.

I still have a hard time describing that whole sequence of events. I don't know if it all makes me a survivor of sexual assault, an adult molested as a child, or a victim of intimate partner violence. I felt like an adult while it was all happening; then again, he would always tell me he saw me as an adult, not a child. I don't know what I would do if I was put in the same situation again. It hurts to think about the girl who was so terrified of the threat of brutal danger that she'd welcome someone abusive over time and time again, because even that provided her some safety and some misplaced feeling of love.

I've never reported or really told anyone, not because I don't think I'd be believed - I haven't even thought that far -, but because I don't want to tear their family apart. I guess some part of me still cares. Some part of me wants to let it go. Some part of me knows that nothing could be done about it anyway, but another part of me feels like he'll undoubtedly assault someone else if he hasn't already. I wonder if I could be blamed. Overall, I feel ashamed.