Sometimes I pretend that what my father told me he’d done regarding our “incest relationship” didn’t really happen. Sometimes I pretend that what happened in that bottom bunk where I slept with my rosary beneath my pillow really was just a “nightmare” my mother told me I had followed by many more “nightmares”. Sometimes I pretend that when my mother had my father beat me for what I was doing I really deserved it. Maybe I didn’t iron his shirts good enough; maybe I didn’t clean the bathroom good enough or scrub the cupboards good enough. Maybe there were still streaks on the windows I just washed and that was why she had my dad beat me. Anything, anything rather than see the painful and searing truth.
Then something happens, a television series that deals with a young girl raped by her father, and in a matter of minutes the mask I have put over the truth comes off and the reality that it did happen I didn’t make it up is so traumatizing and my gut hurts so bad that I wish I could just drop my body and go to a place with no reality, no pain, no mother and father who abused their daughter in such a savage way. I did not know that the pain would follow me throughout my life and that even if I were 98 years old the memory would be sitting, waiting for me whenever I was the most vulnerable.
And then my husband, who feels my pain, asks if maybe there is a blog waiting and I go where I have gone since I was thirteen, to my words, the only real truth I’ve ever known. Once upon a time I wrote: A love affair with words, I have had since I was three, when first they marched out of books to tempt and pleasure me. My words have sustained me for decades. My words have brought me comfort. They have been my closest ally. I have kept a journal since I was thirteen. I have written volumes of poetry and many books and always I find solace in my words. It is the only place where I can feel safe. It is the home of my inner voices, those voices that tell me I will be okay. I remind myself, “Just for today I will be joyful and unafraid. Just for today I will be calm and cheerful in the face of any adversity.”
Feeling safe is a huge wish for those who have been sexually abused. We are always looking for someone to rescue us. We are always waiting for that place where we are cushioned from the dreadful blows that the memory of our childhood abuse brings. And so we see that, Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me. I cry my tears, I talk to my God and I crawl back out in to life, beaten and consumed with pain but knowing this too shall pass. So I put my mask back on, adjust it so I can wear it well and go on with my day. In the long run, in the big picture I am able to take what happened to me and use it to help others. It brings me comfort. It brings me stability. It brings reason and purpose to a world that makes no sense.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, “Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers/Ere the sorrow comes with years.”
