Wendy
I hesitate to call what happened to me, what was done to me, abuse.
When I was eight, my brother started coming in my room at night. He never raped me, never managed to get my mouth open, either, but it wasn’t because he didn’t try. For three years, two or three nights a week, he came into my room. And I would lie there, my body as stiff and unmovable as a board, pretending to be asleep. Fighting off his hands, squeezing my legs together so hard they would hurt the next day. Biting my lips closed.
I remember when I was about ten, I had written about it in my diary and my cousin read it. I remember being in Sunday School with her and she tried to tell the teacher. But I stared her down so hard she was scared to. We never talked about it. She told her mom, though, and her mom did not tell my mom.
I remember realizing he came in my room on the nights my feet were not covered with the blanket. I tested my theory, covering my feet or leaving them uncovered, and learned to keep them covered. For a little while, that kept him out, but it didn’t last. And my little heart was filled with guilt for the couple of times I left them uncovered. I only recently came to terms with that.
I remember napping one day in the summer, while both my parents worked, and waking (pretending to stay asleep) to find my brother and his best friend were both in the room with me. Years later I heard that his friend died in a car wreck and I was glad.
The summer I turned eleven, the year my brother would turn seventeen, I finally told my parents. I took my mom outside one night and we sat at the picnic table under the oak tree. I remember making her promise not to get mad at my brother before I would tell her. I don’t remember anything else about it. She called someone, some authority, and they forced her to bring me to a hospital. She’s still angry about that, and that DSS told her either make my brother live with her parents or they would remove me from the home. She mentioned it the other day, in fact. When I told her they should have, she got angry at me. She’s always said it wasn’t that bad, that it happens to most little girls. They even moved us to Florida for a while to keep us all together. She’s told me since, several times, that she and my dad nearly divorced because of what happened to me.
I remember pretending nothing had happened. That I was fine. The “therapy” sessions I went to were useless. I had thoughts and words and feelings about it all, but the therapist only wanted me to draw. I think she asked me questions a few times, but I pretended to be fine. I told my mom I didn’t want to go anymore and she never took me again.
All of this, except for the details, is no secret in my family. For the most part, I’m fine. But what eats at me, keeps me awake at night, was what happened with my Papa. I think it happened right around the same time my brother started coming in my room. I used to spend several nights in a row with my mom’s parents. There were times I was there alone with my Papa and I remember him chasing me through the house, trying to pin me down to kiss me. With tongue. I remember the smell of the whiskey and cigarettes on his breath. The squishy feel of his quivering old man lips. It only happened a few times, then I told him I didn’t like it, not to do it again or I would tell. He never tried again, but now I understand why my mom handled the situation with my brother the way she did. I loved my Papa, deeply, even after that. Years went by and I was comfortable around him again. I was at his bed as he died and I was sad. I love my brother, too. We have a decent relationship. I can understand what he went through as a child, too. My mom… She was quite the emotional abuser herself. She still is.
And I pretend I’m fine. That’s even my code-word for myself. If someone asks me how I am, if I’m not okay, I answer, “I’m fine” and smile that smile. I’m tired of pretending. I just want to be okay.
I hesitate to call this abuse because the flip side of the abuser is the victim. I’m no victim.
***
Wendy blogs here and twitters at @ImWendy. She asks that you keep all comments here, rather than on her blog.
Wednesday Q&A: With warning signs so subtle and disguised, how do I see them and what am I looking for?
QUESTION
We’ve discussed what to do if you know or suspect that someone is being abused. But there’s another question. It’s one I’ve pondered often, but it was really brought to the top of the heap by a quote from a friend and neighbor of Carolyn Cox. The friend, Jim Wester, said, “If you suspect something, then you start looking for clues; but if you don’t suspect something, you are not looking for clues, and neither one of us suspected anything.”
And he’s 100% right. How many times have we read in these stories on VU that the friends and family never suspected anything was wrong? How often does the victim herself/himself not recognize something is wrong? I think — I hope anyway — that most people would take some kind of action if they knew or suspected someone they knew was being abused. But it’s not as if the victims wear a scarlet letter that identifies them. And because of the nature of the problem, victims become very skilled at hiding it — even from themselves.
I frequently tell myself I’m “seeing a victim behind every tree”. And then I realize that’s because there actually is a victim behind every tree. So how do I tell the difference between the true victim and the one I’m seeing as a victim but actually isn’t? With signs so subtle and so carefully disguised, how do I see them? What am I looking for?
ANSWER
Thanks for this question. It reminds me of this recent post, in which the writer describes reaching out to a stranger after witnessing a verbally abusive incident. This is how she describes her first impression of the man and woman involved: “She looked tired and defeated. He looked agitated and twitchy. As soon as I saw them, I knew what kind of relationship they had.”
