Sep 10
Imagine if…
There is something I hinted in The fable my tattoo tells me… which I never intended to talk about in detail here. It isn’t what this blog is about. I’m thirty four and my history is history. I don’t know whether the subject will come up again but it has today so I’m writing it. I don’t know if you will want to read it.
But I’m writing it.
As a child I was sexually abused by my adoptive father. This information is for “back story” only. It is not something I feel the need to get off my chest. To be specific about the nature of that abuse; I was not raped. The majority of the abuse was what, as adults, we might call sexual harassment. Groping and sexual comments made to appear as jokes but with a real intention to intimidate and shame. My memories are sketchy but these are a few.
In Grade 3, I ask him if he would like a cup of coffee. He says, “No, but you can give me a head job.”
In Grade 5, being punished for something, I am made to take off all my clothes and stand against the wall. I stand there for an hour, waiting to be smacked. He just looks.
16 years old. My mother is away. He has been drinking and comes home. I have a male friend visiting. My friend leaves. I go to my bed. He comes into my room. For six hours he sits on my bed in the dark, talking about sex. The conversation begins as a warning against being seduced. It becomes a conversation about how wonderful it is to be seduced. He says, “I am sexually attracted to you.”
Not long after that, I leave home.
Perhaps this doesn’t seem particularly abusive to you in the scheme of things. There was no bruising. I have no scars. It is difficult to describe the pall over our house, the tension that arose in all of us when it was nearing the time he would be home.
Every day, he would play with himself on the couch while we watched TV. He would masturbate the dog.
He was an alcoholic; unpredicatable, irrational, aggressive and insecure and there were sexual overtones in everything he did. I lived in sexual fear throughout my childhood. That threat hung over me before I could even understand what it was.
The reason why I have written this is because a few days ago while looking for Australian blog carnivals as a way to promote my site, I came across a blog about child protection called Imaginif.
I didn’t want to read it.
I said earlier that my history is history but it never as simple as that. In my life I have spent a lot of time thinking about child sexual abuse, studying child sexual abuse, talking about child sexual abuse. I have spent a lot of time getting angry and getting better. I understood all that could be understood. I was done with it.
I don’t consider myself a survivor. That term reduces me to circumstance and traps me in the past. The events of your childhood, good or bad, provide the language through which you understand the world. They are like a desert wash, a dry stream bed, and when it rains, when life happens, the water naturally flows there and the channels deepen. If you listen to the currents, your childhood is the symbolic key to the map of your present self.
Tonight, I found out something about a young girl I know, which I cannot discuss here, and my stream bed flooded. I felt sick and voiceless and trapped and I was forced to travel through the physical memories of my past again. I recognised the echoes of my own pain and I reclaimed my anger.
I have spoken a lot here about not knowing who I am, about being nobody. There are many pressures in this world for us to reduce ourselves, to not feel too largely, to live passionlessly. To deny everything.
Not wanting to read that blog on a subject I was once passionate about, one that everyone would be passionate about if it wasn’t so unseemly, was just such a denial and I am voiceless because of it.
Tonight I remember the language of my childhood and I remember why I should never stop speaking.
Shrinking yourself to an inoffensive nothing is not just self-harm. If we do that, who will speak for those unable to? Who will cry for those who cannot? Who will guide those who are drowning in their childhood to safety?
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This post, Imagine if…, has received a Perfect Post Award. My humble gratitude to Musing Woman who nominated it. If you would like to read the other award winning posts for September ‘07, click here.
September 10th, 2007 at 5:30 am
Reading this brings tears to my eyes. No child should have to experience what you did.
And I applaud your speaking out for those who can’t. We all must find a way to protect children from such harm.
September 10th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
BRAVO to you, woman of voice.
What happened to you WAS sexual assault. Your voiceless life is the sum of the affects of living with an abusive and incestuous man. Thank God your Mum ended up leaving the relationship.
Your voice will rewrite your future. Your voice is very helpful to other girls and women and I thank you for your bravery and belief in helping the young girl that you make mention of.
Just as you have a voice, I have ears. Anytime you need to talk, you know how to find me.
September 10th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Should it not be recognised that it was YOU who left that abusive relationship ? I don’t think credit should go to anyone else, you had a strength not reliant on the actions of others.
