I figured I should elaborate on the “bone-crushing” last visit. I happened to be looking over my blog. I checked out 3 entries from June 2008 that were password protected (things I know, things I’m not sure about, questions I have). These posts are the lists I made after this visit. When I re-read the posts I became nauseated and I just felt like I don’t want to think about this stuff, talk about it or work on it. Then I realized I have been avoiding this “list” for months. I decided to jump back into the quagmire at my next visit.
I walked into the waiting room and asked Dr. K. if he had the lists. He seemed momentarily confused, “Lists, which lists?” . Then he pulls out the 3 hardcopy pages I gave him of the password protected posts. He holds them up and asks, “Are you talking about these?”. I think I actually recoil slightly at the sight of them. “Yeah” I say with forced nonchalance, “Lets work on those today.” I saunter into the conference room and sit on the couch. Whoo hoo, check out lil’ Miss Badass, going to do some work today, huh? Dr. K. enters the conference room and we exchange very brief pleasantries as he hands me “the list”.
Regret and apprehension immediately take hold. I give the list a cursory glance. I throw my head back onto the cool velour surface of the couch, I need comfort and quick. What you need is courage, Cowardly Lion. I close my eyes and search in vain for the words to express what is happening to me. My head rolls slowly back and forth against the back of the couch. I am saying no to this heinous exercise from the depth of my being. I tell Dr. K. my reasons for revisiting the list. I explain how sickening and godawful this stuff feels to me. Dr. K. agrees that there are some disturbing things on the list, and it is also disturbing to have unanswered questions. He asks if we could start with what bothers me most.
I mention 1 of 3 incidents that took place sometime around the age of 10-11. These incidents were episodes of sexual acting out/inappropriate behavior that I have terrible guilt and shame about. Dr. K. asks if I am able to discuss the exact details of that incident. It sounds like a reasonable request. The problem is I have never breathed these words to a living soul; even on the list the events are summarized without detail in semi-clinical terms. I have barely ever allowed myself to think about this stuff. I tell him this the best way I can. I take a deep breath, just like someone taking a swan dive off of a cliff into the ocean. I close my eyes, I try to control my breath as a wave of panic rises up in my belly. I force my mind to form the words to go with the incriminating snapshots in my head. I open my mouth, several times like a fish out of water. I cannot manage a sound. I can’t believe you are actually going to tell him about that. Now he’ll see what a nasty, disgusting person you really are. I shake my head some more, I breath some more, I will myself to just say it already. Come on, come on just say it, you can do it, just say it! I open my mouth again, nothing. Tears start to come down, I feel him looking at me, but I can’t make eye contact with him.
The agony gives way to a break in the paralysis and little by little I say it. He asks me questions. I answer them. I shed tears, I fidget, but I get it out. I tell him the other 2 stories as well. Dr. K. says it sounds like I was just a little girl looking for affection, I dismiss that immediately. You got it all wrong doc, she’s just NASTY! I tell him that I have to bear the blame because I knew better. Plus I believe my actions affected certain people in such a way that they made some terrible mistakes ten years later. I really believe what I did lead to that. Dr. K. attempts to discount this theory, he reminds me that I was only ten years old, and that it seems extreme that one inappropriate act on my part cancels out all of the good things I did for those people. I don’t buy it all. He is just saying that because he has to, but you know that people get away with bad things all the time. There is no justice, thats why when you’ve got a chance to right a wrong you have to do it. So you got to pay sister, you are guilty! I can’t understand how a little girl goes from knowing what is inappropriate one year to acting out inappropriately the next. The year before I was the little girl that would run 3 streets over to avoid being caught during the game Seven Minutes to Heaven. I would leave the little boys behind, bent over and breathless, demanding that I not be allowed to play anymore. On the rare occasion that I was caught, I would claw and kick and punch until I was shoved away with contempt.
Dr. K attempts the suggestion that I was starved for affection again. He asks where did I get non-sexual affection from? Thats easy, I smile and say my grandmother. I tell him how I would climb in her lap as she sat in her lazy boy recliner. She would bounce me on her knee or rock me while she hummed softly. I would snuggle in and totally relax, take in her scent, her safety. She had humongous breasts and when I was really small I would fluff them like a pillow before I rested my head there. She would laugh really hard so I did it on more than one occasion and she would say, “Are you fluffing your pillows?’. One day my mother demanded it be put to an end. She said my grandmother and I were lesbians and that I was too old for that. I think I was ten. I explain that once my children hit the age of ten any contact I have with them becomes stiff and formal. Even though I am aware of it I feel powerless to change it. But little children? I squeeze them and kiss them. I smell their hair and necks and rub their backs. Its real weird. Dr. K says I must have felt very lonely, my only safe place, my only comfort. Blah,Blah,Blah,Blah, is he still yapping? Look at you, you are pathetic that is over now, you have a husband to hug. Hey would you just shut up? I can’t hear a word he is saying! He is smiling, why in the hell is he smiling!?!?!?
