I don’t know how to phrase this, but after enduring 60 years of…what?…life? I’m finding myself angry, disappointed. Not surprising, the anger that is. SARA…Shock Anger Rejection Acceptance. If those are the stages of trauma I’m still stuck in stage 2.
I hate to even go down half these paths in fear of sounding like a whiner. But I’m angry.
Somebody could have helped me a long time ago, my parents is a good place to start.
I need to deal with the anger of them leaving me at the hospital overnight. Believing in the words of “trusted” authorities, the doctors, that there would be nothing to worry about. “He’ll be perfectly fine.”
After the rape there were plenty of signs that something had changed in me. As a child I used coping mechanisms to hide the trauma in the best way I knew possible. Even if my coping was done based on a wrong belief, the signs were still there for someone to see.
I avoided going into any public mens room. If there was any possible way to avoid it, I simply held it in for as long as possible.. For years and years. More than once I didn’t quite make it back to the house, and preferred to wet my pants and face the punishment than going into a men’s room.
If all the stalls were taken I would have to hold it and leave, because standing in front of a urinal would trigger a flashback. Trying to focus on making it happen, peeing that is, only made matters worse.
As I’m researching mental illness, a key component in dealing with PTSD is simply identifying it in people. People who won’t ask for help on their own. People that don’t know they are reacting differently.
People using those same “wrong” coping skills that I did. If you don’t question someone’s abnormal behavior, how else would you know? But no one ever asked or questioned my behavior at all. Just wasn’t done.
I keep recalling that first day I told my folks, 30 years after the actual rape happened. Especially my aunt’s comment that they should have picked up that I had changed. My aunt was like my second mom, as her son and I were thick as thieves whenever we had the opportunity to be together. Weeks at each other’s house during summer, always together at holidays.
“Why didn’t’ we see it”
That’s a really good question. I’m angry about their lack of insight. I wasn’t acting like a normal child in some very distinct ways, so why didn’t they ever wonder why?
Having two children of my own, if one of them came home with this “cute” little picture from 3rd grade class I would have guessed that something wasn’t right at all.
My parents and other people like my aunt just never put two and two together. Why not? Was it because it was 1964 and there was little known or available child psychology to parents?
Did they think that this sort of incident could never happen? Pedophilia has been around since mankind existed, a silence surrounding it.
My mother dealt with the bedwetting, without question. Me waking up in the morning when I had the dream, only to find I’d wet the bed again. I would pee during the nightmare at the same time in the sequence, believing in my sleep with embedded memories that if I pee, then the assault wouldn’t happen.
The avoidance symptom of PTSD. But in those days no one ever talked about PTSD, even thought it.
Those were the times you never thought twice about your children being molested or abducted or any of the evils that prevail in our society now.
A victim of the times, a victim nonetheless.