My Worst Nightmare

By: Natalie Sparks

I was  young, only warmth filled my heart until my heart was damaged. The story of what happened to me is all over the internet for other thousands of people to see and to read about sex trafficking and offenders who attack young women like me. I’m not the only one suffering over what happened to me. There might be others like me who he hurt, and all I feel is damaged and terrible about how they are feeling. I feel terrible for  myself as well. 

I have leaned on God more in the last two years because of this situation and it will be three years since this happened. A few times during the weeks past by having anxiety, less sleep but going to bed early during the week and taking naps when I come home from school. Someone once told me that we all have one life, but we make multiple lives when we grow our own family in our own lives down the road. 

I see life a bit differently since my trauma happened a few years ago. It’s been only two years since the man was put in federal prison without sentencing from his trial. He’s facing up to 20 years in prison  with the other charges he was accused of. There was one thing I knew I could be looking for. It was closure over this man who traumatized me to death almost all the way from New York, and I was all the way in Georgia on a military base with great friends. I was a sophomore in high school when this happened. I am now a junior. 

It’s been a difficult time healing over this tragedy. The investigation began in October in Georgia when FBI agents there received information from my parents that they had found messages of a sexual nature on the phone between me and a 36-year-old man named Keith, whose last name I did not know at the time, I’ve told investigators I had met the man in an adult chatroom three months earlier. I told the man I was 18. He had told me at some point that he wanted to r*pe me in a hotel, and it was the scariest thing I had ever faced in my life. A man should never force a woman to take photos of certain things on their body, and a woman should never be afraid to say no to them.

 This doesn’t make sense, does it? No, it's real, and it happened to me. Mentally and emotionally. I’ll be seventeen in December of this year which is a huge year for me, and I’m very excited for my birthday. This story is for closure for myself and my future. 

This story really makes me cry everytime I  talk or write about it. It’s an emotional story about my past. I was scared, but now I am not.