Anyway, back to the dream.  So in the dream, my cousin’s grandfather (who has been dead for at least ten years now) came into my bedroom and put his hands on my breasts.  It was like he was in a trance or something; he was so intent upon touching my breasts.  I remembered that if I could yell NOOOO, then it might stop.  I tried to yell no with all my might, but instead it came out as a small faint breathy nooooo.  I tried again and the same thing happened.  I shifted my body position so that he wouldn’t be able to touch my breasts and that didn’t work either. I mean, I was able to shift my body position, but somehow he was still able to touch my breasts anyway. 

I woke up from the dream and looked around the room expecting to see him there.  G-d damn that was scary.  I asked my sweet doggie to please lay down next to me where only moments before the spector of my cousin’s grandpa had touched me.  My sweet doggie laid down next to me and stayed there the rest of the night.  The rest of the night was spent in fitful moments of sleep after that.  I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream, and I couldn’t get any true rest.  I sure was tired when I woke up this morning.

I am now tasked with making sense of that dream.  Is it about my dad?  He was the only one (to my conscious knowledge) to touch my breasts.  Or am I supposed to understand this dream as the possibility of a 4th abuser in my life?  I don’t think that’s the answer, but shit, I married a man who ended up being a woman.  What the fuck do I know about what’s real or true anymore?

Or was the dream yet another in an endless line of dreams designed to make me reflect on what it felt like to be touched against my will?  In this dream, I was so scared.  I realized how powerless and scared I felt in the dream, how little-girl-like I was, how big he was and how indomitable the whole situation felt.  There wasn’t much I could do to stop what was happening, and even my own voice (which might have been able to save me) failed me.

I am not sure what to make of the dream, but I sure am afraid to go to sleep tonight for fear that he will touch me again in my sleep.  I think I will ask my doggie to sleep next to me from the start of the night, instead of waiting until after the bad dream happens.

I asked him why he didn’t want to go to bed, and he said he wanted to stay up and play.

I looked at my ex-husband/wife, and he/she could see what I was thinking. He/she said “He’s not getting abused. All kids don’t like to go to bed.” He/she went on to explain that our son showed no signs of being traumatized.

I told him/her that when I was little, I would beg my mom to let me sleep with her. My nights were so freaking terror-filled. Ever since that babysitter hurt my brother and I, I have been scared of nighttime. I told the huz/wife that the idea of saying no to our son on this issue is something I just cannot do. I cannot force him to go to bed alone in his room because it reminds me of when I was little and I would beg my mom to let me sleep with her. I have no idea what is right or natural for kids to say or do because my experience of being a child was tainted with abuse.

This is yet another way that getting fucked as a kid has fucked me again in adulthood. I can’t seem to experience motherhood without re-living some of the worst parts of my childhood, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in normal mothering situations. My son didn’t want to go to bed, and since I can’t handle saying no to him on this issue, I sat with him on my lap until he got tired and then had the huz/wife carry him to bed when he was almost asleep. Then I cried about re-living through the experience of being a kid afraid at bedtime.

It’s late right now, and I should have gone to bed a half hour ago. But I’m freaked out and I can’t turn the light off, so I will watch tv until I’m too tired to keep my eyes open anymore.

Then I met my husband, and I realized that maybe I was not genetically predetermined to be sad. Perhaps I was reacting to all the stuff that had happened to me, and now that I was falling in love, I was happy. When a person is in love, or is loved, they feel happy. They are not genetically predetermined to be happy. They are merely reacting to life circumstance.

I once read that Abraham Lincoln’s photographer said that it seemed like sadness was etched into President Lincoln’s face. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get President Lincoln’s face to look anything but sad in his pictures. (I do not know if President Lincoln was an abuse survivor, but I do know that he lost his mom real young, and losing one’s mother will certainly cause sadness to be etched into the lines of one’s face.)

The other night, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I looked so sad. So sad that the sight of my pained face forced a weird sad noise from my throat. The noise startled me and I looked at my face. It still looked sad. I wonder what my photographer would say about me.

