I used to wait for the magic moment when I would be part of the world again.

When I was very young I had some inappropriate things done to me. Unfortunately this is not uncommon. As a three year old you can get a sense that things aren’t right but you can still be persuaded to do things and go along with things with a little reassurance or bribing or bullying. I grew up with a large family. I had thirteen cousins living in the same town and we saw each other all of the time. All of the aunts and uncles seemed like parents to all of us. I had older cousins that were like big brothers and sisters and they treated us all great for the most part. They watched over us at school and in the neighborhoods and let us play softball or football with the big kids. Sometimes, though, they would make fun of me for my ears or throw me in a deep lake or river and yell that an alligator was coming to eat me. Whenever someone that I loved was mean to me or teased me I would feel betrayed and crushed. I cried very easily when someone I loved mistreated me even though I was very tough physically. Having so many older cousins actually made me tougher. If other people were mean to me or teased me I never cried. I was known in elementary school for putting bullies in their place. I never let anyone at school see me scared or see me cry.

I had a few cousins that were just a year to three years older than me and we got along and fought like most cousins but these cousins that were barely older than me had me participate in activities that they must’ve learned from adults. I don’t know if they had been molested or had watched movies or seen magazines but the fact is that for years there was sort of a “secret club” that I was expected to participate in. If I didn’t want to or started to cry I would be made fun of and threatened to be “told on” for things I had been talked into doing before.  I got the reputation of being a “cry baby” when I was three. I was very emotional and easily hurt or scared. Even the adults knew me as a cry baby. I don’t know if children between five and seven know how to make someone an unreliable witness but I was considered to be a baby about being made fun of and a scaredy cat. I never knew if anyone would believe me if I told what was going on. I also feared getting into trouble for being a participant. When I was seven years old I said I wasn’t going to be in that stupid club anymore even if I got in trouble. I would rather be punished for something I didn’t want to do than to be punished by continuing to do things I didn’t want to do. I stopped being a cry baby and pretended to not be afraid of the dark but people still treated me as if I were my past weaknesses. Then when I pretended that the negative opinions of family members didn’t bother me at all some of my cousins and my siblings  began to ridicule and belittle me. I was a very athletic child, especially for a girl and could run faster, climb higher, score more points and even out wrestle my older cousins. My cousins and siblings made fun of me and called me cry baby and scaredy cat despite my accomplishments and since they knew about my earlier weaknesses and all of the award givers only knew about the fake me, (the pretend like everything is normal me) then I felt that they must be right.

Even as I got older and hardened my protective shell my family members knew how to push my buttons.

It took a lot more to get me to cry but my family members knew my weaknesses and they would put a lot of effort into breaking me. Sometimes I would last so long that I thought they’d give up but they were persistent and knew eventually I would be a blubbering mess.  Even worse than anything physical was the emotional abuse. Occasionally at dinner my dad would say “all you have to do is look at her sideways and she’ll cry” and I knew that I was not going to get to enjoy my meal. Somehow it became a game to make me cry. My dad would point at me and laugh just to make me cry. If my brother and sister didn’t help him make me cry by also pointing and laughing they would get in trouble. My mom never participated but she never made them stop. I think if she tried then it would’ve only made things worse. Once when I was about twelve and it hadn’t happened in a long time and I had started to really think my family had grown out of laughing at me it happened one last time. I sat there and took it. My siblings seemed very reluctant to do as my dad said but eventually they were made to laugh and point at me. I took it for a long time but when I felt the tears burning my eyes and clogging the back of my throat I got up and went to my room. My dad yelled for me to get back to the table because I hadn’t been excused. I had never left the table without asking to be excused. My dad came into my room and made me go back to the table and insisted I eat even though I was likely to choke as I sobbed at the table. No one said anything until I was finished and I asked to please be excused. Thankfully that particular game was never played again. No one ever mentions it either.

