***Trigger Warning – contains potentially distressing material pertaining to sexual assault
Hours After
The very next day came after a very long day in which I had experienced a sexual assault against me by two teenagers. That day was broken up into mini frames of segments that seemed to last a lifetime. I was glad when that entire day finally came to an end. I recall being emotionally spent. As I remember, I had cried numerous times – more times than I can ever recall crying in my life. I had ached worse in my emotions than I had from the assault itself. In fact, I do not even remember the bulk of physical pain because I was very detached from it all.
I do remember that I found it difficult to get to sleep the night after the assault had taken place. I was very afraid, and although I had always had a fear of the dark, the fear I experienced that night was very different. I was afraid of being alone. I feared the internal loneliness. I feared the unknown. Usually, my aunt never let me sleep in her room, and the night after the sexual assault took place was no different. Yet, I wanted to sleep in her bed, and if not her bed, then her room. I needed comfort. I had no peace.
Although my aunt tried to be affectionate towards me, I had turned ice cold towards her [and everyone]. I did not want to be touched even though I wanted to be embraced. This may have very well been the result of posttraumatic stress. It could have also been because of the anger I felt regarding the betrayal of my aunt’s words to keep the sexual assault forever a secret. Whatever the case, I was in need of consoling, but I lacked this experience.
Nevertheless, I slept alone in the living room on the couch, out in the open feeling exposed by the street lights and constant shadows that moved with the darkness. As I remember, the side area of the kitchen was actually just beyond the outside area where I had been violated, and this awareness alone might have sent shock waves of fear throughout my body even if my mind no longer held onto the memories. I just remember being suspended in absolute and terrifying fear, and I wanted to be anywhere than the place that had become the most unsafe place in the world to me.
I remember crying silent tears into the night. I desperately wanted to be comforted in my loneliness, but there was no one that I felt I could ever trust to call upon. I thought of my parents and wished that I could talk to them, but my mom stood on the side of my betrayal. I feared that my dad would be disappointed in me. It was a confusing time. I had been silenced into keeping the sexual assault a secret, and I felt a loneliness that I could not describe. I had no one. So I recited Psalm 23 like a prayer and cried myself to sleep.
The Day After
The very next morning was routine for everyone else but me. My aunt got up a lot earlier than normal but found me wide awake. She sat down next to me and took me through a routine of things she expected me to do until she returned from work and school. Most days, I was allowed to go to school for summer camp activities, but my aunt decided this was a banned activity for me. I would also normally venture out into the neighborhood to run errands for older neighbors, but she told me I was no longer needed for that. I also frequently visited with a neighboring friend, but now that friend had become off limits to me.
My aunt actually forbid me from going anywhere. I was not allowed to leave the apartment at all. In fact, for two weeks, I was ostracized from the outside world – a pariah of sorts. I could not check the mailbox, sit on the stairs, sit on the stoop, or even look out the window. I could not even go outside when my aunt returned back to the apartment either. Even though I did attempt to understand my aunt’s ways of thinking about this situation, overall, I was angry. I felt like I was being punished for doing something wrong.
Anyway, as my aunt talked to me in spurts as she prepared for her day, I realized that she was more afraid for me than I felt was necessary. In her fear, she enlisted extra security measures in the form of neighbors who would check on me often to make sure I was where I was supposed to be and safe. At the time, I thought my aunt no longer trusted me as she had before, but looking back upon this time, I now know she was protecting me. I also came to learn that she was fearful of retaliation by the attackers because the sexual assault had been reported to the police. I do not believe she wanted further trouble for me. So she took extreme precaution.
One of my aunt’s friends had a police officer friend who also volunteered to keep a look out on me too. The officer made his presence known throughout the day by parking his police car in front of the building near the front window where I could see him. Just seeing the car made me feel safe. I figured he must have known that I was introverted and did not want to be bothered because unlike my aunt’s friends, he never knocked on the door after his first introduction to me. Later on, however, I realized that he was respecting my boundaries, keeping me safe, and staying on patrol for his job.
On the morning my aunt was preparing me for the day, this officer stopped by to introduce himself to me just before my aunt left for work. After his introduction, the officer gave me an old black Billy club as a souvenir. He kindly showed me a few tricks in case I needed to use it for protection, but he reiterated the fact that I should never even open the door for anyone so that I would not have to use it. He also cautioned that I should not even open the door with a chain lock on because someone could forcefully push through to open the door.
The police officer said my best bet was to look through the peephole. Only if I recognized the person should I then talk to the person through the door from the other side, but he strongly stressed that I did not even need to open the door to people I knew either. He suggested that talking to them through the door was good enough because they would already know I was there, and if I did not feel safe, I could call the emergency number for help.