Three people molested me when I was a kid. I never got over it, and honestly, I am not sure that anyone ever really does get over it. I grew up afraid of sex, because all sex held the possibility of rape for me. I then fell in love with and married a man who never seemed to want sex. Seven years into our marriage, he discovered that he is actually a transgendered woman, completely uncomfortable in this wrong body, and that is why sex was never something he really wanted. Our marriage imploded like a dying star.

I understand now that I am not fundamentally sad. But I understand why I used to think I was. This is why you shouldnt fuck kids. We blame our genetic make up for our fundamental sadness, when really we are reacting to people using our bodies in sick ways. I am not fundamentally sad, I am sad because sad things happened to me. One day, G-d willing, I will be happy again. Fucked kids need to be taught that thought process, that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with them. Instead they are merely reacting to terribly painful stuff, and with enough help they can be happy.

“Pain is a part of being alive, and we need to learn that. Pain does not last forever, nor is it necessarily unbeatable, and we need to be taught that.”
– Rabbi Harold Kushner

Today I had a meeting at work so I had to go in, but my friend decided to work from home. I got to the parking lot, parked the car and got out of the car. I looked around. Where is the rapist hiding? Or is he behind me? (Turn around to look behind me.) Start walking to the building. Try to look confident, so that if he is thinking of attacking me, he’ll know that I’ll put up a good fight. I already took my gloves off in the car so that his skin will be under my fingernails when they do the rape kit on me.

I get to the elevator. I look around. Is this where he’s gonna jump out at me? Elevator doors open, I hurry in, press the ‘Close Doors’ button again and again really fast before he jumps in with me. Why do these doors take so long to close? Hurry, please hurry doors and close already.

Ok good, doors are closed, I am safe until they open again. They open on my floor, I run out. If someone is waiting by the elevator door to catch me and rape me, I have thwarted them. This time, I remind myself. Walk down the hallway where no one ever is, and then I sit in my cubicle where there are at least people.

My friend isn’t there today, I remind myself, so I will have to brave all of this again to get back to my car. No, wait, my other friend has to come in today because she will be at that meeting! I will walk back with her, I reassure myself.

The meeting comes and goes, and I am back at my desk, busy with a project. My friend suddenly stands up, puts her coat on and announces she is leaving. Shit!! Why is she leaving now, in the middle of the day?? SHIT!! Should I shut own my computer and leave with her? I can finish my project from home. If I don’t leave with her now, I will have to face the elevator and the parking lot by myself. She is in a hurry, and I am too embarrassed to ask her to wait a few seconds for me to shut my computer down. She leaves.

I am getting more freaked out as each minute passes, and finally I give up, shut the computer down and leave for the day. I get to the elevator. Why, why didn’t I just leave with my friend?? Then we could have walked to our cars together! Already I am starting to shake. This is so embarrassing. I hurry into the elevator, hurriedly press the ‘Close Doors’ button, and wait. I hate leaving this building. The elevator stops, I step outside. Look around, put on same act of bravado as I did coming in here.

Please, I pray, please let there be someone else out here, a co-worker. If someone else is out here, he won’t have the chance to rape me. I am shaking with fear now. I see the bus stopped in front of the building. He appears to be waiting for someone. Thank you G-d!! I rush to my car, check for rapists in the back seat, get in car, immediately lock doors. Try to act like I am normal, like all the shit that I just thought and did didn’t happen.

This is me walking to my car, or walking from my car to work. This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids.

Anyway, so after she told me that all my shit is really an illusory attempt at safety, she told me to tell myself “This is an attempt at safety” every time I have a ‘distorted cognition’ (a fucked up thought that might not be true), or perform an OCD act.  I took her advice to heart and have been telling myself “This is an attempt at safety” every time.

It’s been almost two weeks since she told me to do that, and I believe my attempts at safety now number in the hundreds.  It’s kind of amazing all the things I do to attempt safety.  This is what happens when you fuck kids though.  We understand exactly how unsafe the world is, and we understand this on a terribly intimate level, unfortunately.

