Read on Twitter
When I was 10 years old I walked in on my best friend being sexually abused. I didn’t really understand what was happening but felt it deep inside that something was wrong. He told me they were just “hugging” and said I could have a hug too ....
My best friend who was 11 going on 12 - started screaming at me to “get out! Get the fuck out of my house- get outttt!!!!” She never yelled at me before like that so I ran as fast as I could out of her house through her yard across the street to my house and .....
Straight back to my room. I was crying hysterically and my mom busted in to ask me what was going on. I told her what Emily said and she told me that didn’t make any sense. (We played together everyday + had a routine- I did my chores and immediately went to her ...
House as soon as I was finished.). My brain immediately focused on how mean she had been instead of what I saw before - I didn’t understand what I saw and it was too much for me to comprehend so my defense mechanism was to focus on what i could comprehend. Emily was being mean.
About an hour later Emily came over, her hair was wet like she had just taken a shower and she said “c’mon are we going for a walk or what?” -like nothing ever happened. I was actually happy since I convinced myself for the last hour ....
She didn’t want to be friends anymore. I threw on my sneakers and practically ran out the door. We walked to the end of our road and went back into the woods where we had established a fort that was basically just a Bush with an opening in the middle that hid ....
Us from the view of passerby’s. I immediately asked her what happened earlier and she explained to me that her moms boyfriend was in fact not hugging her. And that my initial feeling that something was wrong was right. I immediately wanted to fix it .....
“Let me tell my dad, Emily he’ll help you!” She said no. “Let’s tell your dad” (both our dads had served in the military- both our moms were divorced) she said no and told me it would only make things worse, and I believed her. 
I wish at this point that there was some heroic intervention, a happy ending but this isn’t that kind of story. By the time I was 12 we were already smoking pot and drinking whenever we had a chance. Emily soon moved onto pills (Percocet first and then OxyContin)
We both struggled through our teenage years. In school, at home, and in relationships either with other friends or boys. When I was 15 I got invited to a party and asked Emily to come with me but she said her boyfriend was coming over and that she couldn’t.
I went anyway even though I knew it was a bad idea. I said I’ll just drink one beer and then I’ll go. By the time I was halfway through the beer that some old guy had poured for me I felt dizzy and disconnected, I remember feeling like I couldn’t stand up.
I’m not going to go through all of the details with you, it’s honestly hard to recall but my night ended in the emergency room with police officers and a rape kit. One of my other friends was there too. The police were questioning me - why were you there in the first place?
The doctors took swabs, and used a UV light to document the tearing. They took pictures of the bruises on my body, and at the end gave me a needle in my buttcheek. It was possibly the most humiliating experience I’ve ever had to endure to date.
After that - all the changes I once watched my friend go through I was now experiencing. I was constantly trying to drowned it out of my memory with alcohol. Attempted suicide 3 times over the next 4 years. My mom literally looked me in the face after it happened ...
And said “well you’re always wearing those mini skirts it’s like your asking for it”. Emily stuck with me through the alcohol, the depression and the basic feeling of not wanting to exist anymore. She progressively got worse ... pills turned to heroin. I didn’t ...
Even notice I was too drunk most of the time to know where or who I was let alone what she was doing. I took a pill with her once- a Percocet. She drifted off to a beautiful escape from this world and laid on the beach near where we lived vomiting. I grew up ...
Religious, so as I laid dying in the sand I clinched my hands together and begged god to please let me get through this and promised if I lived I would never touch another pill again. I don’t care what anyone says there was divine intervention that night because the next ....
Morning I woke up and was so clear. I decided that I wasn’t going to live like this anymore and I packed my things and left everything behind. (I was 20 at this point). I took odd jobs - sometimes 2-3 at a time and tried to figure out who or what I wanted to be.
I stayed in touch with Emily but I was really focused on myself. I had to be because it became clear that I was drowning in my old life. I put myself through school to become an esthetician, I got married, I bought a house, adopted worse case scenario dogs from the local ...
Shelter and showed them infinite amounts of love. I had made it! Emily gave me 3 beautiful god daughters that looked just like her! She had been clean for 3 years last September, I was so proud of her. Her girls were so proud of her. But her behavior became ...
Off again. She was disappearing for days at a time. She sent me a message saying she wanted me to tell her kids stories about us when we were young and happy, and to tell them about our forts and the wars we started with the little boys down t he street, and summers ...
At her grandmothers and all our adventures. I honestly thought she was high and I shrugged it off. She always got nostalgic when she was high. I never even answered her. The next morning I got a call at 5:43 in the morning that Emily had overdosed and was gone.
I went through our memories in my mind like watching a movie. Over and over I went through every second of it. It always took me back to that day that I walked in and saw her being molested. She never recovered. She changed and part of her never came back. I saw it clearly for..
The first time. Pay attention to the people trying to drown out the world - that pain runs deep. 
