part 54

I keep getting overwhelmed with the magnitude of all this. When I am remembering each individual event or occurrence of abuse or assault, I know that it is real. The reason I know that it is real is because I was there. The people who abused and assaulted me were also there, and they know it is real, too. They know what they did.

But when I back up a bit and look at all of it, I am hit really hard by the notion that this shit is CRAZY. Not crazy in a way that has to do with my own sanity or perceptions, but crazy in the way that people can do these things to each other.

All the shit with my dad is really crazy all on its own. The whole thing with the neighbors is crazy – how often does a child who is sexually abused by her father end up living in a neighborhood where there are so many other abusers?

But then that has me thinking about the chances of something like that happening, and when I think of the concept of a child “ending up” living in such a place, it makes me realize that place was there long before I was abused by any of the neighbors.

I was two years old when I moved into that house. My family has lived there for over thirty years. One of my abusers has been there that long, as well, and another has been there for over twenty years. I have considered before how unusual my neighborhood was, just in the fact that the same people have lived there for so long.

I don’t think that is necessarily abnormal – I’m sure there are other neighborhoods where little clumps of people are all friends and all remain close to each other in the same houses for decades.

But then there is the wife factor. The wives of these men have been best friends with each other for decades, too. Perhaps they all share more in common than each is aware. Maybe they get along so well because they are all a certain type of person, as any group of friends is usually and naturally compiled.

The husbands, including my dad and the other abusers, never really got along well at all. They have all pretty much been crotchety and moody toward each other for as long as I can remember, and the ones still living there are still that way.

The only two I ever remember getting along better than the others was when the pedophile who doesn’t live there anymore was still there – he and the other pedophile seemed to get along very well, or at least better than the other men in the neighborhood got along with each other.

An additional consideration is that once someone has been the victim of a sexually-related crime, it significantly increases their risk of being assaulted again at some time in their lives. I was already vulnerable to outside predators because of what my dad had been doing to me since I was a baby.

Predators know what kind of person is easy to break, and to manipulate. They know who to focus on, who is the most vulnerable. All it takes to become that vulnerable is one single occurrence of sexual assault, be it child molestation or rape or trafficking or anything else. It appears that being sexually assaulted in any way breaks some sort of innate method of self-preservation.

This is not a new concept, particularly in our society. Something bad happens to someone good, and the good person’s life course is altered inexorably for the worse.

Anyway – I could go on and on with my theories and whatnot, but applying all of this to myself, it makes sense that what happened to me was possible because of who my father was, who I was molded into, who these other abusers are, and who the families of these other abusers are.

Why would people stay in the same place all their lives, living among the same people, if not because they are accepted and feel safe and at home there? Where would an abuser feel at home? Possibly in a neighborhood of other abusers and of broken, abused children.

Where would the wives of such men feel comfortable? Among other wives of such men.

I’m not saying that there was a mass conspiracy among the abusers and their wives. I don’t know that any of the abusers has ever even been aware of their long-time neighbor’s similar practices. I don’t think the wives and mothers found themselves among a group of women who had abusive husbands and had that common link.

But people who rape and molest and do all of those other horrible crimes are a certain breed. The women they marry also share certain characteristics of behavior and personality with each other.

Maybe all of the people in that neighborhood have stayed there for so long was because the abusers found a home in which they would be able to freely carry on their abuse, and their wives found each other similar in character, and so became close friends.

I’m getting tired of thinking of all of this. My whole point is that no matter how much I try to figure out how none of these things can be true, to find a way in which I could never have been a victim of anyone (I have stated before that I would rather be found bat-shit crazy than for any of this to be real, and I still feel that way), the more I realize how much everything fits. The circumstances, the people, the behaviors – all of it.

One of the biggest reasons I am not able to make my mind not believe that all of this happened to me is because of the way it all makes such perfect fucking sense. There is nothing – NOTHING – to indicate that any of these things could not have happened. I think of the things that happened to me, and I then I think about how someone who had done these things to me would fit into my life, and they all fit.

It all fits.

That’s a pretty shitty conclusion.

I’m going to go watch TLC shows for a little bit, and maybe get a reprieve from my mind and my past. A little bit of information I have found to be helpful is that “Say Yes to the Dress” and “What not to Wear” are fantastic coping mechanisms.

part 53

***TRIGGER ALERT***

I am angry. No, I am ANGRY.

What I’m feeling, though, is not painful or completely consuming, so that’s kind of new for me. Pretty much I just feel angry. I feel angry about specific circumstances I can identify easily. I am angry at specific people I can identify easily.

