Stephanie
I started reading Violence UnSilenced when I followed a link from a fellow blogger. At the time I was searching for clarity, clues, something that would help me in my marriage. My husband was a childhood victim of every form of abuse, and he had just recently begun to tell me about some of his experiences that filled me with rage and horror.
I became disturbed immediately by the similarities I saw between myself and women who were victims of childhood sexual abuse. I have blamed my mom for my sociopath-ic tendencies, because of the reclusive way I was raised, her overreaction when she caught me masturbating at the age of four, her refusal to talk about anything body-related, and the fact that I had no female friends during my teens. I assumed that going through puberty without proper instruction and female companionship was responsible for my intense dislike of the male gender.
Like many others have mentioned, I hated being touched. By anyone. My parents called me the “touch-me-not” when I was a teenager, because they said if you just bumped me I would explode. They thought it was funny. I didn’t. I hated men. When I found out what sex was by reading a seedy novel at 17, I was horrified. It took me months to come to terms with it. My mom was annoyed to learn that I hadn’t figured it out on my own. I hated being looked at. Always a shy child, in my teens I began to suffer severe social anxiety. My mom had no patience with what she saw as my stubborn, rebellious ways. She forced us to sing at public functions all over the place, which only worsened my anti-social tendencies. I hated, on a very personal level, each and every male who dared to look directly at me. I hated compliments, because they meant that I stood out. I hated everyone. Everything.
I met my husband when I was 12, and there was never anyone else for me. He’s still the only man I feel at ease with, outside of my Dad and brothers. I am the oldest of ten homeschooled kids, and I have sisters but they are much younger. Growing up, it was me and my brothers.
I knew that nothing had ever happened with anyone in the family. There is no one I’m afraid of. I told myself I was being paranoid, selfish, that my problems were because of my upbringing and my overly sensitive empathic nature. “Your mind is just too delicate,” I told myself. “All your pain is borrowed pain. You’re too controlling. You’re too empathic. You have to let it go. No more borrowed pain.” I felt like I was stealing emotions that didn’t belong to me, passively demeaning the real victims by being subject to all of their struggles.
But it wouldn’t leave.
Missing my brother’s wedding due to finances became the catalyst. Coinciding with my husband’s issues and other stressful things, I guess it was that feeling of losing control, losing my mind, being completely helpless and desperate, that brought back repressed memories. I always figured I couldn’t have repressed memories, because I didn’t have missing blocks of time. And because I knew my mom would always go after anyone who hurt me. I would have had no reason to repress anything, right?
Unwillingly, I began to look back on my childhood. The parade of older men who came and went through our home due to my parents’ political activism. No one stood out. I wondered if I had completely blocked the person from my mind. It didn’t feel right. After all, I was probably just imagining things. I spent an afternoon lying on the bed or wandering aimlessly through the house, having a sort of nervous breakdown, with all my family away at the wedding, my husband out of cellphone reach, and no one to turn to. I felt depressed, dizzy, guilty. I kept bursting into tears for no reason. I had to figure this out.
So, back further still, and further, searching for that thing that I didn’t want to think about. Our first neighborhood, the house we lived in when I was four. Twenty-five years ago. The place where things got screwed up. There was R.J., my first crush. Evan and Aaron, the boys with the abusive grandfather. But I know it wasn’t him, or them; they were my age. And there was Brian.
I didn’t like Brian. Brian was a bully. Brian lost my favorite red-and-white polka dot rubber ball down the street drain when he got mad at me. Brian kicked apart my little brothers’ carefully made roads in the pine needles and made them cry. Brian was a jerk. Brian was twelve years old, too old to be playing with toddlers anyway. Brian…..
Brian held my ball high up in the air, far out of my reach, with a little pocket knife right next to it.
“I’m gonna pop it!” he said evilly. “I’m gonna pop it right now! Here I go…..”
I wailed.
