Massage Therapy

They say a massage can bring a person to tears. I didn’t have that kind of release, far from it. It felt good and all, but I had to keep telling myself to relax. I didn’t think I was going to make it for a bit. Despite the fact that all I do is sit around the house “getting better” (whatever the fuck that means), I have still had to deal with intense shit. Every day mom calls, and today was our day to go get massages together. That would be intense all by itself, spending an afternoon with mom, but I preceded the whole affair by stumbling upon a blog. Said blog was written by a mom whose daughter was molested by her dad repeatedly for 3 years. Said daughter is someone I know. So this blog, it was a raw and unbridled telling of the truth – how she felt as a mom, how she was abused as a child, how she felt when he fucked her….it laid all her emotion out there, along with her reason for writing – to be a voice among the silenced many who won’t share their truth because they are victims. And she refused to say she was a victim or that her daughter was a victim. She professed that they were survivors. I never heard all this from a mother’s point of view. I never wanted to connect with my own mother’s point of view.
Any time my mother approaches the subject of “why I am the way I am” she gets tearful and her pain engulfs me and I get lost in trying to take care of her. So I read all about it this morning, all about this woman and her daughter that I know, all about the devastation brought on by this man….and I remember once talking to the girl. We were eating, and she said “I hate my dad. He’s an asshole. You don’t even know.” Only it wasn’t said with the usual child’s intense but normal passion. It was said in a heartfelt, “I would kill him if I could get away with it” kind of rage. I just looked at her, not wanting to poo-poo it, but not knowing how to respond. I didn’t know he was molesting her. I wonder if I should have pursued a line of questioning, right there in the lobby, “why do you hate your dad? Is he fucking you or something?” But I’m kind of tied up in my own victimhood. I don’t really actually want to deal with anyone else’s. And I don’t know how. So I didn’t. And I feel guilty about that. Now that I see how this family has dealt with it – with a public blog using real names, with an article in the town newspaper, with friends and family being invited to the courthouse on sentencing day, with a strong mother making a strong statement that HE is the asshole, her daughter is the SURVIVOR, and damn anyone who tries to sweep it under the rug…well…I wish I had that. Instead I have shame for what happened, shame for having shame, and shame for hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. I’m still a victim. But hey, I didn’t cry when I got the massage. I barely relaxed. So good for me – and yay for the ability to hold it all in. I will take our secret to the grave, mom, for you.

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