The first thing I remember from my childhood are my brothers, I idolized them as a little girl. Following them around, doing as they said, and never telling a soul about all the awful acts they would do. Being the youngest and only girl in a big family has it’s perks: I was doted on by  everyone I met, told I was adorable by strangers, and until kindergarten I truly believed that I was a princess.  Everyone loved me, even my brothers, who made it their lives’ missions to make my childhood unforgettable.
From forcing me to drink a cup of spit to making me eat a dirt “brownie,” my brothers were very creative in their torment. They told me stories of a far away land called Alaska and said that they would be generous enough to help me get there. By helping me, I mean they would try to shove me into the oven and say that the second that they closed the door I would never see my family again.
If they were even my family, I mean. It came to their attention that I may have been found underneath the kitchen sink when our parents bought the house. Weirdly enough, this was true, even though my parents were the first to ever live there. There were other stories, ones where I was found under a tree or on the bleachers at one of the boy’s baseball games. Thinking back, I truly believed every word they said and would cry for hours believing that they were not my real family.
I don’t remember when it started, maybe from birth, but the first memory I have of my childhood sticks with me.  The boys told me we were going to play hide and seek and that I had to hide first, I was so excited that I forgot that we were heading out on a road trip. While I was sitting under our backyard porch my family got into two cars and sped off, each parent assuming I was in the other car. The hiding only lasted about 20 minutes before I tried getting into my locked house, the ordeal ended with me crying and a neighbor taking me in until my parents frantically realized I was gone and went straight home.
Growing up gross, that was all I knew; wedgies, fighting, and farting, a little girl surrounded by hormonal teenage boys. There are times now that I wonder, what would I be like without these memories? Would a better person be standing in my shoes, one who could actually trust others? My brothers shaped me like a piece of clay, creating a monster in a little pink bow.
My parents were none the wiser to my brother’s doings, they thought their little boys were practically angels when it came to their sister. When my parents saw Casey take me outside they cooed with happiness at us getting along they unknowingly turned away long enough for me to get the worst wedgie of my life. Or when I was taken out for dinner and AJ would lie and say I wanted the hamburger, even though my entire family knows the thought of meat makes me sick.
I felt like the me that lived through the hell of so many boys could beat the new me up; I am not preparing for an attack any minute now like she was. The water gun I kept under my pillow for all those years is now covered in cobwebs in a garage somewhere. Children should never have to be ready for war, but I was, everyday I just waited for my brothers to come for me. There was no stopping it, no hiding from them.
I think of this everytime I go out to eat with their wives, when I see their children, when I stand up at their wedding to give a toast. Do they remember what it was like all those years ago? Do they ever think of the effects on my life from their “boys just being boys” phase? To have to fight off boys a decade older than you, to not feel safe in my own home, that is not okay. I was not okay, not for a long time. I didn’t want to get close to anyone and even if I did, there was never the trust that there should be between friends.
Growing up for me never meant losing my innocence, that was long gone, it meant realizing that my childhood was not my fault. The hate those boys had for me was not my own and when I get a text message from them I feel my hands start to slip and tell them all that has been on my mind. How I talk about them in therapy sessions, how I told my friends everything and they laughed. I am not okay. I may never be okay, but I am strong. There will never be a force strong enough to break through the walls my brothers helped me build, the only thing they ever helped me with.