The Elephant in the Room

~ KJ ~ 8 Comments

So, I’m going to talk about the elephant in the room.  The thing that no one wants to talk about, hear about, or even think about.

Sexual abuse.

Are you still with me?  Good.  That was just the beginning.

Female-perpetrated sexual abuse.

I know by now, some people have shaken their head in disbelief.  Some have clicked the X up there in the corner with disgust.  Some just said “What? No!”  But it happens, way more than society chooses to recognize.  Studies reveal around 20% of documented cases involve a female perpetrator, and that is only reported cases.  Keep in mind, most sexual abuse incidents go unreported; underreporting is even more common when a female perpetrator is involved.  And as a point, I’m not talking about those young female teachers having sex with young male students that we hear about in the media every so often.  The majority of female sex offenders are NOT of that type.  Are you still reading?  Good.  Take a breath.  Here it comes.

Mother-daughter sexual abuse.

By this point, I’d be surprised to have any readers left. If you’re still reading, thank you.  You have made it farther than most in our society have.  Odds are you’ve never even heard of mother-daughter sexual abuse, or MDSA.  Growing up, you were never taught to question your own mother touching you or doing sexual things to you. You more than likely learned about strangers touching you, and how you should tell someone you trust, like a parent.

Well, what the HELL are you supposed to do when that stranger touching you is actually your mother?  No one prepares you for that possibility.  No one prepares themselves for that possibility.

I’m going to tell you the harsh truth now.  Mothers sexually abuse children.  It’s hard to hear, difficult to stomach.  Imagine how it is for someone who has lived through it.  While mothers sexually abuse their own sons, the effects of sexual abuse of daughters may be the most traumatizing and psychologically damaging type of sexual abuse.  To add to the indescribable pain of experiencing it, most victims suffer in silence.  Society does not want to acknowledge that this type of abuse happens.

People often diminish the reality of MDSA because a mother is involved.  She has no penis, so what could she have possibly done to sexually abuse her own daughter?  Sexual abuse comes in many forms; it’s not just about vaginal intercourse.  Mothers can force daughters into oral sex or penetration (manually or with objects), or do the same to their daughters.  Mothers can engage in inappropriate bathing or dressing rituals, or use inappropriate medical excuses to disguise what is actually abuse.  These are just the most common ways.

Oh, but she’s your mother.  She didn’t mean it like that.

Let me tell you, there is no way what my mother did to me was right.  I wasn’t allowed to bathe by myself throughout my entire childhood and into my adolescence. She would stand there and watch me.  We had no shower curtain, so she could see everything.  On many occasions, she insisted on washing me, even when I was more than capable of washing myself.  And she’d scrub down my area as if she were scrubbing rust off of metal.  What lasted for minutes, in my mind, seemed like hours. She’d always say that children didn’t know how to take care of themselves.  It was humiliating.  It was abuse.

Then there were the times I would wake up in the middle of the night with my pants and underwear down to my ankles. “I’m just checking on things,” she’d say. “Go back to sleep.”  What the hell was she checking on?  Nothing was medically wrong with me.  There was no reason for her to be violating me like that.  After awhile I learned to just pretend like I was sleeping.  I’d go off into another place and try not to think about what was happening.

Boundaries were nonexistent. When I would change my clothes, my mother would barge right in and insist on helping me.  Whenever she bought me new clothes, she wanted me to try them on in front of her.  She’d make comments about my body.  As I got older, she seemed to get more angry.  She’d make comments about my weight, and say that no one will ever love me looking like this.  The abuse never stopped, she just changed her methods.

So do you still think mother-daughter sexual abuse doesn’t happen?  If those same experiences happened with my father or any male, people wouldn’t think twice before calling it sexual abuse.  But for some reason, when a mother is involved, people have this tendency to downplay the sexual abuse as a mere misunderstanding.

My experiences are no misunderstanding.  Neither are the experiences of the countless other victims of MDSA.

I can’t even begin to explain the effects MDSA has had on my life.  It affects nearly every part of me, physically and emotionally.  Talking about it helps.  I want people to know what happens.  I want people to feel comfortable enough to come forward with their own experiences.  I want people to start talking about it.  Stop denying that it happens.  Stop telling everyone to love and honor their mothers no matter what.  Stop glorifying motherhood.  You are only adding to the pain we already feel about our reality.

