TRIGGER WARNING! EXPLICIT CONTENT
by Lynn-Marie Ramjass
Some memories are scorched on the brain like someone used a red-hot branding iron and imprinted them there. Some experiences are so painful, you repress them and forget everything. Still other memories are fragmented. They are like pieces of puzzles scattered about the recesses of your brain.
Was it a dream, a nightmare, or had you imagined it? But then you have always remembered certain details. Though you tried your best to forget. You may remember distinguishing physical marks like whether he was circumcised. Or had a mole on the shaft of his penis. What you may or may not remember, until many years later, and without warning, or the help of intense therapy, is the face of the person who did this to you. Perhaps, like me, you will remember certain details, but choose to push the recollection and the pain down as deep as it will go, whenever they arise and not think about it.
Why had you forgotten such details? Was it your father, brother, uncle, cousin, babysitter, next door neighbour, your coach, or your priest, or was it a stranger? Studies regarding sexual assault have proven that it is often someone we know. Only one of my personal experiences from the age of eight years old to twenty-one had been a stranger. Every other time, it was someone I knew. Two were neighbours, one was a friend of family, another someone I worked with, and one my baseball coach, the last was a relative of a family member. Each time a shocking and traumatic encounter. I remember the event and those who assaulted/molested me over the years. I recollect many details vividly, especially concerning my first assault except the face of my attacker. I have never wanted to know.
To protect ourselves, we often deliberately forget these things. We do not want to remember. Our psyches and spirits are already so badly fractured, shattered like shards of broken glass. We do not want to remember. We do not know how to pick up the pieces. We do not know if we will ever fully heal or be whole again. Especially, if it was someone we knew. If it was someone close to us, or someone we deeply loved, someone we dearly valued, someone we trusted and now no longer can. We do not want to believe they could perform such despicable acts upon anyone, but especially upon a child.
Often you try to hide it. To will yourself to forget it ever happened. You yearn to lock the experience and memory away in a box and bury it because it was so horrific and painful. But a touch, a scent, a sudden sound can suddenly trigger you, and force you back to that place you do not want to go, to that memory you do not want to recall. Back to the heartache, the shame, and the pain, you do not want to feel and or remember. Back to that experience you often cannot forget, though you try.
It could be the heat of the sun on that hot summer day. Or the scent of his sweat and his cologne. You can recall the smell and the feel of the hard earth beneath you. Or the touch of his skin, the weight of his body, his rough hands, the feel and or taste of his semen as he forced himself upon you. Often you can hear his menacing voice. You remember the tone, his threatening you and your family should you tell anyone. But you are too young to know any better. Too frightened to move, to resist, to tell anyone anyway. For years, he invades your sleep, haunts your dreams, until you awaken in a cold sweat gasping for air. The nightmare and anxiety so bad, the memory so clear, you feel your heart has stopped. Sometimes you scream.
But you have no knowledge that this is PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because you never had professional counselling, because you never told anyone, and no one ever explained it to you. You try to handle it by yourself. To will it away. But the trauma walks with you, without and within, peering over your shoulder or up at you from an abyss of infinite darkness. A stain on your psyche he planted there. The memory lurks like a demon, or a junk yard dog snapping at your heels for years afterwards. Consciously or subconsciously, it never leaves you. Trust issues and deep-seated shame arise. The pain and the shame change you. You are no longer the child, girl, woman, person you used to be. Relationships become complicated and difficult. Particularly with men and authority figures.
Often the loneliness and isolation debilitating. You may try to move on, but you drag the hurt, shame, remorse, trauma along with you like a dead weight. Some people to dull the pain and or forget will engage in self-destructive or destructive behaviour. Some will become addicted to drugs, or to alcohol, some to casual sex, or to gambling; or a host of other various vain attempts to avoid the memory of what happened to them. Some are unable and unwilling to tell anyone. Too many, unfortunately fear counselling because they cannot or are not ready to face the darkness. Some too frightened to attach the face to the body who had had broken them. Many more cannot economically afford it.
I personally, suppressed it as much as I could and never forgot as much as I would have liked to. I could not understand how often I had had such experiences as a young girl/teenager. I pushed it down and kept it to myself for over a decade. When I did share those experiences for the first time with my mother. I was eighteen years old. I blurted it out in a moment of heated fury. She implied there was something wrong with me as my friendships with girls seemed far more important to me. Though she never came right out and asked me, I know she questioned my sexuality. I never did as I was not romantically interested in my girlfriends.
My mother never understood my reluctance to talk about sex, or my disinterest in boys. (At my age, my mother had been married and given birth to three children. By twenty eight she had five children, no time for lasting, intimate relationships with other women and very little education, as she dropped out of high school at fifteen). I wanted a different life.
I had just graduated high school. Though I dated several boys my age throughout high school (I attended my prom with a male cousin only because no one asked me) and some afterwards. I was selective as to what I wanted and needed in a relationship and companion. It was important how boys/men treated me. I did not find what I needed until I met my husband the following year. We have been together now forty-five years. He has known of my past and been nothing but respectful, supportive, and compassionate. All the qualities and the reasons that I fell so deeply in love with him when we met.
