Part I: Surviving Sexual Abuse
Up until a few months ago, I would have never dreamed of creating a page like this because until then, I thought I had it all together and nothing could touch my world.
Things have been good for most of my 20 years, even though there has always that ugly little secret of being sexually abused by my grandfather when I was five and by my cousin when I was ten. I've spent most of my life telling my self it wasn't important.
"So what, it happened. That's life. It's in the past. It doesn't affect you."
"What happened to you wasn't as bad as what has happened to most people who have been abused. Consider yourself lucky and move on."
Yet, it was always there - the images on continuous loop in my head. Sometimes I was lucky enough to forget them for a while, but most of the time the events went through my head 24/7.
When I was seventeen, I went to a youth evangelism conference. The focus seemed to be about forgiveness, and I realized I was holding a lot of grudges in my heart. My grandfather had done many things to hurt my family, and I was angry with him for all of it. I felt convicted that it was time for me to let it all go - forgive and FORGET.
With all of this in mind, I went to him with my youth minister and told him how much he had hurt my family. He said he was sorry, and I told him he was forgiven. I never mentioned what he had done to me, but I thought that I could relinquish the anger this way. It would all be ok, and I would finally be at peace. I didn't realize at the time how naive I really was...
The next summer I began to have "flashbacks" again. The pictures played every moment of my waking hours. My days and weeks were filled with it. I could not get away from it. I didn't know what to do.
I went to the youth evangelism conference again. This time the focus was on abuse. It was at this time that I learned that several people in my group had backgrounds of abuse. Everywhere I turned I was faced with it. I thought, "God put that in my mind for a reason. He has a purpose for me here." For the first time, I told part of my story. I told a couple of people in my youth group, and I told my class at the conference. In doing this, I found that abuse was much more common than I had ever dreamed. I was not alone, this gave me comfort. When I got back home that summer I thought that I had finally received healing.
I was ok for a few months. Then I met someone at college and became good friends with them. Over time, they began to have lots of questions like: "Why don't you like to be hugged or touched? Why don't you like your family? What is your problem with being close to people? Why are you so afraid of a getting into a serious relationship?"
These questions forced me to realize that I could not hide from the abuse any more. It wasn't just something in the past. It was very present and very real because I carried it with me though life. My thought, feelings, and actions had all been shaped by abuse. Having to deal with this realization upset me. I didn't know what to do.
I finally told my friend about the abuse. I felt I needed to explain the things he had questioned. After telling him a little about my experience, I felt better. It was a release. Once again I felt that I could go on and never look back.
I spent the next 2 years telling my story over and over again. I would tell someone - usually someone that I hadn't known for very long - for one of two reasons:
1) They usually asked the same questions that my friend had - and I felt I needed to explain it to them so they could understand me.
2) I felt as though I couldn't talk to anyone I had already told. I didn't want to burden them. My reasoning was, "I know that talking about it had to be uncomfortable for them, so why put them through it again?"
After I told someone, I would have a sense of peace - for a little while. However, over the last few years, the anger has been building up beneath the surface. Every time I would think of my grandfather or go by his house, my mind was consumed with thoughts dark thoughts, "I hate him. I wish he was dead. I would be so happy if I could look in the newspaper tomorrow and see his name in the obituaries."
Not only was my hatred for my grandfather growing, but I also began to hate my grandmother and my family. I began to resent my grandmother for not protecting me in some way. She had been in the next room when my grandfather molested me. She had to have known. I never said anything though because there had been times when my grandfather had grabbed me and held me. When I told her, her response was, "If you don't like what he does, don't go over there to him." I knew it wasn't my fault. I hadn't done anything wrong, but why tell someone who does not care?
I have had so many questions...How could she have not said something? How could she not tell someone? No one would have told. My biggest question has been...How could she do that to me and still expect to have the right to be a part of my life? She always wants to know about my life - but she gave up that right the second she chose to let my life be shattered...didn't she?
I haven't been able to confront her with any of this though. She has had a history of being mentally unstable, so I have had to hold it all and just hate her more with each passing day.
My family...who is that? This has been another feeling that I just could not let go. I began to dislike my family. I didn't want to have anything to do with them. I even hated my mother, father, and brother. I guess somewhere deep down my view was that family is supposed to be made up of people that you trust and people who would never hurt you like that. Grandparents are people who are supposed to love you, sometimes even more than your parents do, and you are supposed to have a special bond with them. This view was shattered. The only thing that the people who were supposed to love me did was hurt me. I didn't want to be associated with something like that. So I chose to have my friends as my family and my family as strangers.
Around Thanskgiving of this last year, these feelings were becoming stronger with every day. I didn't want to be a part of the "family" dinner. These people were stangers, and I had never been too comfortable about being stuck with a bunch of people I don't know and with whom I have nothing in common. I was looking for a way out, hoping I would get sick, when I realized that I am sick every year around the holidays. I always thought it was because people just get sick during winter. However, now I wonder if it had more to do with not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings while I held in the awful truth.
