Hubchallenge day 26: Body memories

Involuntary spasms, nightmares and spontaneous bruising are just a few of the ways in which body memories assert themselves. The survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse often suffers from physical harm in the long term, in addition to the obvious physical harm that comes from having an adults sexuality visited upon the pre-pubescent body and the psychological damage.

Many survivors have trouble sleeping. The night holds no comfort, in particular if this was the time of day when the abuse most often occurred. Things go bump in the night, every sound is amplified by the sense of isolation that the darkness brings. There are many sounds that remind you of the abuse: Footsteps down the hall, the bed in the next room creaking, is that the door I hear? And that's just when you're awake!

Nightmares add a new dimension to fear. The things that the survivor of childhood sexual abuse has experienced are locked somewhere in the sub-conscious mind. A place where during the daytime the survivor rarely goes, except through triggers and perhaps therapy sessions. At night that door is blown wide open, the sub-conscious mind making a remix of the experiences that appears to maximize on fear and pain, while (sometimes mercifully) leaving out details like faces and identifying traits.

Mostly during the nights, but for some survivors during the days as well, the body remembers. It spasms, clenches and re-experiences the abuse. This can be very real indeed: people wake up with bruises that they can't account for. Even spontaneous bleeding occurs. No wonder so many survivors are on sleep-medication or avoid sleeping at nights, changing the natural rythm of sleep and waking to accommodate their fears of the darkness. This is an added risk to their mental health as well. Sleep deprivation used to be a favorite torture instrument, making people lose sight of reality and basically using their own fears against them. The effect of incessant nightmares, sleep deprivation and unexplained physical phenomena tends to be disastrous on a persons mental health.

Add to that the fact that many survivors have no previous recollection of the events of their childhood, having repressed their memories. No wonder they think they're going crazy, and indeed often survivors are misdiagnosed as having psychotic episodes with extreme anxiety.

While there is much ado about the "false memory syndrome", only 0.2 % of the reports made are considered false. The mind is a wonderful thing and I'm sure that to the suggestible mind it's possible to implant memories, as recent research has shown. However, as much as society may wish to believe otherwise, the memories I'm speaking of here are very real. As painful as videotaped porn showing images of this may be, it has served to bring to everyone's attention that these things DO HAPPEN. I have real memories of being abused by an adult who because his penis was several sizes too large for my pre-pubescent body spent quite a bit of time stretching me. Others weren't so lucky, they were brutalized and threatened into silence by someone twice their size.

I've never lost a memory myself. As survivors go, I was reasonable mature at the time it happened (12 years old, the mean age being 8). Burying the memory completely, so as not to remember a thing is a relatively unsofisticated (read young) defence mechanism. Most survivors have memories that they've always had, showing what they've always known. Often the emotional content is disconnected (and thus not linked to the abuse) and the memories are more like a black and white movie of something that happened someplace, sometime, far away, maybe to someone else. If I'm not really there for the abuse, it doesn't hurt and it's just a fact of life. 

As a child living this it is quite different as the adult remembering. While the child may suffer pain and become confused, it copes the best way it knows how. Usually this involves trying not to think about it and trying to avoid situations where it happens. The child has an ego-centered view and thinks that things happen because of something the child did or didn't do. This, more than anything, protects the child from knowing the real truth, the one that is so glaringly obvious once grown: The child is at the mercy of the adult abusing it and is powerless to do anything about it.

The realness of my memories has protected me from doubting myself, doubting the abuse really happened. Believe me, it's very tempting to convince yourself that it didn't happen, or that if it did, it wasn't so bad. Esspecially since when you start telling about it, people don't want to believe. They don't ask for the details, they don't want to know. Even after you start talking about the abuse (often many years after it happens) it's hard to find someone who is willing to believe you, willing to help you struggle through your inner landscape of confusion and mixed emotions. People want you to be okay, they want things to seem not as bad and their favorite way of establishing that is: they want to hear you say that you somehow had an active role in the abuse.

The difficulty is that you half believe that anyway, from the childs point of view. To a child the father is the hero, adults are twice your size and they rule the world. They feed you and clothe you and teach you what you need to know in life. To deserve such heinous acts to be performed on you you must have done something wrong. It's both your protection and your downfall to think that you somehow instigated the abuse. It makes recovering from childhood sexual abuse a difficult and demanding task.

The "Real memory syndrome" starts when you can no longer deny to yourself that you were abused and there was nothing you could have done to save yourself. If you could have, you would have. You've been forced, manipulated, entrapped, ensnared in a web of lies and halftruths and you were no match for the adult involved. It was never your fault. And that means that the trusted adult (80% of all cases involve a trusted adult, either family or close friend) tricked you and abused you and used you for his own sexual pleasure with never a thought about how this might affect you.

The "Real memory syndrome" asks you to take a cold hard look at the facts: In my case a 12 year old girl, sort of shy, blonde and barely starting to blossom. No pubic hair, hardly any breast growing, never had a date in my life, never showed any interest in boys. A 34 year old man, friend to the family, grooming me, showing me exciting things about life and triggering an early puberty in me. Riling me up against my family, twisting my words around to suit his depraved needs. Isolating me from whatever contacts I might have had, making fun of my friends, supporting me in my rebellion against my parents. This man preyed on the exclusivity only a child can give you: I had never been touched before. He enslaved me for his sexual pleasures, put a chain around my neck and preserved me as his own private plaything for over 6 years. That's the Real Memory.

There's a hole in my life where they should be. The missing memories aren't about things that happened that I don't remember, instead they are about the things that should have happened that never happened because of the abuse.

Remember your first date? I don't.
Remember your first kiss? I don't.
Remember your first dance? I don't.
Remember going to the prom? I don't.
Remember snickering through sex education? I don't.
Remember the first time you ever thought a boy was cute? I don't.
Remember the first time you felt a sexual tingle in your body? I don't.

The missing memories are a something that is rarely talked about. For six years all my spare time went into being abused. I don't remember my first dance because I never went there. I didn't have a first date until about 4 years ago (first date at 41). I never kissed another boy, because he had made it perfectly clear that such disloyalty would not be appreciated. I never even wanted to kiss another boy, after all they were only after one thing and I had quite enough of that thank you very much.

The normal everyday stuff that you go through, highschool, homework, developing your own identity, making friends... all this was disrupted by the abuse. Highschool became my safe place, a place where I could rest. Thank goodness studying wasn't difficult for me, that meant that I still got a nice diploma at the end. If the study had required that I did any homework at all I couldn't have done it: there simply wasn't time.

The normal everyday stuff... I don't know what it looks like or feels like. Those missing memories are never to be found again. I've made peace with not having lived that part. I've grieved over the loss of who I might have been. Sometimes it still stings, when I hear people talk about their youth and how they used to "hang out" and "do their thing".

Aside from stealing my virginity and all hopes of developing my own sexuality in a natural, normal way, he stole time from me. Now, at 45, looking back and feeling that I am no longer a young woman, this still hurts.