Memory Blocks

Why, oh why can’t I remember??

I so wish I could understand how memories can be blocked out.  I know they are there, but try as I might, I just cannot access them.

I am of course talking about what Alex did to me.  As sick as it sounds, I want to remember.  I need to remember.  I don’t know why, but this is becoming a major issue for me.  I know that it will be painful to remember it and I can’t be sure whether I will be able to cope, but this business of living with huge holes in my memory is getting to me.

It’s not that I want to remember what it was like, but deep inside there is a part of me that questions whether the sexual abuse actually happened.  Yet I know it did.  Not only do I have the two memories of the incidents in Alex’s bedroom and then in his caravan, but I also have the confirmation of my friend, his other victim.

But it is getting to the point where it is just not enough anymore.

It’s got a lot to do with the articles that have been published covering the issues of false memories, implanted memories and of course, the sick women who make fake allegations.

You may think I am weird and need to take a step back and allow things to progress at their natural pace, but that just isn’t enough for me anymore.  I research Child Sexual Abuse on the internet on a daily basis.  I have come across numerous blogs written by other victims, survivors and even thrivers.  There are quite literally hundreds of scholarly articles covering everything - the psyche of the abuser, the experiences of the victim and the effects on the victim in later life to name but a few.  Peppered throughout are items about women who have made false allegations.  And I can’t help but question my own memories.

It’s totally irrational – I have all the confirmation that I need in what I do remember, how the memories surfaced and of course, my witness.  But it just isn’t enough.  Is it really a matter of the events having been so traumatic that my conscious mind could not deal with the implications?  Or did I make a semi-conscious decision to block it all out?  I just don’t know.

Thinking back, I know that the things Alex did to me have haunted me throughout my life.  But it has never been in a literal sense.  I do not remember whether he ever had oral sex with me.  I could not say with any level of confidence that he ever manually penetrated me.  And I cannot actually remember him ever actually having sex with me. 

But I know he did.  Because I remember the occasion that he left me lying on his bedroom mat whilst he went to get some toilet paper to clean his semen off my thighs.  I remember lying there, feeling totally exposed.  I can clearly recall that I was terrified, but not what scared me so much.  What was I scared of?  Was it because of what he had just done to me?  Or was it something else? 

My other memory, the incident in the caravan has become a little clearer though.  I remember how I felt.  I was laying on the long bench that ran along one side of Alex’s caravan.  I was still wearing my t-shirt, but he had removed my shorts and panties. 

My parents had been visiting with his parents in the house and were on their way home.  As was their practice, my Aunt and Uncle had walked my Mom and Dad to the top of the driveway and it was as they were walking past the caravan that my Aunt was talking about the fact that Alex was very quiet and seemed not to have much interest in girls and dating.  My father replied ‘You never know.  Still waters run deep’. 

I can actually clearly recall the feelings that ran through me when I heard that.  The terror that something would make them come into the caravan and see what we had been doing (bear in mind, I was only about ten years old).  I was petrified that we would be caught and I would lose my family and my home.  I felt guilt about the fact that by not telling my parents what was happening, I was lying by omission.  And a part of me was laughing – if only they knew!

How could a part of me laugh?  What had broken inside me to release such an inappropriate reaction?  I wish, wish, wish that I could remember so that I could answer at least some of the questions that are whirling through my mind.

Feelings

This is a hard one.  The way I feel changes all the time, not just day by day or even hour by hour, but even as quickly as minute to minute.  I can be happy and feel secure and in an instant, for no apparent reason, I find myself in the depths of despair and wondering whether it is worth the effort to carry on.  It is hard to explain all the emotions I experience every day and I should imagine it is even harder for the people around me to understand.  Heck, even I don’t understand it sometimes.

But someone said something the other day that has really struck a chord – ‘You are entitled to feel the way you feel’.  

Such simple words that at first glance don’t mean very much.  Even to me, at first I didn’t really get the meaning.  Then I thought about it and it was as though I had been hit by a speeding bullet.  Entitlement!  People take so much for granted in their lives and it is only when we think about it that we realise how much we have and all the things that we feel are our right.

Like most victims of Child Sexual Abuse, my feelings traverse a highly convoluted course, winding their way through happiness and calmness to terror and agitation and passing through panic and desperation in the blink of an eye.  And underlying many of these feelings is the guilt.  

Guilt because I feel like crying and people around me are sympathetic.  Guilt because I feel insecure and my friends and family take a moment to reassure me.

 

And worst of all is the feeling of guilt when I succumb to the depression and just want to sit and wallow.  Because for some reason it is hard to accept that I am allowed to feel this way.

It all comes down to the fact that we generally do not feel that we have the right to impinge on other people’s lives.  And of course, the deeply ingrained belief that how we feel does not matter, we are not important.  This belief that has been taught to us by our abusers, who constantly tell us that we must consider other people – ‘think how angry your mother would be if she found out’, ‘how do you think your parents would feel if you were taken away and put into care’, ‘what do you think people will call you when they find out what you have done’, the unending litany of scarcely veiled threats used to keep us quiet.

So for me, to suddenly be told that I am entitled to feel this way comes as something of a shock.  Because I realise that it is true.  One of the gifts that God has given us is the ability to feel a huge range of different emotions, an ability that does not seem to be shared with other living creatures on earth.  Yes, animals will feel basic emotions such as fear, cold and hunger, but the gamut of emotions that are evident in a human being is unbelievable when you really think about it.

And if we have the ability to feel all these differing emotions, then surely it is alright to feel them?  My head is spinning as I consider the possibility that it is alright for me to feel frightened and insecure, sad or even angry.  Naturally, it isn’t pleasant, but the added burden of guilt is unnecessary.  That is something I have never considered before.

I have always made every effort to hide my true feelings, for no other reason than I feel guilty about it when I have so many other wonderful things in my life, like my work and my children.  I don’t want people to be supportive and kind because I don’t believe I deserve it when there are so many others out there who are worse off than me.

So I know that I now need to stop and think. To remember those amazing words – ‘You are entitled to feel the way you feel’!

Love

Everyone wants to be loved.  Whether they are a child or an adult or even somewhere in between, love is something we all crave, whether we admit it or not.  I know I do.  I know my best friend does.  Admittedly we all look for it in different places and in different ways, but at the end of the day it all comes down to the same thing.  Finding it isn’t the only problem though.

Over the last few weeks, I have realised that love also means different things to different people.  And of course, there are different types of love.

Firstly, and probably the most important of all is familial love.  The love a parent feels for a child, that the child feels for their parents and for their siblings.  This love lays the groundwork for how a child will develop and determines who they will be as an adult.

Then there is the love that we feel for our friends, both male and female.  This is obviously also critical.  Without developing these caring friendships during childhood, it is impossible for someone then to grow up into a balanced adult.

And naturally, there is romantic love.  The love that binds two people together through good times and bad and is the most fragile love of all.

How we perceive these different types of love develops as we move through our lives and experience differing relationships.  And of course it follows that any difficult relationship experienced in our formative years will have a profound effect on our views in later life.

I am by no means a professional analyst, nor any type of expert in terms of psychology, but my personal experiences have not only left me badly scarred, but also with a perspective unique to those with similar experiences.

The strangest part is that I can see it so clearly.  I craved the love of my parents in so many different ways and it has taken me years to realise that I had their love all along, I just couldn’t see it.  Because it was not demonstrated in the way that I had seen in families around me.  I watched my friends and relatives hug their children, cuddle them close when they were sad and express their love in words that could be plainly understood.

But my parents were not like that.  They didn’t show physical affection nor did they speak of it.  At least, not to me or my brother.  I know now that they loved me, but this knowledge would have made a profound difference if I had come upon it whilst I was still a child.

I don’t blame them, I am sure I have said this before.  But this hole in my life made me a target for a predatory swine, whose actions then determined the path for the next 33 years of my life. 

And I do blame him.  I hold him totally responsible.  As a result of his actions, I became a child isolated from my friends and separated from my parents by a lie that I could not share with them.

 

His lies also led me to associate sex with love.  Not by any assumption on my part, but because he told me that he did these horrible things to me because he loved me.  How sick is that?  And because I was too young to know better, I believed him.

So I took that belief into my teenage years and allowed myself to become a toy for any young man to play with and abandon once they had what they wanted.  I remember so many days, sitting waiting for the phone to ring after allowing a man to use me the night before and crying quietly to myself as I realised that I had been used again.  But because of Alex, the belief that sex and love was the same thing was deeply ingrained, so off I would go again, allowing someone else to use me and discard me.

Even now, looking back, it hurts me so much to realise that I allowed myself to be used so badly and to accept that there were so many men out there who were happy to take advantage.  I wonder whether any of them ever stopped to think of how they were hurting me or to wonder why I behaved as I did?  Do any of them look back now and regret the way that they used me?

I have so many regrets about the way that I have lived my life.  I know that I need to accept it and move on, but I fear that nothing will ever be able to take the pain away.  I just wish there was a way that I could turn back the clock and live my life again, whilst still retaining the knowledge that I have now.

Maybe then it would be possible for me to believe that anyone could ever love me.

Returning to work again

Well, have now been off work for a few weeks and am hoping to go back on Tuesday next week.  But the really hard thing is that whilst there is the part of me that is looking forward to returning to the job I love, there is the terror of facing the people with whom I work.

I made a choice after the overdose, to be honest with everyone about what I had done and what I have been going through.  I truly expected disbelief, disgust and anger.  I did not want sympathy.  What I got was friends and colleagues trying to help and support me and that look.  It’s not hard to describe the look – it’s all in the eyes – pity!  And that tone of voice that shows they actually do care.

Normal people (I use that term very loosely) would be able to accept and understand it, but I hate it.  I don’t believe I deserve it.  I feel that they are wasting emotions on me.  I dread the moment that they realise that I am a dirty, worthless waste of space. 

I have been working so hard with trying to deal with the anger that I feel, directed at Alex and his family and don’t have the time or the inclination to work on my self-esteem.  Probably because I fear that it will be too hard and I will never achieve any form of belief in myself. 

Not to blow my own trumpet, but I have had a number of people lately tell me that they think I am strong and capable and I do know that somehow I emit an aura that makes people feel comfortable around me.  


But inside I cannot accept this.  I know that I am deceiving them.  The real me is hidden deep inside myself and I cannot find the strength to totally expose the sense of vulnerability, the fear of being judged and found wanting, the isolation that would result when they see who and what I really am. 

But I bite the bullet, grab myself by the bootlaces and drag myself into the situations that I fear.  Not through courage, but through necessity.  I have to function within society, even if it is all just a facade.  The only place I truly feel comfortable is on the stage and that in my eyes, reveals so much.