Why Would I Stop? Pt.1

*Trigger Warning* Mention child abuse, attempted rape, domestic violence, incest.

I’ve been playing Big Sean’s “Why Would I Stop” song on repeat since I’ve heard it. There’s something about the chorus that gets me amped up and motivates me to go harder. It also makes me think about all the things I’ve endured and experienced in my life. Some things, I’ve unpacked and healed from and some just need to be released out loud. This will not be an easy piece to read. It will contain experiences that are hard to swallow. I don’t wish to trigger anyone. I only want to share my testimony.

I think I started to repress my feelings around five years old. My earliest memory of going numb was in Clarkston, Ga, when we lived in the townhouses with the landlord we called Ms. Piggy. This would also be the first place I learned how to ride a bike and use cars as crashpads, that Santa Claus wasn’t real and it was just my daddy using carpet freshener and his boots to have me think Santa tracked snow in, where I would learn that my aunt had breast cancer and her hair was falling out, where I thought my mom sliced off her pinky finger with a vase, and where my next-door neighbor allowed the garbage men take my Cabbage Patch Kid I left outside.

I have a lot of memories in that townhouse but none outweighs the memory of being five years old and my older half brother pulling down his pants and telling me to suck his penis. I don’t remember what was going through my head at the time but I do remember feeling icky. I can almost remember how it felt in my mouth. This would happen every time he would come over to visit. We would be left alone and he would make me rub him or suck his penis. I didn’t understand why he wanted me to do that but I knew I couldn’t say anything because he would threaten to beat me up if I do.

I had a weird relationship with my older brother. I grew up an only child and would only see him when he was allowed to come over. I love him so much because I had someone to look up to and play with. I remember wanting to be just like him and do everything he did. I quickly realized that I wasn’t like him nor would I be treated like him. He got all the toys I wanted and got to spend time with my dad. Yet, he had a temper. He would fight in a heartbeat and I was scared of him. This is why I went numb when he demanded I do things to him. I didn’t want to feel his rage. I just wanted him to protect me.

His sexual abuse went on until I was twelve years old. I remember being at my dad and stepmom’s house for the weekend and somehow he ended up spending the night. We were in the living room with my stepbrothers, watching Apollo and Arnell Star videos. I eventually fell asleep in the living room on the floor. I woke up to my underwear and shorts pulled down, him laying next to me attempting to insert his penis into my vagina. Numb. I tried to push him back but he grabbed my hands and made me jerk him off until he orgasmed. He released me and I ran to my room and locked the door. The next day my stepmom was taking my friend, LaDeidra, and I to Lenox Mall to shop. I remember trying to avoid my brother and not look him in the eye. I felt empty inside. Like all the joy was deflated from my heart.

Despite my experiences with my brother, I have also had similar experiences with my male cousins. I grew up the only female-bodied person in my age range in my family. It seemed like I was the go-to person to play with and somehow end up on top of humping. I hated it but my voice was silenced. Why does this happen in families? Why do people think it’s okay to have these types of interactions with family members? I know it’s more common than it needs to be.

Before I go on, I just want to make it clear that these experiences have nothing to do with my gender or sexual identity. I wanted to be a boy before the sexual abuse and molestation as a child. I didn’t have the words to articulate what I was feeling and growing up in the South, your gender and sexual identity were frowned upon and you didn’t speak about it.

Along with that trauma, I grew up witnessing violence and domestic abuse. It wasn’t daily nor was I harmed but I’ve always been a feeler. I feel things deeply and internalize it. I can remember feeling fear and panic when my two older cousins were surrounded by a group of Decatur folk after a basketball game. It was a riot. I saw my uncle get beat with a bat, my aunt slapped, and people fighting everywhere as I hid behind a car crying. I was probably nine or ten years old. I’ve witnessed my mom taking a crowbar from her trunk to go beat up a “friend” who stole from her. Yea, my mama is about that life, lol. I’ve been witness to situations that involved a loved one being stalked, tires being busted, keys being snatched from the ignition, people being thrown down the stairs, and the experiences go on. In each experience, I went numb.