I look at Dr.K. with an incredulous expression. “I think we have the answer” he says with a cat that ate the canary type of look on his face. God forgive me but I am so tired and worn out like a wrung out rag over here, I want to crawl in a hole and die and he is smiling, is he really smiling?!?!??! Anger coils up in my midsection, tense as a rattlesnake. Dr. K. continues his astute observation, “When you were around ten years old, your only source of affection was removed so you went searching for it…” I quickly interject, “But SEXUALLY?!?!?” Dr. K. is unflappable, “Yes, because your mother made it sexual, she made it dirty by the comments she made, she called you lesbians.” Then he delivered his coup de grace, “You were removed from your grandmother’s lap, so you brought people into yours.” The statement just hangs in the air for a moment. Its really deep and if this was someone else’s story I would be nodding my head and dabbing away tears in heartfelt agreement. But it’s me, and I feel broken, defective and lost. Gee wiz, you are really f***ed in the head, aren’t you? That’s all. There is nothing left to see here Ladies and Gentlemen, the man is truly an artist……. The session ends.
Why can’t I just accept that reasonable explanation and let it go? Don’t get me wrong, I really love him for saying it, for everything he pointed out. It just does not enter this impenetrable shell of pain.
😦
Tears of a bennu 
It is, indeed, a very strange journey … and one of reverse divination, in an odd way … looking at the used tea leaves and scattered viscera of our lives, and reconstructing an often unknown past out of them, rather than foretelling the future.
What I find amazing about the memory I mentioned above is the fact that I was more afraid of being thought lazy and uncooperative than I was of being considered a potential sexual predator. There’s something just a little odd about that, and that fact is important, but I don’t yet know why.
I also have good reason to believe that I was molested at some point in early childhood, and that the memory of it is so far gone that I may never retrieve it. I think it is certainly true that people who are molested often grow up to be predatory toward younger children, for reasons they themselves do not fully understand; I think in many cases it is a desperate impulse to resolve their own trauma by re-enacting it in the powerful rather than the vulnerable role. I think sexual abuse of children has very little to do with sexuality, and a great deal to do with power dynamics. Anyway — I’m grateful that I was conscious enough to recognize that there was some strange impetus at work in my brain at that time, and that I took action to avoid being put in a position where I might have an opportunity to act on it.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt an impulse like that since that time, and from this vantage point, it’s hard to believe I ever did. It’s hard for me, as an adult, not to be horrified by and ashamed of that memory, rather than regarding it as a very useful piece of information. But it is useful, as every missing piece is.
Hi David,
I find it amazing and commendable that you could broach that subject, at that age, with anyone….especially your mom. One of the biggest questions I have is what causes people to take advantage of a child sexually. I want to understand so that I can forgive, otherwise I am at a stalemate. I often wonder if is is an urge that happens often and since it is not discussed it festers in the dark and becomes an act or if it is strictly a “learned” behavior.
If only everyone had the opportunity to blurt out such confessions, perhaps in the light the urges would evaporate, robbed of their hidden potency. Then the person besieged with those thoughts would be set free from the shame and guilt and not feel compelled to act out those thoughts.
Thanks for dropping by and sharing……it is such a strange journey, isn’t it?
Reading this post triggered a sudden very strange memory that I had completely forgotten. When I was about fifteen, I guess, my parents had some friends who had a nine-year-old daughter. One evening, they were all scheduled to do something together, and a babysitter canceled. My mom asked me if I’d be willing to stay with the girl for a couple of hours. I thought about it, and suddenly blurted out that I was afraid if I was alone with her, I might touch her inappropriately or make some sexual advance toward her. I still can’t believe I actually told that to my mother, but I didn’t want her to think I was refusing to babysit just to be lazy or uncooperative. My mother was horrified that I’d said such a thing, and although she loved me, I think she was a little bit disgusted.
She didn’t know that I was being sexually stalked by one of my high school teachers, which had, I think, a major impact on my level of sexual confusion and led to my feeling that I had no autonomy.