I was telling a friend how much I dreaded the family dinners, and he started asking the same questions as everyone else always does about my family....Why do I hate them so much? What have they done? His questions were no different from every other one I had ever heard, but this time it felt different. I finally blew up. All of the things that I had been holding in came tumbling out. There was so much anger in my heart.
After we discussed it I thought that the episode had just been another one of my releases. However, something was wrong. I didn't get calm. My feelings of frustration were not going away.
I've always said that my heart has a little trap door at the bottom. Once I open the locks and pull it up, there's a vault full of filing cabinets. Each cabinet has folders and everything is put away neatly. Everything has it's place. It was like I had gone down, opened the file and taken all the papers out to look at them, but I got upset, and the papers got strewn all over the room. When I went to pick them up and put them back they would no longer fit in the file...and the file wouldn't fit back in it's place...it was too big.
Never in my life had I been so distraught. All my life I have been taught that I am supposed to love everyone. I was always told that I wasn't supposed to hate anyone. I was a sensitive child, so I lived by that rule. I had never truly hated anyone. Yet here was this emotion that was so intense and vile. I hated my grandfather...my grandmother...my cousin...my family. I had so many emotions going through my heart... thoughts in my mind, and I didn't know what to do with any of them. I was lost.
About a month later, the failure of a close relationship brought me to the breaking point. For the first time in my life I no longer felt that life was worth living. Nothing was important...I had no place. I even contemplated suicide, but I was afraid I would live through it and end up in worse shape than where I started. One of my best friends was going through the same thing, and somehow he got through. With his help, I came out of my depression, and decided it was time to seek help.
I had to do something, but I didn't know who to talk to or what to do. My friend told me that I needed to start talking about the abuse, or I would never be able to deal with it. He said that I needed to tell my mother about it so that I could let go of the responsibility of keeping it to myself. That was something I was terrified to do. I was worried that she wouldn't want to talk about it, or even worse, my grandfather would have tried to do that to her, and she had never dealt with it. I didn't want her to freak out on me too.
I tried talking things out with my friends, but it was not helping much because they had said everything that they could. There was nothing else that they could do other than listen and be there for me.
Finally, I decided to speak with my pastor. I went to meet a friend who would be going with me, and on the way there I had so many feelings and thoughts that I overloaded. I was driving down the road, but that was all I was doing. I couldn't think about it or feel anything. I was numb. The following words from "Lift It Up" by Sierra express how I felt.
Here I am again
I've been here before
I thought I could handle anything
But I don't anymore
When I spoke with my pastor, he agreed that I should tell my mother. So we made plans to tell her together the next week. In the meantime, I made plans to talk with my closest friends and tell them what was going on. I felt that I needed to tell the people whom I considered close before I told anyone else. When I did, I discovered that out of my four closest friends, three had suffered at least one type of abuse, if not more. Telling my friends once again helped me to understand that I was not alone. When I told my mother, she took it rather well. She said it explained a lot of things, like the changes in my personality during my childhood. She also told me she was not surprised because my grandfather had sexually abused my younger cousin too. My family had used that as leverage against him after he threatened to kill my grandmother for filing for divorce. She also told me that he had tried to abuse her as a child, but she had tried to rationalize it as delirium from an illness he had at the time.
With all this said and done, I spoke with my pastor again and requested that he recommend me for a counseling program. I began attending sessions a week or two later.
Counseling has helped me a great deal, but I am still not dealing with things the way I should. I go to the sessions and we have in depth discussions. I feel that I am accomplishing something. I am getting better at dealing with things, but only because my mind is coping, not because I am learning how. I don't think about any of it between sessions. It's like there are two different worlds, my sessions and my life. The moment I walk out the door, I forget everything that went on. I went to a session three days ago, and I could not tell you what we talked about if I tried.
Now for the part where I tell why I need to create this page. I feel that I am healing - but not because I try to. I know that there are sub-conscious processes that I am going through, and that they are making a difference. However, I feel that I need to heal as a whole, not just my mind, but my heart, soul, and body too. I have realized that I must take an active role in my healing to accomplish that. So I decided to write my story. In doing so I will accomplish three things that are part of the healing process - remembering, understanding, and telling. I also hope that my story can help someone else who doesn't quite know what is going on or how to deal with it. Resources for healing the sexually abused are hard to find on the net, and I don't want someone else to feel as hopeless as I did when I first started my search. I want to be able to give people a way to find what they need without having to spend all of their time searching for answers and not finding them.
I hope that this page is of some help. Thank you for letting me share my story. It's another step in my healing process. :o)
Love,
Kylee
P.S. I'd also like to say thank you to Slimy, Oscar, and Cookie...(you know who you are *smile*) None of this would have happened without you (*grin* should I really be thanking you for that?? *grin*). Each one of you has special part in my healing process. I love you guys. Thanks for being there for me.