Mother

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I’m going to start off by saying that I have a hard time calling her ‘mother’.  I believe that title should be earned, and she lost the ability to earn it long ago.

I’m not even sure I can describe my mother in her entirety in one blog post.  For now, I’ll just give you the basics.

My mother likes to be in control.  Correction: she needs to be in control.  For 29 years, she controlled my life: where I went to school, where I worked, when and what I ate, when I went to the bathroom, what I wore, who I talked to.  Every aspect of my life was under her control.

The first time she lost control of me was when I was hospitalized last year.  For the first time, she couldn’t control me, and she lost it.  She called my doctor demanding that the staff tell her every detail of my visit.  She called the hospital, which against my wishes, told her I was admitted to the behavioral health unit.  She never stopped calling.  I didn’t want to speak to her.  Once she came to that realization, she started harassing the nurses, asking them where I was, what I was doing, who I was talking to, what was going on.  She would call more than a dozen times a day, even after she was told that it was none of her business.  I feared going back home, because I knew she would use my hospitalization as an excuse to be even more controlling…and she did.

My mother is also a pathological liar.  She doesn’t just lie about big things, she lies about the smallest, most insignificant things.  She will fight you if you confront her about it, too.  She would deny that she said or did something even though multiple people witnessed it.  She made up the most outlandish stories and spoke as if she believed them herself.  Worst of all, she made up lies about me and spread them to everyone I knew – and most believed her.  Who wouldn’t?  Why would a mother lie about her own children?

My mother has always had a need to be the star of the show.  If I had an achievement, she would turn it around to be something of her doing.  If you started to tell a story and it wasn’t about her, she would interrupt you and start talking about herself.  She would find any way to try to relate anything to her.  If in some way her ego was threatened, she would lash out.  Whenever I received recognition at work, she took it as an insult to herself and lashed out at me.

When it wasn’t about her, she threw herself a pity party – which brings me to my next description – overly dramatic.  She would turn the most insignificant occurrences into something major.  Her emotional reactions were always magnified.  If someone made a comment about the food at dinner, she would break down in tears while throwing kitchen utensils and plates across the kitchen at us.  If something happened at work, she would cry and scream at us, since she couldn’t do it at work.  She believed everyone was out to get her in one way or another.  We learned to deal with her temper tantrums by just ignoring her, as you would a temperamental child.

My mother was emotionally cold.  She was never the comforting, loving type of mother that every Hallmark card seems to depict.  She showed more affection to her cats than to her own children.  She knew how to act in public, though.  She had her caring, concerned, loving mother routine down perfect.  It’s almost scary how good of an actress she really was.  She had, and still has, everybody fooled.

Brother

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

I wasn’t an only child.  My mother decided to bring two children into this world to torture.

My brother is seven years older than me.  Growing up, we were never that close; that probably has to do with the age and gender difference more than anything.  Like me, he was the target of physical and emotional abuse from both parents.  For us, it was our “normal”.  We grew up being drilled not to talk to anyone about anything, that whatever happens at home stays at home.  So how were we supposed to know any different?

I do know my parents treated my brother differently than me.  He was allowed to have friends over; that was never an option for me.  He was allowed to go outside; I was stuck in home-prison.  He had much more freedom than I ever did.  With that being said, using the word freedom may be an overreach.  That was the extent of his freedom.  Even now, as an adult in his mid-30s, he has to report his actions back to General Mom.

My brother has always done the minimum he needed to do to get by…academically, socially, and occupationally.  He failed out of college two or three times.  He’s worked at a grocery store for more than fifteen years and I guess he’s okay with that.  He’s never made attempts to move on or improve.  He wastes his money shopping for frivolous things – a habit which he inherited from our mother.  He could do better, he just won’t.

On some level, I do relate to my brother.  I can see his pain.  He has self-injured for at least the last 12 years.  I remember the first time I became aware of it.  He locked himself in the bathroom and began bashing his head into the wall dozens of times, until he came out swollen, bloodied, and bruised.  What did my parents do?  They screamed at him and banished him to his room.

After that, I became more aware of his other injuries – the cuts on his arms and legs, the burns on his hands.  One morning, he came home from work with his hand all mangled up.  He had “accidentally” slipped it in a commercial mixer at work.  In my heart, I believe he did it on purpose.  His story just didn’t add up.  Neither of my parents ever acknowledged his actions, even though it was quite obvious what was going on.  He was struggling through the trauma, just like I was.

