My Trauma is an IT
Trigger Warning:
This article will discuss an individual’s personal experiences of being sexually molested as a child. This may be triggering to readers with similar experiences
IT was a he who did IT to me. I was a young boy. He handled me like shIT, made me an IT, and now I am just an ITiot.
My he is also she, who did IT to me. I was an innocent boy and she handled me like meat.
Now I am an adult he, but there is still IT in me. There is still the shIT, this little bIT of a stitching sting, which will not let me spread my wings, to…rise.
I do not remember the date of when it happened to me, but it feels as if it was yesterday. The vivid memories of IT - still covered in the boy’s sticky stinking piss. As I relive it, I vomit each and every day.
At the age of six, in a dumb sticky night, in an even more dumb and sticky room, I was molested by an older boy. IT occurred when he forced me to show him my penis. He forced me to look at his, which was erect, humid and had a frightening size, and smelled awful. He forced me to touch him and pressed his genitals against my penis. He demanded I reveal myself, but my penis didn’t get hard, although he wanted it to. He touched me, and forced our genitals together. Then he began to urinate onto my penis and, eventually, his urine poured all over me.
At the age of eight in a dumb sticky night, in an even more dumb and sticky room, an older girl climbed on top of me. She spread her legs while seeking to get my penis hard, which didn’t work well enough in her opinion, as she kept hissing to me, “Get it hard, stupid!” She pressed herself onto me. It hurt as she held my wrists and pressed herself even harder onto me. Her stinking breath was in my face and I could not breathe myself. I can’t remember when she got off me, but rest I could not find anymore.
““I am learning to how to handle the shame, guilt, and aftermath of trauma.””
Coping with IT
I became withdrawn and silent. I wasn’t able to tell anyone. My mother noticed that it was becoming more difficult for me to speak about everything. She sat on my bed for hours, attempting to get me to speak. She felt there was something laying heavy on my soul, but I could not speak about IT. I became another child and hid the reality from my mother. I wanted to protect her from the sorrow and pain. I lived a double life, making up stories in order to mask what was really causing my visibly scarring pain.
In the same year I was molested by the boy, the stress and anxiety of my trauma manifested physically. First, I developed hay fever. Later, I had illnesses no doctor could explain, renal colics, which was so incredibly painful. Also, Eczema began to cover my hands, feet, and backs of the knees. It itched so much and I scratched it until it began to bleed. My hands were covered in crust. I was afraid to show anyone. The children laughed at me and were disgusted by me.
I started to believe God would punish me for my bad behavior as I had partaken in such dirty acts. I started to find ways to soothe my anxiety and fears of the sins that I had committed, by trying to gain control in what developed into compulsive behavior. I began to repeat numbers that were all equal 2,4,6,8- but eight times was the best number to ease my inner struggles. I then started to touch the towel after washing for eight times, and would walk through a door 8 times before I could feel appeased. This obsessive-compulsive behavior became my daily ritual. But no matter how hard I tried to perform these rituals of forgiveness, I believed my god was never satisfied with me.
Me Before and After
I was a boy who radiated with joy before IT. Comparing photos of me, before and after, I appeared to be a completely different person. Before: smirking, golden, and bright. After: emotionally closed, awkward, and introverted.
My relationship with my parents began to suffer, my father saw the change in me as bad behavior and my Mother grew distant from me. I remained silent most of the time and only muttered a word when absolutely necessary. I started to float through life, not being truly present and trying to remain as invisible as possible. I went to school and then rushed home in order to avoid any lurking bullies, who seemed to hate my awkward appearance.
Choosing Life
Although I was finally able to control my obsessive-compulsive behaviors, it was hard to vanquish the shadow of my memories. I either tried to suppress or place them in the periphery of my awareness. My goal: silence, keep silence, do not talk about IT. But the more the sun shines, the more the shadows came out. Suicidal ideation and relieving myself of emotional pain filled my thoughts. I became interested in razor blades and gun-bullets. The lure of relief was tempting, but I never tempted fate, even when the razor-blade-gun’s-bullet-thoughts often became worse, more demanding, more difficult to defeat. I choose life. My biggest dream is to be able to play my Bandoneon once on a Milonga and the people dance to my playing. I think I will need an additional 10-20 years to realize that dream.
Learning: Guilt, Shame, and Trauma Aftermath
Why did I start to talk? – The post-traumatic-silence coping strategy did not work anymore. It cost me too much energy to maintain it. My body didn’t work anymore. I began to collapse from anxiety and depression. Then I knew: Go and seek help, which I did. Back then, I didn’t know THE THING – the trauma – was the problem. I stopped thinking about it. I simply forgot about it. But then, in the process of psychotherapy, the IT came up and filled my thoughts. And now it is here again. I am not yet through it. I am learning to how to handle the shame, guilt, and aftermath of trauma. Life is so good to me and it offers me wonderful encounters, people, friends, women, and love. But a part of me – the boy inside of me – has difficulty accepting this. The fragile, wounded, and fractured boy draws me back again and again into that dark. Even writing this down hurts in every moment, but in these difficult moments, Nick Cave sings to me: “You’ve gotta just keep on pushing, keep on pushing, push the sky away.”
dS*~