Ten Years Later

Life ten years later is a strange place that at one time, you thought you might never arrive at. You don't think about it every day, and it no longer defines your existence. At least, you try not to let it, and try not to think about the ways it has. You are a survivor, you are now strong, and free. That is, until you hear or see something which triggers a memory, and you are suddenly transported into the body and mind of a twelve-year-old girl; vulnerable, confused, and full of shame. One day, you thought you were beyond this, and healed enough to never revisit this place, but now you can taste the dry, metallic fear in your mouth, and feel the weight that drags your feet down as they retrace the steps of your nightmares.

This place you revisit is a hollow core, deep within you, potent with emotions and events that overwhelmed you then, and threaten to do so now. A child is an emotionally sensitive thing, and you were even more so than some. The fragility of the web that held you together then was torn and gaping holes ripped into its fabric. Now you've rebuilt, but parts are still weaker, and not resilient enough to face this return visit. Somewhere within you, that shattered child lives on, as if a piece of you is frozen in that moment, still begging to be rescued, and accusing you for having the audacity to move on; for leaving it there to face the monsters alone. But going back to that child is so difficult. Looking her in the eyes, you instantly are her again, and can identify with the searing pain that has left her there, frozen and unable to escape entirely.

Yet life ten years later is strange. It plays tricks on you. While you can feel that child's emotions so sharply, you cannot clearly remember all of the events that incited them. Part of you is relieved, and part is angry. Something was robbed, something left you in this position, and you cannot even recall some of the exact circumstances. Even the memory which you fool yourself into thinking would help you make sense of it all, understand, is slowly eroding. However, it is natural, in a way. You were just twelve, and it has been ten years. In fact, any other memories from that time have been driven away by the more traumatic ones, and it is that one incident that did, at one time define you, and much as you may refuse to allow it to do so now.

Then, you did not think, "I am a survivor of sexual abuse." You were given other titles for it; adulteress, dirty, tainted, scarred, damaged beyond repair, home wrecker, liar, and hypocrite. You wore the titles, because you had no framework from which to process or understand what had happened. You felt the filth of your actions clinging to you; felt each stroke of his hand destroying your value. You felt shame and guilt that made you reject your own humanity and wish for death. You took the blame, the sickened rage in your mother's eyes, your father's beating and demand of repentance, the rejection and disgust of siblings who knew no better, a church that claimed to represent God, and saw in a victim a disobedient whore. You watched your sister suffer from your actions, and her own innocence, and felt the weight of the guilt and an inability to protect her. You believed you had destroyed the lives of the wife and daughter you didn't even know he had, and furthermore, perhaps his own when his sisters came to you and said that he was threatening to take his life if you did not go to him, and you did not. You took the furious, lashing accusations from his wife that your parents encouraged, and held yourself responsible. You believed you had broken the law, because you were told so, and never knew the law was meant to prosecute him and protect you, because no policeman was ever called. You didn't try to see friends, although it was forbidden anyway, because you felt years older than them, and so much dirtier. You lived in fear, when you did start seeing them again, that they would find out just how wicked and repulsive you really were, and reject you, too. You even accepted God himself turning his eyes and love from you in horror and rage, and accepted the burden of earning his favor back.

In fact, the consequences of your parents finding out destroyed any shreds of childhood innocence that had survived the abuse, because you accepted the full weight of responsibility for the injustice of a crime committed against you. There never really was time until years later to process being lied to by a man twice your age, of living in fear of him, and horrible guilt of your actions, but still choosing to go to him, because at least he said he loved you, and you just wanted so desperately to be loved, and valued by someone. Because while you struggled with feeling rejected by your father, and afraid of him, at least this man offered what felt like love with the fear of what you could not understand. It was not until years later you could wonder what it does to a sexually unaware child to have things like a first kiss stolen, when you do not know how to kiss back, and only take the kisses standing still and trying to keep your balance. What it does to accept dreaded touches all over your body, because you know it will make him happy, and someday, it will be OK, because he will marry you. What it does when he tries to rape you in a drunken episode, and you don't understand sex enough to avoid being worried about getting pregnant, or terrified for years of having an STD. What it's like to live in constant anxiety for years to come that he will hurt your family, and it will be your fault, or snatch you up and take you to Mexico where "no one will ever find us" like he pledged. What it means to believe that you have committed adultery, and will be second-rate goods for any future husband.

