I was a cheerleader and a dancer, and my whole life and my future included that. So not only did he impact my self worth internally, but now on the outside, I look different, and the things that brought me joy the most were now almost impossible for me to do. 

It had to be the accident. It had to be this big to get away, and it had to keep me in the hospital for a while to have me not go run right back to him.

What he did to me, as a person at 14 and 15 years old, lingers. Here I am, like, 40 years old, I graduated, I have an undergrad and grad master's degree from RIT, and I work full time and take care of my kids, and I'm married, and I've done all the things.

 I speak as someone who has had multiple different avenues of healing in my journey as a survivor.

But I also speak as the girl who was really sad and traumatized by losing my cheer and dance of my senior year.

 I speak as someone that really just wanted to have kids and be married and, and be normal and just have a normal life. And I worked really hard to get there. But still someone that's damaged  and still needs to heal so that I don't project my trauma onto my children.