by Essayist and Guest Blogger Heidi Davidson-Drexel

I was not officially a child when I was violated by my boss, a reality which further muddied the mess of emotions I felt about it.  I used to struggle with what to call the experience.  I was enough of a child at the time to feel molested, but couldn’t reconcile that term with my age.  For awhile I referred to it as a controlling relationship- a title modification that allowed me to skim past essential details.  But it wasn’t a relationship.  It seemed there were no accurate descriptions, words or phrases that fit.

To write about it, I had to allow myself to peer into my inner state at the time it all happened.  It wasn’t an easy place to go.  But when I finally got up the courage, the overwhelming feeling I had was one of sympathy for my younger self.  The internalized guilt and self-hatred had dissipated with the years and I could see the confused young person I was, grabbing onto anything she could find.

This feeling of understanding grew as I worked on it.  The barrier between adolescence and adulthood is like a line of buoys separating the shallow end of the pool from the deep end.  It’s flexible- easy to cross back and forth.  In all of the outer ways, I was like an adult.  I started working at 14 and was supporting myself while in college. I studied hard and did well in school. But emotionally, I was still splashing around in the shallows.

When I started out writing this piece, I thought if it as an explanation to some nameless person, some naïve reader who might not understand how such a thing could happen.  I wanted to show how easy it is to lose the ground under your feet, how it could happen to anyone.  By the time I finished the essay and reread it, it was clear.  I had written it, not for some nameless bystander, but for my younger self.  For the part of me that still didn’t understand what had gone wrong, and for the parts of me that still felt I had done something to cause it.  I wrote this for the child I was, in the hopes that she can begin to move on.

Read the essay here.