Alex

I was sixteen when I told my sister our brother molested me. She almost certainly didn't know that when I was fourteen.

Her attempt to vilify Alex and cut him out of Julius's life was likely a defensive maneuver. If she cheated on her SATs and Julius knew, there's likely some truth to her claims she was the abused spouse and he supported her career to get his mountain of student loans paid off by her.

And it worked almost accidentally because she's not that socially slick. It worked because I had been molested, which she didn't know.

If I hadn't been crushed emotionally by believing the brother who raped me had more say in who I chose to date than I did and not knowing how to navigate that, I most likely would have given a lot more pushback about being unilaterally informed that "We've decided you are not to contact him again and we'll call the police if he contacts you."

I hadn't had intercourse with him. He wasn't pressuring me for intercourse.

I briefly fantasized rescue was on the way. Alex was the first person I told I had been molested by my brother. I imagined he might file a police report and the police or a social worker would knock on our door.

That didn't happen and I began tearing him apart in my mind while waiting for sleep. So much for loving me.

He was just twenty when the relationship ended with threats of putting him in jail. I didn't spend too much time vilifying him for failing to ride heroically to the rescue of a girl he knew for two or three months one summer.

I also didn't pine for a man who claimed to love me, whom I trusted enough to divulge my secret to and then he did nothing about his knowledge of the crimes committed against me.

I did spend a lot of time trying to sort MY feelings about MY LIFE.

He's the only guy I got involved with away from my hometown, away from wondering what my parents thought or whatever. I was in Athens when I met him and away from my parents, my brother, my high school, I got involved with someone who didn't pressure me for sex.

Other relationships occurred in imperfect circumstances, tainted by existing circumstances. The dirty little illicit affair. Tom, who dumped the girlfriend he met me through to pursue me. Navarre who was sleeping at his office but not filing for divorce when he met me after I had a verbal agreement to divorce but hadn't yet filed the paperwork.

A fourteen year old me picking someone who wasn't pressuring me for sex is the closest thing I have to a clean spot in a romantic life drenched in oceans of blood from World War II shaping the marriage my parents had and the lives they lived and my father and brother falling down and molesting me though neither was really a pedophile.

I didn't idolize him. I didn't imagine HE was perfect and CLEARLY would have been a good husband IF ONLY...

I spent a lot of years trying to pull MY identity and self esteem out of this dumpster fire to see a bright fourteen year old who couldn't find a boy my age to talk to and hit it off intellectually with a young man in college while plotting to leave home via trying to arrange early college.

My relationship to my sexuality wasn't poisoned by being molested. I thought he was a jerk but it was clear in my mind his bad behavior didn't really say anything about me.

But my belief that my brother who molested me had more say in who I dated than I did messed up my mind. After that, I made strategic relationship choices rooted in understanding I needed to account for navigating the family BS.

I look back on it and feel okay legally and morally about the relationship choices I made. But living through it felt like I never had good options to choose from.

I don't think my sister really intended to do so much harm to me and my life. I still believe for all that she maneuvered a fourteen year old because she was twenty and in college, she's not that socially savvy and kind of lucked out.

Our parents were both the epitome of "No man is ever good enough for our daughters!" My sister had a good friend Mom adored until he took her on a date or two and fell from grace.

But my repeated efforts to establish earned income never paid off and I didn't really get family support for getting a job and moving out until they learned I was married.

They were pro education. My sister and I both were top students of our graduating high school class and went to college straight out of high school.

But ultimately life around us strongly skewed towards pressuring us to marry and failing to adequately support our goals in terms of earned income and paid careers.

My sister likely "succeeded" in having a real career via:

1. Academic fraud.

2. A first husband "supporting" her career to pay his mountain of student loans.

3. Sexual favors most likely initiated by men at work, not offered by her.

4. A lazy second husband who ruined her health and then expected her to remain the primary breadwinner to pay for his expensive tastes while he worked part-time, didn't cook or clean and treated her like shit.

I still haven't succeeded. While Hacker News threw money at a male con artist for having a lot of karma and a blog, they openly pissed on me for having a lot of karma and a blog and actively trying to figure out a legitimate means to earn a living.

No matter how much college you have, college per se doesn't give you a career. If mom and dad feared for our safety as women in a man's world, college doesn't fix that.

It's at best a short-term solution delaying the question of how to earn an adequate living legitimately as a woman surrounded by men eager to treat us nothing but sex objects.

My sister appears to have had her life ruined for finagling some kind of career success in spite of all that because two loser men latched onto her for her money and blackmailed her into marrying them. And that negatively impacted my life.

I'm not excusing or defending her crimes. But no amount of virtue seems adequate to overcome this mess.

As Dan Gackle once said about politics, when it's pouring out, it gets wet in here too. Or you know, to bake an apple pie from scratch, you first need to invent the universe.

I would like to invent a new universe, please and thank you. This one SUCKS.