Jackie Sue's homepage:adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse

Let's talk about child molestation.

So....I told my father that I had been molested. That meant that none of the bad things that remained with everyone else was to remain to haunt me, right? I had come through it unscathed, right? WRONG!

While I reported some abuse, we never talked about how I felt. We never discussed anything about what had happened again. Not ever. Because I had told, I thought nothing remained for me to deal with. I had never paid any attention to the fact that I'd never really had a boyfriend, although I definitely had liked boys in my lifetime. I had many male friends, but never had I had one that liked me back. Of course, I didn't really know how to flirt. I had managed to squelch every natural instinct I had for being a woman that existed. Because the abuse had left such a tremendous impact on my being, I had ceased to recognize a natural part of my being...that of being a sexual woman. I didn't have a clue. When the rest of my friends were noticing boys, I had been doing my best, albeit unconsciously, to disappear into the woodwork. And I didn't even realize I had done it.

There was something else I didn't know. In my bliss-filled state of ignorance about my abuse, I had somehow missed a very obvious statistic. Did you know that somewhere in the upper 90 percentile of little girls who have been sexually abused are obese? I didn't know that. I was at home watching one of those morning talk shows when they announced that statistic. Until a tear fell upon my hand, I didn't even know I was crying. I was that statistic. I was fat, and that is why! Evidently, on an unconscious level, the natural reaction that little girls have to sexual molestation is to try to make their bodies undesirable...and the way they do it is by gaining weight! The weight is a cushion that they give themselves in an effort to not have to deal with the physical part of abuse again...not ever! I was crushed. It began my journey into my recovery. Before that show, I didn't even realize I had anything to recover FROM!

I knew that I had hated Daddy George for what he had done to me. He didn't deserve my love. He was a monster. He deserved to burn in a special HELL. I would have gladly given myself an eternity to stoke the fires in HELL if it had enabled me to see him suffer. He had basically gotten away with what he had done to me with only a slight bit of embarrassment and getting yelled at by my dad, or so I thought. He died knowing my father had never forgiven him and never could forgive him. He also died knowing I had not forgiven him...yet. He never really knew who all knew about what he had done, so he had to be very careful about who he came into contact with in the family. Unfortunately, these things were not discussed back then. They should have been though.

I learned several things in my journey into self-discovery. One of the things I learned is that it is not at all unusual for women who have been abused as little girls to suddenly "crash into the wall" when their own child gets to the age that they were at when their own abuse began. They somehow project themselves into the place of the child that they love so very much, and they try to understand how someone could hurt THAT child that they love, never realizing what they are doing. They have been transported back to a time when things were not so simple...when life wasn't that great. They have been unwittingly taken back to a time when adults did very frightening things to them. It is terrifying, and it is very confusing. Tears will fall by the bucketfulls. It's a delayed stress reaction. Truthfully, it isn't that unusual of a reaction either. My gynecologist told me that it happened in the office monthly...someone would "crash and burn" and he has since then brought a counselor into his offices as a part of his practice. Think this doesn't happen often??

It happened to me when my neice, Katie turned 4. She was the most perfect angelic child I had ever been around, and having Katie around was like having my own child. We were very close. I looked at her one day, and it all came back. I wondered how ANYONE could do such horrible things to a sweet defenseless little girl like her...or like I had been. How could he have done that to that little girl? I was trying to place myself in Katie's shoes and deal with what had happened..but I was getting there. That was a huge leap in itself. I had to work through the pain I had failed to work through earlier in my life. Six years of sexual abuse take more than fifteen minutes to get out of your soul.

I had taken my first big step forward. I had contacted that hurting frightened little girl that felt so vulnerable and fragile...she needed the adult in me to protect her...to make her feel secure enough to FEEL again. The abuse had done such a number on me, I hadn't even noticed, but I didn't feel ANYTHING. I was about to suddenly feel EVERY emotion in the world, and I was going to start feeling them all at once! It's a pretty powerful thing to deal with. But it, too, is a normal part of the healing.

How could someone do something so horrific to a child? I became that 4 year old girl again. All the hurt and pain and fears were raw gaping wounds that left me with no alternative but to learn to deal with them. I couldn't stop the deluge of tears that followed. The tears would start falling at the oddest times, and there was nothing I could do to stop them, so I had to do SOMETHING to make myself feel better. I couldn't take living like that any longer. I had wasted enough of my life being closed off to love and feelings. I had tried to make myself invisible to the opposite sex for so long that I wasn't sure I knew how to be any other way. And I had lost most chances of having a family now because of HIM. HE had cost me my family, and THAT more than anything I felt the need to mourn. I liked men, but I was afraid of them. How contradictory that was to deal with!

So here I was. I was afraid of men, but I liked men. I was not used to flirting or being flirted with. I didn't know how to do anything as far as dating went. I had gone so long without acting girlish, that I wasn't sure I could change. It wasn't natural for me to do the things that I'd seen other girls do. I felt sick to my stomach at the thoughts of letting someone touch me....yet kissing scenes in movies just made me melt in my seat! They are SO sensual...except I'd never experienced a sensual kiss. I'd been assaulted, but I'd never been kissed properly. And then there was the child issue. I wanted kids, but I was approaching my 40s rapidly. Soon it would be too late for me to give birth. Of course, I had always wanted to adopt. I would be an excellent mother, especially since I had practically raised my brothers! I signed up for adoption classes immediately. I found a therapist to help me get this mess behind me. I wanted to spend not one second longer on my past than I had to. Unfortunately, it doesn't work quite as easily as that. I had to take 2 steps forward and 1 step back. But, with much hard work, I got through the tough part. I now "FEEL"...sometimes more than I want to be feeling. I had to get through the part of recovery where tv commericals brought me to a sobbing mass of tears--which can be embarrassing! All the feelings of tenderness that I had managed to ignore suddenly came gushing forth. That has subsided a bit now, but I am still softer than I have ever been in my life.

Instead of giving in to the negative feelings that would have been so easy to succumb to, I managed to lean to the "light side of the force" in Star Wars terms. I have always been a positive person. I have always encouraged others in their endeavors. I decided it was time to encourage myself. Afterall, I deserve good things to happen to me. I am not a bad person. I did nothing to deserve the horrific things that were done to me as a child. NO CHILD DOES! But there was one other thing that I found I had to do before I could get past my past. I had to forgive. I found out that there was more to learning to forgive than I had realized. I was angry at my parents for not seeing clear signs that my grandfather was abusing me. He was caught in my bedroom more than once afterall! That alone should have been a sign! Yet, it was a different time. I know that my abuse most likely played a part in my father's early demise. Knowing what I know now, it couldn't have been something that he would have forgive himself for. HE would have blamed himself for allowing that to happen to his daughter under his nose. My father was a very acutely aware man. He probably suspected that his father had done something. I think he felt it too horrible to face. I hope and pray that he was able to forgive himself, however. I hold no ill will against him at all. It would be my fondest wish to get to meet him as an adult. (I was 11 when he died) I hope he knows that now. To make my father proud of me has always been one of my determining factors when I have had a decision to make. I think he would be proud of me for most of what I have done. I know he would have been proud to know that I was recovering from the damages done to me. He wouldn't have wanted me to suffer at all.

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