D.A.R.E.

I was sitting in my 5th grade classroom staring at a police officer with a giant banner hanging on the chalkboard behind him. This giant banner had huge bright red letters screaming the word D.A.R.E.. Coincidently, this word was all to familiar to the 5th graders. There was a game played by many of us called, truth, dare, double dare, or promise to repeat. I believe the agenda of the game is to get the boy to kiss the girl. This is how many of my first experiences with kissing took place. The police officer had a completely different meaning to the word dare. The class was then introduced to the program Drug Abuse Resistance Education-D.A.R.E.. The police officer opened up his presentation with, "What does abuse mean?" Of course many of my classmates had their hands up in the air wiggling as if they had advanced Parkinson's Disease and whispering under their breath "I know, I know." I was not this type of student. I didn't like to share my answers with the entire class. I had a fear of being wrong and having other students make fun me. The police officer called on a few,
in which they answered with a child like definition of domestic violence and child abuse. He agrees with their answers and moves onto some others. Someone mentioned sexual abuse, which many haven't heard of. The officer goes into detail of what sexual abuse is. As I was listening very closely, my body started to have goose bumps, my face felt like it was on fire and my mouth was watering. By this point the discussion had already moved onto drugs. I asked to be excused to the restroom. There I sat on a cold floor of a stall. I didn't cry (yet), I just sat their remembering every moment in detail. I was confused and shocked. I dry heaved over the toilet for sometime. Then the tears came and they wouldn't stop. The teacher concerned with the amount of time it's been, sent a girl from class to check on me. I told her that I just discovered that my own father had been sexually abusing me for as long as I can remember. I never had a clue that what he did to me was abuse. It was normal to me, I thought all father/daughter relationships was just like ours. The girl cried too, holding me so tightly that I felt safe there and never wanted to let go. After all the tears, I told her to never tell anybody and that I wanted to be the one who told. She respected that, she never told anybody, not even other students. I wish I could say that this girl and I became the closest friends and are still in touch. That's not the case, she unfortunately, moved away. I now have my own acronym for D.A.R.E.-dad abused Rachele everyday.