I'm not going to get graphic here, but I'll still be reflecting on how I felt while I was being molested by my dad, so trigger warning all the same.

The age of 15 really was the worst time of my life for me. My dad made a daily thing out of molesting me whenever he had me alone. Which was often, obviously, if it was happening every day. He had gotten a job where he would work from 4 PM to 1 AM and since me mom worked from 8 AM to 5 PM, he would always have a large window to have his way with me during the daytime. Often multiple times out of the day.

When he first started molesting me every day, he would only do it during the daytime, usually in the afternoon before he would leave for work. For a while, I knew I would be safe after he went to work at least until the very next day. Evenings and nighttime were my periods of reprieve - when I didn't have to be scared of my dad. That ended up only lasting about a month until one night when I woke up in the middle of night to him molesting me after he had just came home from work.

From that point on, it started becoming a thing that happened almost every night as well. The set up was just too perfect for him. He would come home while my mom would be asleep and had plenty of time to do what he would do to me for a while an then just go to bed without my mom suspecting a thing, assuming she would even wake up when he eventually went to bed. He would molest me at night before, but he did it so rarely, I never thought about it at the time.

With that, my period of reprieve had been taken away from me. I no longer felt safe at night. Many nights, I couldn't sleep because I was too scared of waking up right in the middle of it. My anxiety would be high just counting down the hours of when he'd come home, reaching its peak as soon as I heard the front door to the house open. He wouldn't do it every night and I would always hope that night would be one where I'd hear his footsteps disappear to the other end of the house where my parents' bedroom was rather than getting closer and closer to my bedroom.

All of this contributed to how hopeless and broken I felt. I was so dead inside, whenever I would reflect on how my life was, if I wasn't crying my eyes out, I was putting myself down by telling myself I have to accept this because I deserve it for being too weak to do anything about it. I don't know how I went on for so long enduring this dark state of mind and reality I was in. Then again, I felt I didn't have a choice but to do so.

My recent therapy sessions have helped me realized that these times I would feel hopeless and unsafe at night had more traumatic impact on me than I thought. Which makes sense considering all the hours I spent lying at night just anticipating my dad coming home to molest me again. Since talking about this, I've been reflecting on how I would feel during these instances when I'm in bed at night and left to my thoughts before going to sleep. It's almost triggering for me. It only goes to show that this another demon I have to conquer. And I'm still confident I can and will.