Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: fear, panic, panic disorder, phobia, PTSD, survivor of child sexual abuse
I had to go away to a conference again, and this time I went with someone from my new job. A new friend who seems very nice, but kind of plays her cards close to the chest. I have told her a tiny bit about my childhood, opened up a little bit to share my world. She has been safe to confide in so far. I haven’t ever said anything about my PTSD though, because it’s work and I don’t want work people to know that I am so fucked up because then they will think I can’t do my job, and so far I have been able to do my job no matter what. If anything, my job has always been the only place in my life where I have experienced success.
So anyway, we had to stay in a hotel for this conference. Remember how I had to stay in a hotel for that conference a few years ago with the woman who used to cut herself, and I got scared of the imaginary man behind the curtains?
So this time I remembered to check the fucking curtains. We settled into the hotel room, we both got changed for bed, talked for a long time, and by midnight we laid down in our respective beds. We turned the lights out except for the bathroom light. You know, now that I think about it, my friend was the one who left the bathroom light on and the door opened. I wonder if she doesn’t like sleeping in the dark too? Or I wonder if it was her way of being kind to me?
So I laid down in my bed and I went through a mental checklist. I had already made sure that the door was locked in every possible way, and I checked behind the curtains. We were on the first floor, which is inherently unsafe, but I couldn’t control that. I didn’t check under the beds. I shifted in the bed so I could see under her bed. It was way too low to fit a human being under there. THE CLOSET. I didn’t check the fucking closet. I started panicking. He could be in there right now, waiting for us to fall asleep so that he can rape us by surprise.
I tried to talk to myself in a soothing way. There’s no one in there, Butterfly. There’s no one in the closet. I had such a strong vision of a man hovering over me in bed, breathing on me, me paralyzed with fear. He’s here. He’s waiting for me to relax and lose my attention on him and then he will pounce on me. I can’t. I can’t go to sleep like this, knowing he is in there. I just can’t. I leap out of bed and check the closet. I am breathing heavy and scared, and I hurriedly open the closet door. There’s no one in there, thank G-d.
I walk back to my bed and I see that my friend is staring at me with a WTF expression on her face. I am too tired to make something up. I explain that I have to check the closet or I wouldn’t sleep all night. Her face changes a little bit, but it’s an unreadable expression, and I can’t tell what she thinks. It almost seems to confirm something for her, but I can’t be sure. I don’t care. I am just so grateful that I was able to check the closet and that no one was in there and that I can go to sleep already.
This kind of humiliating shit is why you shouldn’t fuck kids.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anxiety, depression, incest survivor, panic, panic attack, survivor of child sexual abuse, survivor sleep
Last night I was so tired. It was well past midnight and I was so tired and I really wanted to sleep. I laid down in bed and I got so scared. I was thinking “What if there is a man hiding in the closet, waiting for me to fall asleep, and then after I fall asleep he will surprise me and attack me?” My heart started beating rapidly, my eyes flew open, my breathing became irregular. I reminded myself that not only had I already checked the closets, but so did my ex. Then my thoughts went to the same surprise-attack scenario, but involving a home invasion. I looked around the room from my vantage point on the bed; no one was there. I listened carefully; I couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. I reminded myself that I am safe, just like my therapist and I have been working on for years. She says that you have to recognize safety in order to recognize unsafety. I reminded myself that my home has an alarm that goes straight to the cops when tripped. Plus I have a dog that sleeps next to me. I reminded myself of all this, but I was panicking anyway. The reminders of safety were helpful, and I eventually used thought-replacement exercises to get to sleep. I kept my mind busy with thoughts of a beautiful life with my next husband in a beautiful log cabin, etc.
I have really been hating the nights lately. My next contracted jobs don’t start until the fall, so until then my schedule is willy nilly. Since my work was the only thing I’d been doing in my life that gave me any sort of self-esteem (not to mention a regular schedule), I have been sad and I guess a little depressed.
