Slowly, I’ve been reading Lucky by Alice Sebold. I just got past the part where she feels the urge to tell someone, anyone, that she was raped, and not just beaten. I feel the same urge. I’ve talked about my experience a little, but I’ve never gone into detail.
When I was a baby, my parents split apart.
When I was 3, my dad met another woman. She had a son a little younger than me.
When I was 5, they had a baby. When I was 5, I was molested. I remember fragments. I don’t remember the actual events (it definitely happened more than once), but I remember other things. For a long time, everything was repressed inside. I don’t remember how old I was when I started remembering things. I think I was 17. Not sure.
Anyway. I remember a few snapshots now. At first, to hide, I wedged myself in between my mattress and the wall. Well, children learn. That didn’t work. I hid under my bed. I hid in the closet. Finally, I slept in the closet, in the corner, with lots of noisy, plastic toys piled up and around me. Well, when everyone’s in the living room drinking booze and shooting heroin, it’s pretty tough to hear anything anyway. This is why I have such aversion to any drug, even pot. I blame heroin for my bad childhood.
I had a nightmare once. I was laying in bed, and it was dark in my room, night. There was a dark, mahogany box hovering above my head, and a scroll. It rolled itself up and put itself in the box. The box disappeared when my door opened. The light was on in the hallway, and a man’s silhouette filled the door frame. He came into my room and closed the door so just a sliver of light shone in. He came close to me, then the dream ended. I was terrified.
Anyway, I know he made me do things with his penis. I have memories that I refuse to share. I know what happened wasn’t my fault, I didn’t know any better. They still make me ashamed. A few years ago, I tried having a relationship with a man for the first time. No matter how much alcohol I drank, I could not bring myself to have sex with him. I had to be completely blitzed to even let him touch me. I couldn’t touch his penis. I couldn’t kiss him. If this had never happened to me, I would be bisexual, and not a lesbian. This is not to say that if this had not happened to I would not be gay at all, because I love women. I love their bodies, I love their smoothness. What I’m saying is, I could probably have had relationships with men too.
When I was a child, my dad and my grandmother (his mother) brought me to a psychologist. I remember his office being huge. Maybe it was huge because I was so small. The walls were covered wall to wall and ceiling to ceiling with books. There was toys on the floor that I was playing with. The psychiatrist brought out a book. A childrens book. The main character was a child, a little girl, playing on the beach in a bathing suit. I remember she looked like Piglet because her bathing suit was pink stripes. The book was about people touching her in inappropriate places. I remember him reading to me, and it made me very uncomfortable. I wanted to keep playing my toys. I didn’t want to listen.
What makes a little girl, with bright and shining eyes
become so sad?
What haunts her so?
No child should have this look in their eyes.
The psychiatrist said, “Crystal, has anyone ever touched you in these places?”
I remember thinking I can’t say anything because he said so. I was afraid. I just wanted to go home.
I can’t remember the answer. I think I said no. If I had said yes, would my life be different? People who have never been through a childhood trauma say I need to move on and put it past me. What they don’t understand is that it haunts, every day. The effects of this are with me in almost everything I do.
I have to sleep in complete darkness. In the darkness, I can hide. Sometimes even the glow from my stereo is too much. I have to have the door closed at all times, no matter what door it is. I begin to have a panic attack if a door is left open. I used to have terrible nightmares. Have you ever had a nightmare that you can’t remember? You wake up, and all you can remember is black. And your heart is beating too fast, you’re sweating, you can’t breathe. You. Are. Terrified. Of what? It used to happen to me every night. Now, I have nightmares only once in a while.
I have a sixth sense. I can sense a presence. What I mean is, even if I’m dead asleep, in REM, I instantly wake up if someone or even an animal enters my room. Because of this, I scare easily. If someone comes up behind me and I don’t realize they are there, I jump a mile and my heart goes into my throat. Sometimes people do it on purpose because they think it’s funny, and I try to laugh it off, but it really does scare me.
So you think it’s so easy leaving the past behind me?
I still can’t remember the answer.
How the hell do you know that about someone??
