Chapter 8: Puzzle Pieces

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.

LINKS + CONTACT:

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For inquiries or to connect with Michaela directly, email michaela@michaelamae.com

© 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

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Chapter eight Puzzle Pieces twelve year old Michaela My sister and I are leaving central Oregon for a week to return to the valley with our mom. I'm a little nervous about leaving town because I don't want to leave Pepper, but I'm also excited to see my cousins, whom I don't get to see very often. The first plan is to go to one of my cousin's twenty first birthday parties and to her college graduation celebration. Then we are going to a Toby Keith concert afterward. After the concert, we'll leave for my uncle's cabin near the Columbia River Gorge for a mini vacation and to meet his daughter Constance, a different cousin, for the first time in my sister and I's lives. I technically met her once when I was three or so, but I don't remember meeting her, so I don't think it counts. Then we return to Central Oregon briefly, just before we pack and go to our annual vacation on the Snake River. I'm looking forward to the next few weeks, but I only know what day it is because I'm counting down the days until the Toby Keith concert. This summer just keeps getting weirder and weirder. And to top it off, our neighbor got stabbed one night, and it gives me the creeps that there was a dead body across the street from our house. Not only was it our neighbor who got killed, but he got killed in a home that my dad owns and rents out. We currently live in a duplex off a street where my dad owns most of the homes. One night I woke up in the middle of the night, looked out the window, and saw ambulances and police cars lined up and down in front of the home my dad owns across the street. I went downstairs and I told my dad what I saw, and he told me to go back to bed and if it were important, someone would knock. Well, the officer did knock a few hours later, around 4 a.m. to inform my dad that the lady who lived in the house stabbed her boyfriend and killed him. What I didn't tell my dad when I went downstairs was the reason I was awake to see the ambulances and police cars outside is because I wet the bed. It upset me because I had my favorite pair of pajamas on that night. I don't usually like pink things, but the pajamas I had on had a pink background with red and green apples all over them and had the softest material of any pajamas I had ever felt. I got so embarrassed that I peed the bed at twelve years old that I shoved my pajamas in the garbage so that no one would know, and I washed the bedding on a day when no one else was in the house. I mean, I know I could have just washed the pajamas with the bedding, but I didn't want to remind myself of that time I was twelve years old and peed the bed every time I put those pajamas on. So yeah, both of those things, along with the incidents with Todd, have made this summer weird. I feel like I have two different Michael's living inside of me, one who wants all this weirdness to stop, and the other one who wants to go back to the barn each and every day and doesn't say a word and does whatever Todd wants her to do no matter what. I feel compelled to please him, and I just don't understand why. I don't understand my feelings at all. I'm so confused, and I argue with myself every day before I leave the house to go to the barn. Michaela, why do you care about brushing your hair for him? You never brush your hair. Why do you care now? I don't know. I guess I know he's gonna look at me, and I might as well look decent and and I I don't know why I'm brushing my hair, okay? That's one argument I have with myself, but there are many more similar arguments about what I say, about what I do, about what I wear, and about what I should do when he kisses me. And the three voices that argue in my head usually sound like this Michaela, just kiss him back. It's so weird that you just stand there while he kisses you. I don't know what else to do. Every time I feel the wetness, I freeze. Well practice then. What do you mean by practice? How the hell do you practice kissing? I don't know. Against your arm or something? Against my own arm? Yeah, I don't know. Didn't you watch someone do that in a movie once? I mean probably. But I don't really want to kiss him back. It's terrible. Touching my boobs, fine. I don't mind it. And there's a part of me that even likes it. But the kissing Ugh, I fucking hate the kissing. Hate it or not, you are going to have a kit have to kiss a guy you like one day, and you don't really want to be the weirdo that gets dumped because you can't kiss. Consider this practice. Well, you have a point there. I guess I'll figure out this kissing thing thing then. I've also lost a lot of weight this summer, and everyone is starting to notice. I went vegetarian this summer, so everyone around me has blamed it on my quote unquote better eating habits, but that's just an illusion they have in their head. I'm not eating better. I'm just not eating. Eat once a day, maybe. I'm just not hungry because there's a