An Uncomfortable Existence: One Woman's Journey Through Childhood Sexual Trauma. (CHAPTER 2)

I was born in 1974 to young hippie parents living in Austin, Texas. Is it cliché to say it was the best of times and the worst of times? Probably, but it's true. My parents were 22 and 18, temporarily homeless, and more broke than not. I don't know the circumstance of how or why, but they would eventually find a tiny house in Houston to try to throw down roots and raise my adorable little self. As far as first memories go, I don't have a single happy memory of that time. That's not to say there weren't any. There just weren't enough to make a significant imprint in my memories. I do remember the house and its layout. I remember that my bedroom was actually a closed in screen porch. I remember I had a swing set outback that I loved. I remember that my neighbor was a really old woman who was always so damn mean and when my parents were going through a divorce when I was 5-years-old, I remember telling her that the reason we were moving away was because she was so mean. That obviously wasn't true, but it was my first venture into being a salty little pissant and I think I nailed it.

Me, at 5

Mostly I remember the unpleasant things.
I remember choking on a penny and my mom screaming at my dad to get it out as he held me upside down by my feet and hit my back repeatedly until the penny dislodged. I also remember the Dr. Pepper I was given right after. I think it was my first.
I remember getting my foot caught in my dad's bicycle spoke while he was riding with me and, somehow, the heel of my foot got caught and chopped up a bit. I remember screaming, not in pain, once we were at the emergency room, but because I was terrified the doctors were going to give a shot.
I remember when family friends came over with their newborn and how I accidentally dropped him on the floor while they let me hold him. Oopsy. In my defense, I was four and sitting down, so it wasn't a long drop to the floor. I remember his brothers, 4 and 7, coming to his defense yelling at me and then being sent to my pseudo-room by my mom.

Oh, and I remember walking into the living room to see my mom having sex with a man on the couch -a man who was, most assured, not my dad. I remember her yelling at me to go back to my room and then, later, bribing me with butterscotch candies to keep quiet, which I did until I was 42-years-old.

Not long after my parents split up, each moving to apartments in Houston, my mom and I started spending a lot of time with her best friend, the mother of the baby that I had dropped and the brothers who had came to his defense. She was also my godmother and I adored her. Her three sons, eventually four, would become my most beloved childhood playmates. They would also be the ones to introduce me to sex at a very young age.

It is not uncommon from children to be curious about the opposite sex and to play house or play the whole "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" game. It's par the course for healthy childhood development. But, hindsight being the gift that it is, I can see that something was very wrong with how we played or, more accurately, how they made me play. I can look back with extreme empathy and sadness in understanding what they must have also gone through to know the things they did at such young ages, but at the time? I was only five, six, and seven. What the fuck did I know? So when the second eldest, the one who was just a few months older than me and, in my mind, destined to become my husband, told me to get naked and lay down while he lay naked atop of me and mimicked having sex (something I'd already witnessed thanks to my dear ol' mom), I went along with it. When he told me to make certain sounds, I did. When he told me to touch him "down there", I did. Sex play became normal for me because of these boys and, most notably, because of future sexually abusive events. Not only was it my normal, it became something I craved.

If it's not already obvious, I wasn't the leader type. I was a follower. As an only child to divorced parents and a mother who wasn't exactly involved in my emotional development, I was timid and afraid to speak my mind very early on. I didn't learn to fend for myself. I learned to submit and take whatever was happening. I succumbed to the idea that it was my place to do as I was told regardless of whether or not I actually wanted to participate. I was also desperate to be liked and loved (SPOILER ALERT: MOMMY ISSUES) and that, my friends, is a very dangerous combo. These unfortunate lessons would stay with me for a couple of decades and lend nicely to all kinds of unsavory circumstances.

I've never thought that my mother didn't love me. I know she did and does. But I do believe, due to her own severely abusive and neglectful childhood, she wasn't equipped to be a mother, certainly not a good one, and didn't have the strength to break the abusive cycles that were long ago established in our bloodline. I think to her, I was a mistake that she chose to deal with and, in her eyes, that was enough. "Hey, I didn't abort you! See, I'm a good mom!" I probably forgot to mention that I was an accidental baby. My mom was pregnant once before prior to having me. I assume this was the reason she married my dad when she was only 16-years-old, but I'm not certain. It may have been to escape her own abusive parents. In either case, sadly, she lost the baby in her 5th or 6th month of pregnancy due to an undetected bladder infection. It was devastating to her and my dad, naturally, and they vowed to never get pregnant again. A year-and-a-half later, that bad round of the flu she thought she was suffering through was actually me wreaking havoc in her womb. Surprise! All this to say/write, my mom wasn't nurturing. Oh sure, I was fed and clothed and had a roof over my head and she'd tend to me when I was sick and gift me toys at birthdays and holidays, but that was honestly the extent of her role in my life. She didn't play with me, read to me, cuddle me, or offer comfort or advice. A couple of times she even forgot about me. She was incredibly selfish and emotionally distant. Physically, she was volatile. I would endure my first beating from her when I was around 6-years-old. I remember sitting in daycare a couple hours later, silently crying while staring at the red welts that encircled my tiny little legs from the belt she had used to teach me a lesson about talking back. I would continue to suffer abusive blows from her a couple times a year (using either a paddle, her fists, or her feet) until she kicked me out to go live with my dad at 14-years-old. But I digress.

I realize that none of this is pertinent to the childhood sexual trauma that I will soon write about, but I think it serves as an observational backdrop to the environment that I was in and, I think, sets the stage for understanding the trajectory of the emotional fuckery that would follow me for decades to come.

In short, I'm an only child in a very small and very dysfunctional family. My dad, for all his faults, was a good dad, but because he and my mother divorced when I was only 5, my time with him was limited to every other weekend and every other holiday. When I was with him, he made sure to make it fun and light-hearted. He was playful and certainly nurturing in his own way. When I ended up moving in with him in my early teens, what was left of my childhood would slowly begin to turn around for the better. Sadly, he knew nothing about the realities I was dealing with at home until I finally told him this last year, but that's a whole other story. Back to the overall family dynamics. We didn't talk. We didn't comfort. We weren't even particularly close with one another -literally no one was close in the traditional sense of the word. If I had to pick one word to describe the overall theme of my childhood it would be lonely. Further, there were no strong matriarchs to look up to, only broken women who bowed down to distorted world views based on their own abuses/sufferings at the hands of men and lack of learned maternal instincts. Therefore, when I would come to face the most terrifying moment of my young life at only 6-years-old, it will come as no surprise to anyone that absolutely nothing was done to help me through it. After all, we don't talk about such things, right?

Wrong. Hold tight.