I did not get the reaction or support I expected or neededĺ from my parents however. There was no "I'm sorry that happened to you," no "it wasn't your fault," no "I'm sorry we failed to protect you, no "that explains a lot." Instead, there was no reaction, and nothing was said regarding the matter. There certainly was no encouragement to seek counselling. We did not discuss such dark, ugly, truths in my family. We did not air our dirty laundry publicly. Therapy was for the weak-minded and I was raised to believe this and to suppress my anger, feelings, and pain. Needless to say, I was painfully disappointed and never brought the topic up again, until I entered therapy over fourteen years later. By then I was thirty-two years old, married eleven years with two young sons of my own, aged nine and eight years old.
In time, I honestly came to realize that my passivity and meekness was like a neon sign that attracted predators of all ages in my youth. Some victims of sexual assault do find the courage to seek professional help. Others shun therapy. But I learned it is one of the most courageous things one can ever do. To address the darkness within one's self and ones life and to share your vulnerability. Finally, you talk about it and he or she, helps you face those demons. Finally, the weight is lifted off your chest and your shoulders. You have told someone. You have slowly come out of the darkness. You had come through the suffering and emerge on the other side, scarred, deeply flawed, but finally, perhaps, at long last, able to breathe.
Some go to court and seek justice but are told "Well, it can be a false memory" and "memories are not reliable." It is not uncommon for the law to side with the perpetrator instead of you because the incident occurred so many years ago. It cannot possibly be true. Where is the evidence? Where is the proof? Your memories must be distorted. The legal system then rapes you all over again and thrust you right back to that darkness, and you wish you had kept your mouth shut. Yes, there have been many victims who have endured this added humiliation.
What is it about certain men that they feel entitled to touch a woman without her consent? Or to violate a child? What or who granted them this sense of entitlement? Who gave them this power? Where had they learned such behaviour? How do you convict an adult who will obviously deny having committed such a heinous act? An act conducted in secret and inflicted upon a child who was too young, too weak, and too frightened to stand and defend herself? Who would believe that the sainted neighbour next store, or the pastor or priest in the pulpit violated a child? Who wants to believe that? How do you prove that he did it? How do you prove that he did not?
Traumatic experiences stay with you. As a child five or six years old, I broke my right thumb. It was a bright, sunny winter day and bitterly cold. I remember it was a Sunday morning. I had been playing with a long metal heavy pipe I had found outside in the backyard. There were patches of ice everywhere.
I may have forgotten many of the details of that day, such as what I was wearing, what I had eaten for breakfast. I distinctly recall, I was alone when I slipped on the ice at the top of the stairs and fell all the way down. I remember the feeling of helplessness as I could not catch my fall. I saw the metal pipe fly high into the air as I fell. I watched it descend towards my head, but as I rolled to avoid it, the pipe landed on my hand. I heard the crack of bone, and instantly felt excruciating pain in my right thumb. It was my dominant hand. I did not need any mental health professional to help me connect that steel bar with the pain in my thumb. Nor did I think that that inanimate object wilfully and deliberately hurt me. It was an unfortunate accident. With humans, it is different. We have choices and free will. It is especially difficult when you are hurt by someone you know and love.
The morning I had broken my thumb, I recall screaming in pain and clutching my thumb. I refused to open my hand. My father came to the back door and shouted for me to be quiet. I would disturb the neighbours. Try to imagine a child with a broken thumb try not to cry and disturb anyone. I learned early to stifle my emotions and bury my pain.
Many years later, after I had become a parent myself, I addressed the topic with my father. He immediately became defensive and angry which was generally his way. "How was I to know you were hurt?" he asked me. "I thought you were horsing around."
I was stunned that he could not distinguish a child's cry of pain from pleasure. As a mother, I was generally able to determine a child's other various cries: hunger, anger, exhaustion, frustration, but especially pain. His shouting at me that morning, his nonchalant manner. He left me with more scars, painful memories, and major disappointments throughout my childhood, in fact my entire life than my broken bone ever did or could.
There were never any apologies or any responsibility, only excuses. Sharing my thoughts and feelings with him. It did not make me feel any better. It was never mentioned again. Trauma often leads to further psychological, emotional, and spiritual torment, especially when it is inflicted upon a child. From a young age, I had known the pain of a broken bone, a broken heart, a fractured psyche and spirit. Most likely, I had been troubled in mind, long before I was officially diagnosed with bipolar. It took me decades to seek counselling and many more years to heal. Finally, I am thriving today. At peace, happy, and enjoying my life at long last. I try to live in the moment and take each day, each step, each opportunity and challenge, one at a time.
I found my voice in my mid forties. I am no longer passive and will not sit down and be quiet, especially with injustices and unfair treatment of minorities. I will not stifle my emotions, thoughts, opinions, or my truth purely to make others feel comfortable. It is high time we talk about uncomfortable topics and address the elephant in the room. For the consequences of not doing so are dire. The violent, abusive, obnoxious behaviour of cowards, bullies, and predators will continue unchecked, and they unaccountable for their actions and crimes, so long as society silently sits on the side lines and chooses to ignore it. For silence is complicity. "The great aim of education is not knowledge but action." Herbert Spencer.
Sincerely,
Lynn Marie Ramjass
