Me, too, 9-28-2018

I have been almost paralyzed this week.  Paralyzed by memories.  Memories of being 11 years old and my body developing sooner than most of my friends.  With the onset of menses the spring of 1956 by the fall of 1957 I had begun wearing bras.  On this particular day I was wearing a corduroy jumper dress with a long sleeved blouse.  This outfit had been made by my Mom.  It was the '50s so my skirt was well below my knees.  Walking down the hall I was surrounded by about 3 boys.  The held me and managed to unfasten my bra through all that material.  I was embarrassed and bewildered.  While the boys had paid attention to me it was not in a way I liked.  I did not tell anyone and I do not know why.

In the guise of 'teaching the facts of life' my father molested me from the time Mom went to work in 1958 till I left home in July of 1965.  Not gonna give any more of the details.  During an overnight visit to a friends home I was awakened by a man fondling my breasts and touching me.  He constantly said it was ok just do not make a noise.  A later to my parents home he raped me.  Whispering, "I'm fixed do you will not get pregnant.  Now keep quite."

Again, I did as told.  I never fought.  But the 61 years since the beginning of the incidents has been filled with self loathing.  Decades were filled with nightmares, suicidal thoughts and threats.  Of course there was so much therapy.  In 2002 I was diagnosed with PTSD and treated with a reprocessing of the scenes.  I would give the details of the events.  A therapy treatment of eye movement and relaxation and then I would recite the details.  Only this time I would yell or do what ever I wished I had done at the time of the incident.

And then the uproar over Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Judicial Committee hearings.  I cannot will not watch on purpose.  I avoid the facebook posts that say it has been 30 years, why did she wait so long.  Well, considering the hell she is being put through now just imagine what it would have been like following the initial incident.  Victim blaming is not new.  Just read the Bible.  All I can say is I am not a victim.  I am a survivor.  So are all the other women that have been subjected to the unwanted grab to the unwanted penetration and have lived . . . in silence and misplaced shame.  Like it was my fault to be walking down a hall with breasts I did not ask for; or just being a daughter alone with a father while the mother was at work.  Sleeping in a bed at a friends home.  Just being a female.   

Then there are the young boys that have been bullied and raped as a rite of passage by older boys.  I do not have an answer to all this except to say this.  Do not teach your boys that this is okay by saying you do not believe.  By saying well it will ruin the rapist's life if we punish him for just being a boy following his nature.  We cannot continue with this and expect the world to be any safer for any of us.