@Mendingmysoul it is a bit weird how you are so like me. My mom and stepfather also told everyone I was a bad tempered child. Both my mom and sister were really embarassed about people finding out we had a pedophile in the family so they tried to bully me into giving into him. When my stepfather was fuming over a rejection, he would sometimes blow up and scream at me in front of other people and it made my mom and sister afraid people will get suspicios so they got angrier at me.

The thing that makes me feel bad is that I am not as traumatized as other people with similar childhoods. The sexual abuse was limited to my stepfather masturbating in front of me and other kids, saying innapropriate things, and he groped me maybe 10+ times and tried to make me help him molest boys. I mostly felt disdain because I thought he was embarassing himself in front of my peers. I did get hit for refusing him and eveyone in the family yelled at me a lot. I feel that most of the damage in my life was done by my sister because I put up with a lot more from her. And she was more daring than our stepfather when it came to physical attacks on me. And my horrid mom would threaten to commit suicide if I bothered her about my sister's bullying.

I did wonder of any of the other sexual abuse victims would feel more confident if they learned something like self defense. It's a bit of a cliché. But my parents made me take karate because they wanted to show off to people. It made it impossible for people outside the family to bully me. I still took years af abuse from my sister because I was too stupid to hit her back or go to the police, but the karate lessons are the main reason I'm not afraid of men. A boy got rough with me in college and I just slammed him into the floor. I don't think everyone should grow up mean and angry like me, but it does help to know that you are stronger than predators think you are.

If anyone is interested in learning karate and stuff, I'd recommend looking for a teacher who is actively competing and winning. A lot of schools only have you go through the motions without really teaching you the important stuff like how to punch correctly. And fighting regularly with other students makes you less emotional about being hit.