My Logic Is Sound- When the Victim Blames Herself

One of the most difficult aspects of my psychological make-up is that I can intellectually know something, and believe it, but cannot relate it to myself. For example, I know that sexual abuse is not the fault of the victim. I know that the victim will often blame themselves for abuse, but that it’s not their fault and healing comes through letting go of that blame. My mind can completely grasp this concept. I could, with great feeling and passion, share this information with others. But you know what comes next, don’t you….I have overwhelming and oppressive shame. I think everything is my fault. I know it’s not my fault, but it feels, without exception, all the time, like I am not only at fault, I AM faulty.

Imagine watching tv and the channels keep changing. If your spouse is a channel surfer, you know what I mean. This is my mind. The channels keep changing and this makes identifying what happened to me very difficult. I can slow the channel changing down a bit sometimes, and I can write or speak about what happened, but the act of writing or speaking is detached from what is happening in my mind. My mind won’t hold that channel, so I have great difficulty identifying the solid, realistic events of my past. I often wonder if what I have said happened, really happened. I wonder if the brief view of my past is real, or if it is a fabrication to justify the intense and horrible reality of my emotional state. In truth, I wish it was a fabrication…

Before I went to the hospital that had a special program for treating dissociative disorders, I wrote my therapist a letter. In the letter I wrote down what happened, for the first time, and said something like “I know this is true.” I was afraid the hospital staff would try to fuck with my memories and I would come out with some crazy story of horrific abuse that wasn’t true but that I believed nonetheless. I wanted proof for myself that what I knew, I knew. So I know. But it doesn’t seem all that bad. It seems like I should just be able to accept that it happened and move on. But it profoundly affects me. The worst way that I am affected, I think, is that I feel incredible shame for what happened and have spent my entire life re-enacting in some way the role I played then, compounding the shame and solidifying the belief that I asked for it, I liked it, I participated willingly in it, and that makes me a monster. Additionally, I think I created the sexual component of the behaviors. What was done to me was meant to be loving, nurturing, and normal and I am the monster that made it something sexual. I cannot escape this belief. And since I was a child, the shame is exponential as a sexual CHILD is most certainly a monster.

Even writing it down and re-reading it, I can’t find the faulty logic. Children are not responsible for the abuse perpetuated upon them, but my experiences weren’t abusive, I MADE them sexual so I’m the one to blame. Certainly, in the manner of a true dissociative mind, I can step back and ask the logical one inside to make a comment on this. And he says “the behaviors were sexual in nature, and since you were a child you were not to blame. The perpetrator was abusive. The perpetrator was meeting her sexual/emotional needs through you.” Immediately my mind spins, my stomach develops that bottomless pit of sickness, my flesh crawls, and I want to scream and hit myself. It’s easier to blame myself. It’s relaxing and calming to imagine punishing myself. It’s normal and comfortable and safe to blame myself. The awful, threatening, deeply disturbing pit in my stomach disappears as I reject the logic of “she was at fault” and embrace the belief that “I am faulty.”

I also know that there is more to this story. It’s not just about the confusing her-me relationship. It’s about someone else, because I can smell him. I can see, before the channel changes, brief scenes. It set the stage for everything else. I just cannot, for the life of me, determine whether or not it is a fabrication to justify my feelings (and my behavior) or if it happened. I once said to my therapist, “I know for a fact that this happened, and also I know for a fact it did not.” If only I could unlock that part of my mind, and see what happened, and know that it wasn’t my fault…then I could transfer that to the her-me shit. Change the channel.

Book information at http://inandoutoficeglass.weebly.com/

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.

Book information at http://inandoutoficeglass.weebly.com/