With all of the rage I grew up with, that is not how it was. That rage followed me into adulthood. I was angry all the time, and it was in my blood, and I was just generally angry at everything. Sometimes it would be specific, like when I was driving or unhappy about not getting my way, but mostly it was just general.

It has been really difficult – because even far into adulthood, I would just start freaking out randomly, melting down, throwing a tantrum. The most ridiculous things could set me off on tirades that only big giant assholes have. I realize I am saying that I have been a big giant asshole. That is okay, because it is true. I might not like it, and I may owe apologies all over the planet, and I may be scared about what people will think of me, and I may have perfectly sound psychoanalytical explanations for that behavior, and I may be incredibly uncomfortable just thinking about it at all. None of that will change the fact that I have been a big giant asshole.

I don’t think I am a big giant asshole right now – I hope to never be a big giant asshole in the future. I sincerely believe that being a big giant asshole is not okay. Still doesn’t change that I, on one or more occasions, have been a big giant asshole.

A refusal to acknowledge what is true and what is real does not make what is true and what is real cease to exist. It is possible to do horrible things to other people, and they never get undone, no matter who or what wants to pretend otherwise.

People have committed horrendous crimes against other people, but were not convicted because there was not enough evidence against them. Does that mean the horrendous crimes didn’t actually happen? That maybe something happened that admittedly wasn’t great, but it also just wasn’t these horrendous crimes? That nothing at all happened, and the victim is making the whole thing up?

The answer to that question is an unequivocal NO.

The truth is the truth and what is real is real. The distortion of the truth and what is real has been the primary method of concealing the fact that people rape babies every day (this is not inflammatory language – it is the truth). It has also concealed the fact that people can inappropriately touch children and can hurt them, but that there will be no repercussions for the perpetrator.

This happens every day. People hurt children terribly every day. Rich people, poor people, middle class people, educated people, white people, American people, Christian people, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth people – REAL people.

Why are we so quick to turn real people and real events into imaginative misconceptions of children? Why do we do that? Why, as an entire society, do we let that happen?

I don’t know. But it still happens. It happened to me. It has probably happened to more than one person who will read this. It is happening right now – someone is hurting a child right now, and it could very likely be happening within a five mile radius of where you are sitting.

Why aren’t we doing anything? Because we really aren’t. When so many children are hurt by so many people and no one does anything to make it stop, that means that we are allowing that behavior. We are saying, hey – it’s okay to digitally penetrate your five year old neighbor, because there are people all around that five year old who are choosing not to see it happening.

Doing something about it might spark a lawsuit, or make living in the neighborhood uncomfortable, or make people in our own families feel uncomfortable. “Doing something” is also known as “rocking the boat,” and nobody wants to rock the boat, even at the expense and dignity of a five year old child.

Fuck that shit. I have the truth and reality on my side, and I may get my ass kicked, but I have experienced much worse before. I am not going to sit down and shut up when today I have a voice and a choice to use it, and when there are so, so many children – so many people - out there who are silenced and have no choice at all.

Bring it.

Part 52

There has been a question that keeps coming up over and over again: how did my mom not know what was going on?

Other people ask me this question a lot, in person and in messages and comments on my blog and on Facebook.

I don’t remember ever addressing this on my blog, so I will do that now.

I have recovered memories of specifically telling my mom what happened to me at one of the neighbor’s houses. I was maybe seven years old. I am not aware that any action was taken by any adult concerning this information.

I specifically remember telling my mom about my dad tying me to a tree when I was 15. Nothing happened then, either.

So, the logical and painful question is, why didn’t my mom do anything and how did she not see all of the things that were happening?

I am copying and pasting text from a Facebook conversation that addresses this issue. Here it is:

Hi Rebecca,
I have been following your blog, and there is a question that keeps coming up for me. As I read about the horror that you endured at the hands of your father and neighbors, I can't help but wonder...where was your mom when all of this was going on? How can a mother not know that these awful things are happening to her child? As a mother, I feel that I would know if there was something shady going on that involved my children, I feel like I would sense it. I know that the effects of abuse are far-reaching, and I am in NO WAY putting any blame on your mom, it's just hard to understand how a mother wouldn't know that such severe abuse was happening in her home. 

I have two young daughters, and it can be overwhelming to think of all of the evils of the world that I must protect them from. But, I would straight up kill a motherfucker if they layed a hand on my girls, as I think you would for your boys. Once again, I am in no way blaming your mom for anything, I guess I'm just trying to understand it all. 

