This year, at my Thanksgiving table, when we go around the table listing the things we are grateful for, I am going to list you guys, my readers.

I am grateful to be alive this Thanksgiving, and I am grateful that you are too. Every one of us that survives and transcends past our abuse is another one on the right side of this war. Just by the fact that we are alive, we are letting them know that not only have we won, but we will make sure they lose. This is the kind of stuff I think about when I start thinking about stuff I am grateful for, and so it is a reason you shouldn’t fuck kids.

This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for you.

It’s winter, and it’s getting cold out. Most people wear gloves when it’s cold so that they can keep their hands warm. I don’t wear my gloves, and here’s the reason: If someone attacks me, the police can get his DNA from under my fingertips when I scratch him. Plus, there would be physical evidence on this man’s face/body of the fact that I put up a struggle and fought him, thus showing that this was against my will. If I were wearing gloves, I wouldn’t be able to get his DNA, and then there would be no proof that this crime was perpetrated onto me, the way there is no proof of anything that babysitter did to me (or my dad or brother too).

I am reasonably certain that had neither of these three people fucked me when I was a child, I would be happily wearing gloves in the winter. This thought process of scratching his face for evidence wouldn’t even be a thought in my mind had I not experienced the abuse of my body as a child. And plus I would have warm hands now, as an adult. Cold hands due to the inability to wear gloves in cold weather. That would be reason #134 why you shouldn’t fuck kids.

Always when a survivor begins speaking about her trauma of incest or childhood sexual abuse, someone inevitably brings up the concept of forgiveness as a means towards wholeness. What a bunch of bullshit this crap is. I mean, if survivors feel the need to forgive their abusers, then I am totally on board with it. What I am not on board with is other people saying we need to forgive.

Whenever I hear someone tell me some shit like that, all I hear is “I am uncomfortable with all of this, and if you forgive your perpetrator, then you will be done talking about it and I don’t have to hear it anymore.” They no more have my interests at heart than the perps did.

Just to be clear, I am not at all against forgiveness. For people who need/want to forgive, the act of forgiveness can bring some much needed healing. For people who don’t need/want to forgive, nobody should be pushing them into that shit.

In order for true forgiveness in any situation to even be contemplated though, three things have to happen:

1) The wrongdoer must apologize to the person he has wronged.
2) The wrongdoer must be truly sorry.
3) The wrongdoer must never do it again.

In most cases of childhood sexual abuse, if we were still kids now, they’d still be fucking us now. It’s only because we outgrew our little bodies that we were allowed to be freed from the abuse. So why exactly should we be forgiving people who have not apologized, are not sorry, and would still be raping us if we hadn’t had the fortunate circumstance of growing bigger as a natural result of age.

In those circumstances, I say fuck forgiveness. See how hardened my heart is? That ain’t right. This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids.

All the ‘experts’ say that babies need to learn to ’self-soothe’ themselves to sleep. We’ve had sleep problems with my son, and everyone in the world says to let him cry it out, because “eventually he’ll learn”. Yes, it’s true that eventually he will learn that when he cries, mama won’t come running. But let’s break that down a bit. If he was an older child, and he was crying at night because he’s afraid of going to sleep by himself, it wouldn’t be right to leave him alone to figure it out. If he was an adult, and he was crying, shouldn’t we all take notice?

But somehow because he’s a baby (now a toddler), the world feels that I should let him cry. Well, I think that is disgusting. And I cannot help but think of all the nights I cried because I was afraid to go to sleep by myself too.

Yesterday, I read this article by Roland Summit called “The Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome”, and one of the lines in there really struck me. It said something like “Bed covers take on magical properties against intruders”. That is just so fucking true. I have always used my bed covers as though they could protect me from the kind of shit that had happened to me.

I never did learn to self-soothe. This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids.

I recently celebrated my 36th birthday. Every birthday, I picture the number of years I was alive while being abused (almost 16), and the number of years I have been alive after that (20 years). I have been alive longer than I was alive during the abuse.

