Unravelling the Web Of The Past
Sexual Assault
There isn’t any “good” way to say this – so I’ll just say it. One side of my four-sided family is completely f’d up. There is a history of sexual abuse. The other day, I got a call from a family member – trying to unravel the past. It would have been easier on me to tell them to just leave things a mystery. To not talk about, to just say it’s in the past and leave it there. But the problem with mysteries, they take a lot of energy, and you rarely figure them out.
And, having been there, trying to unravel that same web – from a slightly different angle- I understood. And so I exchanged puzzle pieces. The sad thing, was that we had both come to basically the same conclusion about where the original abuse had originated. Only me from my view, and they from theirs. But after I got off the phone, I was so mad. Not at them, no, just mad.
Mad that I had to relive this whole crazy mess. Mad that a certain parent had allowed bat-shit-crazy into my life at such a young age. Mad that said parent had obviously left me alone with bat-shit-crazy, when they MUST have know the history. And mad at myself, but for a while I couldn’t figure out why. Then I realized, that I in some crazy way, blamed myself for what had happened to me – at age eight. I mean logically, how is that even possible? But I was. Why is it that when something happens to a child, they tend to internalize it at some level and blame themselves?
I have seen friends literally try to kill themselves slowly with drugs and alcohol because of the pain of sexual abuse. I have seen friends blame themselves for conflicts they have had with their sexuality because they are torn (hating men, afraid of men, but expected by society to be with them). And I have seen how others around them, not knowing what is really going on, blame my friends for their responses to that pain. This time, for me, I was blaming myself on some level for being awoken sexually at such a young age. For being aware of things I would not have otherwise been aware of in my body at such a young age. And I became aware of hating myself and my body for that – something I had carried around since I was a young girl. Wow.
Not the phone call I was looking for. But in way, maybe the phone call I needed. To not only help someone else piece together answers, but also to allow me to let go of some of my pain from the past. And move forward, lighter, into the future.
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Comments (12)
greg
For years I have been walking around in a world that doesn’t “get” me. It feels so very good to feel like someone really does “get” it.
Thank you for sharing.