constant knot in my stomach that I can't get to go away whether I eat or I don't eat. So mostly I choose not to eat because it makes the knot more uncomfortable. And Todd, he's noticed too. One day a week or so ago, or maybe it was several weeks ago. I just don't know anymore. Anyway, one day a while back, I stood in the cross ties again after a lesson, and Todd came up and grabbed me from behind. You're starting to get awfully shapely, aren't you? Just make sure these don't go away. And his hands came up and grasped around my boobs from behind. He started kissing my neck and moved up to my ear. I felt even more uncomfortable than normal as I stared out the back of the barn door in front of me, knowing my dad was just on the tra just outside on the tractor. My dad is outside on the tractor, I told him. Oh yeah, I should probably behave myself, he wouldn't understand, he says as he breaks away from me. He brushed my cheek, and I continued to brush my horse. I tried not to feel it, but I'm guessing he brushed my cheek because he left a speck of chewing tobacco on my cheek when he kissed me. He's done that before. The first time was the worse, but he didn't leave a speck of chew on my cheek. He left his whole glob in my mouth. He kissed me as I stood in the cross ties, and when he broke away I felt something in my mouth, so I swallowed because I didn't want to spit in front of him. It wasn't until I swallowed that I realized I had swallowed a whole dip of his chewing tobacco. It's just it's just so weird because I don't feel anything until after he's done what he's doing, and I think that's why I'm starting to forget things, or why I don't remember things in the first place anymore, or why I don't know I have chewing tobacco in my mouth until after I've already swallowed it. None of this makes sense to me. He reaches for my boobs or he starts kissing me, and it's like a part of me disappears. And then when he's done, that part of me that reappears, and when it does, that's when I can feel that my lips are wet or that he's left a speck of chew somewhere on my face. But at some point, I'm guessing after I swallowed his chew, but I don't really remember, I started turning my lips into my mouth and biting them so his chew or his tongue couldn't get in. And that's the order it usually happens in. He grabs my boobs, leans in to kiss me, I bite my lips, close my eyes, and then a part of me disappears. The weirdest part is that even though I can't feel what he's doing, once that part of me disappears, sometimes I can see what he's doing, not from my body since my eyes are closed. I can see it from a space outside and above my body. I don't even know what's happening to me, but I feel like I'm going completely crazy. And to make me feel even crazier, I've been seeing images that seem like they're from my memory, but I haven't seen them until this summer. They come in like puzzle pieces, and I can't seem to put the pieces together. Preschool Michaela. I'm sitting on the floor of my babysitter son's room. I lean up against the bed and I see him returning his brothers from his brother's bedroom across the hall. He sits down next to me, opens the magazine he has in his hands, and places an open magazine on my lap. It's a tan couple, they're naked and seem to be intertwined with each other like twisted tree roots. He points to the image, this is what we have to do, he tells me. I feel him pull up my black dress with pink flowers on it. His privates are out, and I watch his privates get closer to mine. Tell me if it hurts, and I'll stop. He says as I watch his privates get closer and closer to mine. No, nothing hurts. What is he talking about? I see the front part of his privates that look different than the rest disappear into me. A pain shoots through me, I jump, that hurts, I say to him quietly. He pushes toward me and the pain gets sharper. That hurts, I say again. He shoves closer to me once more, and I push away from him with the heels of my feet as hard as I can, but I don't get far because the wall is right behind me. I said that hurts, I say louder. He pushes his privates back into his shorts and stands up. He won't look at me, and he feels disgusted with me. Go wipe yourself in the bathroom before you go back to your nap, he says while looking at the edge of the bed behind me. What did I do wrong? He told me to tell him if it hurt, and I did. Didn't I do exactly what I was told to do? I go to the bathroom like he told me to do, wipe a weird fluid onto the toilet paper, and then return to the blue couch to finish my nap. I can't lie down because the kids sitting next to me stretch out onto my spot on the couch while I was gone. I lean against the couch's armrest, squeeze my knees into one another, and I stare out the window. The babysitter had just put plastic over the window and I can't see and I can see each drop of rain run down the plastic. A tear runs down my cheek. I repeat to myself in my head big girls don't cry, big girls don't cry, big girls don't cry. I wipe the tears and lay my head against the back of the couch to finish my nap. Big girls don't cry, big girls don't cry, big girls don't cry. I chant to myself as I fall asleep on the couch. Twelve year old Michaela. Have I had sex?