I am starting to see silver hairs. It’s absolutely wonderful. Every year that I get farther away from childhood is absolutely wonderful. That feeling is exactly why you shouldn’t fuck kids. Childhood shouldn’t be so painful that you are happy with every year that you get away from it.

It has been established elsewhere in this blog that I have a fat ass. I have determined that I am unsucessful so far at straight dieting, so I have decided that I need to exercise. I talked to the huz about it, and he said “That’s a great idea, we can bring the stationary bike up to the spare room and then you can have that room to exercise in.”

I said “That’s a great idea, but we would need to put a lock on that door first.” The huz asked why. And yet again I am brought face to face with another reason you shouldn’t fuck kids.

I can’t get lost in an activity like exercise without knowing that I am safely locked up in the room in such a way that an intruder would have to work hard to get in. I am positive that this has everything to do with the fact that I was an innocent child who lived in a safe world until that babysitter showed me that people will take every opportunity to hurt me, especially when I am not expecting it. Ever since then, I have always looked over my shoulder, expecting her or someone like her to hurt me in the worst of ways. And so now I need a lock on the fucking door in order to exercise.

When I was in therapy (at 19 years old, for wanting to kill myself), I told my therapist that I didn’t like it when people made incest jokes. She had no idea what I was talking about. She said “Who makes incest jokes?” I am now realizing that maybe if you are not a child sexual abuse survivor or incest survivor, maybe you wouldn’t be sensitive to this shit the way I am, so maybe she didn’t realize how we as a culture like to downplay and make fun of incest.

When I was dating blowjob guy, he told me a story about how he knew some guy whose daughter was now a teenager and wore bikinis. The guy made some joke to blowjob guy about how he had to control himself around his daughter because he found her attractive. Blowjob guy laughed while he was telling me this. As someone whose father did not ‘control himself’ around me, I didn’t think it was funny.

Last night, the huz and I went to a dinner theater event. We’d been planning it for a few weeks, we never go out and do fun things (because we have a baby), and we were really looking forward to it. The play was about hillbillies (seriously, the title had hillbillies in the name). Within the first few seconds, they started incest jokes about dad having sex with daughters, and all other family members fucking each other too.

We planned a night out, for fun. And here I am, yet again, an incest survivor, supposed to laugh and act like none of this shit is personally hurtful to me. I am unable to find the humor in child sexual abuse and incest. I was pretty pissed that we paid $70 to basically hear jokes made about the most hurtful part of my life. And yet again, a perfectly innocent night out to try and relax and enjoy life becomes a reason you shouldn’t fuck kids.

If a veteran came home from war, and we joked about the fact that he had to kill people or see his friends’ heads blown off, no one would think that is okay. Yet all of us fucked kids are subjected to these disgusting jokes that make light of not only our suffering, but also the events that caused our suffering. It’s not right, and I am ashamed that I gave my money to this dinner theater event.

Is anyone watching this season of Survivor? There’s this total shithead on there, Russell, who is a lying sack of shit. From the moment I saw his eyes, I knew what he was, in terms of the kind of person who is willing to lie, cheat, steal, etc. to get what he wants.

So, I think in episode #2, there’s this woman cop who is totally on to him and doesn’t trust him for shit. Sure enough, he gets wind of the fact that she thinks he’s a horse’s ass, and so he rallies everyone around and gets her kicked off the island. Other women stood by this man, and voted against good, and on the side of evil.

I took it as a personal insult. I have seen this happen so many times, and yet every time it surprises me. How many times throughout history has someone tried to stand up for what is right, only to be shot down by the evildoer and the evildoer’s followers? This is what happens in incest and child sexual abuse cases too.

We try to tell whomever will listen. We are children. Our voices may be small, but we are still speaking. You hear us. You know you hear us. We know you hear us. And then you tell us we are lying, we are imagining it, we’re too young to know what we’re talking about. Whatever shit it is that you tell yourself and us so you can sleep at night, while we lay awake, haunted.