Depression and suicide is all about a mostly false thought process inside a person’s head that tells them (over and over again) that the situation they are in will be the situation they are always in. That things will always be like this. That I will always feel this way. I know it is false, because life changes a lot, and sometimes it happens very quickly. Sometimes it happens slowly, but the point is, something always happens to change a person’s life.
I have been trying to think of ways to make the night easier. Maybe I should take up a hobby, like crocheting or cross-stitching during the night. The panic-sleep thing totally totally sucks. Maybe it’s time to do a meditation, or some sort of positive affirmation before bed.
Remember that time I went away to that conference with my friend, and I got scared of the imaginary man behind the curtains in our hotel room? Writing this blog post about last night, alone in my own bedroom, feels like that. But I figured I should put it in the blog today because the entire point of this blog is to keep a running tally of the many ways that surviving abuse in my childhood has fucked me up in adulthood.
This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. We get completely afraid of being assaulted again, and we find inventive ways to be afraid, and inventive ways to manage those fears. I am 40 years old. It’s been 35 years of survivor sleep. When the fuck does this end??
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: brother-sister incest, father-daughter incest, first kiss, panic, survivor of child sexual abuse
Last night I found myself thinking about my first kiss. I was fifteen, almost 16. I had been kind of dating my friend for a while. I think he felt that at a certain number of dates (3? 4?) that we should be kissing. So on our third or fourth date, we came back to my house, and he leaned in and kissed me. My reaction to this kiss was – not good. I pushed away from him, got up and ran into the bathroom and locked myself in there until he left my house.
He was a nice guy, not a rapist. He thought I was into it, and he kept apologizing. He was so upset. I was so upset. It was a hot mess.
It sure was embarrassing too. At the time, I understood enough to know that my reaction to all of this was weird, but I wasn’t exactly sure WHY I reacted this way. I figured it probably had something to do with my dad or my brother. At that time, I didn’t even know I had a third abuser (the babysitter) – I found out about her like four years later.
It’s been 25 years since my first kiss. I now understand why I reacted that way to such an intimate act. This is what happens when you fuck kids. A beautiful innocent act like our first kiss becomes a complete hot mess because it’s not our first go-round with intimacy. I had already experienced my brother’s head between my legs when I was way younger, but I didn’t want that experience. Even now, the memory of what he did to me – it’s painful.
This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. What should be beautiful and pretty and sweet and innocent – like first boyfriends and first kisses and ‘I like you’ – becomes a whole other thing fraught with rape potential in our heads. We can’t separate who you are with who has already used our bodies. Even though we want you – the ones we have chosen – we can’t figure out if you are like the ones who have already hurt us. The piss is – we want to figure it out. We are just like all the other girls and boys; we too want healthy beautiful romantic tangible love that we can feel with our hands and our hearts. But we can’t get there because of what has already happened to us.
I went to sleep thinking about my first kiss last night. This morning I woke up from a terrible rape dream. That’s why you shouldn’t fuck kids.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bedtime, fear of the dark, motherhood, panic, survivor of child sexual abuse
Tonight my son didn’t want to go to bed. I naturally immediately wondered if he was getting abused at day care. Not wanting to go to bed, having trouble sleeping, peeing the bed – these are all behavioral signs of surviving abuse. My son isn’t having trouble sleeping, but he didn’t want to go to bed.
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.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: babysitter-child sexual abuse, panic, surprise, survivor of child sexual abuse, that fucking ant
Remember when that ant fell on my head and it caused me months of panic and panicked sleep?
The fear of the ant has returned.
I talked about it with the marital therapist during one of our alone sessions last week. I told her that my mom thinks that these fears are my way of coping with life stressors. It has been a very stressful time, with the death of my father-in-law.
So I told her that I am scared that an ant will fall on my head again while I sleep.
She said “Well, what is the nature of the fear, exactly?”
I said “I don’t want things touching me without my permission. And I sure don’t want it happening by surprise.”
She said “So, it’s kind of about control. You don’t want things happening outside of your control.”
I agreed, and she said “Now what else is happening right now that is outside of your control?” She looked at me pointedly. Yes, yes, ha ha, I get it, my father-in-law died and I can’t control whether he gets to live or die. Clever bitch.
