This was going to be a digression from the aftermath post, but I think it will end up being long enough in its own right that it could be separate.
There was no privacy in our house. No boundaries were respected. At least, that I can recall, not by my father, nor by either of my two brothers (now that I think about it, not by me either, at least when I was a young child; I do remember as I got older that I did learn them, somehow). My mother probably respected them the most, herself at least, but she wouldn't even try to get anyone else to respect them.
If there was a closed door in the house, that didn't mean anything. If someone needed to talk to whoever was on the other side, they (meaning father or either brother) would just open the door and walk in. It didn't matter what may have been going on on the other side of the door, or who was in there.
There was only one door in the house that had a lock on it, and that was the bathroom. The only room that was safe. This was never a conscious realization on my part until much later, but that is where I did effectively all of my masturbation as a kid... sitting on the toilet. (If you know or have a child who is a teenage boy, and he spends a lot of time in the bathroom, this is why.)
Eventually I joined the military, spent four years in it, then came home (and, incidentally, spent a lot of time in a depressive state, living off of unemployment...) only to be pointedly reminded of the lack of privacy. (I was in my room, or rather "the room in which I was sleeping," having phone sex and masturbating... and middle brother decided he needed to come in and ask me something.)
(Digression: After I got married and lived on my own, and had a family, I somehow managed to forget all of this, only to be reminded of it again. One Thanksgiving, we lived in another state, and invited my parents to stay with us. They hadn't seen us in a long time and our child never. At one point, my wife had just gotten out of the shower (master bathroom off of master bedroom), and was in the bedroom with the door closed, drying herself, totally naked... when my father decided he needed to go in and ask her something.)
God fucking damn it, will you people just respect a closed door?
Showing posts with label boundaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boundaries. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
rape, the aftermath
(I won't guarantee there aren't triggers ahead, but I don't think so. Still, read with care.)
The next day, maybe two, I was kept home from school. I had no objection whatsoever. A couple of days later I did go back. I thought I might have trouble in P.E. class, especially showering afterward, but I didn't seem to.
My dad insisted that I get in to see a counselor. I at first didn't want to, but he admitted to me while we were alone that a similar thing had happened to him when he was a child, and (I think he said this) that he wished he could have gotten counseling for it. I agreed. He had a name, I don't where he found it, but he said that this was who I'd see. I went ahead and saw him. I think I went and saw him twice all told, then not again until I was an adult. (Digression: this would turn out to be the therapist who told me he didn't think I had ADD and probably wasn't transgendered.)
That wouldn't be the end of the aftermath for me. I didn't have any particular lingering trauma that I can recall, but there were some lingering issues that only much, much later could I articulate and tie back to that. (The therapist wasn't much help in that respect. Why do I still owe him thousands of dollars?)
I think I've mentioned that the way I discovered I had ADD, as an adult, was that my youngest brother revealed to me that he'd recently been diagnosed with ADD, as an adult.
(Digression: It hit me like a ton of bricks that that's what caused all of my trouble with school when I was a kid. I felt a lot of guilt, because when you're told year after year that you're smart but why can't you seem to apply yourself?, and when someone (i.e. mother) keeps telling no, there's nothing wrong with you, you just don't seem to apply yourself, it's hard not to internalize the label of "lazy". No one ever said the word, but they didn't have to. I also felt a lot of anger, at my parents who were too wrapped up in their own lives to notice, too wrapped up in "the way it was done when we were kids" to think that maybe there might be a solvable problem, and at every single one of my teachers who were dealing with this in other students and should have seen the signs and maybe, y'know, mentioned something to my parents. I also felt a lot of regret, that if maybe some steps were taken to help me when I was six or seven or eight, I could have been a better student and not ended up depressed most of my adult life, maybe made it through college, maybe been able to get into college at eighteen instead of twenty five and end up dropping out because of undiagnosed ADD --)
I had no trouble at all believing that he had ADD. Not-digression, because this leads up to what follows in this post: let's see, maybe I was ten or eleven years old, which would have made him six or seven. A friend (a year younger and thus behind me in school), who lived somewhat nearby, near enough for me to ride my bike over to his house and hang out with him, had invited me to do just that. Which I did. I don't know why brother came along, but he did. We hung out in the friend's bedroom, talking, playing with toys (probably action figures, Lego, or something similar). The friend would leave the room to do things, maybe minor chores or something, and when that would happen brother went into action. He could absolutely not stop handling the friend's stuff. I didn't think it was right that he should keep messing with the friend's stuff, and told him to stop, but he wouldn't. I think maybe he couldn't.
Fast forward, back to the aftermath. Brother wouldn't, or couldn't, keep his fucking hands to himself. Here's the operative part: he would not respect my personal boundaries, and I couldn't articulate that I absolutely needed to have them respected. He'd poke me in the leg or the belly or the thigh or the butt (yeah, the anal region!), or sometimes sneak up behind me and very lightly tickle the back of my neck -- and screaming would ensue. "He's touching me!"
