The first time I remember being aware of a tingle between my legs, I was seven. My chiropractor, who had cracked my back for three years, ran the vibrating wand up and down my spine, then across my buttocks, then up and down each leg. When the vibrations came back up each leg and toward my behind, I felt something I’d never known before. I sat up and looked at Dr. Odom as though I expected him to explain what had just happened. He never did. And for five more years, I’d feel this way on every visit to his office. But say nothing.

When I was eight, I sat in an assembly with Linda Tran. She asked if I wanted to feel something cool and reached over and pushed down on my pubic bone. “Don’t you feel like you have to pee now?” she asked. I never answered.

It was the next summer that I was surrounded by several Cambodian refugees at the shallow end of the Hapeville Pool. They touched me, grabbed me, wouldn’t let me get away from them – and chattered in a strange, fast language while they laughed at me, panicking, silent.

In the seventh grade, while the “cool kids” got to leave class to decorate the set for our play about Frankenstein, there was an all-out grab-fest, a preteen orgy, inflicted on the three of us girls by the three boys on the stage. Behind closed curtains, so the cafeteria staff wouldn’t see, the boys grabbed our butts, our breasts, our most private parts. It was a game, to them. We returned quietly to class as if nothing had happened.

One year later, and I attend a concert with my cousin and her friends from college. I am 13, with braces, but I’m in her 2nd favorite dress and her friends think I, too, am 20. We leave our seats at the end of the concert and jam into the corridors to head for the parking lot. We are packed like small fish in this space when two men who look to me like Dominique Wilkins press their hands into our crotches and finger both my cousin and me through our clothes. Pushing away seems futile when there are tens of thousands of fans packed into this lobby. Joni and I relate to one another that this happened to both of us but never discuss it again.

Now, I am 16. I am on a date with David Michael Paul. We’re in my car, pulled off in an empty cul-de-sac off of Riverside Drive. We’ve moved to the hatchback, where there’s “make out” room. But before long, the kissing ends and I am naked from the waist down, folded in half, with my backside exposed to the world, I feel, as he shoves his hand down into my vagina. Over and over, he forces into me with one hand, while holding my legs down at my shoulders with the other. I am screaming for him to stop and he yells back, “I’m doing this for you!” I stop screaming.

Today, I am 28. I have woken up this morning with vivid memories of these assaults in my mind. I wonder what impact such early violations have had on me. Surely no more effect than having never spoken of them.

Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!