I hope that I'm not getting too "all up in your business" or anything. And, you totally don't have to answer if you don't want to. It's just scary to think that something like this could be happening and a mother might not know.

MY RESPONSE:
I really don't mind answering questions - you are actually the second or third person to ask me that specifically. I may just post a blog on it.

It is funny you asked now, though, because the night before last I sat down with my mom and I reminded/confronted her of the times I told her things were happening to me when I was little, and nothing happened. She has been really good at acknowledging things like that now - it doesn't make up for what she could/should have done at the time, but it helps my recovery tremendously today.

There are a few factors as to how my mom avoided seeing everything that was going on. One of the biggest is that she is remarkably talented at keeping her head up her ass. She learned how to not see anything bad when she was growing up in her own violent childhood home. That talent served her very well as an adult, too.

Another factor is that my dad started laying the foundation of discrediting anything I said very early on in my life. He told people - including my mom - that I lied about everything. I was five years old and my dad was telling my mom I lied all the time because I was so set on breaking up their marriage (I mean, ?). These kinds of things allowed my mom - and everyone else - to turn their heads the other way without too much guilt.

As I got older, my dad also began to weave in the notion that I was crazy. This was really easy for a lot of people to believe, too. He would tell people I was not "taking my medication" if I did anything to openly confront him about anything - he continued that strategy until the last time I saw or spoke to him.

One of the biggest factors, I believe, that contributed to all of this shit going on "unnoticed" is that it is always, ALWAYS easier to look the other way. The things my dad and neighbors did to me were horrendous, but it was so easy to contribute any claims I made or alarming or harmful behavior people saw to the crazy-lying-non-medication-taking stuff. It was simply easier to believe that shit than it was to consider that what I was saying could possibly be true.

What was particularly difficult for me was that I WAS crazy, I did lie, and I did take medication: I was obviously harmed psychologically by my experiences, the lying I did primarily consisted of my attempts to minimize and hide each little thing that happened to me, and I started taking Ritalin when I was 11. Just enough stuff to get me to believe in the lies, too (there is a lot of shame associated with that, but hey - I'm still in therapy, so I'm sure I will work it out one day).

It was all basically a very diabolical and constant mind fuck that no one looked at long enough to try and stop, or to even acknowledge was happening.

As a victim and a parent, my suggestion to you as a parent would be to TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS. If you think something is off with either of your girls (or any other kid), there is probably something that is off. It may not be sexual abuse, and may be as simple as something they saw on tv and do not understand, but there is most likely something there hurting or confusing them in some way.

I also try to be as open and honest with my kids - about EVERYTHING - as I can, no matter how difficult or embarrassing or uncomfortable I am. I obviously try not to traumatize them with graphic details - it is a difficult line to walk.

This is not always possible to accomplish, but it is the best I know I can do to protect my kids, and any one else's kids,too. I would rather be seen as a paranoid and histrionic maniac by the entire world than fail to say something that could help someone.

That doesn't mean I always step up - it is really, really tough shit to address with anyone at any time. However, I don't think that is okay as an excuse for me or anyone else, including my mom, to look the other way.

Any-hoo! Hope that gives you some insight. Please feel free to ask anything you want - if I am uncomfortable answering, then I won't answer :)

MY FRIEND’S RESPONSE TO MY RESPONSE:

Wow...what a tangled web. I can't imagine the guilt that your mom lives with everyday. 

Thanks for all your candid info. I agree with you about the importance of being honest and open with our children. I have always been totally honest with my girls about their bodies and what is appropriate and what is not. And, I feel honored that I have 2 daughters with whom I can share all of the info that I have learned throughout my journey. Since becoming a mother at a young age, and being aware of the statistics surrounding abuse and girls (1 in 4 I think?), it has been my goal to get them raised without suffering through any abuse or severe trauma. So far, so good. AND, they are total little bad-ass spitfires. Sassy as the day is long. But, that sass will serve them well in this life.

END OF MESSAGES

So that’s that (by that I mean that’s the end of that e-mail conversation, not the discussion on the topic - the whole issue of my mom and other people who could have done something to stop my abusers and didn’t will probably be one of those things that is always out there).

FYI – I really do appreciate getting messages and comments, even if the person asking the question is concerned they are crossing a line or being nosy. As I mentioned in the above conversation, if I don’t want to answer a particular question, then I won’t. Talking about it is important, though. It is a great way to perpetuate the exposure of these crimes, which I believe is the only way to stop them from happening.