Then it was all your fault, and you never questioned this. Years of knowing your own wickedness, and worthlessness, of drowning in unbelievable shame that made you loathe yourself robbed you of much of the good that could have been in the following years. It was not until four years later that you were able to talk about it with someone; professionals in a hospital, where you ended up because of the overwhelming depression, much of it stemming from this incident. Talking about it was like trying to resurrect someone from the dead, because your family only vaguely referenced it once or twice to remind you of your depravity following those first months which were saturated with lectures, and calls for repentance. Embarrassment and shame threatened to drown you, as you tried to relate what had happened, because deep down, you still took the blame. Although it shouldn't have really mattered that much, it someone seemed as if your whole self worth, or excuse for being alive, depended on whether or not you were responsible for this catostrophic event. You had learned to think about it in such twisted ways, by trying to cope with it yourself, and it was what defined you; it was the major event of your life, the turning point, the moment in time you thought of for years after as when you died inside. Even then, you told yourself internally, "I'm dead inside; I'm not alive anymore, it's just my body here dealing with this." It was the only way you could survive.

Ten years later is a strange place to be. You know so much better than to think and believe everything you did then, but sometimes, you are taken back to that place and mentality against your will. You shrivel up inside, and feel shame to write something like this, because for years you could not even talk about it, and even now, do not know how to reference it. Saying "when I was sexually abused" sounds too weighty, and at the same time, too understated. Mostly, you call it, "That thing that happened when I was twelve" because shame dies hard. People don't just bring up things like sexual abuse; it is a looming skeleton in the closet, and you feel worry about people's reaction when you act as if the shame does not exist, and refuse to be silent. You will not be silent. You will not give it that power, or him that control over your life. It is not a dirty secret, it is something that happens to billions of women, and often much worse than what you experienced, and you will not allow people to look away because it is uncomfortable. Because you will not let anyone, ever again, make you feel worthless because you were taken advantage of.

How do you survive, to ten years later, when there are moments so dark that you wish he had just killed you, instead of leaving you breathing, while his crime and everyone else's reactions to it destroyed your life? All kinds of things, you think, would have made it better. Counseling after, or justice from the law would have provided some kind of vindication. Sometimes you wish desperately that he had been prosecuted, as if somehow, this could have righted the wrong. At least it may have let other people know that he was a danger, and prevented some other little girl from being victimized.

Yet the years for the law intervening have passed. Your father still holds you to blame, although your mother somewhat, and your siblings entirely have come to realize the truth of what happened, which as children, they could not have. Your sister still visited part of the nightmare which you did, and like yourself, her ten-year-old innocence cannot be redone. He may have hurt one, or several other little girls, and gotten away with it. His own daughter, now eleven, is most likely growing up without a father, and his wife must still live with the pain of that separation.

So ten years later, in this strange place, how did you get here, and how do you keep going on the days when the paralyzing Past breathes down on you like a living entity from the pits of Hell?In the darkness, when you cry, there is one comfort that surrounds you like a blanket, and that is the love of your Heavenly Father, who did not blame you, or hold out his favor in anger from you as you once believed, but instead must have wept for your pain, and felt anger at the injustice. When you feel utterly alone, like no one in the world can understand the agony that can still surround you, or the road you have walked down, you know Jesus knows the cause of every hurt, and the depth of every one of the tide of emotions that threatens to drown you. You know that while you do not understand why you had to walk down that road, he walked with you, and it was the work of sin and human depravity that caused those events; not his punishment, or rejection. Your own culpability no longer matters, because His forgiveness is complete, and offered even to the man who wronged you, and to those who stood to accuse and reject you. He was accused and rejected, and he, if anyone, knows the pain of that rejection. It is He, with his scarred hands, who holds that crying, wounded little girl, and has never, ever, for one second, let her go.