I spoke to my cousin about what she thought of justice.  She told me justice for her was me healing and taking back my life.  Why was she so invested in me?  I had no clue what she went through but now I know that she is my hero and the only person to show me unconditional love.  Here's some of what happened.  The first time my cousin discovered I was being abused was when she spent the night at my house.  She woke up to my brother on top of me, 'doing things to me." She kicked him off of me but to no avail.  He continued.  She yelled at him to stop and when he wouldn't, she said to do it to her instead.  Every time my cousin came over, he would touch her instead.  She was 10 and I was 7-8 at the time.  I don't remember any of this.  She said he continued to molest her for a long time.  She assumed he stopped touching me and touched her instead, but he didn't.  The time I remember being touched, I was around 9.  So obviously, he didn't stop.  Then two of my oldest friends told me that I already told my parents but they didn't believe me.  I have no memory of that as well.  I'm so confused.  My head hurts and I'm having trouble deciding what is real.  If that's true and I did tell my parents already and they didn't believe me, then no wonder I blocked everything out.  How could I live day to day with my abuser and then when I told the people who were supposed to love me the most, the treated me like a liar.  My friend told me my mother didn't talk to me for a while after that.  The brain is an amazing thing.  It really did it's best to protect me.  I was in a horrid situation.  Unsafe, unloved, and unwanted.  If teenage me remembered all the details of my abuse and rejection I faced, maybe she would have pulled the trigger.  My brain did what was best to keep me alive.  By forgetting.  I'm so grateful to be here today and I'm ready to get justice for that child I was.  

Also, my friend told me I told her that my brother would take me into the basement and make me perform oral on him.   So that's a new situation too.  More details of abuse, a longer timeline of abuse, no one to keep me safe and a burning fury growing inside me.  

*Additional memory: My brother had my cousin pinned on the bed in my grandmothers house.  He was dry humping her.  Apparently, I walked in saw them, asked what they were doing and then left.  I'm getting mental pictures of this incident.  I remember he looked like he was doing a push up over her.  He never said a word. Just stared at me.