"Can't you just ignore him?"
Uhhh, not just no, but hell fucking no.
(Digression: remember the "good Christian" family that lived next door to us, where I suspect sexual abuse was rampant? The possibility exists that brother may have been a recipient. I can't remember any personally happening to me, but the kid in that family who was drummed out of the Army for rape would frequently tell me to put my mouth on his penis. I thought he wanted to pee in my mouth, and I had great difficulty thinking of anything more disgusting. I always told him no. The daughter of that family, she of the rampant sexuality, would occasionally babysit for us, but after the time my mother caught us (about which more another time), I think never did again. But her brother, the army rapist, did babysit for us at least once after that. I don't remember anything happening, at least to me, but I couldn't be every where all the time. And we were starting to get old enough to not need babysitting.)
To be continued...
The next day, maybe two, I was kept home from school. I had no objection whatsoever. A couple of days later I did go back. I thought I might have trouble in P.E. class, especially showering afterward, but I didn't seem to.
My dad insisted that I get in to see a counselor. I at first didn't want to, but he admitted to me while we were alone that a similar thing had happened to him when he was a child, and (I think he said this) that he wished he could have gotten counseling for it. I agreed. He had a name, I don't where he found it, but he said that this was who I'd see. I went ahead and saw him. I think I went and saw him twice all told, then not again until I was an adult. (Digression: this would turn out to be the therapist who told me he didn't think I had ADD and probably wasn't transgendered.)
That wouldn't be the end of the aftermath for me. I didn't have any particular lingering trauma that I can recall, but there were some lingering issues that only much, much later could I articulate and tie back to that. (The therapist wasn't much help in that respect. Why do I still owe him thousands of dollars?)
I think I've mentioned that the way I discovered I had ADD, as an adult, was that my youngest brother revealed to me that he'd recently been diagnosed with ADD, as an adult.
(Digression: It hit me like a ton of bricks that that's what caused all of my trouble with school when I was a kid. I felt a lot of guilt, because when you're told year after year that you're smart but why can't you seem to apply yourself?, and when someone (i.e. mother) keeps telling no, there's nothing wrong with you, you just don't seem to apply yourself, it's hard not to internalize the label of "lazy". No one ever said the word, but they didn't have to. I also felt a lot of anger, at my parents who were too wrapped up in their own lives to notice, too wrapped up in "the way it was done when we were kids" to think that maybe there might be a solvable problem, and at every single one of my teachers who were dealing with this in other students and should have seen the signs and maybe, y'know, mentioned something to my parents. I also felt a lot of regret, that if maybe some steps were taken to help me when I was six or seven or eight, I could have been a better student and not ended up depressed most of my adult life, maybe made it through college, maybe been able to get into college at eighteen instead of twenty five and end up dropping out because of undiagnosed ADD --)
I had no trouble at all believing that he had ADD. Not-digression, because this leads up to what follows in this post: let's see, maybe I was ten or eleven years old, which would have made him six or seven. A friend (a year younger and thus behind me in school), who lived somewhat nearby, near enough for me to ride my bike over to his house and hang out with him, had invited me to do just that. Which I did. I don't know why brother came along, but he did. We hung out in the friend's bedroom, talking, playing with toys (probably action figures, Lego, or something similar). The friend would leave the room to do things, maybe minor chores or something, and when that would happen brother went into action. He could absolutely not stop handling the friend's stuff. I didn't think it was right that he should keep messing with the friend's stuff, and told him to stop, but he wouldn't. I think maybe he couldn't.
Fast forward, back to the aftermath. Brother wouldn't, or couldn't, keep his fucking hands to himself. Here's the operative part: he would not respect my personal boundaries, and I couldn't articulate that I absolutely needed to have them respected. He'd poke me in the leg or the belly or the thigh or the butt (yeah, the anal region!), or sometimes sneak up behind me and very lightly tickle the back of my neck -- and screaming would ensue. "He's touching me!"
"Can't you just ignore him?"
Uhhh, not just no, but hell fucking no.
(Digression: remember the "good Christian" family that lived next door to us, where I suspect sexual abuse was rampant? The possibility exists that brother may have been a recipient. I can't remember any personally happening to me, but the kid in that family who was drummed out of the Army for rape would frequently tell me to put my mouth on his penis. I thought he wanted to pee in my mouth, and I had great difficulty thinking of anything more disgusting. I always told him no. The daughter of that family, she of the rampant sexuality, would occasionally babysit for us, but after the time my mother caught us (about which more another time), I think never did again. But her brother, the army rapist, did babysit for us at least once after that. I don't remember anything happening, at least to me, but I couldn't be every where all the time. And we were starting to get old enough to not need babysitting.)
To be continued...
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