After Thoughts: Chapter 6

Welcome to Michaela Mae's Audiobook Experience for The Barn off of Colfax Lane: an unfiltered memoir about sexual assault and the mixed feelings that come with it. 

In this book Michaela tells her story of the childhood sexual abuse she experienced when she was 12-years-old while taking horse back riding lessons from a horse trainer in Oregon.

BOOK SUMMARY:

I was 12 years old the first time my horse trainer grabbed my left boob and asked me if I had ever had sex. I'm not sure what caught me off guard the most: his question or the fact a 79-year-old man had his hand firmly cusped around my boob while asking me, a 12-year-old, if I had ever had sex. I've blocked out a lot of that season from my mind, but that first day sticks out clearer than the rest. Is it because of the shock? Is it because I hadn't fully remembered my pro-dissociation skills yet?

I have no f*cking clue, but I do remember the green-striped tank top and the dark navy blue jeans I had on that day. I remember watching his lips ooze as the words, "Have you ever had sex?" spilled out of them. I remember the blank stare in his eyes, the black specks of chew stuck in his teeth, and the way his cheeks met his chin like a pillow shoved under fitted sheets.

My eyes left my left boob, flung around the barn, and up to his face. The light coming in from the barn door behind him lit his back, but darkened his face so his face looked as dark as the blank stare in his eyes. My brain raced for answers that made sense. Hell, it searched for a question that made sense too. "No, of course not. Wait, why is this happening? How do I answer? Do I answer? Am I dreaming?" I couldn't speak, so I looked up at him blankly then he turned and walked away.

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© 2024 MP Media. All rights reserved.

Narrated by Author Michaela Mae.

Keywords: survivor memoir, childhood sexual abuse memoir, childhood sexual abuse, trauma memoir, healing memoir, horse trainer abuse, equestrian community, read by the author, audiobook, Oregon, Michaela Mae

