Survivors' Story

For me things are difficult, my learning was corrupted while I was an innocent, and many years went by before I knew this to be so.  As a child I spent many a time with my peers playing explorative games and thank goodness I was always a shy child, attentive and caring, I would spend a lot of time happy to watch other children at play, watching and learning, this saved me from many a situation that would have been disastrous. 

I realise now looking back and only with my knowledge as an adult why it is the media say that once abused the victim would go on to abuse, whilst a teenager I hated with such ferocity this statement, but now I can see what they meant, perhaps? All those games we played as children, first the ‘show me and ill show you’ games and then the kissing, and later maybe the touching.  I look back and wonder how much influence did I have in those games, how many did I instigate? And why, what were my motives?

After a lot of thought I know I can let these things go, I didn’t do anything that other children of a similar age weren’t doing and I didn’t do a lot of things that some children did.  And so I began to distance myself, to draw a line between me and people and then another that I mustn’t pass. 

As I grew I began to realise that some of the experiences I had had as a child other people didn’t have, and nothing was worse than the PSHE lesson in school, when the teacher I respected and adored so much explained about child abuse, and how we didn’t have to put up with it, how there is always someone you can talk to about it, how it was wrong and it was something that was done to us against our will and that these people were bad and should go to prison.

So who was it that took my innocence away? Because up until that point I had no idea, almost on a daily basis I began to remember things long forgotten, I could picture myself with him and the things that he did to me, I tried to work out if I was imagining the images I could see in my head, but id never seen anything like it before or since and indeed not for several years did I begin to understand what he had done and with the naming of the act came more and more waves of guilt. My head was like a mine field and no matter which way my thoughts tried to go, each one ended in an explosion of pain.  I just wanted to die, every day I awoke to darkness, everything was just too much to think about and I just wanted to lay down under my duvet and not ever come out. 

What had happened to the protection my parents should have given me? Did they know?  Should I ask them? How bad would they feel, what would it achieve? Was I going to go on and abuse, OMG had I already started? 

Months passed without an end. I would go for long walks along the moors and through the woods, I would see the men with their privates out hiding in the long grass and I longed for one to grab me, rape me, kill me, then everyone would know how dirty I was and I would be the victim that the teacher had spoke of.  And maybe that was the problem, I wasn’t a victim, I let they guy do what he did, I lay still for him, on occasion I even went to him, I liked the attention, it felt nice. And it made sense that we shouldn’t wake my brother cause as the guy said, he would only be jealous and he might want to share my biscuits, and so it was our secret, I wonder now if he had any idea how long that secret would last. I was 4, maybe 5 years old when it happened and 11, 12 when I realised how wrong it was, it took several years for me to get past the past and to begin to have a life, create a future, to look people in the eyes and know that they couldn’t see into me.

And then one day when I was 17 I was with my boyfriend of 2 years, we were playing about in his bedroom I think I had a pen that he wanted and as I playfully tried to get away he grabbed my feet, held them together, it was like being hit by a sledgehammer, I sudden blow to the head, a light switch turned on. I was overtaken with sheer panic, I screamed and screamed, I kicked and fought and screamed and came to rest moments later in the corner of the room wide eyed and terrified. I'd seen it all, the night when I was too tired and I didn’t want to come downstairs, the persuading, the way he carried me in his arms and laid me on the couch, I was so sleepy and down below was still sore from last time, my parents had been out a lot that week it was almost Christmas.

I remember saying no and when he carried on I began to cry, he told me to be quite and it would be over quickly, I cried louder and louder, he put his hand over my mouth and I began to scream, and for the first time I remember seeing my brother on the stairs looking at me, he asked if I was ok and the guy said I'd had a nightmare and he should go back to bed and that I would go back in a minute when I had calmed down. My brother sleepily went back to bed, but the guy was really cross with me, he held my feet together so I couldn’t kick him and kept his hand over my mouth so I couldn’t scream.

He talked to me for a long time about how naughty I had been, and that he was just making me better. He said that I had been so naughty that he wasn’t coming back to sit for us again that I had made him really sad. Finally he said that if I went straight to bed and sleep that he wouldn’t tell my parents how bad I'd been, and there it was, a secret kept forever, all I ever wanted was to be was a good girl, even in school if I was told off I would be reduced to tears because I had been bad which meant people I liked would go away from me and not come back.

I never physically struck out at people because I'd learnt how bad that was, it too made people go away and not forgive me. If I ever hurt anyone by accident I would feel so distraught inside and even now I have to check myself, why do I care if these people like me? Why do I care what they think? They are not me! And I have no wish to be like them. But there are times when I wish I could be as free as my friends, I want to get drunk and not be responsible for my actions, put myself at the goodwill of others and trust them to care for me, but I just can't do it, I have to be in control, I don’t have to be in the lead but I do have to agree to it, I have to be aware of everything all the time.

Trust I just can't do it, it feels like giving someone the opportunity to hurt you, laying all that you are out in front of them and expecting them to hold it close to them and cherish it like you wish you could someone’s soul, to let someone in, to fill that huge chasm that follows me around, tainting my daily life. When a friend puts their hand on my shoulder to tell me its time for a break and I freeze because the warmth feels so good, but knowing that its wrong to enjoy their touch so much because it wasn’t meant like that. When a friend cries and you hold them in your arms, always questioning the touch, always holding back.

For many years my life became ‘normal’ I even have 3 children on the back of a 10 year relationship, but I have never left my children with anyone, not even their father. Don’t you see? For me it’s the guy who looked after me, we played games, he made me feel nice and that was wrong and the one time I said no, he left and everyone asked where he’d gone and how they missed having him around because he was so nice.  And so when my friends are looking for the nice guys, the funny ones that make you laugh, play games and whisper into their ears.

Anonymous.