“You have to swear,” he said. “Swear you’ll never tell your mom.”
“I can’t swear,” I sobbed. “Swearing is wicked!” I was desperate, terrified. That ball was my most prized possession. My special, special toy. It was irreplaceable to my childish heart.
“Then promise,” he compromised. “Promise you’ll never tell.”
“I PROMISE!!”
Eventually he gave it back. I clutched it tight and hated him. I hated him for making me cry and beg, for taking away my control. I was the big sister. I was in charge. It was MY ball.
When I remembered this, I started shaking and crying. The doubts ebbed away, replaced by a rush of horror. What did Brian do that I couldn’t tell my mom? It couldn’t have happened in the house. I don’t think he was ever in our house. There were no tree-houses, no little rooms under the outside stairs, no secret places, no trees with branches low to the ground. Wait, there was that bush……
“Go away,” I told my little brothers. “Go play with your cars. Brian and I are playing house together.”
They were upset. They wanted to play too. I always played with them. But not today. Today was different. Brian was going to show me something really, really nice. He told me so. It was very special. I was special. It would be our little secret.
“It’s just like tickling,” he told me, in a don’t-be-silly-everyone-does-it tone.
I giggled, because it felt good. It felt really, really good. “Do it again,” I said.
Great. I could have done without THAT memory. I guess you don’t get to pick and choose.
I don’t know exactly what happened. I do know that there was no penetration, and for that I am eternally grateful. All I remember clearly is the threat, and the feeling that our nice little secret had somehow gone horribly wrong. I didn’t like Brian anymore.
It wasn’t long after that my mom caught me masturbating, and she freaked. There were long lectures in her bedroom about the evil of the “lusts of the flesh,” and vague statements about some things being only for married couples to do, and whippings whenever she caught me after that. I became overwhelmed with guilt. I had done something terrible, something I would surely spend eternity in hell for. I couldn’t tell my mom. I was more afraid of her now than I was of Brian. Of course I would have told her if he hurt me. But in my youthful mind, he hadn’t hurt me. I didn’t know that “hurt” need not involve physical pain.
I guess blocking it out was my only option.
It did scare me enough that I did not let him continue to molest me. I know now that the mean things I remember him doing were his way of punishing me for not going back to that secret place with him. After he lost my ball in the storm drain and tried to go in after it, my mom banned him from our property.
I know that he made a big deal about how special I was, and that he was angry with me for not reciprocating. I remember him telling me that my mom was crazy, and being very upset by that. I assume that must have been after she lectured me, and I must have told him that she said those things were bad. And I very clearly remember standing in the front yard by the pine tree, facing him, a mass of confusion and guilt and rage.
“Fine!” I screamed. “I don’t want to be special! I hate you!”
I don’t remember his exact words, but I know that he told me he was going to find some other little girl to be his friend. One who wasn’t crazy and weird like me. That I wouldn’t be special any more.
The memories did not come at once. It was like a hole in the dikes; first a trickle, then a stream, then a flood. I told my parents. They cried. I told our family therapist. She pointed out that my hatred of being looked at, noticed, complimented, probably stems from the manipulation about being special and not from the physical abuse. I think she’s right. I came to associate being special with something very private and personal, something that carried a sense of violation. It’s frightening how much damage one 12-year-old boy was able to do, in such a short time.
I apologized to my husband. He told me not to, and held me close. But I won’t take it back. It was so easy to assume that all of our marital issues came from him. I was wrong.
They say that a girl’s first experience defines her future sexually. I didn’t believe that, because I felt it was completely untrue for me. This explains an awful lot. Having sex the first time was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than childbirth. I didn’t want to lose the only man I could ever love, and I thought he would move on to someone else. He told me it was okay, but I didn’t believe him. I was sure he was just telling me that so I would feel better. I wanted his babies. I wanted to marry him. So I gritted my teeth, and told myself that this is what NORMAL people did, and I was going to be normal if it killed me.