This morning, my son waved ‘goodbye’ to our dog. My ex husband/wife (we’re still living together) said “he’s waving goodbye to the dog’.  I have an enormous problem with the word goodbye.  I am afraid that if someone says that word, I will never see them again.  (This thought process is an attempt at safety.)  So I forbid its use around me. (This action is an attempt at safety.) I told the ex-huz/wife: “He’s not saying goodbye!” (This statement was an attempt at safety.) The ex-huz/wife immediately corrected the whole thing by saying that the baby was waving ‘see you later’ at the doggie.

You see what I mean though?  And that’s like one moment in the day.  There’s been so many daily occurrences of attempting safety.  I wonder if this happens to other survivors too, or if it is just me?  Do other survivors also attempt safety in so many little and big ways?

I figured I should try to work out some of my barriers to dating, so I brought it up with my therapist. One of the things we talked about was the fact that I have an issue with people’s names. (Mostly men’s names, of course.) I believe that people with certain names are bad, and people with other names are good. If I meet someone new and they have a ‘bad’ name, I assume they are bad people. For instance, I wouldn’t date anyone with my brother’s name because obviously they’re bad people.

My therapist said that if I told her a name, she could tell me an example of someone good with that name and an example of someone bad with that name. I said, “So what does that mean then? I’m wrong about the name thing?”

She said “It’s an illusion of safety. You think that if you can categorize people into good and bad based on just their names, then you are safe from bad people. It’s an attempt at creating safety.”

I had never looked at it that way, but she is absolutely right. The ‘names thing’, the ‘only wearing certain colors of underwear thing’, the ‘only reaching for stuff with my right hand’, etc., all of these nutty things are my attempts at creating safety.

This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. We construct attempts at safety and take comfort in the illusion. We judge people on names and form reasons to hold people at arms’ length.

My mind has begun to understand my husband as a female, and I accept our upcoming divorce. Our relationship has morphed, after a lot of crying, fighting, blaming, etc., into a lovely friendship.

Now that I’ve come to this place of acceptance, I have begun thinking about the idea of dating in the future. When I picture trying to date a new man, I worry over every part of it. I have no specific man I am thinking of dating, mind you, so all these worries occur with some faceless guy in the future. Inevitably, my mind goes to the probability of me having sex issues in bed with new guy. I mean, that was the reason I ended up marrying my husband. He never pushed me on sex, and I sought out the safety of that. So it’s inevitable that this issue will surface again with a new dude. And even that is only if I can get over myself enough to freaking try to date again.

Sometimes I picture it all going something like this:
New Dude: “By the way, Butterfly, how many dudes have you slept with?”
Butterfly: “Oh, uh, one.”
New Dude: “What?”
Butterfly: “Yeah. The first guy was my husband. I was almost 31 when we slept together. A few months before we got married.”
New Dude: “Seriously? Why??”

And this is where I stare at him and contemplate saying “This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. We grow up scared of penis and sex and we marry men who don’t want sex, or in my case, their penis.”

Tyler Perry’s letter (below):

Tyler Perry’s Open Letter to Penn State 11-Year-Old

Nov 28, 2011 12:00 AM EST

 

I must tell you, what you have done is so courageous. The strength that it must have taken for your 11-year-old voice to speak out about such a horrible act is something that I didn’t have the strength or courage to do at that age.

I was a very poor young black boy in New Orleans, just a face without a name, swimming in a sea of poverty trying to survive. Forget about living, I was just trying to exist. I was enduring a lot of the same things that you’ve come forward and said happened to you, and it was awful. I felt so powerless. I knew what was happening to me, but unlike you, I couldn’t speak about it because no one saw me. I was invisible and my voice was inaudible.