It is not comfortable, but it is real. I have my voice and I have my truth, and those can be very powerful influences on anyone. I definitely know that much.

p.s. thanks to my friend for taking the risk of upsetting me to ask questions that are important to her - one of the hardest parts of being a parent. and also thanks for letting me post our conversation :)

part 51

I am very tired. I haven’t felt quite like this in a long time. I feel like I’m filled with sand and need to be still, but at the same time my mind is very wound up.

It is THE feeling. The one I spent most of my life trying to avoid. It is the feeling of PROCESSING TRAUMA. It sucks. It sucks to feel the pain. Because it hurts.

The latest revelations about my past have tossed me back to what it felt like to be me as a child. There was nowhere to go – nowhere safe. I was literally surrounded by people who had hurt me or would be hurting me at some time.

I feel very naïve. I was a small child, but it took four or five times of being molested before I would not return to that neighbor’s house anymore, and I think I should have figured it out sooner. I don’t know why I always hoped and believed that it wouldn’t happen again. I think I just needed someplace safe to go, and before this guy got to me, it was a safe place. I wanted it to still be a safe place.

But it wasn’t. Neither were the houses of the other neighbors. There were two pedophiles and two sadistic rapists living within a hundred yard radius, with me being in the middle. One of each still live there, but I am not in the middle anymore.

I have been quite shocked at how I have been flung back to that time, back to when I was terrified and filled up with lead every second of every day and every night. Remembering that I am here now, though, is almost instantaneous relief of the tight, sharp pains in my chest. Not complete relief, but it loosens up some.

I am really feeling a lot of disgust toward myself right now, too. I can remind myself that I am here now, and then the disgust lightens up, too, but it is so strange to be straddling these two times of my life. Back then, I would fantasize about having someplace like I have now, someplace that is mine and safe, and if I want to hide in it, I can do that at any time, and if I want to get out of it, I can do that at any time too. I can also just be here without feeling the need to run or to hide. It is a pretty good place to have.

But these emotional and physical memories of what it felt like back then, when I had no such safe place, are really shitty. Compounding all of it is the realization that I never stood a chance. There was no way I was going to get out of my childhood with my innocence intact.

I remember how these men treated me when I was growing up back then. Of course, one of them is my father, but the two who still live there were very cruel to me, too. I don’t really remember having much interaction with the fourth one.

Anyway, these two men, the ones still alive and still in my life, were very mean. One of them was mean in a taunting kind of way – like he could make me do whatever he wanted, and the other was mean in a very cruel kind of way – like he could kill me any time he wanted. I don’t recall having much of an idea about why they treated me like that at that time.

I am very angry right now, in my safe place and my safe time, remembering the shame and hate and worthlessness and hopelessness and pure rage that compiled almost the entire range of emotions I was capable of as a child. It was hell being me living there, and those men really exacerbated the pain and the harm.

And it was all because they were too disgusted with themselves to acknowledge that I could be anything more than an object to be used and abused.

I think about hurting them – they are old men now. It would be easy to hurt them. It is nice to think about, but I have no interest in making my own situation worse.

The people who love me and who know about all of this are outraged and also fantasizing about revenge. I cannot help but think, though, that there is nothing any of us could do to them that would hurt them more than they have hurt themselves.

Evil is a living, breathing entity, and if you allow it to, it will eat you from the inside out. From the outside, it may not appear that you are suffering, but you are. People who do things like those men did to me are being eaten alive from the inside.

I believe this is how my father died. He allowed evil to cripple and kill him rather than acknowledge any wrongdoing on his part.

I wonder if that feeling of being devoured from the inside by evil is painful enough to qualify as just retribution for the pain they caused. I don’t know. I can’t really measure how much pain they caused me – I don’t know anything else to compare it to. It has been my life.

What I do know is that I am able to feel love, and smell the air, and speak softly, and most importantly, to rest. I can be still and be okay with it. I really believe it is the key to true happiness – to just be able to sit and be still and have peace all at the same time.

I know none of those men have ever known what that is like. Maybe their punishment isn’t the pain of anything bad happening to them, but the loss of experiencing anything beautiful. I know what it means to experience beauty, and the idea of none of those men even being capable of knowing what real beauty is makes me feel a little better.

Suffering is what happens when I am not able to know that peace and beauty, and if it is the same for those men, they will never know anything other than suffering. And I don’t have to do anything at all to them to make them suffer more.