Letter writer, you are right–it’s often not as simple as seeing bruises or burn marks or witnessing one person berating another. And you’re right, too, that some survivors work hard to hide their abuse or explain it away. I suppose there may be times no one sees the signs because they’re so subtle or disguised. But the post above reminds us that even the subtlest of signs can act as bold, red flags.
More often, I suspect we don’t see the signs because we don’t want to see them, or we’re not trained to see them, or we don’t want to rock boats, or we’ve bought into that widespread notion that it’s none of our business anyway, or we’re ignoring that internal alarm system that tells us, “hey, something’s not right here.” We want to think of our loved ones as happy and fine. They hand us their lives as neatly wrapped packages, shiny and tied with bows, and then hope we never open the box and look inside. And too often, the rest of us oblige.
Last weekend I had dinner with a friend from out of state who recently went through a divorce. Her husband never hit her, but he obliterated her self-esteem. He screamed at her and called her names and made her feel worthless and ugly.
After they separated, friends congratulated her. “We never liked the way he treated you,” they said. These responses made her mad–her friends had known something wasn’t right, but they never spoke up or expressed concern for her well-being. “If he’d beaten me, they would have said something–but nobody was willing to say anything about how he battered my spirit,” my friend said.
To me, her story underscores the necessity that we speak up, in ways that are safe and confidential and nonjudgmental, every time we can. Every time we suspect something is wrong. Yes, from the outsider’s perspective, there can be a wide, muddy line between a relationship that is abusive and one that is simply unhappy. Some of the signs may be similar, but at their roots, they are very different.
Below is a starter list of some of those subtler signs of abuse. This list is not exclusive, nor do any of these signs necessarily mean abuse is occurring. But these are signs to watch for, characteristics that should snag your attention and make you think:
- A need to make the relationship appear perfect to friends and family
- Worry over saying the wrong thing
- Needing to get permission from one’s partner before taking action
- Unease over making decisions on one’s own
- Excessive excuse-making for the partner’s behavior
- Unwillingness (or inability) to disagree with one’s partner in public
- Any exhibition, however subtle, of fear or anxiety in the presence of one’s partner
- Any statement like, “My partner would never let me do that,” or “Oh no, my partner is going to be really angry,” or “My partner doesn’t let me [fill in the blank].”
- Excessive canceling of social engagements, paired with excuses that strike you as off
- Flinching easily; regularly appearing distracted or overly anxious
- Disengaging from activities or hobbies they once enjoyed
- Being regularly late to work; making mistakes or forgetting things in a way that is out of character
- Suddenly becoming overly private or withdrawn
I would love to hear what readers think — what would you add to this list?
Please exercise the same safe, supportive, non-judgmental restraint in the comment section of the Q&A as you do for survivors, as many of them are reading.
Our volunteer expert, Carrie K., is a trained advocate who has worked with survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault, as well as their families and friends. Her background includes hotline advocacy, community education, and awareness and prevention programming around issues of domestic violence and sexual assault. Most recently, she has worked for a domestic violence intervention and prevention program in Wisconsin. She blogs at rageisgood.blogspot.com
If you have something you have always wanted to know about domestic violence and/or sexual assault, please email your question to carrie [at] violenceunsilenced [dot] com .
Karl Erikson
Hi, my name is Karl, and I wear asinine sexist t-shirts to BlogHer.
The above photo is me at three years of age, writing even then. I start all my goofy “Little Writer Film” videos with this very photo. It’s probably one of the last photos where my innocence is still intact.
See, it’s not something I talk about – particularly on my blog – but I am a Survivor. I won’t be linking to my blog for obvious reasons, though I don’t mind you knowing who I am. You can search my blog archives for an April, 2008 post entitled “Much Bigger Picture” for one of my only public admissions about Survivorhood.
I wasn’t physically abused, but I’ve often wished I HAD been. In my mind having physical reminders of my abuse would be far less confusing. Scars, burn-marks, something to prove to me that this shit happened. As opposed to me repressing everything for decades, I mean. Or sitting before countless therapists, trying to convince myself that I am not imagining things.
From around the age of 4 until I was 15, I was the victim (how I hate that word) of sexual abuse. Not from strangers, mind you, but from the very people that should have been most concerned with my welfare. Four of them…parents and stepparents. Yeah.
I distinctly recall baths with my father where he “tickled” my penis, and then peed white. A 4-year-old should have no fucking clue what the hell an orgasm is, but this 4-year-old wasn’t given an option. That’s actually one of my earliest memories. I have huge chunks of my life missing, of course, acres and acres of memories are black holes. That’s probably a good thing, because the shit I do remember is bad enough.
