Telling people you’ve been sexually abused is almost always difficult — sometimes for you, sometimes for them. Sometimes for both.
In the last three days I’ve found myself disclosing to two people. In both cases there was a context of sorts; we were having ‘normal’ conversations about families, and, rather than brush over, or tell white lies, I told it like it is: my father sexually abused me for about four years, and my mother (not living with us) had several mental illnesses. My stepmother, for her own reasons no doubt, seemed unable to act. So my ‘Christmas plans’ have not included any of my parents for decades.
Why say it like it is? Isn’t it easier to brush over? Short answer: yes, it is. It is easier not to be damaged or complicated — but for most people, whatever has happened in their lives, that’s a lie. My damage and complexity just happen to spring from several places which make most people uncomfortable, or even reel back in some horror: this is too dreadful to be true they seem to say, the expression on their faces passing through pity, disgust, grief, and settling to neutral.
Again, why do this? Because, and it’s quite simple when I think about it: it is not up to me to apologise or ‘be over it’. It is not up to me to hide facts which were completely and utterly out of my control. It is not up to me to protect others’ sensibilities. We don’t protect each other from the bad news of cancer, or bereavement — we say it all, and hope the listener figures out how or if to respond.
In recent years when I finally could bring myself to disclose the sexual abuse, I would rush to — as in the next sentence — say ‘but I’m okay, I really am. I’ve had lots of therapy and I’m really well.’ Some of you reading this blog will recognise this from our long friendships. I did this to save my listener from pain, disgust, pity — and helplessness in the face of this horrible thing. The desire to protect the world from the dirty secret — to carry it, to carry the shame indeed, the unresolved triggers, the mess of it all — always took precedent.
But it’s good for ME to finally say it like it is. In public, without feeling sick or wanting to run away. To stand by my experiences. I was not able to say more than a vague ‘my father…. mumble mumble’ for decades, just hoping someone, even therapists, would understand without me having to actually SAY it. My silence — repeat after me folks — is one of the many silences which enable perpetrators to carry on abusing. It’s that simple. My pushing it away keeps abuse hidden. That simple.
However, what I do know is that not everyone can speak. For numerous reasons. Where we are in our journeys, who we have around us, how involved we want to be in taking a stand.
Which is why I am and so many others are now here, speaking out. Raising awareness, educating, and trying to redress the imbalance. Taking the power away from the abusers, where it has rested for centuries.
So. If you can’t say it — yet, or ever — let us say it for you. Let us share the burden. We will all get there in the end.
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From my memoir, Learning to Survive. This is the first time I tried to tell someone what was happening. [NB: I have permission to use she/her pronouns; in time they moved into he/him, and into a much happier place. I have asked and have generously received permission to start here. Thank you, Joshua.]
Suzanne
When I am 16 years old, I fall in love with a close friend, and she with me. Although I do go on to have lesbian relationships (sort of) in university, out of love and respect for this person I need to say that in a few years this close friend will be a man. However, at the point in which we are in a relationship, he presents as female, a fact which for me, given what I have been through, I recognise even then as crucial.
I speak to no one about my relationship with Suzanne, and have no memory of writing anything, at least in the early days, either. As far as my father is concerned, she is a friend, and we are able to spend many happy hours together, many months in each other’s company, before he seems to have an inkling of what is going on. If I could remember, I might place his knowing concurrent with my beginning to write about her in my journal, but of course – this is another empty room, another empty space where memory should be.
Early on, Suzanne senses my intense fear around my father, about doing anything ‘wrong’ or attracting ‘suspicion’ – and she sees through it. One night on campus as we sit in a classroom working out trigonometry on the blackboard (her father also teaches at the university), she stops. What she says seems to come from nowhere, like she hardly knows she’s saying it: ‘It’s almost like he loves you like more than a daughter.’ She turns to me. ‘Does he? Does he love you like that?’
I cannot bring myself to say yes or no. But somehow Suzanne knows from my face. Her anger and horror are instant – she makes thick white chalk lines over and over on the blackboard no no no no no. And more than once in the months that follow, I hear her car outside my house, driving around the block and up and down the hills, over and over, the horn blaring.
We never speak about the abuse, and my father’s possessiveness, more than that. I start shaking too quickly, and it’s all so ugly, and all we want is to be together. I believe that she is saving me, and I think she believes this too, and to an extent, she is.
PATRICIA DEBNEY 