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Chapter six, Afterthoughts. The thing that stood out to me most about rereading this chapter, and especially reading this chapter out loud, is how much of what I expected him to do is what I would have done in that situation, and how I expected him to feel is how I would have felt in that situation. Like if I would have done something like that, I would have felt so guilty, I would have felt so ashamed because I mean I was 12, right? So I really had no awareness or knowledge that I was projecting my feelings onto somebody else. That I just assumed he would respond and react the same way that I would respond and react. And even today, as present-day Michaela, it's still hard for me to comprehend and understand and grasp that someone can purposely build up trust with somebody just to break it. Or that some like even as much as I've thought about this situation, as much psychology books I've read, as much interviews I've listened to with other people who have experienced what I have, or even some of the interviews with other perpetrators, it is still hard for me to grasp and understand a human brain that can build trust or build a bond just to break it and like do something for their own benefit or their own. I don't even know if you would call like something like sexual assault like a bent their own kink. I like I don't even know how to describe it, to be honest with you. And so I have a hard time grasping that, right? And especially at 12, I just it was so much for me to handle and so much for my brain to handle. Like I I don't even think that my brain would have allowed me to understand, like, that I was in danger, especially because this was someone that I had felt, yeah, like as we talked about in previous chapters, yeah, we had our our differences, I had my frustrations with him, but overall, like I did feel safe with this person, and I definitely never thought this person would do something like that. And then obviously, like my dad trusted this person enough to leave his child with them, and so I really just and I I even when I just said it out loud, could not comprehend or grasp that I could have been in potential danger. And I just find it so interesting because you know, we can still do that or tend to do that as adults today of assuming someone feels the same way we feel of if I feel guilty, of course they feel guilty, but no, that's not true. And I just expected, like, oh, he won't be able to look at me, and like reading that, and it's just like, no, Michaela, that was how you felt. He was just, again, now I was really fortunate that I had a detective that had dealt with quite a few sexual assault cases, and he really, and I'll I'll talk about this a lot more in depth in my next book, um, because my next book actually starts with the interview with the detective who took my case. Um, that's how the next book starts, so I guess spoiler alert. Um, but I was really fortunate that he really took the time to explain grooming tactics to me in earlier in one of the earlier afterthoughts when I talked about like not feeling crazy and having a hard time with feeling crazy. He was the first person to help me not just feel a little less crazy, to not feel as crazy, to feel a little less crazy, because he was able to put these grooming tactics into words for me. And so now having that perspective, that was very much what Todd was trying to do. Again, my brain always feels guilty, and I I could literally not comprehend that I was a puppet at the end of a puppet string, and he was just pulling one of the strings. And okay, is she it to see if it worked? Like, were was I, this would be a better way to word it, like was I actually like attached to this string that he was trying to build, or was I still off of the string and he needed to do more to get me on the string? Because it's very much like a touch and go of a grooming tactic, as far as I'm gonna test the waters here, I'm gonna see how hot the water is, and then I'm gonna pull back, and then I'm gonna test it again, and then I'm gonna pull back, and then I'm gonna test it again, and then I'm gonna pull back, and I'm gonna get this person to the point where I no longer have to pull back. I can just go full send forward. And so part of what he was doing was seeing like where I was at. Of course, he was gonna act normal because he's just trying to read where I'm at. That was like the his whole goal. And what's really interesting about him, and just again being removed from this for 18 years now, and which is just insane to say, by the way, is he he was so like methodical and meticulous. Like that was one of the reasons. Um, I'm gonna have a book where I go more at some point where I go into like the patterns of abuse that I've noticed both in abusers and in abused victims. But one of the things in him that honestly still blows my mind to this day was his meticulousness. And because I'm I'm building my writing to go into that book that I'm telling you about, where I talk about the patterns I've seen in abusers and um abuse victims. I I don't know if I said that right, but you know what I mean. I wanted to really drive home on his meticulousness because he had, in my perspective, had his grooming program just as solid as his horse training program. But I'm I'm also not blind to the fact that there was something going on in this guy's brain that just wasn't right. Like there are people that have OCD tendencies or just like things really clean or really, but there was there was something going on there. And now I'm like I'm not blind to that, and I'm definitely not trying to justify anything, but the level of meticulousness that guy had, the way he was like just so I mean his routine was insane. I mean, like I was saying, I I always knew something was wrong if he was breaking routine because he never broke routine, he wrapped the hose. I mean, I can see that hose in my mind to this day. And as someone, I'm pretty meticulous. I'm pretty, I have a pretty good eye for things. Like I I joke I did graphic design for a while. Like I joke that if there's a pixel out of place, like I will be able to see it. And I cannot comprehend how he wrapped that hose so well and so meticulously, and just like one coil on top of the other in perfect, like it it just blew my brain. The stalls were the same way, like the whole being level without a leveler, like he could just see that. He never broke his routine, he ate the same things, like not never, but like he rarely broke his routine, and again, when he did, there was something wrong. And I do just wonder like what was going on in his brain. Like, if I could get a brain scan done on this person, what did it look like? Because and that's why I I really think like he like I hate to say this, but that's why I think he was able to get away with it for so many years, was because of his meticulousness. And we could argue also, like the timing, you know, it wasn't as supportive for you know victims of abuse to come out and talk, but I think because he had his training, and I hate to say it this way, but I just feel that it's the truth, like because he had his training program down for little girls as well as he did his freaking horse training program, I think that's why he was able to get away with it for so many years. Because for this guy to never get taken to court, for me to be the first person to take this guy to court, at by the time we started actually going to court, he was 80 years old. And so he had been getting away with this for I'm sure decades. Obviously, I'm assuming things because there's so many gaps, like I just don't know the real story. But, you know, even the judge in my my case had said, like, you don't just turn 79, 80 years old and start doing this. Like, so you clearly have been getting away with this for years, and I agree. And there's other people that like you kind of hear scuttle butt in the town of it happened to them. And I think a lot of it does come down to this meticulous and this this training program. And I again I hate to call it that, but for lack of a better term, that he had for his victims. And obviously, I I was in it just as much as anyone, and he did have it just so like methodical and meticulous of I'm gonna go do this, and then I'm gonna pull back, and then it continues, which I'm not gonna talk about it much more because we'll continue with it out the throughout the book, and I'm sure I'll continue to circle back to it. But it was just so like interesting rereading that chapter and remembering how um methodical that he like because again, now I have the hindsight to reread it and remember it, like how methodical it was, especially in comparison to his like his horse training program. So that's what was coming up for me as I was rereading chapter six, was just like in my child brain, I just I couldn't even think that this was part of a program. Like I just assumed he would be responding as I was responding. And again, even now today, I have a hard time grasping that this was just part of his goal, uh again, for lack of a better term, was to see where I was at and if I was that puppet attached to that string or not.