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Neema Ejercito (she/her/hers), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

Please note that this article discusses sexual abuse and assault.

As I go through my healing journey, I celebrate the small wins of taking my inner artist out on dates. I even sent myself snail mail, which felt weird because I kept hiding the envelope from my husband, even if I had written my name in Japanese. Even the fact that I felt I had to do that was weird in itself. Long story short, I just didn’t want him to make fun of me, nor for me to have to explain what I was doing. The point I’m trying to make is that I have issues of negative self-worth. And I’ve been trying to figure out why, when all this time I thought I’d had a great childhood and received so much unconditional love that I could not think of ever fully repaying my family except by paying it forward as best I can.

I have lately made the painful realization, however, that I held such idealized notions of my family and what they had given me that I idolized them. Strange, considering the fact that I had been sexually abused by my older brother and my dad almost sexually assaulted my niece (my sister’s daughter), and though my parents, siblings and their spouses know about it, no one has really taken the time to talk to me decently about it, except maybe for my brother-in-law, who is the father of the aforementioned niece.

My eldest son has commented that there was a time my social media stories and posts were too much about self-love and being happy with myself. My youngest daughter actually grew tired of Andy Grammer’s song “Love Myself” because, according to her, I overplayed it (I’m glad Spotify can contest this though, because my top songs and artists of 2024 were neither of them).

As I thought more about how I truly had such crippling self-loathing, I came to the conclusion that it did, in fact, stem from that time I was sexually abused. I don’t know, dear reader, if you are thinking, “Well, duh . . .” because, to be honest, I never really studied the effects of that abuse on me until I had to look it squarely in the face.

So as I end my article, I just want to let people know that one of the things that happens to the person one sexually abuses is this:

We feel worthless because of what you’ve done.

We may not know it, but we live with perpetual denial of self-worth. I personally have been questioning why I feel undeserving of experiences. As my eldest put it one time, “No offense, Mom, but your posts are too much about self-love.” And I hated realizing that it was because of what my older brother had done to me. And now I am so protective of myself that I’ve learned to be guarded from everyone who would condone that—with their silence, with their inaction. And I have said goodbye to anyone in my life that exhibits that kind of behaviour.

There’s still a lot to unpack, for sure, but coming to that conclusion has taken years of every kind of help I could possibly have at my disposal. I had to relearn the meaning of what it means to have someone who truly has your back, and I’m proud to say that I actually have more than 10! May we all indeed be so blessed.

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Neema Ejercito is a professional writer, director, and creative writing mentor. Her 3D edutainment series for beginning readers, AlphaBesties, is showing in Japan’s streaming platform, Prairie Kids. When she’s not writing or mentoring, she helps develop apps with her husband in their EdTech startup and manages her household with him and their two adults and teen.