One of the things that has made me very angry over the years is the number of self-proclaimed experts on the psychological impact of abuse. The only way to be even knowledgeable about the sometimes overwhelming effects of this experience is to have been a victim. Not surprisingly I’m angry about what happened to me but I’m also dismayed at the way these events can still cast a shadow over my life. Sometimes it feels as if that brute put his mark on me, a mark that can never be erased and which, at many times in my youth, I genuinely believed was visible to everyone around me.
When I first found the courage to talk about the events in my childhood I was immediately incensed with the number of people who stepped up to tell me how I should feel. No self-appointed expert can possibly understand the sense of shame, dirtiness and revulsion at being forced, under threat of violence, to perform oral sex on a teenager with a very sketchy understanding of personal hygiene, my greatest fear at the time was that I’d be sick on him and get a beating anyway. If you haven’t been forcibly sodomised and made to bleed you really don’t have the right to tell me how I should have felt, all I can say is that I was in a great deal of pain, full of shame and had to sneakily hand-wash my underpants so that my Mother wouldn’t see the blood stains, throwing them away wasn’t an option as she knew exactly how many pairs I had.
Similarly it’s incredibly insulting and patronising to be told that I should be over it by now and that I should move on. The things that we experience as children make a deep impression, unfortunately some of the things I experienced were very bad and the scars may never properly heal, as I’ve said in the introduction to my book In some respects I will always be a victim of sexual abuse.
There are no straightforward answers to these issues and I would not have the arrogance to tell fellow travellers on this road how they should feel, all I can do is offer what so many of you have given me support, love and the knowledge that you’re not alone.
Love
OMFG! Why do they even believe they know what it was like for you? Even if they had of suffered thru sexual abuse as a child of your age, in almost exactly the same kind of circumstances? It still would be different, because we bring to the abuse our snowflake different selves. I hate, hate, hate the all knowing people! And to be told that you should be over it, or get over it already, is the same as being told that what happened to you wasnt important!
Been there, had that happen to me as well, and it never gets any easier having someone say that to you does it? Know that you and only you understand what marks it left on your soul, and you are the one who has to deal with the dirty leftovers, not them never them.
No, it never goes away and it’s never over. I really hate being told how I should feel. It’s like the people who tell young gays that they shoul djust come out and stop living a lie. It sounds a lot easier than it is.
It’s like those people who say “I understand.” Because they don’t; they can’t. Every child who suffers abuse of ANY kind reacts to it differently; feels differently; works through it differently. And any self-respecting therapist or counselor should know that.
That’s the point really isn’t it, Bob? There are no rules for this stuff
You have put it very well. I find the mind for what appears to be no rhyme or reason will take me to “a dark place” which I really don’t want to be anymore. The mind slides around in that place, unable to get traction to leave it.
It is different for each.
Best wishes, be happy, be well, be safe.
Scottie
It’s so easy to get trapped isn’t it? It’s like waking from a dream and finding that you’re still dreaming, ever decreasing circles.
All the best
Mac