2.11.26
She abused me sexually when I was a toddler. I repressed the memories, and I realised it years later, when I had started Primary School and began to gather an understanding of the world. The first time that I had a framework to make sense of that experience (the words, the cognisance of right and wrong/healthy and unhealthy) was in the second Grade. By that time, the damage had already been done, though I did not know it at that point.
I remember the day I realised it. I was sitting at the back of my father’s van, a white ford. We were on our way home from school, driving in steady traffic along William Nicole Dr. I was a pensive child, quiet, kept to myself, seen and not heard. I remember that during that time in Grade 2, I had been learning from school and the media (television shows like Soul Buddies) about abuse and the many forms it could take, and learning about the importance of never keeping secrets from your parents. I was a deeply empathetic child and I was reflecting on the horror of anyone being taken advantage of by someone they trusted in that way. I was appalled by the injustice of such a thing. At that moment, it hit me.
All those memories of the sustained abuse flooded back to my memory and I felt sick and confused. I had been taken advantage of in exactly that way, and I had kept (and was still keeping) the secret from my parents. My world fractured. It was a silent, certain, cataclysmic collapse of everything I had known. I looked around and my world was no longer rose-coloured.
When we arrived home thereafter, evening duties commenced and preparations for the next school day were underway. Life went on. I did not have the kind of relationship with my parents where I could share that kind of thing. I also did not know how much they knew. I assumed they must have known – after all, it happened over a long period of time. And as my elders, they would have had the framework to identify and make sense of it.
So I grew distrustful of my parents, my sister, and even myself. I no longer trusted my own judgement. I no longer trusted anyone, and especially not family. I grew resentful of them, I felt shameful for having been complicit in my abuse. I withdrew further into myself. I did not say anything on that day, or any day after that, for about 15 years. I repressed the memories of the abuse, and the memory of my realisation.
It went as well as you can imagine; dysfunctional relationships, issues with self-worth, love, control, confidence, distorted perceptions of healthy relations, distrust of authority figures. I was angry. I was bitter. I was taken advantage of in the worst way and I felt the world owed me.
When I finally told my mother, I was about 21 or 22. I had been encountering subconscious blockages and struggling to advance in all areas of my life. I retrieved the repressed memories in meditation, and the truth hit me harder than it had back in Grade 2. After all, now it had the added force of all the ways that I had personally opted to live from a place of shame, anger, destruction, and hatred for myself and my family throughout my life. All the ways that I gave my power to that abuse and to the identity I had formed around it; every encounter in my life had proved that nobody could be trusted.
I remember that I could not sleep for days after that meditation, the memories would shake me awake violently. I was sweating, crying, throwing up, and then eventually just heaving. I questioned everything all over again. This time, with the knowledge of my role in the life I had created, and a determination to find out whether my parents and sister knew.
I could not tell you much about when I told my sister or my mother; except that I likely told them in a dissociated matter-of-fact way, under circumstances that I felt were not fit for the massive disclosure. I could not run you through their responses either. From what I gathered, they both told me they were surprised and had not known until that moment. I was not expecting much else as a result of these exchanges, but I would have guessed that I would feel relieved or freer to some degree. This was only partly true.
A large part of my shame and self-hatred stemmed from the knowledge that my silence helped to protect the perpetrator. I was complicit in my own abuse and the resultant psychological torment, and I could not stand myself for it. So finally sharing with my sister and mother what had happened, alleviated a measure of that shame and responsibility I had been carrying.
However, I traded the prior resentment I had toward them for keeping things quiet, for a new resentment toward them for not knowing. I was especially resentful toward my mother:
How negligent could she be? Had she no maternal instinct? I was only a toddler. How could she entrust my intimate care to a virtual stranger with such abandon, and for such long periods of time? Was she so wholly unavailable? What vetting did she do to ensure we were safe as young children? Where exactly was she during those times? Did she really need to be away? Was she always at work?
Somehow, my father was never the object of my resentment – the tyranny of low expectations, perhaps. I do not expect maternal instincts from a man, and the perpetrator was his daughter so his judgement or presumption of safety (though desperately wrong) would be understandable. I did not extend the same grace to my mother, who was a lot younger than he was (likely influenced by him beyond her better judgement) and struggling through a demanding job while raising two young daughters and managing a “blended family”. To this day, I have never asked or told my father.
I am now 27-years-old. I have no friends, no partner, no children, and no desire for any of these (or so I tell myself). I choose to be alone because it is safer that way. I struggle to ask for help and I do not allow anyone in, because my life is a series of examples that nobody can be trusted, nobody really cares, and my vulnerability will be used against me.
My preference for partners has always been the unavailable kind; much like my parents. All my relationships, even my relationship with myself, have perpetuated the fear (and realisation) of abandonment that came from my experience.
It was not until this morning that I realised how I, too, had abandoned that little baby girl who was so trusting, and so full of life.
I have gone back for her; I have taken back all my power across space and time.
– Lele
17 | VII* | 19