Throughout my childhood (and yeah, adulthood), I acted out in very strange and inappropriate ways. I know now that this is typical of a sexualized child. Sure, many children kiss other children at 5 years old. Many children also compare genitalia, particularly girls and boys, who are just dying to see what the OTHER “bits” look like. But NOT every child is experimenting sexually with other kids. Again, I know this NOW.
Just like I now know that my childhood was far from “normal,” whatever the fuck that word means. At the time, it was all I knew, and so it SEEMED normal. Seeing countless mouths hang open in group therapy while I recounted bits and pieces of my childhood helped me to realize it was anything but.
I recall quite well how, in 1994, flashbacks and memories came flooding back to my brain. I have always been a reader, from the time I was photographed writing on that slide, and so I believe that most everything I need to know can be found within the pages of a book.
Exploring Barnes & Noble’s self-help section was a huge punch in the gut that night in 1994. Because it was then that I discovered I probably WAS imagining everything in my childhood. Tons of books about WOMEN being abused, but not one. book. about. men. There are a few out there now, of course, but back then? When I most needed to see those titles on the bookshelves? Even just ONE book? No.
It’s precisely this reason – that men are often the silent Survivors – that I write this post. All Survivors live by the Code of Silence. It was never spoken to me directly by my abusers, the Code, but I somehow instinctively knew about it. To this day, I have NEVER discussed it with any of them. I doubt I ever will. Shit, it’s confusing how they’re all old and harmless now…it’d be very simple to (again) pretend none of that crap ever happened. But I can’t. Pandora’s Box, etc. etc.
And it’s thanks to a new dear friend of mine (that I met at BlogHer) that I am inspired to dust off my half-finished autobiography. The one I haven’t touched in nearly a decade. The one that is still waiting for Chapter 13 to be finished, where I go into detail about some of my teenage abuse. I’m all about the funny, and there’s no cracking jokes about that shit. Trust me, I’ve tried.
Something inside me – the need to get my story out – has been rekindled. This Silent Survivor stuff is bullshit. I understand the need for it, for the secrecy…it’s all about self-preservation. Surviving. But surviving just isn’t enough, mere existence isn’t LIVING.
It’s time.
And I’m very thankful for a few people pointing this site out to me. Because clearly, it’s “time” for a lot of you. That’s a good thing.
***
Karl asks that you keep all comments here, rather than on his own blog. Please do not leave comments on Facebook, either.
Sunshine
I think I need to write about it. I think I need to write about it because it hurts too much to talk about it, no one understands anyway, and I think I’m going to explode from it.
I married a man who I thought loved me and cared for me and would spend the rest of his life with me (doesn’t everyone think that when they get married?) Ten long years together. We met when we were both so young… He had a hard life. I’ve had a hard life too, but I don’t take it out on anyone. He took it out on me.
It got so much worse after we got married. He used to say that he knew I wouldn’t leave him because commitment was so important to me. I guess maybe he tested me in some ways, and I was always forgiving; when he threw things at me, when he yelled at me, when he grabbed my breasts without my permission, sometimes bruising them. He would say he was play fighting, but get really mad and leave me crying because he hurt me. But then things just escalated more and more, and he started being angry all the time. And hitting me.
He had strange reactions afterward, sometimes crying and apologizing, sometimes saying nothing but making me a really nice dinner. Sometimes saying I was overreacting because he hadn’t bruised me, hadn’t hit me that hard, I should just get over it. I was always shocked when it happened; it never occurred to me to hit back. He would drive like a maniac and tell me he was going to drive us into a concrete barrier. He started threatening to kill me, usually not when he was angry and ranting at me, but before bed, when he was sad and quiet. That was scarier, I think.
He said such terrible things about my body and about me. He said I looked so pretty when I cried; he said I was crazy; he said I was ugly. I found a large, unsheathed knife in his bed side table, and I think he meant to kill me with it.
At first, when I left him, he said he was so sorry for abusing me; he promised to get help with his anger. But that was all lies. I’ve lost so many friends because of this, people who could not believe that their cousin or best friend or nephew would hurt me that way. And I came from a family that is dysfunctional and sometimes violent, which certainly didn’t help; I wonder sometimes if I would’ve left my husband sooner if I had a supportive family.