Also I thought you might like the quote below:
“We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? “…………. “your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t be insecure around you.”
-Marianne Williamson
Love you La
Becxx
October 1st, 2007 at 7:45 pm
[…] Turmoil awarded The Simple Family Redsy awarded Spin Me I Pulsate Musing Woman awarded The Cerebral Mum Momma Loves awarded Midwestern Mommy Simply Sassy awarded Secret Agent Josephine Using My Words […]
October 4th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Simply an amazing post which has left me speechless. I’m just so - I don’t know what the word is - but no one should have to go through that.
October 5th, 2007 at 12:21 am
It might seem odd but I didn’t expect such an emotional response from everyone. What happened is something I have grown accustomed to and I tend to understand the world, and my emotions, in a very intellectualised way. (Hence - The Cerebral Mum.) I would just like to say thank you. Your comments have moved me greatly. I sometimes forget what a wealth of love and sympathy and support is out there.
October 14th, 2007 at 6:17 am
This is a perfect post. I suffered a much much milder molestation with my dad, and I understand a bit of what you must have gone through and how difficult it is to keep speaking.
October 28th, 2007 at 6:06 am
What a powerful post! Today you’ve given a voice to those who have none. You’ve said something so rarely said–that it doesn’t have to reach the level of rape to be destructive and to have liveflong consequences in how we see our world. You are also powerfully making the point that no matter what our past has been, we can shoose what we want our future to be.
October 28th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Mary Joan - One thing I had to learn was to call the abuse what it was, to feel entitled to my anger and pain, to not minimise what had happened, to not think that what was wrong, was wrong with me. Sometimes I wonder if it is harder for those who experience “milder molestation” to begin to speak because their abuse is not well understood but the sad truth is that victims of all forms of abuse fear that it is their weakness and that they will be rejected and disbelieved. We do not trust ourselves and have no reason to trust others. We all have to take a giant leap of faith to start to heal.
April - Thank you. I hope that thing that is “rarely said” is one day widely understood so that everyone gets to hear it when they need to.
October 31st, 2007 at 5:38 am
For many, many years I lived in my head intellectualizing everything and every feeling away. I couldn’t feel because it hurt too much so I picked things apart with my brain. I was totally disconnected with my body from neck down. I was in open denial that the incest was still affecting my life and my family. I was so full of rage that I was afraid that I would hurt someone if I accessed it. Feeling was exactly what I had to learn to do. Being in my head was how I survived the abuse of incest. It took going through 2 different counselors before I was able to feel and learn to use my anger appropriately rather than stuffing it inside and letting it make me sick. When I was still in my head, I reacted to stress like a volcano or a pressure cooker. The stress would build and build until the rage would come exploding out all over my family with hurtful words. I had to learn to feel my anger so that it didn’t build to destuctive levels. Rarely, do I explode any more. When it does today, I look to see what old fear has raised its ugly head to be acknowledged and released.
Sexual abuse does not have to be physical rape to be damaging to a child. My abuse was physical intercourse. I still today have trouble calling it rape because it wasn’t violent. My sister was fondled and had sexual comments made to her similar to your abuse. I have dealt with the abuse and its affects upon my life. My sister drinks and smokes to deny her feelings. She dates men who treat her disrespectfully because she is still recreating the effects of the abuse in her life today.
On the surface, you would think my abuse was worse than her. That isn’t true. We were both abused, in different ways but that doesn’t lessen the fact that she has been affected in her life in much worse ways than I have.
Thanks for having the courage to write this article. Please continue to do so because for each of us that speaks out, we may save some child from being abused or we may give permission for another adult who is suffering alone a reason to start to talk and heal.
October 31st, 2007 at 9:21 am
Patricia, thank you for sharing some of your history here. I was similar in the way I intellectualised my feelings, but when the pressure cooker exploded my rage was always directed against myself. Anger is still the most difficult emotion for me.
And I don’t think it can be said often enough that there is no better or worse form of abuse. When we look at the harms they cause, they are all the same.
But the same way that you struggle to call it “rape”, I struggle when I call it “sexual abuse”, even though I know that it is. I still have a voice deep in my head telling me I’m a liar. Even though I know better, that voice hasn’t yet given up trying to hurt me.