Published via Ecency

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I told him to stop it, but he didn't.

I kept saying no even telling him to stop, but he continued molesting me while the others stood there recording it on their phones.

I don't think there is a word that can fully explain what I felt that day.

I was so scared, I was embarrassed and feeling angered. But more than anything, I felt betrayed.

The painful part is that they were not strangers.

These were people I trusted, I owned up to as my people

We laughed together, we shared things with each other. I thought I knew them, I thought if something ever happened to me, these were the people who would protect me.

But in all of these I was wrong.

I don't even know exactly when everything changed. Maybe it started with the little jokes I ignored, I mean the teasing.

The way they sometimes made me uncomfortable and then laughed when I complained. I kept telling myself they were only joking because I didn't want to believe that my own friends could actually be against me.

Then they started ganging up on me.

And the person I expected to protect me became one of the people hurting me.

That betrayal hurt differently, for real

Because when someone you love hurts you, you don't just lose the person. You start questioning everything you thought you knew about them.

I kept wondering, "Why me?"

I wondered if I had done something to deserve it, I wondered what people would say if the videos got out.

I wondered whether anyone would believe me.

Most of all, I felt like they had taken something from me that I could never get back.

Which was my dignity

For a long time, I carried that shame quietly.

I smiled when I didn't feel like smiling, i avoided people.

I replayed that day in my head more times than I can count. Sometimes I blamed myself for trusting them.