This is super long. But please read. This is a story and it's not very interesting be, but please someone listen.
I met my now brother-in-law when I was about 12 or 13. My sister is 10 years older than me and he is as well. I have never felt comfortable around this man. Never in my life. My family quickly agreed that he was awkward and a little clueless about how to behave but what I was seeing was not harmless awkwardness. He has always taken an interest in me. At first I thought I was being egotistical, selfish, childish. He gave me too much attention, talked to me too much, tried to get to know me. This sounds normal but I’m an introvert. He would come upstairs and talk to me for hours, while everyone was downstairs. This is so hard to explain…I kept telling my family for years that I didn’t like this unwanted attention, but they took pity on him and told me that I need to be nice to him because my sister loves him, and he just wants to be a good brother to me, he’s a part of the family, etc etc. And so my awkwardness and introversion became rage. I verbally attacked him sometimes. And yet, he continued to force himself into my life. He claimed my family didn’t understand me, but he did. Here are some anecdotes?
When I first made out with a guy, he caught me, but I wasn’t aware. He said he watched me and that he wouldn’t tell my parents what I was doing (???)
He would browse my internet history and when I looked at porn or erotica he would try to bring it up.
I would sometimes wear no pants upstairs because my siblings all moved out and no one would come up, but he would come upstairs and one time he just stared at me. Stared. And finally he was like, okay do you want me to go?
I became paranoid, horribly paranoid. I was creeped out. I would catch him looking at me all the time. I would yell at him and tell him to stop in front of my family, but he would just say “I wasn’t staring at you!” And then my sister started to notice, in her own way I guess (we are very quiet people and because she’s so much older than me we never got too close). She would ask her husband why he was paying so much attention to me and to stop talking to me. Like out loud, in front of me.
Things escalated. He and my sister stopped really having sex. He would text me secretly, send me emails. Nothing sexual, he just repeated over and over again how special he thought I was, how much he wanted to make me feel good. Oh god, I’m sorry. I just. When I was 18 I had a manic episode, (triggered by Cymbalta, hugeeee surprise in my life). He started giving me massages. I was manic, everything was golden, I had no inhibitions, no cares in the world. But he kept doing it, and even as I was manic I realized this wasn’t exactly right, this was weird. He started telling me about my sister and the sex problems and how he has to masturbate all the time and he can’t look at porn because my sister won’t let him. Spilling everything out and I didn’t know what to say so I just kept listening. He would text me while my sister and he and I were all in the same room, but when my sister asked who he was texting he would say it wasn’t her business and it’s not a big deal. I felt so trapped.
We went on vacation. My sister was pregnant (the kind where they implant the sperm in her, they didn’t actually have sex; don’t ask me, I don’t know the logistics!). He asked me if I wanted a massage and I said yes, for some stupid reason, and he took me to my room (we rented a vacation house). He shut the door, not all the way, and I asked why. He said he didn’t want my sister to see. He started massaging me and then it got too intimate, he was touching me, my breasts, my inner thighs. I told him to stop. But he just kept saying “I just want you to feel good”. But this didn’t seem like a big deal to me at the time. You know, I was manic? I was confused.
After that vacation I told my parents he was being inappropriate (no details). They confronted him and told him to tell my sister or they would tell her. I suppose he told her because the topic never came up again. It’s been two years (I’m 20 and in college). My computer broke down a few months ago and he’s a techie geek so my parents gave him my comp to fix. I had naked pictures on there and he told me…told me he saw them. And that’s when I started to remember things. I recovered from my manic episode a while ago and things started to feel very wrong. He no longer gives me unwanted attention (at least publicly). He humiliates me, makes fun of me in front of my family, treats me like I’m a huge “w”itch, and now I can never really see my niece because I feel so uncomfortable around him. I hate watching him hold her and I hate interacting with her when he is around, because I can feel him there.
I know this is long. I know. This has been such a small, slow accumulation of creepiness and I can no longer take it. I still feel like that 14 year old girl, paranoid, and somehow egotistical enough to think a man finds me so tantalizingly attractive. But I never wanted this. I can’t be around him anymore. I’ve talked to my therapist, but I’ve made my decision.
How do I go through with this without tearing my family apart? I'm still having a really hard time calling this assault or molestation. That feels like such a harsh way to put it. People have been through worse, I know that. I just don't know how to deal with it. Is this abuse? Can I call this what it truly feels like? Is it too dramatic?
