" What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light . . . . proclaim on the housetops. . . . [ Matthew 10:27].
{ April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month.}
To come face to face with someone who has survived child abuse is to confront the uncomfortable, the taboo. We contemplate the survivor, and we see the very edges of society. No one wants to draw near to the outlier. It is as if the survivor represents a rebuke to the entire community.
And so, the abuse survivor " disappears." She pretends that everything is okay. She melts into the corners of the room. She cannot ask for help, because that plea forces people to confront the ugly side of humanity.
The abuse survivor is often told, ' Well, you were only a child, so how can whatever you say be believed?' Or she is told, ' Well, it only happened X number of times. How bad could it have been?' Or, she is told, ' Why do you ' want' to dwell in the past?' Or, ' Why can't you forget it and move on? Be happy.'
The fact is, the child may have tried to tell her mother, or another seemingly
The abuse survivor can really never forget what happened. Abuse is not a discrete set of events "going nowhere". The abuse creates lasting damage.
I think of Maya Angelou, who writes so hauntingly in her book, " I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings", about the sexual assault at the hand of her mother's boyfriend. It happened but once - --- and then, she stopped speaking. Her silence came after she told the police the identity of the man who had assaulted her; the police hunted the man down and killed him. Angelou concluded that her words could kill. She became terrified to speak.
I stopped speaking when I was ten. I had already shut down my emotions. When my father told my mother, ' Do NOT feed her', I realized that food had become a power struggle. To neutralize that war, in which I was the target, I largely stopped eating. I kept myself awake at night until I was sure everyone was asleep. My chronic lung disease roared through my system.
Often, I could barely breathe. I kept shutting down my systems, one by one -- sleeping, eating, feeling --- praying that the quieting of another system would finally make me invisible and therefore, the abuse would go away.
But, the abuse did not end. Finally, I stopped speaking. I had given up on humanity. I had given up on myself.
You don't stop speaking for several years, with no effect. I have had to fight to get my voice back. I still fear speaking up. But, I also fear censoring myself, unable to defend myself verbally. I still have unnerving fear over asking for help. I am working on learning how to regulate my conversation, neither interrupting too much, nor going silent again.
I still sleep fitfully. The nightmares come every night, forcing me to relive the trauma. The flashbacks float before my eyes, during daylight hours, disembodied images of terror. Sometimes, the nightmare turns out to be a horrible version of the truth.
I am still nervous about having enough food. I remain fearful that someone will take my food away again.
My chronic lung disease is serious, since my family never provided me with appropriate medical care when I was a child. Plain and simple, that was neglect. And so, I have daily physical effects from the neglect, including chronic bronchitis and hearing loss.
I am still afraid of my emotions. I live in a muffled emotional world. I can recognize broad emotions like " happy", and "sad". But, some emotions such as "frustrated vs. anxious", "excited vs. angry" are softer around the edges. I have to consult a trusted person, like my husband, to figure out what I am feeling, because all I know is that I am somehow, indefinably " upset".
My emotions are disconnected from the triggering event, as if my emotions simply float up for no reason; these free floating feelings are amorphous and seem to have a life of their own. To feel emotions,without a known reason, feels like being randomly invaded by aliens, manipulating your moods.
There is intense pain from the past traumas. It is like a psychic cancer. I can stay busy, I can distract myself, but the pain never goes away. It is there in my waking moments, it is there in my nightmares. Military veterans and Holocaust survivors have gone through a war and paid the emotional and physical price. Abuse survivors have been through their own kind of War, as well.
The worst part of the abuse is the legacy that it leaves for the next generation. The children of abuse
survivors take on all the anxiety and guilt and feelings of worthlessness as the survivor herself -- but without the original trauma causing these. The survivors' children inherit their traumatized interior landscape. In a September 10, 2010 article on Time.com, the author wrote about studies of Holocaust survivors, whose children displayed even genetic changes to how the body processes stress, and stress hormones. And so, the legacy of trauma rolls down the generations.
I have worked hard on myself. I am a much different person than I was when the memories of the past first began to surface unbidden, like so much awful dreck dislodged from the bottom of a murky lake.
I do not want anyone's pity. I was always at the bottom of the pecking order growing up, anyway. Pity only plunges me back to the bottom, by minimizing me and discounting me. To pity me, is to shrink me down into the pitiable child I once was. I do not want to go there again.
But I WOULD like it if people would stop telling abuse survivors. " Get over it". A lifetime of abuse is not overcome in an instant. Some of the effects, sadly, are pervasive.
All I would desire, as a survivor, is the Love that I never received. If you cannot give me that, can you at least respect me for the battle I am engaged in?
Peace.
[ Related Postings: " STOP Abuse, April 14,2100; " Rescuing The Invisible Child", April 18, 2012; "The Warning Signs of Abuse", May 10, 2013; " The Culture of Abuse, April 10, 2013.]
(c) Spiritual Devotional 2014. All Rights Reserved.
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