Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: babysitter sexual abuse, marital therapy, survivor of child sexual abuse
I have been seeing our marital counselor by myself once every other week, ostensibly to work on me, in order to fix ‘us’.
I saw her this week, and she naturally asked me how I am doing. I told her I have been waking up at night, afraid and hypervigilant. She asked how long that has been going on. (I wanted to say “as long as I can remember.”) But I thought about it and said “Ever since that ant fell on my head.”
She asked me what happens for me when I wake up like that. I described what happens. I lay there awake and afraid, wondering if I am hearing the voices of rapists downstairs. So I listen, listen, listen so carefully. Wait, was that something? There it is again, do I hear him? Quiet. Listen. Listen. Nothing. There’s nothing there, Butterfly, I tell myself. Wait, was that something? Listen, listen, listen.
She said “What if there were someone there? What happens then?”
I explained how I had given this a lot of thought, and how I would run and get the baby and lock the door and call the cops. How I keep a pair of scissors on my headboard and I would grab them and stab him. I keep a heavy flashlight and then I would hit him across the head.
Then I said “But the truth is, at the end of the anxious scene in my head, I am always bloody and battered and then I have to go to the hospital and tell everyone what happened to me.”
She said “And what if that happened?”
Here’s where I started to cry, as usual in her fucking office apparently. I said “Then I would know this horrible thing had happened to me, and I would have to walk around everywhere as if nothing had happened, when really this terrible thing had happened to me that split my world apart.”
She said “Is that maybe how you feel right now? That this terrible thing happened to you and you have to walk around knowing it happened to you but you have to act as though it didn’t?” As usual, she reads my mind.
I nodded and looked at her through tears, and said yes.
This terrible thing happened to me. This babysitter came into our home and my brother and I were so small and we were so trusting and our parents were in the middle of getting a divorce, so we were just getting used to living with only mom instead of a mom and a dad. And mom left us to do whatever it was that she just had to fucking do that night, and hired this terrible woman to keep us safe for the night. And instead of keeping us safe, that babysitter hurt us, irrevocably. She asked us if we wanted to play a game, and we didn’t have a choice in playing the game, and she hurt me and she hurt him and she hurt us and we’ve never been the same. And since her arrival into our lives, I have been terrified of the whole world ever since. She hurt us, terribly, and it was really scary and we didn’t have anywhere we could go or anyone we could tell and we knew for sure then that evil exists and could come get us any time we were caught unaware.
Before her, my heart was whole and my smile was real. This terrible thing happened to me, she did this terrible thing, to us, and every day since I have had to smile and act as though I am whole, when really I am broken and shattered into a million little pieces. That’s why you shouldn’t fuck kids.
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