21f my dad touched me as a child and I never told him

I don’t know how to write this, but I thought the story was worth sharing. Holy trigger warning though.

Once a year, while my parents were still married (I was 10) they would take me and my siblings on a large group trip to a tropical location. Usually it would include extended family, cousins of uncles I didn’t recognize and random stranger twice removed kind of deal. On this particular trip, they chose Cancún, Mexico.

We stayed at an all inclusive resort. It’s the perfect vacation plan for people that just want to turn off their brain and escape for a week. My parents decided this was going to be the week they could finally let go of the steering wheel and relax. From the moment we checked into our room, until the moment we returned the key, both of my parents (along with everyone else we went with) were shitfaced drunk. Leave your child unsupervised while you black out on the pool chair drunk. Call your daughter a bitch for wanting you to pay some attention to her drunk. Pass out outside, wake up the next morning still drunk and then go to the breakfast buffet and drink bloody mary’s drunk. I’m not kidding.

It was the second night of our vacation. I had spent most of the day inside, because I felt safest in our hotel room and didn’t do a good job of using sunscreen the first day. I was laying in bed probably watching youtube, and at some point I started drifting to sleep. I heard my parents come in, and I didn’t move. There was no point in saying anything because they wouldn’t hear me. My mom stripped naked and settled into the only other bed besides mine as my dad stood between her bed and mine. He stripped naked too. I didn’t turn to look, but I heard his relieved sigh as clothes rustled and fell to the floor. I was confused why he wasn’t getting into bed with his wife, but I laid still facing away from him and didn’t say anything. Then, he lifted my covers and fell into the space behind me, which made me an involuntary little spoon. His arms wrapped around me. I was young but I understood what it meant for a man to have an erection. I could feel it because he was so close to me. There was no denying it, my dad was fully erect, naked, and spooning his 10 year old daughter. Once I realized something was wrong I shot out of bed, out of breath and completely panicking. I didn’t fully process the situation in that moment. I was overwhelmed and felt trapped. I cried alone in the bathroom, silently so I wouldn’t wake anyone up. I didn’t want to freak out and ruin my parents’ vacation. After the tears stopped and I’d exhausted myself, I found the only other unoccupied soft surface in the room, which was a padded bench, and crashed there for the night. Before I fell asleep I took a look at my dad and, as I expected, he was blacked out. In the morning, he woke up and questioned why we all slept in the places we did. I said nothing. My mom said nothing. We went to the breakfast buffet with everyone else. I choked down chocolate chip pancakes and OJ while my mom and dad ordered the third round of mimosas for the table. In this situation, I didn’t stand up for myself or speak my truth, I carried on quietly trying to convince myself it didn’t happen. I don’t remember a lot from the rest of that trip, but I was happy it was over. I was told I was ungrateful for not enjoying the vacation more.

I held on to that secret, not telling a single person for over 8 years. I didn’t even come to terms with what happened until I was 16. Unfortunately at 16 I was assaulted again by a boy at school and it made me realize it was a pattern. At 18 I went to the doctor on my own and got a PTSD diagnosis. I moved out of my parents homes and found my own apartment. My relationship with my dad started to recover. We talked every day and I went to him for help like anyone would with their dad. He stopped drinking as much and was actually there for me. Our relationship started to feel normal.

Well. Until the night I got the call that my dad had killed himself. I was 19 and completely shocked. Nobody that knew him expected it to happen. My mom died that year too from alcoholic liver/organ failure. That’s a whole other reddit post. I never had the strength to tell my dad what happened. I wouldn’t know where to start, or what to say. I didn’t know whether he even remembered it, since he was in a semi-conscious drunken haze. I really didn’t want to feel gaslit either as my mom had done that enough in other situations—again that’s a whole other reddit post. Maybe a day would have came where I could have told him. Maybe not. I’ll never know.

I wish I could end this story better. I wish a lot of things were different. I know I deserved a hell of a lot better. But this cycle of abuse and alcoholism ends with me. I’ve been going to therapy since I was about 13, and my current therapist is one of the best things to happen to me. I’ve learned and grown in ways I didn’t know were possible and finally I feel like my life has some kind of meaning. I won’t be having kids but I will have many fur babies and I hope to live a decently happy life with my partner. I still struggle with my mental health daily and still have flashbacks from time to time. I try to use what I know to help others who might be struggling too. Alcohol is a hell of a drug.