I guess you could say that I'm a survivor.
Looking back on it, it's a wonder that I did survive, considering what I went through for the first 22 years of my life.
I have survived losing my father before I was 2-years-old. I've survived being dragged all over the country by my alcoholic, drug-addicted prostitute mother. I survived being sexually molested by my stepfather, beginning not long after I turned 10 and continuing for over a year, and I survived the aftereffects when my mother found out and shot him to death over it. I survived nearly three years in a state juvenile school for girls, where I was used sexually by the older girls nearly the whole time I was there.
And I survived eight years with my Uncle Bill, my mother's older brother who repeatedly exposed himself to me and made me watch him masturbate until I turned 18, at which time he turned me into his little sex slave, a role I filled until I ran away from him when I was 22.
Yes, I was my uncle's whore, and the only good thing that came out of it was that we used the money that was made from selling my body to pay for my college education, which, in turn, gave me the means to pull myself out of the cesspool that was my upbringing.
I survived because I'm tough mentally and physically, in that I was able to accept some awful treatment. I survived because I also have a high intellegence, although some of the choices I've made weren't very smart. But I was smart enough to stay alive, to stay largely free of drink and drugs, and to stay relatively sane. And I was smart enough to carefully plan my escape, and cover my tracks so my uncle could never find me.
The thing is, though, I don't look tough, and that was always my problem. Even today, as I approach age 35, I stand slightly over five feet tall, and I've never weighed more than 105 pounds soaking wet. I've always had this vulnerable image, along with a pretty, innocent look - haunting brown eyes and dark, girlish hair - that always seemed to attract the wrong men like flies.
Of course, to look at me now, you would never guess that I went through any of that. Today, I am happily married to a man I love and who loves me, and we have two little girls. I am a successful computer software designer for a major company in a large Southern city, and Ron is an attorney. We live in a nice suburban home, we're members of the local country club and we're active in the community.
I survived and I escaped my background, but it was a close thing, and I still have nightmares about being dragged back into that sordid life. Fortunately, Ron is my rock of support, and his love has helped heal a lot of the wounds I suffered during that time. I told him some of what I did before we were married, and he kept me anyway, although it might have been different if I'd given him the gory details.
Trust me, a lot of the details are pretty gory.
So why am I telling you all of this? Well, for one thing, I feel the need to unburden myself, but there is a lot more to it than that.
Like I said, I still have nightmares about that life. But it's not only nightmares, it's dreams I'm having, many of them hot, lurid scenes that leave me sweaty and shaking with fear and lust. It's as if my inner psyche is trying to lure me back into the life of a whore and a slut by replaying images of the things I used to do.
You see, for all the hell that I went through, for all that I was used and abused by people who were supposed to guide me into adulthood, the fact is that I willingly let a lot of it happen. Part of the reason was that I was so lonely and starved for affection, and I had such low self-esteem, that I craved the attention I got from selling my body, giving it away to people who used me, many of them for some truly perverted acts.
But more than that - much, much more than that - was the feeling I got when I was engaged in those acts. To be blunt about it, the biggest reason why I submitted to years of sexual servitude to my uncle and all of the others, and stayed with him for so long, was because the things they did to me routinely sent me to and kept me at such incredible heights of orgasmic ecstasy that they made the bad times bearable.
Every night that I worked for my uncle, I would think, "tonight's the night they're going to take me to that place," of sexual nirvana where nothing else matters except pure sensate pleasure. And many times they would.
The amazing - and shameful - part about it is that I actually miss that aspect of my old life. In the 13 years since I ran away from my Uncle Bill, I have never - not once - come close to achieving the kind of high level of sexual pleasure I did when I was his whore.
Oh, sex with Ron is nice and loving, and I do enjoy it. I love my husband with all my heart and soul, and we have an active sex life.
But it's not the same. It is almost impossible for me to achieve an orgasm unless we both work long and hard at it. Even then, when I finally do get to the point of climax, they pale in comparison to what I got almost all the time with my uncle, his friends and the men he sold me to.
God help me, I live in desperate, daily fear that the wrong man is going to come into my life, a man who will push all the right buttons, and before I know it, I'll be right back where I was 13 years ago. Only this time, it won't just be my life that is in danger, but the lives of my husband and my daughters.
And I have come too far and worked too hard to allow that to happen.
So, let me start at the beginning, because that really is where everything started.
First of all, there is the issue of my name. I answer today to Lyn Foster, Foster being Ron's name. My name before I married was Lyn Gibson, Gibson being my father's name. But when I was growing up - and when I was whoring for Uncle Bill - I was known as Sophie Trotter, Trotter being his and Mom's family name.