Then she said the most ridiculous thing. She said “Who has more power, you or the ant?”
I immediately said “The ant.”
She had the nerve to look surprised. I guess she expected me to say me, as if I have more power than that ant? I don’t understand that at all. Of course the ant has all the fucking power. I am sitting here not sleeping and generally hypervigilant and the ant is walking around happy as a clam. That ant has 100% power over me right now until I figure out how to either be unafraid of the ant, or be okay with something touching me without my permission the way that babysitter touched me without my permission.
Then she tried to get me to understand that I have inherent power, or that I have power over the ant, which of course I do not have at all. I have no idea what the fuck she is talking about, and when I walked out of her office at the end of the session, I thought “Great, sure, let the ant walk on me. Let’s just let anything touch me without my permission now. Ants, babysitters, brothers, fathers, whatever.”
An ant has complete power over me and over the general quality of my life. Just like that babysitter had power over me and my brother, and the quality of our life.
I believe that an ant has more power than me right now. That’s why you shouldn’t fuck kids.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: babysitter-child sexual abuse, fear, panic, survivor of child sexual abuse, therapy
I told the therapist that I have been trouble sleeping at night ever since that session with my mom. I told her that it feels like the babysitter is in the room with us, constantly, and because of it, I am afraid.
The therapist said “Have you tried talking to her yet?”
My reaction to this question was almost violent, not to her, but within myself. I was suddenly terrified. Petrified. I started panicking, right there in the therapist’s office. Tears started streaming down my cheeks, and I frantically looked around. (This right here is why you shouldn’t fuck kids, by the way.)
The therapist said “It’s okay, Butterfly, I’m right here. It’s okay.”
I could hardly speak, and I finally got out these words ‘I – can’t talk to her. She’s – she’s gonna hurt me.”
The therapist said “She’s been in the room with you now a month, ever since that session with your mom. If she wanted to hurt you, she would have done it already. ”
That brought me down from a panicked state into a thoughtful one. And the more I thought about it, the more I felt she’s right. The babysitter in the room with us – she’s been like a presence in the room with me. But she hasn’t come near me, and she hasn’t tried to touch me or anything.
The therapist then said “What do you suppose she is hanging around for? What would you say to her? What do you think she wants to say to you?”
And G-d help me, my immediate thought was that she wants to apologize to me. I’m not sure what to do with that, but the whole line of conversation was pretty helpful. This therapist is all about embracing whatever’s happening. Like how I’m so afraid to kiss my husband – she keeps telling me to embrace it, and hug the little girl inside for protecting me.
If that babysitter is in the room with me, and she hasn’t hurt me yet, then maybe she is there to help me figure some shit out. I hate to use the word ‘help’ with this bitch, because honestly, all of my energy has gone into hating everything about her existence ever since I found out about her. And if she is trying to apologize, then it’s hard to hate her. It’s not that I forgive her, mind you, because I am certainly not there. At all. But an apology is certainly a different place than the one I am coming from, where I continue to ask myself if we were one of many children this woman molested. If we were basically nameless fuck dolls that she used, if she even remembers us. Or if we were a re-enactment of abuse she was experiencing at home.
I wonder if she is trying to apologize, and I am open to at least hearing that apology, I wonder if I will continue to wonder about her and why/how/what she did to us on as regular a basis as I do now.
Filed under: fear, survivor | Tags: fear, panic, perpetrators, Senator Scott Brown, survivor of childhood sexual abuse
Senator Scott Brown (Republican Senator in Massachusetts) has gone public with his survival story. I am sad that this happened to him, but I’m glad he went public with it. As I have said many times, each time one of us goes public and tells our story, all of us win. Each time one of us goes public, we all learn that we are not alone. I think we will also learn that there are more of us survivors than there are perpetrators, and if we could ever form some sort of Universal Group of Survivors – maybe we could stop this shit from happening to other kids from now on.
He had two abusers. Both threatened him into silence. Senator Brown actually said in the interview (which will air this Sunday (February 21st) on CBS) that this will be the first time his mother learns of what happened to him.
