#YesAllWomen

September 15, 2015

 

My professional life is taking me places I never dreamed possible. My Letters to Daniel blog has spawned a multi-project brand about coping with bipolar disorder that for me has become more about helping others like me confront that stigmatizing disease to get help. This blog is about something just as important to me. Surviving sexual abuse. Surviving rape. And the way surviving that impacts how we women see ourselves afterwards. Or if we were children how we see our bodies as we grow into womanhood.

Now I know men and boys are affected too. But this blog is about these things through the prism of my experiences. If you guys can relate please do not hesitate to comment and share your stories as the rape culture in this country hurts and harms everyone it touches.

My story unfortunately starts at four years of age. Where an uncle, brother on my father’s side raped and molested me while my father was getting a divorce from his second wife. Who by the way, was always very good to me and my younger sister.

No one realizes just how damaged I was at that age. The only way I was able to survive it was to convince myself I was protecting my sister from the monster who had made me into what would be a perpetual victim until I sought out therapy many years later.

What happened to me in my childhood should have shattered me, ruined me, broke me. And for it time it left me broken. My response to it though at that age was to eat to it.

Doris would fix these massive meals and I would eat five chicken legs. Mashed potatoes. Green beans. Rolls. Creamed corn. Tons of food. By the age of eight I believed I was fat. I had that reinforced by a sister and a step-cousin who sang fat ditties at that age.

I then became an overachiever. I had to be the best at everything. That if I were just good enough I could become the good little girl I had been before my uncle had done what he had.

The worst part about it was? I felt so alone. Like I had done something wrong. Like if I told someone I would be the one to be in trouble.

My uncle, though, was only the tip of the iceberg. He threatened to kill me if I told anyone. He gloated that if I did no one would ever believe me over him.

For that short time I visited my biological father while he staying with his brother was a special kind of nightmare. The worst part? I have missing time.

Where I go to bed Thursday and I wake up Sunday morning on the floor in the bedroom with my panties down by my ankles at my biological father’s brother’s house. If the stuff I remember is that horrific then I don’t want to remember what the hell is in that black hole of a memory loss.

Does anyone else feel that way?

I know I want my truth to be heard. But I also know I’m not sure if I’m ready for the Spanish Inquisition on this issue.

I suppose writing this blog is going to open me up to this types of questions.

What I do want everyone out there to know who has ever been raped, sexually assaulted or violated in anyway this blog is as much for me as it is for you.

 

Signing off for now,

Amy