And then the abuser chimes in and lies to you, to me, to everyone who’s listening. And everyone believes him because the world would rather believe lies than truth. Except us. We know what is real. We know who you are. This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. There’s more of us than there are of you.

I don’t know the end of this season yet, obviously, but I am sure that he will get what’s coming to him. They always do.

On the RAINN website, (that’s short for Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network), there is a link to this movie “Open Window”. I watched the trailer to the movie, and it was absolutely haunting.

In the movie, there is a husband and wife. The husband opens a window at some point in the movie. At a later point in the movie, the wife is doing something in that room with the open window. Someone comes in through that window and rapes her. Later in the trailer is a scene with her therapist. The therapist asks her something about the rape, and the wife says “Well I left the window open”. I thought that scene pretty much said it all, in terms of the myriad of ways we find to blame ourselves for the disgusting things that people do to us.

Every night, my husband has to check all vulnerable spots in the house. Windows, doors, closets, dark spaces, corners, etc. Locks on doors need to be checked twice, the way the door fits into the door jam needs to be checked several times. I have done this for years, and now that I am married, I am grateful that the huz does some of the checking for me.

I was talking to my husband about this trailer that I watched, and about that scene in particular. I told him that this scene hit upon my exact fear, that if I stop checking for all these ways that intruders could hurt me, then that will be the exact time when an intruder hurts me. I feel like I need to be extra vigilant about checking all the time so that I can stop possible hurts, the kind of hurts I have already suffered as a child.

It’s not my fault that the babysitter found an opportunity to molest us when my mother hired her to care for us while she ran an errand. It’s not that woman’s fault that the window was left open and some degenerate prick chose that opportunity to harm her. Knowing that it’s not my fault and that it’s not her fault does not stop the hypervigilance and the constant fear of the dark. This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids.

Last night, my mom and I went to Yom Kippur services at our local temple. Yom Kippur is the day of atonement. It is a time when Jews atone for their sins against their fellow humans, and against G-d. For the ones against G-d, we apologize to G-d. For the ones against our fellow humans, we apologize to them.

I spent the entire service crying. I am just so scared all the time, and I need G-d’s help. May G-d forgive me that this is what I prayed for on Yom Kippur. I asked for help for myself, which in my own eyes is a sin. Yom Kippur really isn’t a time to ask for help, it’s more of a time to apologize for all the wrong shit you’ve done to everyone and G-d.

Since I was already apologizing, I took my husband aside and apologized for all the times I have been shitty with him (like critical or short with him, etc.). I apologized to G-d too, for feeling far away from Him lately.

The Rabbi’s sermon was about hatred, and how hatred is a sin. He talked about those idiots in Kansas who hate in G-d’s name, and go around protesting funerals because they think that G-d rightly ‘killed’ those people as punishment for all of America accepting gayness. The Rabbi said that not only do we need to accept the GLBTQ community, the very idea of hatred for hatred’s sake is wrong. (It’s a reform temple.)

I thought about it though. Hatred for hatred’s sake. May G-d forgive me, as I have been feeling some hatred lately. People who fuck kids are #1 on my shit list obviously, and I, like many people, hate them. The thing is, hating them doesn’t help anyone. Hating them doesn’t make any of us any safer, it doesn’t help those who have already been abused, and it doesn’t help those who are currently being abused. Hatred and fear are two sides of the same coin, in my opinion.

I hate that babysitter, as much as I fear her. I feel she did this to me. She is the reason I am so afraid all the time, the reason I can’t go to sleep until my husband has checked every dark place in our room, has assured me that the door to our room is shut tightly and the lock checked, the garage door closed and locked, all the fucking doors closed and locked, etc. She is the reason I embarked on this journey, the reason every family I look at is now circumspect when I see a father figure/daughter figure. I hate her. She did this to me. She broke me. This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids.