Why Don’t Sexual Abuse Survivors Talk About What Happened?

I think I used to wonder this whenever I went to yet another survivor meeting. It’s like, we all knew why we were there, but no one ever dared to say what exactly happened. We knew we’d been sexually abused but we never shared the abuse stories.

And this is understandable in a way, for many it’s too painful, embarrassing, they’re ashamed even when in the company of survivors. It’s like an unwritten rule that many horrid unspeakable sexual acts were done to us, but we’ll never say out loud what.

I also know that I haven’t talked about it here much if at all. But I now think it kind of is important, not for the sickness factor (“oh, look what happened to me! Disgusting, right?? I bet y’all can’t top this!”) but for our own sake. Why should we remain quiet? Also, sometimes when I go on other people’s blogs I often wonder what happened to them, but people generally don’t talk about it. Only those who’ve been through really, really horrid unthinkable abuse speak about it. A Piece of Cake and The Sum of My Parts come to mind as examples.

The rest of us with the “routine” (excuse my terrible usage of words here) abuse; the touching, the kissing, the lewd speak, the masturbation in front of us…you know, the stuff that’s absolutely fucking detrimental to a human being, but isn’t “horrific” enough to be life threatening, doesn’t leave visible scars and broken bones…That’s the kind of abuse no one talks about.

Well, you know what, it happened to me. I was sexually abused by my father from early childhood to when my parents divorced at around 9 or 10, and it never left anything physical on my body. I am really having a hard time remembering what happened – I repressed all of my childhood until about 9 years ago when I had a flashback into the abuse and I “remembered”, after which a shitty ass fucking doctor put me on antidepressants and the flashbacks stopped, and until I started Trauma Therapy, I didn’t remember anything new – but I have always been pretty sure that I was a “virgin” (as in intact hymen) until I voluntarily lost it at 17 to a German exchange student. So nothing “really bad” happened to me.

Yet, I feel like it was bad. Just yesterday I remembered more and more about an incident that happened in a sauna (in Finland, everyone has a sauna inside their apartments, so we also had one in our two-bed place) where he touched my vagina while he masturbated (I was all sorts of fucked up yesterday when I remembered).

So I know pretty much that my father talked dirty to me, he masturbated and spent time naked in front of me, he kissed me and inappropriately touched me with his hands and mouth in and around my vagina and chest area, and I have a feeling something was also at some point inserted into me but I don’t remember when and what.

So that’s the abuse I endured and survived.

That’s it, just wanted to get that out of my chest. Have a beautiful weekend. I hope no one was triggered by this by the way!!!

M

My father, the abuser

I have never really posted about my father, which I guess is a bit odd considering he is the sole reason I ever started this blog!

He is the one person who has fucked up my life more than anyone else, and I think it is about time to reveal more about my past and him than I ever have before.

My dad was 41 when I was born in a little town in Finland. He came from a dysfunctional family of an alcoholic father and a strict mother, both of whom were quite old when he was born, I think (all of this comes from things that I have picked up from different sources along the way so not always quite sure what’s what, when it comes to his life) and he had lived a life of poverty. He had quit school young and his first job was to deliver ice cream from the factory to the stores, and I still remember his stories of rapidly melting ice cream which he and his friends ate as they couldn’t deliver already-melted stuff to the stores.

I remember stories of him working as an ambulance driver (somehow he once had assisted an amputation which he always told in all it’s gory details), a baker at a bread factory, and other random various jobs, until he became a fire fighter.

He had married a lady and had two daughters at some point in the seventies. One summer day they were driving on a highway when a bug had landed on his shoulder. He was sitting on the front passenger seat and the daughter behind him had started screaming and the mom who was driving turned her attention from the wheel to slap the bug off, when the car veered towards the oncoming traffic and hit a truck.

The mom and one daughter died on the spot, my dad and the other daughter was airlifted to a hospital where the daughter also died days later.

My father was the sole survivor of the crash that was caused by a bug on his shoulder.

Not too many years after he met my mom and within six months of meeting each other they were married.

First came my brother and a year later, me.

The only remnant of his previous life was one picture of his smiling young daughters, my half-siblings, who’d tragically died yet whom we were never allowed to talk about. I remember the picture, but it’s significance never really was revealed to me – it was just two girls who now were dead, but to me they didn’t mean anything.

I adored my dad. LOVED him. I was Daddy’s Girl, and he paid a lot of attention to me, at the expense of ignoring my brother. I remember him brushing my hair (I still like it when a guy touches my hair. It feels…comforting. Familiar. A bit sad and painful, but mostly comforting), giving me pocket money to go buy candy from the corner store, how he liked Snickers candy bars and how he gave me chocolate covered Digestives after I’d first had braces fitted and I was in pain and miserable.

I don’t remember when the abuse started. I don’t know why he did it, I don’t know if he enjoyed it, or if he knew I didn’t. I don’t know if it started after he had meningitis which forced him to stop working as he couldn’t climb heights anymore and hence was useless as a fire fighter, or after they started arguing with my mom on a daily basis, or …if he’d always done it?

I forgot about my childhood for years. My early years were a complete black hole, no memories. I was 19 when I bumped into a girl who’d lived in the same apartment block as me and after a little chit chat she said my dad had abused her and how she’s always wondered what had happened to me.

It came as a shock, of course I hadn’t been abused! My dad loved me! My dad babied me and bought me things and paid me attention. I negated her crazy ideas and never saw her again.

It wasn’t until I was in bed with a college housemate seven years ago, making out with him in the dark, when a flashback came out the blue. A random thought entered my mind as he was kissing me whilst his hand was exploring its way down towards my private area…”yet another man is taking advantage of me” I thought.

I started crying, and the image came to my head. An image of a young me in my bunk bed, staring widely with wide eyes at the ceiling whilst a black image next to me had its hand in my underwear.

It was as if I was looking down at this person, but I knew it was me, yet I wasn’t attached to her. It felt like I was watching someone else, looking at a still picture. It wasn’t even a movie, just an image full of horror, shock and pain.

And I knew it was my dad.

I cried. He asked me what he’d done wrong, and I said I think I was sexually abused by my father when I was a child. I was in shock, unable to process this horror.

The time after that is a blur. I cried, was upset and didnt sleep ever again in that bed, I craved my housemate’s attention, was sexually pushy towards him to test whether he also just liked me for sex (we didn’t sleep with each other which is good, I think I probably would have killed myself afterwards as it would have just been so wrong on so many levels) and for me being a woman, I drank, walked around aimlessly, and eventually at the encouragement of my friends, went to see a doctor.

I blurted out to her that I’d remembered being abused, cried, and she calmly prescribed antidepressants and told me it would be okay.

I received really horribly shitty responses from people around me and I am now really angry about it, but there were some really good people around me too. The guy who I had been with turned out to be my best best best friend for the years to come and unfortunately due to other issues and drama, we are not friends anymore, but he really and truly saved my life.

I owe my life to him. He was the first man to show me I wasn’t just worth my pussy and womanhood, but that as a man he respected me just as a person, not a vagina.

I had gotten one other flashback, and then as the meds took over, I stopped remembering.

For years I didn’t remember. Then when I was with my ex-boyfriend I started remembering again. Mostly the memories would come right after sex, and although it was fucked up, I enjoyed having sex knowing it would elicit those disgusting memories as I craved to know more…I have felt like I’d never be whole until I fully remembered…

I have now come to a point where I think I will never remember. I would have, if it was meant to happen.

My mind is protecting me. I have no idea really what happened, but I know I have sucked dick and fingers have been inside of me and there has been invasion of personal physical intimate space and I have been talked to sexually, but that’s about it.

I’m pretty sure I was a virgin when I naively lost it to a guy at sixteen. I bled. So I must have had my hymen intact, right?

Years of poor mental health ensued. I always attributed my self esteem issues, depression, hopelessness, crazy weird thoughts, eating disorder, OCD, and all that, to the horrible atmosphere at home and my dad’s tendency to physically abuse my mother in front of us, but who would have known it was worse than that….?

But it’s a pretty open book now, my life. I attribute my depression, anxiety, borderline, all these mental health issues, straight back to the abuse, but also to the domestic violence, bullying at school, terrible teachers and the surrounding community.

I hope to really get into writing my story into a book. It has been a journey! From that night when I was about six years old, wearing pink my little pony pyjamas in my little bunk bed while being groped by my own father to living a beautiful life where I have real friends, I have an education, I have travelled and experienced the beauty of this planet.

The pain continues. The fucked up confusing feelings of loving someone who I also hate gets overwhelming. I carry with me the blueprint of how to behave with men, and what I’m worth, from my childhood. I an hopeless, confused, anxious, and have completely lost the knowledge of who i am. I sometimes fly outside of my body and look down on myself as if I was a different person, and it feels surreal to not really…be. Exist. Feel what’s real and what’s not.

But I manage. I am a very expressive person with a big hearty personality, and although I have been embarrassed of that before, I now try to love it. It was my way of coping, making a fool out of myself, or making a scene, just to make people notice me, to make me feel like I existed or mattered, and made people laugh for them to like me.

I carry that with me to today, and I just pray and hope one day I can use it as a real skill. To make a living from a coping mechanism would really make me feel like it was worth it, surviving the abuse that is. From the nights of wishing I was dead and planning my funeral at the age of nine to flourishing in this world would mean…the world, to me.

Good night ladies and gents, and I hope that it wasn’t too graphic. I just have to be honest, with myself and with you.

Xxx

I Did Love My Dad

Anyone who has read any of the posts I have previously written might be surprised by the title. Yet it conveys something that I have just recently discovered while working on my healing, and I must say that this is probably the hardest and most painful thing that I have had to deal with….

Never mind that four years ago I remembered being abused.

Regardless that my whole life I have suffered from different types of mental and physical problems including major depressive disorder, anorexia, and bodily problems relating to horrible bone structures.

Not to mention that I very recently actually remembered being raped in my childhood, as well as in my early twenties.

No, none of these struggles come even close to what has dawned on me just a few days ago. And that is that I did love my father. This realization is a crucial part of healing, but at the same time it’s crushingly painful ~ how can I possibly have loved someone who hurt me so badly and because of whom my whole life has been a mess??

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I grew up as a Daddy’s Girl. I have been told by many relatives how I always clung onto my dad when I was a child, and how I adored him and he adored me. As my memories of my forgotten childhood start coming back, I start getting images of my dad giving me money after school to go get candy from the corner store, how he had an orange Volkswagen van which he used to drive us around in, and how he brought me gifts from trips abroad. I thought my dad was great, and so when my parents divorced, I was crushed.

My relationship with him deteriorated, and at one point I stopped seeing him. I then moved abroad and cut all contact, as somewhere along the line I had started hating him and being really uncomfortable around him. He did start contacting me about 5 years ago via email as I was studying in another country, and I remember thinking that I should be nice to him because guaranteed, he might give me money for my studies.

When I had the first flashback, suddenly the image shattered; granted, I had not liked my dad for quite a few years by then, but to realize what he had done to me was excruciatingly painful. It made me hate him with a vengeance, and I even wrote him a letter where I wished him to end up in hell.

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Four years of hating, and the inner child is starting to come out, yearning for Daddy. The little girl who misses her father, and wants that figure to hold him, to brush her hair like he used to when she was small, and tickle her face with his stubble.

His smile and his exclusive adoration towards her were magnetic and made her feel beautiful and loved. Yet it shall never be real; his love and his touch turned out to be selfish and done out of need for gratification and for feeling he had the power. His hands were hands of a sick sick man who until today has not suffered for what he did to me.

As I write this my smile turns to an angry frown, and hatred creeps into my soul. And this is exactly what is the most fucked up thing in the whole world, and which I have to deal with for the rest of my life; How can someone who made you and who cut your umbilical cord, abuse and hurt you?

My boyfriend said he was confused because one day I say I hate my father and want him dead, and the next day I’d be sobbing and crying about the fact that I don’t have a father and how I am sad that he doesn’t care about me. Again, people who are not survivors will never understand the never-ending dilemmas that rule our existence – for only survivors can truly love and hate, and hate and love, the same person.

It is fucked up, it is confusing, and the mental splitting that you have to go through growing up as a survivor of incest is honestly the hardest thing a human being can do.

But..I shall survive. One day I shall be at peace with the fact that I loved a man who one moment made ponytails in my hair with pink ribbons and gave me money for candy would the next moment rape me. And this is what I have to live with.

LittleGirl x x x