Interestingly, I took this officer’s words to heart and saved his words even when I lost the ability to remember why I saved his words. I also saved the old black Billy club he gave me. When I was nine, the club reminded me of a baseball bat, but there was a string attached to it for hanging purposes. This club currently hangs by a door entrance in my home, but in the 44 years that I have had it, I have never had to use it. Oftentimes, when people have seen it, they have always asked me how I came to have it.
Oddly, I could never truly remember the specific reason prior to seeking to understand the root of my anger issues. My mind had so buried the aspects of the sexual assault, that I had no connection to any object or occurrence that surrounded the events. I had truly forgotten, and dissociated myself from nearly everything. The only thing I could remember was that a relative was friends with an officer who gave it to me when I was a kid, and I have kept it ever since.
Stuck Inside
Nevertheless, I stayed home in the apartment completely bored out of my mind, but I wished that my aunt would have stayed with me. Just the day before, I had endure a sexual assault, and even though I was foggy on remembering much of anything, my emotions were overwhelmed by engulfing fear and loneliness. I was an introverted child and could spend an exorbitant amount of time alone, but I was also an explorer. I liked to do things to occupy my mind, and mainly that required me being outside enjoying my world.
Since I was stuck in the house for two weeks, I had to find things to do. My aunt did not really have anything to keep a nine year old occupied in the apartment. There was a television, but for some reason, I had no interest in watching it during the day. So this was around the time in my life that I became a connoisseur of music. My aunt had a huge collection of records from almost every musical genre, and throughout the course of this time after the assault, I listened to every single one of her records – often playing some records more than others. Over time, I had even learned the art of clearing out the skips that I had created from playing certain songs so much.
Nevertheless, there were never any books of interest to read for my age level, and I loved to read. I was an absorber of information and facts. During the school days for summer camp, I often spent time in the library, but I was not allowed to go anywhere. So during this time of being cooped up for hours alone in an apartment, I frequently read through all of my aunt’s television guides, fashion magazines, and school nursing books. I eventually became an avid scholar about the celebrities of that era, television shows that I did not even watch, all kinds of medical ailments and treatments, the study of the brain, and the study of psychology.
When my aunt’s friends stopped by to check in on me, I took the words of the police officer to heart, and I never opened the door. Frankly, I was ashamed to do so, but I eventually passed notes to them stating that I was okay, and somewhere along the line, their checkups on me slowed down during the day. One friend of my aunt’s told my aunt that “your niece has this placed locked up like Gibraltar … no one can get in here even if they tried”. Yet, after a while, being cooped up became tortuous, and the anger I had begun harboring exploded from me like lava from a massive volcano.
I “sassed” my aunt as she had stated when all she was trying to do was protect me. Although I processed her words, I did not process the reason for her words. All I could think about was that I was being treated wrongly when I had done nothing wrong. I wanted to go outside to enjoy the sunshine and play like every other child, but I was being treated like “the rape victim” I kept hearing about via my aunt’s gossip with her friends.
Interestingly, I had not even made the connection that the “rape victim” was me. I was outside of myself listening to stories about myself but never feeling the connection. Thinking about it now baffles me that my mind could literally shut memories off. As a I recall, I often felt like I had a mind within a mind operating at once with one mind remaining inactive. It was like I split in two because I was aware of certain things but feeling as if there were missing gaps in so much.
This would make sense because I was missing fragments of myself because of trauma, but as a child, I was unable to articulate within myself what was going on. I just knew that in reality there was knowledge of situations that I did not have even though another mind within the split of myself was very aware. It is just that the two selves kept a lot of things separate from each other if that makes any sense. So I was always lost.
Turbulence
Eventually, my aunt gave in to my requests to be allowed to go outside because I refused to back down about it. Plus, I was miserable staying inside, and she was miserable trying to explain the reasons that I refused to hear. I was angry, and I believe she was fearful that my anger would expose the secret she, my grandmother, and my mother had wanted me to keep from my dad. Yet, their exposure was actually far from my mind. I was more or less focused on the fact that I was in an unhappy state and the fun times were no longer fun.
I was functioning in a state of trauma and had not realized how I was suffering from signs of posttraumatic stress as well as severe effects of sexual assault. The following week, after being cooped up inside for so long, I was finally allowed back out into a world where I had to learn to psychologically protect myself. I remember it so well as if it were yesterday, but for a long time, my mind helped me to forget.
Stay tuned for what happened next.
My Voice Unchained 