You would think, in our shared experiences, that my brother and I would be close and able to relate.  We couldn’t be farther apart.  I stopped talking to my brother about anything significant years ago.  Unlike me, he is completely attached to my mother.  They share everything about each other.  They have nightly “conferences” (that is what my father calls them) in which they meet in my brother’s bedroom with the door closed.  I don’t dare assume what goes on – they do not want to be disturbed – and I don’t think I really want to know.  All I know is that it is not normal.  I have even had outsiders comment to me how it seems like my mother and brother are married; if they only knew what went on at home.

I don’t understand the connection between my brother and my mother, and it angers me.  How can you be this way to a person that hurt you so much?  It’s sick.  Sometimes, I conclude that he must be brainwashed by her.  That is the only explanation I can come up with.

Where do I start?

~ KJ ~ Leave a comment

While a few people know parts of my story, no one knows every piece of the puzzle of my life.  Hell, I don’t even know every piece.  There are significant time periods in my life that I have no memory of, especially in my childhood.  Sometimes, my mind likes to torture me in the form of flashbacks – because experiencing it the first time wasn’t enough.  I probably should have been more specific when I begged myself to remember more.

I wish I could remember more than I have.  Most of my memories are traumatic ones.  I remember few, if any, periods in my life where I was happy and felt safe and loved.  Did I ever experience that?  I would like to think that I did, but I will probably never know for sure.

I could focus this blog only on the future, and on the positive experiences of my life, but what good will that do?  I feel like in order to understand my present situation, you have to understand my past.  In recovery, they encourage you to focus on the future.  People rarely want to talk about the trauma, the pain, the reality of their pasts.  But I do.  I want people to know that things like this actually happen.  That parents aren’t perfect.  That mothers hurt their own children.  If we refuse to talk about it, people will never acknowledge that it happens, and victims will continue to stay victims instead of becoming survivors.

I used to be ashamed of my past.  To be perfectly honest, I still go through periods of intense shame and self-blame.  I probably will for the rest of my life.  But something in me changed.  I am no longer afraid to acknowledge the reality of my past because it will always be a part of who I am.  I have come to accept that maybe, just maybe, there is a greater reason that I endured all the shit that I have endured.  I need to be the voice for those that cannot find theirs.

It was a Friday…

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

On Friday morning, July 10th, at 7:30 in the morning, I began a new life.

Running on less than two hours of sleep, I managed to stop shaking long enough to carry my three bags through the narrow hallway and towards the front door.  My father was there; he heard me in the shower earlier and stayed up to see what I was doing (nothing goes unnoticed or unquestioned in that home).  I struggled to get my bags out the door as I underwent his interrogation.

“Where are you going?” he asked me.  Luckily, I had already prepared myself for an interrogation and rehearsed my answers.

“I have an internship.”  Apparently, that wasn’t enough of an answer, as he repeated his initial question and added extra emphasis on the where.

“School.”  I kept my answers short.  The less detail the better.  But even that answer was a lie.  Then he asked me about work.  By this point, I had already been out of work for two weeks.  He believed I was on vacation. In reality, I resigned.

“How long are you going to be gone?” he continued.  By this point, I had one bag left to carry out the door.  Then I would be done.  My mother was just starting to wake up and I knew I had no chance with her.  I struggled to keep my emotions in check.  I mumbled “four weeks” as I made my final exit through the door.  I knew it wasn’t going to be four weeks – it would be forever.

It took two trips up and down four flights of stairs, but my adrenaline was so high at that point that I couldn’t feel a thing.  I threw the bags in the back of my friend’s car and we took off.  There were no goodbyes, no hugs or well wishes.  We were not that type of family and this was not that type of situation.  That was the last day I saw my family, and hopefully that continues to be the last day for the rest of my life.

Many people do not understand what would drive a person to up and leave their family behind without as little as an explanation.  For me, leaving was the only option I had left.  Very few people knew the reality I had been living for the 29 years of life.  I was at a point where I knew if I didn’t get out, I wouldn’t make it to 30.  This was the day I had been imagining since I was a child – the day I would finally be free from the hurt, the pain, and the abuse that had become my normal.

I would be lying if I said I was free from hurt.  Even now that I am out, the hurt and the pain are still a part of me.  There are scars that will likely never heal, and emotional damage that cannot be reversed.  Every day is a struggle for me, but I am taking steps.  I want to live a life without hurt.  That is the life that I deserve.