I lied to Dammit Janet in her diary. I didn’t think I was but I did. I said I was glad I had never experienced that kind of trauma. And I didn’t. But I did. I just had a few near misses.
Holy fuck I don’t want to talk about this. I feel so exposed. I am a very private person actually. I’ve had to be for various reasons including my mom’s paranoid schizophrenia. But that’s another story.
The one I’m willing myself to tell today is one that has never been pieced together into the story of a life yet. I’ve shared at different points, individual episodes, but never in one sitting.
But I have to. Reading all the incredibly brave posts by women I have deep respect and admiration for really brings it home for me. Talking about it and using our voices is the only thing we have left.
I have been very fortunate to have had wonderful and caring and supporting men in my life & I have never once hated all men. But I don’t get it. I really don’t.
I’m sorry to be piling on and continuing the string of diaries, but I am going to anyway because I’m stubborn.
The first time I was 9. My mother had recently re-married. He was an abusive fuck and liked to get his kicks when he wasn’t beating my mom by making me stand at the foot of their bed while they watched tv for hours on end as punishment. I learned that my imagination was a lot of fun when I needed to escape.
Then one day he decided we should all take a shower together. My mother agreed. He was hard the whole time and made me wash it. My mother did not object. I was really messed up by the whole thing. I was 9. I didn’t tell anyone. Who could I tell? My real dad was a junkie living in a hooker hotel downtown. He used to beat my mom and left us when I was 1 1/2. I only saw him when he cleaned himself up enough to get a job for 6 months or so. So he was out. I didn’t know his side of the family since they disowned him at age 9 by moving without telling him while he was at hockey practice. Not a good year to be alive in my family it would seem. My other grandparents would have died. I didn’t want to hurt them.
A few months later I went into a convenience store to play a video game because I didn’t want to go home (surprise, surprise eh). While I was playing the man who owned the store locked the door and then came up behind me and offered to teach me a trick on how to play. He stuck his thigh up between mine. I was so scared. I let him do it for a while and then asked him what time it was. I don’t know how, but I concocted a story about my dad waiting for me in a coffee shop across the street and that he would come looking for me if I didn’t get back. The man let me go. I went home and went to the laundry mat with my mom and step-dad. I didn’t tell anyone.
The next near miss was when I was 16 and at a girlfriends house for a party. We were young and stupid and doing shots of vodka. I passed out on the couch in the basement. I remember the 5 boys coming in to the room and I could hear them talking about me but I literally could not move. I’ve never been that drunk and high again. Their talk moved into actually having at me. And they started to. I couldn’t move. I whispered no over and over but that was all I could do. My top went up as did my bra. I felt two different hands on me. Then my pants started to come off. Miraculously at that moment my girlfriend burst into the room because her parents had come home early and she wanted me to wake up. She was followed by a few of my other friends.
They pulled my shirt down and picked me up. Funny thing is, they never mentioned anything or said anything to the guys. They just told them to go out the back and pulled me upstairs. And that was it. What if her parents hadn’t come home. I don’t even want to imagine it, but it nearly happened.
And these were all guys I went to school with. They were drunk and horny and didn’t see anything wrong with gang-raping me. Do I think that’s normal? No. Do I think any of the subsequent men in my life would do that? No. But unless we continue to talk about it and our men speak up to their friends about it when one of them objectifies a woman in a derogatory way (I don’t mind some objectification, it’s a sex drive and men are visual creatures) we will, as a society, continue to raise little boys who grow up to get drunk at a party and at the very least feel up a girl who is passed out.
So that’s my story. Or stories. Both time periods completely different. One child abuse and one woman abuse. But both unacceptable.
So I never wound up at a hospital which is how I responded to Janet. I was never raped. But I lied nonetheless because it hurts too. And it’s not okay.
But I am.
Thanks for listening.