I've Been Keeping a Secret For 44 Years I’ve been keeping for 44 years. Lately it’s been bothering me and this is my first step in letting this secret be known. I’m a 49 year old male and I’ve never told another living soul what I’m about to write. Today I also plan to tell my wife. When I was five years old (1966), I was in the hospital for a hernia operation. That first night in the hospital room I was given an injection which made me very weak and almost paralyzed. Later a man entered the room and raped me. This rape was violent enough that he ripped my a*** and bloodied my nose when he forced my face into the bed. The memories of this are still crystal clear in my mind. After he raped me, he held me forcefully by the back of my neck and put his lips to my ear and told me that if I ever told anyone he would have to kill my mother and father. Then he asked me if I wanted them to die, of course I didn’t. He left me and sometime later, I regained enough strength to crawl far enough up on the bed to press a button to call a nurse. When the nurse didn’t come I kept pressing and pressing it until she did. When she eventually came into the room, from her reaction I could tell she was shocked by what she saw. She left and brought other nurses. My hands and pillow were covered in blood. One nurse kept asking “who did this to you?, who did this to you?”, but of course I didn’t know, I never even saw his face. They washed me and changed the sheets on the bed. They spent a lot of time washing me and examining my backside. Nothing was ever said to my parents. While I honestly didn’t understand what had happened to me at the time, I knew it was something bad, I followed the instructions of the rapist and I never told my parents. I think back and wonder why the nurses, as adults, didn’t tell my parents. Did they fear losing their jobs? Did they fear a lawsuit? I suppose I’ll never know. The surgery the next morning went as scheduled. The pain of the torn a*** was far greater than that of the hernia operation and I couldn’t sit without a lot of pain for weeks afterward but I still never said a word. When I was well enough to play outdoors I can remember the physical pain as a result of the rape lasted far longer than that of the operation. As I got older I fully understood what happened to me that night. I still never told anyone because I was too embarrassed. No young male wants to tell people the time he was anally raped. Then when I became an adult I still never told anyone, I just never had a reason to talk about it and I suppose I didn't want to burden others with my misfortune. Sometimes, I still have nightmares of being held by the back of the neck by the rapist and I hear him telling me he would have to kill my parents if I tell anyone. Here it is 44 years later and I’m still reliving that night. Today, I took the afternoon off from work because it was a beautiful day and as I drove home from work, I found myself thinking about that night with tears streaming down my cheeks. I suddenly realized that 44 years later I’ve still been following the instructions of the rapist. Well it's time to stop, seconds from now when I press the confess button and post this story, I’m not following his instructions anymore.