This month’s Bloggers For Peace Challenge is a hard one: I want you to open your arms to your enemies.

I only have two enemies. One is a pedophile, the other is a violent sociopath. I just wrote a post yesterday about how I cannot forgive either of them, so I guess I already played that card. I’m not sure this is what Kozo had in mind, however, I’m going to take this opportunity to write a letter. It probably won’t be very peaceful, but it might help me. I’m going to be selfish this month and try to bring peace to myself. If I talk directly to the monsters, which I have been avoiding, it might bring some closure. I’m going to start at the beginning with the pedophile.

To the sadistic pedophile, otherwise referred to as Monster #1,

I’m not sure where to start. You know what you’ve done, or perhaps, you don’t. It seems that guilty people have lots of means to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. In case you forgot, which I don’t think you have, allow me to address your crimes.

You pulled me from my bed and out the window by my ankle when I was seven years old. You led me to the woods. You forced me to do things. You left me in the woods alone in the darkness with my little girl nightgown pulled up. When you were done with me, you just left me there, discarded, like some piece of trash. I fell several times on the way back home. There was either no moon or the trees were too thick to allow the light down to where I was. I couldn’t see where I was going and I was crying. I couldn’t sleep from that night onward. I still can’t sleep. I still wake up in the middle of the night instinctively curled up into a little ball, trying to keep my feet away from your hands. I cannot comfortably sleep near a window or on the first floor, still, to this day.

You were staying with your mom and step-dad next door to the cottage where my family and I spent the summers. I only had to make it through the summer. I repeated that to myself like a mantra. Come fall, you would be far away. But then, somehow, you wormed your way into my home. You convinced my family to let you live with us. Your room was right down the hall. It was the same room my sister and I played in. We lost our play room and so much more.

You took me, a seven-year old child, to an R-rated slasher movie with sex scenes. In the movie, a serial killer hides under a bed and grabs a girl’s ankle, much like you had done earlier in the summer. I jumped in and out of my bed after that because I was scared someone was hiding under it.

You hog tied me and liked to watch me struggle to get free on the floor. You used to laugh at me struggling to get free. It was funny to you. My terror was funny to you.

You came into my room at night. You had much more freedom at the house than you did at the cottage. You didn’t have to drag me to the woods. I was right there under the same roof. You started experimenting. You tied me up. You blindfolded me. You gagged me. You forced me to listen to recordings. You put me in the closet, hog tied and gagged, and made me watch you have sex with some woman. I didn’t watch you, but I couldn’t help but listen.

After the instructional and educational period was over, things really got bad for me. That’s the part I have the most trouble remembering. I only have pieces of it. I see a dark bedroom with body parts as if it was a picture, not a memory. I have brief flashes of pain and terror and absolute panic as if I was going to die. I remember not being able to breathe. I remember choking and gagging. It is this part that gives me panic attacks. It is this part that I still can’t talk about because I barely remember it. I don’t try to remember it because it will make my heart explode. If I remember it, I will track you down and kill you, and the rational part of me doesn’t want to do that, so I leave it as brief flashes of skin lit by moonlight. I leave it in the darkness.

Do you remember now? Good.

I’d like to tell you about what happened to me because of your actions. I’d like to explain everything your actions resulted in, but honestly, I fear that you will get joy from my story just as you got joy from watching me struggle to get free on the floor. No matter, I think I need to tell you anyway, for my sake.

I had two recurring nightmares as a kid. I think they started when you were still there. In one, I was trapped in a powder blue bathroom with a very high ceiling that had no door. There was only a toilet and a sink and a small window at the top. I would climb on the sink and try to reach the window, but the window just kept moving farther away, so that by the end of the dream, the narrow bathroom was some fifty feet tall with the same sickly pale light shining in the window. Powder blue bathrooms still freak me out.

The other dream was sort of a waking dream in the sense that it happened exactly where I was at the time and I could never be sure if I was awake or not. I would be lying in my bed on my back trying to sleep and the ceiling would turn pitch black. My room had a window and there was a street light outside so it was never entirely dark in there. The darkness on the ceiling was like the darkness of space. The blackness would spread on the ceiling and slowly climb down the walls, inching ever closer to me. I could not move. I couldn’t shut my eyes. I couldn’t do a thing. It just kept inching closer to me until it engulfed me entirely, starting with my ankles. It always started with the ankles. The closer it got, the more I panicked.

I had both of those dreams for years after. I would sit up in bed, covered in a sheen of sweat, trying to catch my breath with my heart beating a mile a minute. You took my ability to sleep. Thanks for that, asshole.

When I got older, I began rebelling. I started drinking and smoking pot around the age of fifteen. Always the good student and the good girl, I started being bad. I would skip school. I wouldn’t do my homework. I hung out with people my parents wouldn’t approve of. I barely graduated high school.

I didn’t go to college. I became promiscuous. I became profoundly addicted to crack cocaine. I became a prostitute. I was homeless. I did not care at all whether I lived or died. I was completely lost. I didn’t realize until many years later that my promiscuity was a direct result of what you did to me. Once I realized that my sexuality was totally skewed because of you, I shut down. I have never truly, honestly, completely given myself to anyone because I can never truly, honestly, completely trust anyone, because of you. All of my failed relationships, all my sexual conquests, all of my excesses and passive suicide attempts are your fault.

When I went to my parents and told them the truth, had they not taken your word over mine, things might have been different. They didn’t believe me. They sent me back into the lion’s den. They never got me any help. You took my family away. I could never trust them again. I had to deal with this immense burden all on my own.

Everything I have ever done is, in part, a result of what you did to me, what you took from me and what you put there in its stead. For many years, I didn’t realize that. Once I did, I became furious. I have the anger of a thousand suns burning inside of me. I hate you with a passion that I don’t have anywhere else in my life. You destroyed everything. You took my innocence, my family, my ability to sleep or feel safe. You took my virginity and my natural sexual development. You took my education and the life I might have had. When my family sided with you, you took my ability to ever trust anyone again.

You gave me nightmares. You gave me betrayal and self-doubt. You left me with a total mess that I didn’t even realize I had. How do you think I felt when I learned that you have children of your own? You deserve to be in prison. You are an abomination and should be wiped from the face of the earth.

I’m so tired of hating you though. I am so tired of sorting through the wreckage to find who I am without the abuse. I will never forgive you. I will never forget. It incenses me that your actions will always be a part of me, but it is no longer “our little secret;” I won’t keep it inside any longer.

I hope you live a life of pain and agony. I hope some small part of you regrets what you did and keeps you awake at night. Fuck you and die, you sick fuck. I want nothing to do with you and do not ever contact me again.