Melody, 32 – Molested

As the oldest sibling of five, the feeling of being a “grown up” chased her during her early stages of life. Melody who today is 32 years old, looks back at her life, feeling blessed despite all the tribulations she has faced.

“Being the oldest, you are giving a lot more responsibilities. I think especially if your female. But now looking back I feel I’ve been very blessed. I have a great family, I love my siblings.”

“I wouldn’t necessarily say I was robbed up a childhood but I was felt like I had more responsibility, I had more things, I took care of my sibling a lot so I really did consider myself a second mother to them.”

Melody, experienced culture differences due to her parents being raised in Mexico and herself in the United States. One major contrast would come to be gender inequality.

“Women are supposed to play a certain role in the family structure. Men, you know, they just go out and play. Like, my brothers always just went out and play. The girls stayed inside doing chores, doing certain things and then we got to go out and enjoy ourselves.”

Her driving force of life became soccer. Passionate, and strong Melody, quickly became an inspiration source for her teammates.

“That [soccer] was actually a huge confidence booster. I would say that was probably the only confidence booster I had.”

“Soccer was a huge saving grace, no, like a, it was an answer to a prayer… from the time I was 13 years old up until I stopped playing, there was like  ‘Ah, Mel is our goalkeeper, okay this is awesome!’ That felt good. Everyone always wanted Mel. There were three high schools that all wanted me to play for them. It felt good to be wanted.”

Behind the soccer fame hid an innocent introverted girl that had to battle a war inside of her caused by someone else.

“When I was five years old, I was molested. But I didn’t know what happened cause what does a five-year-old know?”

“It’s happened to so many women, different ages in their lives. For some reason, to me, it happened when I was five years old.”

“A teenager made a bad decision and that definitely affected me in the way that I interpreted relationships. Elaborating on that I would say, I didn’t know how to trust men. Cause obviously some boundaries had been crossed.”

“For the longest time, I didn’t want to have a boyfriend. That was another reason why I think people felt they could say ‘Oh she thinks she’s too good for a relationship.’ Especially in the Mexican culture, it like, there this assumed, ‘oh get married by the time you’re 20-21, you have kids, that’s what the woman is supposed to do… I wasn’t getting any pressure from my parents, but they society.”

“Struggling with the pressure of society versus what happened to me, how am I supposed to have a relationship? I always had this concept that men are all bad and they’re all selfish. So it took a long time for me to realize that I had been molested.”

“It wasn’t until I was probably like 14-15 years old and you’d already had ‘sex ed[ucation]’ classes, you’d already had ‘the talk’ and stuff, and I’m like ‘wow’. I’m pretty sure for a while I actually kind of blocked it out cause that’s the only way that your body and your brain can cop. You know, certain traumas, they’re still there, but then something triggers it later on in life. I think what triggered it for me was that my friends started getting boyfriends and I’m like ‘ I think I’m supposed to have one’ but I always had this instinct ‘But I don’t want one.’

“The ironic thing is that I always make guy friends very easily but that’s all I ever wanted.”

“In terms of obstacles, that’s just been like a life long like major trust issues for me.”

“I never dressed up, I never wore makeup. I never did anything to call attention to myself. I don’t know if that was an instinct or a way to like emotionally protect myself but like I never did anything to draw attention to myself to have to deal with boys.”

Melody did eventually date a guy who later cheated on her with two other girls.

“Obviously that sucked, but he did. I think that was one of the first times my parents actually concerned about me, and again, in a very twisted way that kind of made me feel good. Cause again, you know, quality time was one of my love languages, that I didn’t know about.”

“So when they were worried about me I thought, oh this is kind of nice, but it kind of sucks to be depressed.”

Her healing point came only four years ago when Melody started going to a professional therapist. Today, she encourages people around her to not be afraid, to take the first step and go and see a therapist if needed.

“I think it was one of the best decisions in my life to do that.”

“We know there’s shame involved, there’s guilt, there are all kinds of feelings that we shouldn’t have. Like why should we be the one that is ashamed, I don’t like to use the word victims, but we were. We were victims. We’re the ones left with all of this chaos.”

As of the animal lover that she is. She would love to one day have her own business or a non-profit organization.

“I think it would definitely have to do with animals. Cats and dogs. Either it’s a shelter or something related to that effect.”

“I think I definitely could’ve, my life could’ve gone in a very different direction. From the time I was five years old and for some reason, I think I’ve had internal struggles, and I don’t know if that’s something that’s ever gonna change in this life. I just kind of have to work through the stresses or the triggers. It’s obviously getting easier, I’m 32 now… One of the first things I had to do was to accept that something bad had happened and not just try to deny it or bury it or forget about it”

“We tend to think that everybody has to be the same in order to be a worthy child of God. But there’s no such thing as being “a worthy” child of God because we are already children of God… Whatever it is what we’re doing, we’re still his children.”