My Story

This is so incredibly hard - I feel like I'm dying - I wish I could just bury it inside of myself forever or truly convince myself that I'm a liar - use all of the hurtful words and justifications that my mother would use if she were to ever find out what she already knows - I guess if she found out that I remember. I wish I didn't.

I look like such a smiling idiot in these pictures when I was little - I actually look happy. Probably because I had no idea what was happening to me wasn't normal - that she wasn't being a good mom, or even a mom - she was actually sexually abusing me.

She was paranoid that all the pain and abuse from when she was growing up - the neglect, emotional/verbal abuse, and sexual abuse would reoccur in our family. Why was I chosen to be the bad one - was there something about me that made me bad or easy to hate and abuse?

I think she caught me masturbating or something when I was four, I can't remember for sure whether or not she caught me doing something completely normal and healthy - I can finally admitt that and believe it more than I don't believe it. I remember back to when I would cry and pray that I would stop being bad and when I believed that I was filthy, deviant, and dirty and that if ledt alone I would hurt other people including my little brother. I definitely remember her checking me - it started around four - she would have me come to the kitchen table when my dad wasn't home - she never did it when he was home. I remember the way our trailer looked, the table, the dining room - but most of all I remember the way it felt and how scared I was. She would have me strip naked and she would sit down in one of the chairs, the one closest to the wall unit - she would "check" me. That's the nicest way I can put it - the only way I can say it without feeling completely sick. She would use her hands to open up my labia and push the skin inside around to determine whether it was red or not. If it was red I had been, to use her words, "rubbing my bum" - today I cannot stand when people refer to vaginas as bums. It makes me feel so angry and sick. I convinced myself for a long time that I just hated the word - that there was no deeper meaning. I couldn't even think about what happened for a long time but I would always get really disturbing flashbacks that I would try to dismiss as me imagining things and think about something else immediately.

If I was red, I had "rubbed my bum" or masturbated and I would be spanked hard for a long time in my room or right there in the kitchen leaning over the chair that she had been sitting in or my bed looking at my rainbow wallpaper through my tears.

I remember her threatening that she would have my labia sewn together if I didn't stop, that she knew doctors who would do it to prevent me from ever "rubbing my bum" again. She threatened that after they had sewn me together if I tried to I would rip out a stitch and that "that would be last time I'd try that". She would say things like "Do you really want me to do that? Are you going to make me do that? You realize that it will burn when you pee? Are you willing to risk that?" I completely believed her because she was my mother and I trusted her. I was absolutely terrified that it would happen and I became very scared of our family doctor.

I learned from her that what I was apparently doing was very, very bad and that no one else was like me. The only time that I learned that other people masturbated was when I was fifteen, ofcourse jokes were made before then in school but I never thought anyone did it but me - I didn't find any of the jokes funny to say the least.
I was a nanny and I was playing computer games with the two boys I worked with in their parents' office - I spotted an article from a parenting magazine - an advice column. It had lots of questions on it including one from a mom who had recently caught her young son masturbating and didn't know what to do. The columnist had replied that it was normal and that the mother should communicate this to her son and just emphasize that he do it in private. I was completely shocked but not yet ready to admit to myself that I was abused until I was talking in bed with my boyfriend about our childhoods. I was describing mine and he got really upset - I couldn't hold it in anymore and I started crying hysterically letting the first bits and pieces out to him and myself for the first time. It's far easier to think that I am the sick one.

I think the hardest part of all of it was how I was never trusted to be alone with my younger brother. If we were playing, which was extremely rare she wanted the door open and would be very close by. She never verbalized what she was afraid of but even at 6-7 years old I knew. I remember one time; I'm unclear whether I was coming out of the bath or changing but my brother, Travis, had done something to make me very angry while I was dressing. I was so mad that I only get my shirt on and started chasing him until we got to the living room. My mother was horrified when she saw I was half naked and chasing him. She kept repeating "What the hell is wrong with you?!?!" I got a really bad spanking for that one. I learnt that day that it was a big deal and understood more why she always kept us apart. I remember being extremely uncomfortable when a babysitter bathed my brother, 2 years, and me, I was 6. I kept thinking "I hope I don't hurt him".

She continued to check me most mornings - I remember she would call me out and Travis would continue playing while she checked. It stopped when I was ten suddenly. I don't know if she thought the threat was gone or whether she thought I would tell people - sometimes I think she's too selfish to even think that it was abuse. All the feelings of me being deviant came back when I was eleven and Travis and I had, on a rare occasion, been allowed to play together in my room while she worked in the yard. I would have been eleven. It was very important to her, still, that the door be left open so I made sure. Travis and I played for a couple of hours and then decided that we would watch TV and lay on my bed. We were drifting off to sleep when she ran into the room screaming "I trusted you!" while ripping my brother out. There was no explanation afterwards and Travis and I were to be separated all the time. I had to move into the basement and he was to stay upstairs. We were not to be in the kitchen at the same time while making ourselves meals. Travis and I started to use the computer to type messages in wingdings and then using a string and a pink waterpot that I had ripped off one of my porcelain dolls to pass messages between our perpendicular windows. She would use the excuse that Travis and I fought too much and thus should just be kept separate. But I knew.

Her paranoia only materialized again when I was fifteen and she wouldn't take me to the doctor when I had a yeast infection - she accused me of having an STD from sleeping with male friend of mine, Darrin - I hadn't even kissed a boy. The yeast infection got really bad before she finally took me to the drugstore. It was horrible - I honestly think she still thinks that I am a dirty deviant.

I remember her commenting on how I had permanent marks on my vagina from masturbating even though I did not. Telling me I had done permanent damage that I could not undo - I was so scared that there was something physically wrong with me, especially when I didn't hit puberty at the same time as the other girls in my class. I am just starting to let this fear go.