In the midst of me going numb to harmful situations, I also started burying things in my memory. I didn’t want to forget. I just wanted to bury things that hurt me deep enough that it didn’t affect me. Little did I know how that would begin to weigh on my choices in life. I was never a fighter growing up but when attacked I tend to blackout. I remember when I was twelve at summer camp, a boy who had been picking on me my entire summer started a fight with me and put me in a chokehold. I hate things being around my neck, so I struggled to get out of his grip. There was a brick wall outside Tobie Grant Library that a brick went in and out. I rammed him over and over again into the brick wall until someone screamed he was bleeding. He released me and blood was gushing from his head. I had caused a huge gash in his head. I didn’t feel sorry for what I did but I felt sorry that he got hurt. That was until his parents reacted to the fact that I was a girl and I couldn’t have done this.

You ever felt a numbing fire brew inside you? Like you feel but don’t? That’s what I had started to do. I like to call them emotional volcanoes, where I hold traumatic situations until I’m triggered. The way I saw it. I was tired of boys taking advantage of me and treating me like I wasn’t their equal. If they didn’t respect me, I was going to take it. That’s how I earned the nickname “Mike Tyson” at Stone Mountain Middle School. I unexpectedly got into a fight with a girl who wanted my boyfriend at the time, Wingo. I laugh at this now because our relationship was more of an intense friendship than romantic. I mean, we were about as romantic as 8th graders could be who wasn’t having sex. Word got out that, Lashandra, wanted to fight me. I remember Leguan coming up to my friend Elisha and me in the hallway saying she was waiting to fight me. Lol. We walked up to her and I asked her what was the problem and she said I was. Lol. Okay. I wasn’t trying to entertain this foolishness because my mom and I were in a car accident like a week prior and were going to the chiropractor. I told Lashandra that I wasn’t going to fight her unless she hit me and started walking off. She pushed me in my back and all hell broke loose. Insert blackout mode. All I remember was the boy's coach dragging me off of her and my basketball coach yelling at me for fighting and we had a game. Lol. I tried explaining it wasn’t my fault but yea no luck. It turned out that Lashandra was trying to mutilate my face so that Wingo wouldn’t like me anymore. People are simple-minded.

That only intensified the brewing. I would take my anger out on the court. I would clothesline people and the coach would yell “This ain't football” as I was hit with technical fouls left and right. I needed an outlet. I needed respect. Transitioning from a teenager to a young adult was a weird time. I wasn’t reckless but I was rebellious, as I always was. During this time, I didn’t know what I was doing. I partied six days out of the week. I had part-time jobs here and there. I lived on friends' floors, couches, and rented rooms in their houses.

Oddly, none of this bothered me. I still managed to party and have various relationships/entanglements with many women. I’ve dated several exotic dancers, moved to Austin to be with a partner, had my hair cut with a knife by a partner, climbed out a window to escape an abusive partner, had all my belongings thrown out while I was in the shower by a partner, had to break in a partner’s brother’s house to steal clothes to go to work in, stayed with a supervisor to escape that partner, had my clothes thrown away while I was on vacation by a roommate that liked me and I didn’t return the notion and lived two months with only a weekend’s worth of clothing.

No matter what I’ve been through, I never gave up. I didn’t allow my circumstances to keep me down. I swallowed whatever demon that presented itself and kept pushing. That was until I learned that my older brother had been accused of raping a woman. That sent me spiraling in a dark place. I blamed myself for never telling anyone about what he did to me. I became depressed and was eventually med boarded out of the Army. It wasn’t until I had a life-changing experience with an evangelist that my mind shifted and things that had been occurring in my life made sense.

Part two coming soon.

”And I know I'm a gift but I think out the box
And they want me to stop, but why would I stop?
I am unstoppable, why would I stop, bitch?
Why would I stop? Chill, I don't jump, I dive in it
This the reason I'm alive, isn't it?”

“WhyWould I Stop?” -Big Sean