“This post is that of a letter I wrote for a victim to send to her abuser.”

I'm sure you must remember me. I could never forget you. I'm the one whom you raped and tortured for many years. Did I forget to mention your friends, who also abused me under your watch?

Let me clarify something. Not only did you forcefully rape me time and time again, but you stole from me- my childhood and even my adulthood. Yes, you CHOSE to use me for your own selfish pleasure, took away my virginity at the tender age of 6, and since then I've paid the price for your selfish and heinous actions.

We are both adults now- only in a way. You see, my happiness, innocence and belief in the goodness and kindness of family ended with the very first time you raped me. I remember every single detail of what you and your friends did in that basement. As my cousin, you should have protected me! Do you even remember any of what you did? Did you ever think of how much physical and emotional pain you inflicted on me?

This brings us to now. Yes, I do mean us. I know what you did, time and time again. YOU RAPED ME. YOU ENCOURAGED YOUR FRIENDS TO RAPE ME.

I never asked for this. When I should have been playing with dolls, I became your toy- an unwilling, six-year-old human being that you used time and time again to mop up your sickening desires. How utterly selfish. How pathetically sad that you did this to me, yet never ever came clean. Not that you ever could come clean, because choosing to rape a six-year-old is dirty and unforgivable and would have landed you in prison had I not been so terrified of you, and spoken up. I had the wounds, both physically and emotionally, to prove you sexually assaulted me. Instead, I was so afraid of you and your evil friends that I never told anyone. Why? Who would believe that a six-year-old was raped by her cousin?

This brings us to now. You? You went on with your life. You aren't forced to live within a cloak of anger and pain, trapped inside the darkest of places where the light never infiltrates. I am still forced to stay beneath the weight of you and what you did to me. I will never be the same. No, I won't ever be anything that I could have been had you not been so cruel and abusive. This leads me to wonder: how do you live with yourself? Did you ever even think of apologizing to me? I look at you and immediately feel a combination of disgust and hatred. You are an adult but you will never be a man. You have had years to own up to what you did, yet you have shown no remorse. SHAME ON YOU! I guess I shouldn't be surprised because a shameless person cannot feel shame or be shamed.

If you ever stopped to wonder if I remember what you did, I will tell you this: I cannot ever forget. I awaken each morning trying desperately to push away the nightmares from the night before; horrors that are so real and just as excruciating as when they actually occurred. Yes, even back then, my six-year-old mind knew that every time you came towards me, it only meant one thing. RAPE.

All day long I see reminders that bring me right back to that basement where my happiness ended, and my pain began. Then, at nighttime, I try my best to avoid sleeping, because I never actually feel safe enough to sleep. I close only one eye and keep the other opened just in case you come out of my nightmare and rape me again.

I want you to know that until you die, and even past that, you will live in the part of my heart that slowly dies each time I see or hear anything that reminds me of you. The torture I live with doesn't compare to the physical pain I felt at your selfishness, but you wouldn't know this because you never stayed around long enough each time to see the blood running down my legs and the tears running down my face. As much as it hurt back then, it hurts even more now because what you did 40 years ago has led to physical conditions that prevent me from finding any sort of enjoyment. Among them is PTSD; I leap in fear at any noise at all, for that could mean you are near me and ready to resume feeding your insatiable need. No matter where I am, you come along with me. You are the pain, fear, and cruelty that is the rope which strangles to death my hope and happiness, tightening its grip more and more each day. I wonder if you will ever even spend one second trying to comprehend what you did and how I am left to live with the repercussions? I also wonder if you did this to anyone else. Maybe I was the first but not the last.

Speaking of last, I hope you have a lasting memory of your actions every time you see me. I hope that as you breathe your last, you will finally regret what you did; such horrible misdeeds. I hope there is a forever-hell that is far worse than the hell I have lived since the tender age of six. You will never come close to knowing any of this because you never owned up to any of it. I wish I could forget or even wonder if it happened, but I don't even get that option. Not a minute goes by where I don't relive what YOU DID.

I will end this letter now. While my pain will never stop, I will choose from now on to attribute to you the shrapnel that lingers within me- despite your refusal to own your actions. If I could eradicate you and my pain, I would. But since I can't, I will hand over the disgust and hatred cooped up for far too long. Even one day of your abuse that resulted in my pain should have been too long. But you weren't satisfied with that, were you?

I'm done. There will never be enough words to adequately describe the way I feel about you and what you did, especially since there has been adequate time for you to own your abuse of me. But you haven't. Maybe you never will. Never is such a promising word- when I consider my wish that it NEVER happened, and you were NEVER in my life. But never will never be.