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manner. Luckily, I was not afraid to stand up for myself. He tried to apologize multiple times that night, realizing what a huge mistake he had made, but the damage was done. The word damage does not even seem to describe it. It was like an atomic bomb had been dropped over my whole life. This was my family, the man who was a father figure in my life, and he was trying to violate me? I felt like someone had died all over again.

I do not know how I survived the seven hour ride home but I do remember that I could not get away from him fast enough. This was someone who I thought I could trust with me life, and he ruined what had been years of great things in a span of minutes. How could he do this to me?

I have not been in contact with him since. He tried to call me and apologize but I had no interest in hearing anything from a stranger, because that is all he had become to me. I did write him a letter about a year ago, telling him I forgave him for my sake, because not a day goes by when I do not think about the situation. I find it sick that he is going about his everyday life like nothing happened and meanwhile I got everything ripped away from me. I am the one who drives by the Tae Kwon Do school that I trained in for half of my life every time I am home, I am the one who lost a father figure, an art I love, and a second home.

I have trained in different martial arts here and there, but I do not know if I will ever go back to Tae Kwon Do. It will always be my favorite sport and art, but the trauma of what I went through is not something I can untangle from the art just yet, if ever. Ironically, I used my mental strength from Tae Kwon Do on the very person who had taught me that mental strength in the first place. The life lesson I got from Tae Kwon Do is something I wish on nobody, but the important thing is I got through it and no matter what happened that horrible night, everything Tae Kwon Do had given me before it will always be mine. Nobody can take that from me.

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