My hair is a mess and I’m sitting here on the floor of a dirty bathroom peering at my own face in a mirror that hangs from the door. My cheeks are shadowed with running mascara… my nose red from misery and self pity. I’ve prayed and I’ve prayed for someone to help me but since I never said the words aloud, I remain alone. My God, I need you. I have created a whirlwind and can’t manage to crawl out of the fallout. Almost 15 yrs with a good man yet here I cry… it’s not his fault. The fault is in the man who was supposed to be honorable and protective. A man my mother and father chose to trust my care. The night they came home after a long days work and asked how my day was…. I said we played games…. games I was not comfortable with… games I did not like.
He had taken me earlier in the day to the store because he needed chapstick. Cherry chapstick. The scent of that shit still makes me sick. I can see him like it was yesterday… unwrapping the seal and circling it on his dirty lips. Pink. My nightgown was pink with a pretty lace trim. I wore it as I sat on my dad’s lap in the cold police station. Then to the hospital. I can’t help but cry when I think back to that day. Everything he did to me was so methodical… planned…prepared..sadistic. He wanted to be with a child… a baby. I was just a baby.
It’s been years since he took my soul yet when I see a child sitting on a man’s lap, I can’t help but think… he must be a pervert. When I see a little girl scared, I think, I wonder if she’s somehow been traumatized. I hear of a child that’s been assaulted and I can’t help but cry.. not just for the now but for the new normal they are forced to cope with. The terrors that will cause them to wake up in a pool of sweat clinging to what little innocence they have left. The fear they will have when they find they have triggers.
Mine came after years with a man. In a moments decision he said a few words and make an action. I’ve never felt so powerless in my life. Like I was a child, in a pink gown with her legs spread for a man who shouldn’t be there. My breath was taken from me as my husband placed his loving hands on me. He had no idea what he had just done. I would never see him in the same manner again. I couldn’t, I tried. Under no fault to him, he became a trigger for me. I desperately wanted to see him for the beautiful person he was but my mind was forcing me in the opposite direction. His touch now became something I cringed.
Unless you’ve been through such a traumatic event, it’s impossible to fully understand. I no longer loved him like a wife should love her husband. I no longer craved his affection and I no longer felt comforted by his touch. It would be selfish of me to keep him in a marriage that could never fulfill his needs. I had to leave. Therapy doesn’t always fix people. Sometimes it just helps minimize the damage.
And here I sit. On the floor of my bathroom trying to stay alive. It’s hard. I’m leaving a man that loves me and would never hurt me. A man that gave me two beautiful children. A man who would do anything for me. All because my life has been tainted by a monster. Now all I can do is try to contain the fall out.
Fuck you David Swearingen. You are a piece of shit PEDOPHILE. You walk around like you are a regular person yet every life you have touched, crumbles. I hope your family and friends read this. Go to hell. 
Just Angela 