Before The Rebuild: The Prequel to Rebuilt
Before Mike, before the love story people know now, there was me-raw, broken, and surviving. This is the truth I never thought I'd be strong enough to tell.
I was 22 years old when my life shattered. I was raped in a back alley and left bleeding, alone. When I turned to the police, hoping for help, they didn't protect me-they shamed me. They called me slurs. They asked me what I'd done to deserve it. What I had worn. Whether I had "led him on." No one believed me.
Nine months later, I gave birth to my son. I named him Aerion Jace Rosier-Aj. His name means strength, wisdom and power in Greek. I gave him that name because i wanted him to have everything I felt had been stolen from me. He was my light, even in the darkest time of my life.
But the darkness wasn't done with me. My two older children, Samuel and Emilie, ended up with my first ex's mother, and I lost all parental rights to them. And then came the 18 months of sex trafficking. They used Aj as collateral-my baby was the only reason i obeyed. I was forced to do what they wanted, or they would have killed him. They only let me see him for one hour each day. I was deprived of food, stripped of dignity, starved down to 75 pounds. I remember the blue car Aj was in the day the police sting finally saved us. But even after we were freed, i wasn't really free. the PTSD haunted me. I avoided certain materials, certain places, even certain sounds. And every night, I heard the voices.
Every relationship after that was wrong-narcissists who broke me down even further. Men who convinced me I was unworthy, unwanted. My current ex even told my son Aj that he wasn't wanted-that he was nothing. I let it happen, and the guilt kills me. I became "the girl who never cried." I thought if I never cried, maybe none of it really happened.
But the truth is, it didn't. And it changed me.
