My Experience With Abuse

I am not entirely certain how to even start this. I have talked with very few people about the abuse I experienced as a child. It wasn’t until amost 5 years ago, during a fit of horrible frustration at how I was being treated on a social media platform by someone whom I thought was my friend, that I even made any real comment that I had ever been a victim of sexual assault.

For whatever reason I felt horrible and embarrassed about it. Suddenly there it was, for all to see, and I was so horribly scared what others would think of me.. So I deleted my whole account. I haven’t logged back in since.

Since that time I have only ever talked with my mother and my spouse about the experience, and with my mother the conversations usually devolve into how she just never knew any of the abuse we were experiencing was going on. Conversations with my mother about these things tend to be less about me or my life and more about her distancing herself from trying to understand me or my life.

Curiously, the only time the subject comes up arond my spouse is when I am trying to talk with my mother.. my spouse just doesn’t talk .. even about this.

It is really difficult to figure out what to say, or what is relivant. There were multiple periods of my life, by the hands of different individuals, in which I experienced one form of abuse or another.

Early on it was physical abuse from a step parent whom had good days and horrible days. On good days they would hand you a $20 and tell you to be back before it got dark. I was in 3rd grade.

On bad days I begged him to please beat me with the other end of the belt, crying “please, not the buckle.”

We were children, we wanted to be adults, we pretended to do adult things. This included lighting up cigarette butts from the ashtray in the living room and smoking them when everyone was gone. This ended with him holding a lighter to our hands for playing with fire.

The throwing us by our hair, by our ears. The slaps upside the face. The hand on the back of your neck forcing you towards your room, into a wall, or forcing you to bend over so they can spank you.

I will never forget how large his eyes looked when he was in his mood. How I thought they would fall out of his face.

Just one of those things that I try to avoid remembering .. it is always so vivid.

I remember my brother and I crying to our father during one of his visitations, begging him to not take us home, to protect us from hell.

I remember the tears in my fathers eyes, his arms around my sibling and I, crying that he had to, that the law wouldn’t let him just take us away.

And now I have tears in my eyes again…

During that same time period I was sexually assaulted by one of my step siblings. I didn’t even understand what was going on at the time. You just do things because the older sibling is insisting you should do it. You don’t know what it is, or that it is wrong. The only thing I knew was that, in that moment, someone wanted me for something. What cold be so wrong with that?

Years later one of those step-siblings told me that the beatings their father gave us wasn’t really abuse, we were just smaller and bruised easier, so it wasn’t really that bad.. it was all fine. And those sex games with their other sibling, that was just us playing house, we were just kids, so that was fine too. I don’t know if my ignoring everything is a better or worse coping mechanism than their’s.

My mother always asks me how come I can remember so many things with such detail. I simply cry, explaining that all I have ever wanted was to be able to forget.

This is the first time I have really ever written about any of this, and it is really just surreal. I never really thought it effected me, and I totally thought this would be an easy thing to write, just get it out there. Yet here I am, sobbing again. I suppose it has been affecting me more than I ever knew.

I would like to say it was only that one period of time. That it was something that happened, and life goes on. Only it wasn’t just that one period in my life. The problem for me is that the other incident is even more difficulty for me to come to terms with. Today, if one of my children had been involved in a sexual relationship with their friend’s mother whom was also a teacher .. I would instantly call it sexual assault, regardless of middle school or highschool. Children just aren’t capable of making an informed decision about such things at those ages. Yet here I am, unable to really come to recognize that regardless of what I thought I knew at the time, I was woefully unable to make an informed decision. Intellectually I know this, but I can’t figure out how to get my brain to accept it as a fact for myself.

And it continues to get more vague for me…

One of the things that I have been trying to square away with myself is my views on friendship and sexual intimacy. For years I have been willing to simply give myself to my friends, if that is what they seemed to want. To me it was always just … natural. And maybe it is, but what isn’t natural is that it is something that I would do regardless of whom else it might hurt. The flip side of that is that I also never really thought of myself as pursuing sexual intimacy unless it was with someone I was in a relationship with. Being there for my friends, if that is what they wanted, wasn’t something the same thing to me as wanting to connect with someone I was in a relationship with. I just never seemed to have the ability to say “no” when it came to my friends. This exact topic came up when the partner of one of my friends, whom I had an encounter with, asked me why I did it. I told them, quite honestly, that that was just what friendship was to me. I would litterately do anything for my friends. Sexual, criminal, whatever.

And why does he hang out with those retarded gorillas, as you called them? Because any one of them, if he asked them to, would take a fucking bat to your head, okay? It’s called loyalty.

I can’t believe it took me so long to get around to watching this movie. One of the few movies that I feel like I can relate to.

On some level I am fundamentally insecure, and I have learned that this is a pretty common traight among physical abuse victims. Heightened insecuries, highly aware of the naunces of other people, always on the alert for a mood change, always wanting some sort of communication, some feedback, something to let them know how others are doing. Quite contrary to the Hollywood stereo-types, physical abuse victims don’t become staunch iron-willed loners, or shy quiet shut-ins. This part of my personality plays a large role in my need for communication from my spouse. If we had been communicating at all then one could lay claim to the idea that I was too needy. If we had been communicating at all… Instead I was just hyper aware of how much we weren’t communicating at all…

The other side of abuse victims is the heightened risk taking. Many of us drop out of school, end up homeless, live-fast and die young. Giving the illusion of a carefree spirit according to some observers. The hard reality is that there is very little to be scared of in heaven once you have finally gotten out of hell.

Perhaps spectacularly, I have done all of these things. I dropped out of school. Spent 4 years couch surfing, sleeping in caves, in the woods, under bridges. I would earn room+board from caring friends by cleaning the house and cooking. One of those 4 years was spent barefoot, my shoes had simply worn through. The year all of that ended was the year I met the person whom would end up being my spouse. I met them 5 days after my 21st birthday.

On that day, my life on the streets ended. To me this was so much like the missing last chapter of Alex’s story.

So yes, on 02/05 my spouse and I had a conversation in which I was done being sexually used by them. I was trying to find a way to take a stand, for myself. I am trying to come to terms with my past behavior, to face it and not feel horribly guilty. I want to stop letting people use me as a matter of their convenience. I wanted a relationship, I wanted communication, I wanted someone whom would tell me how they feel and talk to me about these things. Who wanted to be there and help me work through this. I did not want someone who felt sex was a way to avoid a conversation…

I just want to work through this…