I thought it would be better once I left him, that I’d be free. It took a long time to accept that I had to get out … I didn’t count on the poverty. Who knew that I live in a place where, in the absence of a police report, the only evidence that would result in his having to support me financially is my medical records? It seems so unfair. Letting the man who abused me for years see my medical records felt like a further violation, so I gave up on the money to protect my privacy. So he walks away from this, scot-free. I don’t know what I’m gong to do now, I don’t know how I’m going to pay the rent. I know I can’t hold down a job at the moment, I can barely do school; I don’t know how I’m going to finish my program, financially, and emotionally I am a mess. I’ve been thinking of selling my body for money, but my self-esteem is already so low that I’m concerned about where that would take me, emotionally.
And, in a stroke of incredibly bad timing (not that there is ever good timing on this), just after I separated from my husband, I was raped. It was so movie of the week; I stayed over in a frat house after a party because I had an appointment on campus early in the morning. I drank a lot; I woke up with a man raping me. I knew him, barely. I said no, I tried to fight and get him off of me, but I was just so weak. The next day he said that he thought it would help me get over my bad marriage. I feel lucky that he bruised my thighs and my stomach, because I think that helped the police to believe me. So next is the trial, and I don’t think that I can do it… I’m subpoenaed, so I don’t think I have much choice. I know he raped me; he knows he raped me. But I’m struggling so much with my emotions right now that I feel like I would rather die then speak about this in open court. I feel sick about what his defense lawyer is going to ask me, how he’s going to blame me for being so stupid.
The whole thing has almost destroyed me, and still might. I can’t trust the man who loved me and married me, I can’t trust a random casual friend. I can’t trust anybody, really.
So that is my story. Oh, there is so much more to me, I’m funny (really, I’m wacky, though you couldn’t tell it from this), and fun, I love dancing and going for walks and being silly, and people tell me that I understand them so deeply when they share their feelings with me. I’m a smart girl. I’m a kind person; I don’t hurt others. And I don’t understand why it seems so easy for them to hurt me. I used to be happy go lucky. But it is hard to find me because I hurt so much inside. No one wants to talk about my hurt and my pain and I haven’t told that many people anyway. I’m too ashamed and too embarrassed. And nobody really understands. I can’t blame them really; I know how awful it is, but no one else gets it. How could they? People want it to be not so bad, they want me to be over it, they wanted me to be over it as soon as it happened.
Mostly I can’t believe that this is my life. I think about it all the time though, I cry over it, I wish I was dead because of it. I pretend I’m ok and I act normal (most people who know me would think I’m strong, fun, friendly. A party girl, maybe I drink too much, but I go out all the time and have a good time), but I don’t feel normal. I feel damaged, like I have no value and no one will ever love me or care about me again. I feel terrible that this story has so little hope in it, and so part of me is sad and sorry to be sending it in; maybe you won’t post it. I’m not a survivor, really. But here it is.
***
Update, sent October 1, 2009:
Things are up and down, but have shifted in the past few months. I was feeling much better for July and August. I was able to secure a student loan for September, and that has taken some financial pressure off of me. I was working hard at school, and able to concentrate. I’ve been trying to see my reaction as understandable, given the circumstances. Then, I had the sexual assault trial in September (though the verdict won’t come in until October, which is how the legal system works where I live).
The trial was really really hard. Beyond hard – before hand there was a lot of panic on my part, and since my day of testimony I’ve had a hard time coping. The things the defense said about me were horrific, and I’m not sure that anything could have prepared me for that. It brought up a lot of memories of being raped that I had really tried to push aside; since then, sleeping and working has been a challenge for me. But with that said, I’ve heard that trials are like being raped again. Straight up, it was not as bad as being raped was (really, nothing could be that bad!!), and there was a place of strength in me that I found and am proud of.
I did not allow shame to keep me silent. I accessed my supports and found positive ways of grounding myself (sipping water throughout my day-long testimony, holding a small rock that I found with an engraving of an image of something meaningful to me, and remembering to breathe!) I stayed composed, which was important to me, and spoke the truth of what happened. I spoke out, and I know that it was the right thing to do, for me, and for my healing process.
It has been sad for me to accept the loss of my innocence and naiveté and trust in strangers, and to realize at a very deep level that some people in this world make the choice to really harm others. But it has also helped me realize that I am a strong woman; I lived through this, and am continuing to survive and even thrive.
At this point, I feel that my ex who abused me, and the rapist, they are responsible for the horrible things that they did, and though trauma recovery is going to continue being a painful process, I am sure, I am not going to give them any more of me then they’ve already taken. I am going to keep trying to forgive myself for the times that I struggle and the times that my coping is not as healthy. And I am going to keep laughing and smiling and dancing and being joyful, and taking good care of myself in positive, loving ways. I’m not going to allow them to permanently take away those parts of me.