I wonder if she will be surprised. She was married to a man that beat her and beat him. This is of course how kids get fucked. First, put them in a home where mom is beaten into submission, or mom doesn’t give a shit what happens to child. Make child feel less than. Set up the situation so that the child is alone. A loner. Make child feel like ‘the other’. Place child in unsafe situations where predators are already on the lookout for ‘otherized’ children. It really is that simple.
One of his sexual abusers was a camp counselor at a religious camp he went to. This counselor told him he’d kill him if he told anyone. His other abuser was an older boy who threatened him with a knife to perform sexual acts. And so Senator Brown stayed silent. Until now.
Senator Brown said, “There were, I knew now, no safe havens, no one I could truly trust, just my legs beneath me, running, riding as far as they could carry me, and the slow motion of my lips, offering up a silent prayer.”
The first thing that all of us fucked kids implicitly understand with the very first improper moment with our perpetrator is that all of our safety is completely gone, and that it never really existed. From the first time we see that look in our perpetrators’ eyes, we understand that ‘safe’ is not a real thing, the way Santa Claus is not real. And from that moment on, it starts us on a terrible trajectory of using fear as a means of trying to protect ourselves from the kinds of horrors we have already experienced. Panic and fear become our constant companion on a terrible journey towards capturing the ever-elusive ‘safety’, which never comes because it’s not real. That is of course why you shouldn’t fuck kids.
There were no safe havens for Senator Brown when he was a child, and for the rest of us victims of child sexual abuse. May we all find our safety now. May Senator Brown use the safety and power he has now to make it safe and powerful for all of us, and for future kids as well. May he use his safety and power to make the abusers afraid, the way we have been afraid all this time. And may that fear stop them from perpetrating evil anymore.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: babysitter sexual abuse, mom, panic, survivor of child sexual abuse, therapy
Because Mom and I live kind of far away from each other, I felt we should get everything out of this session. So I felt we should talk through all the things we haven’t ever talked about. And so I did. I said everything I wanted to say, everything I had been thinking over the years. It was like I purged myself.
During the session, she said something like “Nothing ever happened in front of me” and other types of untrue statements. I mean, she’s right – no sexual abuse ever happened in front of her, but shit, physical abuse did. And plus, she had a complicit role in all that has happened to me, and I felt like we needed to have it out in front of the therapist.
I said “Look, if I am on your resentment list, then at least let me be there for a reason. If you want to resent me for making you feel guilty, then let me tell you some stuff so that I am least justifiably on your list.”
And so I began. I looked at the floor and said “You were in the room sometimes when Dad was physically abusive with us. You were completely dissociated from life, but you were there in the room with us, and sometimes you yelled at me for crying afterwards.”
The therapist said “What do you need from your mom now, Butterfly?”
“Acknowledgement. Acknowledgement that this happened, that she was there, that I am not making this up.”
Mom said “It did happen sweetie, and I am sorry. I acknowledge it happened.”
We were both in tears, but I felt I needed to continue through my list of hurts because we were there in front of the therapist and we only had so much time. So I continued. “You left me alone with Dad and my brother. You left me alone with them, and it was like being left alone in a crazy house. You were out at all hours, and you left me there with two of my abusers alone.”
Mom said “You’re right sweetie. You’re right. I am so sorry.”
Still I continued. “After I told you about Dad, what he did to me, your response was to tell me to cover up. And you went to a doctor for yourself. At no time did you get help for me.”
She said “I was trying to help you, telling you that you didn’t have to hug him so that you understood your own rights in the situation.”
I said “But do you understand the message I received? That I was responsible for receiving or not receiving incestuous sexual abuse by making a choice not to hug him?” (I feel I need to say here – I did refuse to hug him. After Mom told me I didn’t have to hug him, I did refuse. But all that ended up happening was him constantly saying it was his right as a father for me to hug him and I just couldn’t take it anymore, the constant harrassment, and in the end, I did hug him, and that was of course when he took the hug too far and put his head on my breasts and moaned and it was horrible and I pushed away from him and ran upstairs and put on layers of clothing, etc. I’ve written about that before on the blog, but I just want to make it clear here.)