I can’t believe it was that easy. A rubber ball. A freaking rubber ball for my innocence. Who would have ever thought?
Casey (Moosh in Indy)
I stared at the words in the chat window for a good five minutes before I could even let my fingers touch the keyboard in response.
Denial has been an excellent friend of mine.
When I actually look back on my past and acknowledge what I let happen to me my stomach churns. I was a smart girl, no way could I have been dumb enough to let men use me.
But just like a horrible movie preview, the memories come back. One or two at first, then more, until I am overwhelmed with the weight of how many there have been.
For some reason when I allow myself to remember, they are always named Chris. I don’t remember where I met the first Chris. But I do remember he had a blacklight in his room above a woolen wall hanging. I don’t remember what the image on the wall hanging was, but I do remember how itchy it felt when he had me shoved up against it. I remember that his hands smelled of cigarettes and sex as he held them over my mouth so I couldn’t scream.
I could tell you a half dozen more tales of slaps, thrusts, chokeholds, blood and a broken heart.
Of a little girl who thought she was in control of her body when the truth was she had lost all control.
A little girl who loved ballet and horses, but found herself pinned under sweaty bodies all in an effort to find some sort of validation, to gain some sense of control.
I can still feel the strong smack across my face, so strong that I blacked out. I woke up at a neighbors house, arm dislocated from being thrown down a flight of stairs.
All because I refused to put my mouth where another Chris wanted it.
Things like this change who a girl is. They forever alter the woman she becomes.
I may never know much the forceful hands I allowed on me in my past have molded my present.
But I know that when I hear stories of other girls who are made into women far before they are ready my heart recoils and I am reminded of that young girl, curled in the corner crying, covered in the scent of betrayal and innocence lost.
It’s a scent and a pain and a numbness I wish I never knew.
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Casey writes at Moosh In Indy.
Aubrey
It’s between 1 and 2 in the morning
and my whole body hurts.
It’s a familiar pain
echoing the pain in my heart
the sorrow for wasted life
wasted years
wasted hopes and loves
clinging to illusion
clinging to hope
clinging to faith.
He pinned me to my kitchen floor
he only forced me when I said no
No I said
he grabbed my arm
no
he pulled me on him
pinned
hands on my hips
I pulled on the carpet
naked now
from the waist down
I crawled to the center
don’t remember standing
do remember him behind me
raising my arm to strike
I mean it
fighting my own body
(You’re not supposed to be violent
You always were a violent girl)
losing my equilibrium
falling as I twisted
on hands and knees,
fetal crouch
he knelt
over
encompassing me
patting my head
“It’s all right
ssssshhh….”
stroking my hair.
I return to myself
enough to try to crawl
he flips me over
pins me
half in the living room
half in the kitchen
while he proves his love to me
arms pinned
body blocked
See? You like that.
I gaze at the bottom of the refrigerator
while it freezes
solid
Not like this.
Though my body lies.
No one has touched me in months.
at all.
And I cry.
not like this
After, he sits bare on my couch.
I crawl to him.
Not like this, I say
You see? I am pleading with him
being reasonable
I should go, he says
and some small
the first small
tiny
tiny
spark of
will
strength
anger
in me
NO
you can’t just do this and leave
too weak to stand
he drags me
He pulls me up
helps me to bed
holds me until the shaking stops
you okay? he says
I nod
he leaves
and I feel
Nights like tonight
I would let him in
because now I am
what he
thought
KNEW
I was then
And I would take almost any comfort.
The Devil’s bargain
You can’t rape the willing
Take away my claim to innocence
Crying as I punish myself
Tonight i’m trying hard to stay sober.
How
do I get past this
without
going
THROUGH
?
I can’t decide
if it’s my innocence
or my guilt
that hurts the most
now.
####
Aubrey writes at A Long Way Home. She asks that you please keep comments here, rather than on her own blog.