I know I may have some problems and behaviors because of the things that were done to me emotionally but also I have issues that have their root in the inappropriate things that were done to me physically. I was very young and so were the boys in the secret club so really I don’t hold them entirely responsible for their behavior. Only one time when we were older did one of them even mention it. I was about thirteen and spending the night at my cousins house which was a usual thing when my fifteen year old cousin said “Hey, remember when we used to….” and made a motion with his hands that we used to use to signify what we did. I said ” I don’t know what you’re referring to” and he said “you want to do it right now?” and I pretended like I didn’t hear him as I continued on my way to the bathroom. I locked the door and I was so scared because I thought he might try to force his way into the bathroom but even more so because it meant that all of those memories were TRUE. I had tried to bury them and had started to believe that none of it had actually happened. I was afraid he would bring it up again when I passed back by to go to bed. I was afraid he would try to force me to do something and that I would have to scream and awaken the entire house and everyone might find out about what I participated in from three to seven years of age. I sat in the bathroom trembling and crying for so long that when I went back out he was not in the living room anymore. I laid in bed all night trembling and nauseous because of all of the things that began floating to the surface of my peaceful facade like cadavers breaking free from roots they’ve been entangled in surfacing in still waters. Still waters run deep.

One of the things that bothers me the most is that even if I could forget about all the bad in my past that I did NOT bring on myself there would still be those people that know what they did.

They can think about it anytime they want to. I wish ignoring it would make it go away completely. I wish that certain people could know what their precious angels did to a genuinely GOOD person (without them knowing it had anything to do with me.) I am a good person, I actually am a naturally good person even though being mean could be so easy after being taught so well by being tortured by others from an early age. I suppose most of them were too young to actually know how much they were destroying in me.  Even when the physical acts stopped they would hatefully make fun of me and I was known by then to be a crybaby so they got away with it for years. Most of the time I just played along like it was all just fun and games. After I was grown and put in a situation where I had to spend time with the same people that treated me inappropriately they just acted like nothing ever happened and we were just one big happy family.

No matter what is going on I always feel like two people. The one that I would’ve been if things had gone right and the fucked up one that I actually am no matter how good I am at pretending. They are both just as real and have different emotions and different thoughts and ideas. Whichever one I am being at any particular time the other one is in the background with opinions and judgments of how I am behaving. It’s like I am actually a third person who is a combo of the other 2 just faking like they are ‘normal’ the whole time. I wish I could’ve been who I was meant to be. I have occasionally been able to convince myself that I am GROWN and miles away from any of them and then something would happen and it all comes flooding back and I am helpless and three years old. A couple of times I have found out about others that the same people messed up in the same way and I feel guilty about not saying anything before because maybe I could’ve kept it from happening to them. Then I see how they are called liars and whores and I am so glad I never told.

When I ignore the past for a long time it all comes out in anxiety symptoms. I never believed in actual panic attacks until I started having them myself. At first I just thought I was having heart attacks or strokes and wouldn’t believe the doctors who claimed they were attacks caused by anxiety. I definitely had anxiety and after a few years got to the point where I was over the panic attacks and so happy that I ignored the doctors that said I would need medication to cope. I recovered by starting my yoga practice and intentionally forgiving anything that was ever done to me. I forgave myself. Sometimes I have to REFORGIVE myself.

I want to be my true self but have no idea what that could’ve been. I was with the same man for almost twenty years and he never knew everything that I didn’t talk about from my childhood. He knew of some of the stuff but no one will ever know about everything I went through. But I am GROWN now and should just get over it. I try to let it all go. I make the decision to not let the past effect me and I know I have control and I should make myself better than my tormenters by taking care of me. I have the power to make myself real but I am too afraid of being torn down to put myself out there. I will never have ONE true honest connection with anyone ever because I can’t share my truth and I can’t trust anyone to not be thinking horrible things about me and making fun of me while they pretend to be nice. People are experts at pretending. I honestly feel that no one can like me because if they do then they are liking the fake me…which isn’t me…and if they knew all of my parts that make the real me then they couldn’t like me and they would be revolted by me. People sometimes pretend to like someone so that  they can later talk about how ugly or disgusting or stupid they think they are. I’ve even occasionally done that when someone INSISTS on talking to me and they are annoying to me so how can I judge others when I am very good at ridiculing people too? We all have ugliness in us. We’ve all been treated poorly at some point in time and that fact is no excuse for behaving poorly ourselves. I would hate for the few people that I’ve joked about behind their back to hear the things I’ve laughed about. I would be humiliated and feel like such a heel. I would feel very bad but probably not as bad as they would feel if they knew. I usually treat people with respect and consideration and really have no excuse for the times that I don’t.