Mom looked truly stunned and said “No, I didn’t realize that. I thought I was empowering you. I am so sorry if the message you received was different.” She was so sincerely stunned, I know she was telling the truth here. Actually, I think what hurts the most out of all of this is that she seemed so sincere and apologetic, and I feel like I was just fucking crucifying her in there. I tried to apologize about it later on, by phone, and Mom said “Stop trying to protect me, sweetie. The therapist explained that you are trying to protect me. I’m your mom and I can handle it. I need to protect you.” (Which of course only made me feel more guilty for being the kind of asshole that crucifies her understanding mother.)
Anyway, so I kept going (in the therapy session). I said “Look, it’s not your fault that my brother molested me. And I am VERY grateful that as soon as I told you about it, all of it stopped. But why were we alone in the first place? We were so young. Why were we allowed to be left alone on our own like that? There should have been a rule that we go to grandma’s after school, so that he never would have had the opportunity to molest me.”
Again, Mom looked stunned. When I said the part about the rule, it was like a lightbulb appeared over her head. She said “A rule. You are so right honey, I should have made a rule about it.” It was so clear to me that she had never thought of it. I totally understand that – she was a young, single mother doing the best she could on welfare at that point.
This is the last of the Scenes from the Session together mini-series. After that session, I was exhausted and just slept for a long time. And cried for a long time, the rest of that day and the next day too. It was painful stuff that we exorcised, and it was hard. Really really hard. And I have been afraid of the babysitter every night ever since. I feel like she is literally there with me at night as I go to sleep, and I wake up several times a night afraid of her too. I don’t understand why this is happening, and I really don’t understand the timing of it. I mean, I did some healing work with my mom right? Why am I experiencing such heightened anxiety of the babysitter now? If anything, shouldn’t I be in a more calm place?
At least with my mom though – I do feel calmer with her, closer to her, better about our relationship. In a way, I feel like I am just getting to know her now. It’s like all the cards are on the table now, and we are starting from an incredibly honest place.
But I am all fucked up, constantly afraid of the babysitter ever since our session. What is happening and why? Every time I go through such a period where I am so intensely afraid of the babysitter, I think to myself that this will be the time when my memory of her magically returns. In my mind, if I have conscious memory, maybe I won’t be so afraid of the ghost of her. But my memory doesn’t return and all I am left with is panic and terror.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Columbine, panic, relaxation exercises, shaking, survivor of child sexual abuse
My husband has been reading this book about the Columbine massacre, and he was telling me about the two kids involved in the shootings (Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold). Apparently, Eric Harris was a psychopath who prided himself on his outstanding abilities to deceive people by making them think he wasn’t a complete psychopath when in fact he was. The huz told me that this is fairly common among psychopaths.
This conversation scared me enough that I began to shake violently. The idea of psychopaths is incredibly frightening to those of us who have been on intimate terms with evil. I cannot make heads or tails of psychopaths – but they seem like evil to me.
The huz told me that psychopaths are unable to feel empathy, and that there is the possibility that their brains are wired differently than the rest of ours. Yet, that trauma conference that I went to last month said that when you traumatize kids, their brains get wired differently too.
Are psychopaths made, or are they born? Are some people born to do evil, or are they formed to do evil?
These questions bring me, always, to sex offenders. If someone’s willing to fuck kids, they are obviously without natural empathy. Some survivors take their experiences and it makes them much better at feeling empathy, since they know what it’s like. Other survivors take their experiences and victimize others, since they know what it’s like.
After the Columbine discussion with the huz, I found myself still shaking an hour later. I tried to do some deep-breathing exercises, and some relaxation exercises, but nothing really worked. I basically shook until I fell asleep for the night.
I’ve been shaking like this for years now. It’s embarrassing, it’s uncontrollable, and it happens in every possible situation. It happens when discussing evil, and it happens when kissing my sweet husband. That’s why you shouldn’t fuck kids. Ordinary shit scares us to the point of uncontrollable shaking.
Reasons You Shouldn't Fuck Kids 