So to think that you, when you were only 11 years old, spoke up—you are my hero! I’m so proud of you. You have nothing to be ashamed of. I want you to know you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not your fault. Please know that you were chosen by a monster. You didn’t choose him. You didn’t ask for it and, most of all, you didn’t deserve it. What a huge lesson that was for me to learn. Your 11-year-old self was no match for wicked, evil tactics of this kind. You were hunted like prey. A pedophile looks for the young boys he thinks he can manipulate. The ones who have daddy or mommy issues, the ones who are broken, and the ones who are in need. But this wasn’t you.

Do you know that at the young age of 11 you had more courage than all the adults who let you down? All of the ones who didn’t go to the proper authorities, all of the ones who were worried about their careers, reputations, or livelihoods. All of the ones who didn’t want to get involved. Or even the ones who tried to convince your mother not to fight. You are stronger than them all! I wonder what they would have done if it were their own child.

I had a few of those adults in my life, too. They knew and did nothing. One of them even said to me that it was my fault, because I allowed myself to spend time with the molesters. And yes, this was someone who was in power and could have called the police, but instead this person allowed this criminal to go on molesting other young boys for many years. When I did tell a family member, I wasn’t believed. I suffered in silence. But not you, my young strong hero, you have done what many of us wish we could have done. You used your voice!

You know, now that you’re older you need to be aware that the aftermath of abuse may affect you for a very long time. But that’s OK; just know that the strength it took for you to talk about it then will help you get through it now. I often tell myself that if I made it through that experience as a child, then surely as a man I should be able to get past it. It still may take you a while, but that’s OK too. I have known people who have gone through the same things that we have, but unfortunately they were never able to admit it, and it destroyed them. They never went for help, and they let the abuse defeat them. Some of them went to prison for crimes, some are addicted to drugs, and some have even committed suicide. I know that none of these things will happen to you. You are too strong for that!

No matter what happens next, just know that the hardest part is over. I wish the coward and very sick individual who hurt you would have the courage to admit his wrong and not put you through a trial. But he will most likely profess his innocence until the bitter end. And probably, all the while, yelling at the top of his lungs about all he has done to help troubled young boys.

You may have to go through with that trial, and you may feel all alone when you’re on that witness stand, but just know that there are millions of young boys and grown men who are standing with you—including me. If every man who has ever been molested would speak up, you would see that we’re all around you. You may not know all of our faces and names, but my prayer is that you feel our strength holding you up. You will get through this; you’ve already endured the worst part at age 11. Now fight on, my young friend, fight on! We are all with you.

I woke up today thinking about that movie. When that babysitter was molesting us, I wonder if we cried and screamed. Probably not, judging by my behavior with my brother while he was molesting me. I probably dissociated and left my body and pretended I was somewhere else, like I did with my brother.

This happens to me so often. I HATE not having conscious memory of her, of what she did to us. I wouldn’t hate it but for the fact that all my symptoms of surviving molestation appeared after she molested us, which was years BEFORE my brother ever touched me. So, obviously the memories are stuck somewhere in my subconscious, unable to be accessed by the rest of me. And so I am left to drive myself crazy with the wonderings of what she actually did, how she went about hurting us, how long she waited after my mom left, how we reacted, etc.

Am I under stress right now?  Well, eight months ago my husband told me he is a girl.  We made the painful decision to end our marriage shortly after that.  We are still living together until it gets too shitty or uncomfortable to live together.  I have had two major hospitalizations and during the first one I almost died.  And through it all, I am still experiencing all the effects that come with having survived child sexual abuse.

Now, someone reading this might think to themselves “So what?  What does losing your hair have to do with surviving child sexual abuse?” and you’d be right, kind of.  Lots of people lose their hair, and generally speaking, it would have nothing to do with surviving abuse. But I am losing my hair because I am under a great deal of stress right now because my husband is transitioning to femalehood.  I feel like I am living under the gun.  I married him because he never pushed my sexual boundaries, because three people used my body against my will when I was a child.  This marriage was a direct result of the child abuse I survived.  Consequently, I am losing my hair.  That’s why you shouldn’t fuck kids.