I've been thinking about your comments about the book you are reading. I have been wondering why some people who have been abused stand up and shine and overachieve, and others hide.
I think I mentioned this before, but for years I did a very unofficial survey of my daughter's friends. All of the overweight, struggling kids had been abused - many sexually, but also physically and emotionally. They all opted to hide, to become invisible.
Some of us learn that we are trash, to be used and discarded. Some of us decide we are not trash and to show 'em all and become more. It seems that both ways involve disowning a part of self. And I can't decide which way is healthier - as if there were a healthier in this kind of a situation.
Just started reading the Joyce Carol Oates I pulled from your backseat library. The story seems to focus on the rape of a nice girl, as opposed to a dirty girl who the football team believes deserves it. I am emotionally involved, and a little anxious and nauseous. A good book can do this for us!!
You say you kept putting yourself in the same position for the molestation to be repeated. What happens when you say No! to a rapist? The violence increases. All of the rape advice tells us it is better to survive, even if it means - not exactly cooperating, but not resisting. I'm not sure. A few years after I had been raped, I was walking home alone in the dark. I got that eerie feeling that someone was stalking me...that feeling that makes your hair stand up and your hearing ability magnify. I remember thinking, "If someone wants to rape me, they are going to have to kill me. I am not going through that again." A few deaths of "good girls", if women showed we would rather die than be attacked and assaulted, that we preferred death - attitudes would change. Maybe. Or more news would be hidden - not valuable, not interesting.
I get so angry. One man said if rape were inevitable, we should relax and enjoy it. My thought was violent, involved an assault on him wondering how long it would take him to relax and enjoy.
I really lost it when I read about a judge at a rape trial. He told the lawyer to approach the bench. He gave the lawyer a pencil. Then the judge proceeded to move a Coke bottle back and forth and told the lawyer to put the pencil in the bottle. The lawyer could not do it, thereby proving that rape was impossible. I almost stopped breathing when I read that. I wished I had been in that courtroom, and had the courage to raise my hand and point out that the judge missed something. First, we take the Coke bottle and slam it down on the bench. Hard. Possibly cracking it, or maybe shattering it. Then we jam the pencil in easily.
And the other way of protecting self is to go ask for help. In our home, who could you have possibly asked? No one would have listened. Kids just play doctor sometimes, you know? And sex was such an uncomfortable topic, that you would have been shushed immediately.
Rereading your last post, thinking about protecting others, protecting kids. Two thoughts came to mind, two ways of protecting children - our family way of never talking about certain subjects - they simply don't exist for children. There is no sex,. there is no violence, everything is fine! Or transparency - letting the garbage fall out of the closets, the psyches, and be there for all to see. Can you imagine all the pain and shit and silent screams and shock and blood and gore that would come out of our family closet? Which of us would tip-toe over it? Which of us would talk about it, acknowledge it? Which of us would roll up our sleeves and clean the damned mess up?
I come back to our siblings' comment of - Don't take our childhood memories away from us. Basically, we don't care if you are in pain, as long as we are not...
Not off to a good day here, but in the long run, this work is good...
I love you, many, many hugs...
Clare
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