 I’m okay with that – for right now, anyway.

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part 50 (!)

I am faced with the unusual possibility of confronting several of my abusers. I had written before that my dad pimped me out when I was really little. This is still true, but I have since had a lot more memories about being sold to people – people who are still alive and still very prevalent in my life.

I have processed a lot of images and smells and feelings and thoughts in the past week. It has been exhausting. These latest memories are not easily questionable in my head, meaning that they are too real and concrete to even begin to try and convolute them into something that never happened. I mean, they happened.

One problem I’m having with these latest memories, though, is that it is another shocking and disgusting – unbelievable -component of everything else that happened to me. How many shocking and disgusting things could I have experienced? What’s the cap on that kind of thing, because I am pretty sure I am way past it.

I feel like it would be difficult for someone else to believe me time and again after remembering more stuff. One of my dad’s ways of discrediting me was by telling everyone in my family and in our lives that I was a liar. I guess that was a pretty effective maneuver on his part, since people believed I lied a lot, and I am still experiencing fear connected to it 20 years later.

I told Jonny and my mom about these people who paid my dad in order to rape me when I was younger. Jonny and my mom both know these people, and have known them for years. Jonny’s initial reaction when I told him who it was (I remembered what happened before I remembered who it was) was one of those faces people make after they have been puzzled about something they did not really even know was puzzling them, but then out of left field it all clicks together.

After Jonny made that face, he said: “That makes sense.”

It was surreal to hear him say that. I am not accustomed to other people catching on so quickly to the things that have happened to me and then connecting them somehow to their own reality, but that is what Jonny did. Based on his knowledge of me and who I am, and one of these abusers and who they are, and thinking back on the years and years of knowing us both, it made sense to him that what I was saying could be true.

Another reason it was surreal was because of the way the reality of it all stayed very consistent with me. Instead of experiencing any kind of dissociation, it felt like I was much more present in that moment and knowledge and feeling. I suppose that is the opposite of “surreal,” but my regular “real” has never been this real, and so it is unusual for me = “surreal.”

When I begin to get scared that other people might think I am beginning to make shit up (I haven’t figured out what anyone might think my motivation behind that would be), it lasts for just a whisper and then is gone. Because it is real. It doesn’t really matter if anyone else believes me or not. I don’t need any backup or evidence or corroborating events or documentation to prove that it is real, because I already know how real it is.

It doesn’t make a single bit of difference to me if anyone believes me or not. Actually, that is not true – it has been tremendously helpful having Jonny by my side, not only believing that this happened, but being able to comprehend how it happened, too. I would have had a very difficult time if he had not reacted this way, but I would still know it was real.

It’s just that it feels good to have someone so close to me so tightly in my corner. I might even venture to say that it feels EASIER having him here next to me.

It is all still really shitty. It’s another one of those things that has required a rearrangement of my past and of who I believed I was. It has been very disruptive this way, almost like when I first remembered my dad sexually abused me.

The difference, though, is that remembering that my dad sexually abused me completely destroyed all concepts I had of myself, of my life, and of other people. The new thing has only destroyed who I thought I was at certain times in the past.

Actually, I know who I was – I guess what I mean to say is that it destroys who I thought other people were at certain times in the past.

It makes me so sad. People I loved fiercely and I thought loved me, too – I don’t know who those people are now. I only know who I thought they were, and how I felt about them before I remembered the latest abuses.

It is true that the way I thought of them then, and of how I believed I could trust them to love me back, is not something that can be taken from me. Those feelings about them are still there, albeit in the past, and I did specifically get through a lot of things believing completely in those feelings.

I guess it doesn’t matter what I believe about those people now – they were who I needed when I needed them.

Still, it is just very sad.

But I still know who I was then (in hindsight, of course), and I know who I am now. I suppose if they contributed to me getting to this place of strength in my life (which they certainly did), regardless of how I thought it happened, I can appreciate and be grateful for that. There are no life-long guaranties about people. What I know about them now does not nullify what I got from them then.

When I first began my process of recovery, I met a man who was able to answer questions for me that no one else could answer. I asked other people these questions, and I kept getting referred to other people until this man finally answered my questions. I was very grateful – I still am.

Since then, that man has been investigated, charged, convicted and sentenced – he is now in prison for child molestation. Once I discovered how disgusting he is, I did not want to acknowledge that he was able to do anything good for me at all. But that is not the truth.

Sigh.

The truth can really be a bitch. I don’t think there are many things more valuable in life than the truth, though.

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