I woke up yesterday morning, made breakfast for me and the kids and turned on Mickey Mouse in the kitchen. I took my coffee and toast into the living room and turned on the news. Christine Blasey Ford was giving her opening statement. I didn’t know it was going to be on live TV. Her words hit me like a sledge hammer in the gut. Almost eighteen hours later I am still raw. I’m trying not to cry. I can’t describe exactly how I’m feeling. I’m just flooded with memories and emotions about what happened to me at 15 and how I never told anyone. I can feel that shaken feeling you get after an attack. The soreness on your arms, I imagined what the bruises looked like, as I sat in the bath yesterday. I remember crying softly so my mom couldn’t hear me. I had the door locked. My mom was right outside, I could have told her what happened to me, the trauma I just endured. I never did. Yesterday Christine Blassey Ford gave me permission to acknowledge that what happened to me was wrong and not my fault. And I feel pain in that. What happened to me, when I was fifteen altered me. When I talk to parents now about their teenagers, I always preface that, I was a bad teenage, I was always in trouble, I did bad things. In our Being Human Residency, we had already been talking about the stages of development in our kids and ourselves as kids. My stinky, bloody, dark, teenage box had already been pried open. My years of sexual trauma is intertwined with myself as a child. Being taken advantage of. I want to run from it. I get scared, I might get in trouble for being depressed about this stuff. For being triggered like this. One night, when I was sixteen, my mom told another mom, “It wasn’t your daughters’ fault, my daughter’s the ring leader here, she’s a bad seed”. I think my mom may have even been grabbing my hair and shoving me in the car. I have been taught it’s my fault I was sexually assaulted. I thought it wasn’t important because it happened when I was a kid. That anything in High School didn’t count. Never talk about it. I don’t really know what steps to take to work my way out of this, I don’t know how much I should try to bury it again, pretend it didn’t happen, or write about it, or talk about it, or cry about it. I still feel ashamed by it. I feel uncomfortable.
Category: art
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You were so young, maybe fourteen and a half, maybe fifteen. You just started ninth grade at Clairmont High school. A world away from Spring Valley, the place you lived your whole life, a slow paced, dusty, border town. Now you found yourself in an urban environment for the first time. You came with knowledge of the life the kids who were bused in from East San Diego had, but you had no experience with the other half of the kids who were students at Clairmont High, suburban kids. You were always a brave kid and made your way as best as you could.
This day though, something happened to you, an awful thing that took you down a lonely path that lasted your whole high school life. No one knows this story, you’ve never told anyone this story. You were wearing a pair of jeans, they had started to feel tight around the waist. You were working on an article about the cheerleaders for the school paper. It was after school; the hallways were empty. All the activity was down on the athletic fields. You felt a sensation in your lower abdomen, maybe you did hold your pee too long, maybe you should have gone to the bathroom long before you did, or maybe this was a cry for help, a cry for your mom to notice something, even though you didn’t understand what was happening to you yet.
You ran to the bathroom, through the empty halls, trying to hold it, but as you are pulling down your tight, thick, non-stretchy, eighties jeans pee came pouring out. So much pee, it’s hard to believe. The jeans stick to your legs. You can’t pull them up or down. Thoughts run through your mind, how to sneak to your bike and ride home. But you want to tell your mom, you want to call your mom even though she’s at work and you’re usually so independent. I think you had a sweater or long sleeve shirt to tie around your waist. But I remember the wetness stretched down to your knees, nothing could hide it.
You rummaged through your too heavy backpack full of books for change to call your mom. You stood at the pay phone and hoped no one walked by. You were crying, humiliated, and scared. Your mom made an appointment at the urologist, she was concerned you had a kidney infection. You remember sitting on the examination table, feeling comfort that people were listening to you talk, were concerned about you, but there were words in your mouth that wouldn’t come out.
“I’m not a little girl anymore” you felt, or you said to yourself, but you wanted to be that little girl they were treating you as. You wanted to go back and take away all the actions you took that led you to this place, where they thought you had a kidney infection, but you were pregnant. All you felt was shame and regret and sadness and despair.
You were alone, and your path would only get lonelier and scarier and the feeling of shame would become almost unbearable.
But you fought through these awful years and these awful feelings. For this you deserve a trophy. You deserve a trophy that I am going to make for you out of gold sculpy clay. I want to acknowledge you and your suffering and thank you for being so strong and making it to this point in our life. You lived so I can live. You suffered then so I would suffer less now. You felt shame then, so I would understand shame better now. You taught me to be strong and brave. I thank you for giving me these gifts and I present you with this trophy.
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Yesterday, in our “Being Human” residency we delved into the subject of “Confiscation”. I brought my butterfly yard decoration that I was afraid would poke out Jack and Fiona’s eyes and attempted to recreate one that was safe. I wrapped string and used felt. We didn’t finish them yet. I have a new idea I want to do, make a giant stuffed butterfly yard decoration! We also talked about our own experiences as children- Could we remember an item being confiscated from us when we were children?
Last night when I laid my head on my pillow I started reeling in thoughts. Half were thoughts on all the ways I could make my butterfly safe, but the other thoughts were about my childhood. I tried to remember a time something was taken away from me, all I could recall was my home being confiscated from me in one form or another. All I could, all I can remember is me being in trouble all the time, being told to “go outside” or when I was older, “Go to your room”. My mom confiscated the house from me, my dad confiscated himself from me. He moved out when I was six years old and rarely showed up on his scheduled weekends. My mom confiscated herself from me, sending me outside or to my room, and she would stay in her room often with the door shut. I can’t remember any specific toys that were precious my mom took away to punish me. I can’t even remember any situations with my mom when I was little, except the times I got hurt and had to go to the hospital. My mom was always there for me in those situations, she would still be mad at me for not wearing shoes and stepping on a rusty nail or getting my ankle caught in a gate while riding my pony into her corral. Or falling backwards at the skating rink and braking my arm. She was annoyed at these times, I remember that clearly.
Last night, while I laid in bed and my neck and shoulders stiffened, with these thoughts running through my head I kept trying to remember something positive, something happy when I was a little girl. All I can remember are the times my mom was mad at me or the times I wanted her attention, but she could not give it to me. I remember her singing songs and rubbing my back at night, so I would fall asleep. But that’s a small memory in a sea of troubled memories. It is unsettling, and last night I started to get scared. I thought about how my whole life I’m constantly concerned I’m going to get in trouble. Everything I do, every moment I live I am questioning the validity of what I’m doing, if it’s O.K., if it’s bad or good.
I didn’t live a safe life as a child, my mom never thought to wrap anything in batting and felt, to alter the dangerous things and make them safe. I’m not upset with her and I don’t blame her, she was a product of her unhappy childhood. My mom did the best she could with what she had at the time. I know this, and I know she loved me very much. I wish I could remember some happy memories when I was young.
I’ve done so much to keep my kids safe, I’ve confiscated so many things from them, I’m sure they won’t remember them all!
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 