Had I given any thought to the name of this blog, had I considered that it would still be here five years later, it would have been difficult to choose what to call it since I’ve gone through so much life-ending shit. How does one choose a title between attempted murder, rape, beatings, torture, betrayal, drug addiction, prostitution and all the other things that can happen to a person when one just generally doesn’t give two shits about continuing to live?

Strangely, the name of this blog is from one of the most benign chapters in my life. It’s a nickname I picked up after my memory was severely impaired from a traumatic brain injury.

I was repeatedly raped and tortured as a child by someone who lived in my house for a year. My parents denied it, let it continue, and never got me any help. The abuse, and my family’s subsequent betrayal and neglect, set me on a course of utter ruination. It’s amazing that I’m still alive, and that’s not hyperbole.

I’ve shared a lot of awful things that have happened to me on this blog, but I haven’t talked a lot about the chapter I call Tales of A Teenage Crackwhore, which is also the working title of my autobiography.

Part of the reason I don’t talk about it much is that it was a thousand years ago and it seems like it happened to another person entirely, which in a sense, is true. I’m not the angry, looking-to-die teenager I once was. Now, I’m just an angry adult, but I would never allow myself to end up there.

I’ve kept a journal since I was fifteen years old. Nowadays, this blog is my journal, but back in the day, they were hardcover books I would write in with pen. The only chapter of my life I didn’t write about was that one. There’s a void. The books jump from seventeen to nineteen years old. Afterwards, when I was getting clean in the suburbs, I wrote most of it down without emotion. It’s just a factual account of names, places, dates, experiences, and I left out the worst bits entirely. I wrote nothing at all when it was happening.

It’s probably for the best, since the memories I do have tend to be entirely too visceral. The smells, the sounds, the sensations… they make me cringe even now.

Besides the egregious drug use making my recollections hazy, it occurred to me that another part of the reason I don’t talk about it is because it was not something over which I had no control; it was the result of choices I made.

Really, when you get down to it, it’s embarrassing to admit that you turned down a scholarship to Cornell University to become a homeless, drug-addicted prostitute. It’s hard to admit that that is really, truly a choice you made.

I didn’t have a choice in most of the awful things that have happened to me. I didn’t choose to be the plaything of a sadistic pedophile. I didn’t choose to have a traumatic brain injury. I didn’t choose to become the favored punching bag for a psychopathic domestic abuser.

I chose not to go to college and move to inner city Detroit. I chose to do drugs for the first time. I chose to put myself there.

But then, the voice of reason chimes in and tells me that it wasn’t really my choice. C’mon, do you really think any of that would have happened were you not raped, then betrayed your family at only seven years old? That is the root of all the evil in my hardcover books.

Nearly everything that happened afterward was the result of unchecked, untreated child sexual abuse. It is the product a confused child who had to carry that all by myself. It is the result of my family’s endorsement of abuse by allowing it to continue.

As a child, when your own family tells you that you’re lying about a man coming into your room to hogtie and shove things inside of you, having no context, it makes it seem as if that’s just a normal thing that people do. It’s your problem if you don’t like being bound, gagged, and raped. All of that set me on the path to becoming a teenage crackwhore. It set me on a path of self-destruction. It set me up to be a victim again.

Still, I don’t talk about it much, in part, because it’s embarrassing. I was a homeless teen prostitute. There were many like me. There are many like me. There are children on the corner now who weren’t believed, who were neglected, who think that renting their holes to strangers is just how it’s done.

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