***Trigger Warning – contains potentially distressing material pertaining to sexual assault
If Only Life Events Could Be Reversed
Life is lived forward. It can be seen in the passage of time and in the elements of age progression. There is no going back. There is no standing still. There is only movement forward. Yet, many times, if I could go back to points in my life and be allowed a do over, I would do so many things differently. Yet, there is no other time that I would choose other than how I engaged with my aunt after I experienced sexual assault.
I became a very angry child after the assault, but the anger I harbored was justified because I had been violated in the worst way. Beyond that point, however, I would still need to be accountable about how I lashed out against others in my anger. Since I was staying with my aunt during the summer when the assault happened, she saw first hand how the anger I harbored affected me.
On the other hand, I saw how my anger affected my aunt as well, and I had no idea that she was dealing with her own personal struggles on top of my own. If only the lived events during that time period in both of our lives could be reversed, things might have progressed between us differently, but I often wonder if things simply progressed the way they were supposed to because it was simply life.
A Painful Reality
Both my aunt and I were angry but for different reasons. I was angry because I had been brutally violated, shamed, and made to keep the violation a secret and then go on to pretend as if it never happened to me. Fortunately, my brain cooperated in this matter even if my body and emotions remained defiant. My aunt was angry because she found out that she had a progressive stage four cancer. At 28, she was a young mother in the prime of her life and still had a lot of living to do for herself and her child.
I did not know the truth about my aunt’s condition because the information had been shielded from me. However, I discerned from time to time that something was wrong based on subtle hints here and there. By accident, I had walked in on her while she was changing a bra insert. I remember vividly that there was a deeply stitched scar where a breast should have been and upon seeing this, I gasped in shock. The shared eye contact between my aunt and I made with each other spoke a loud volume of silence which words could not handle in that moment.
Upon seeing my aunt without a breast, I panicked and back-stepped my way out of her room and ran. In my gut, I knew the truth, but I was unable to articulate what I saw. I had no words or thoughts. I just ran out of the apartment and sat on the steps that led to the second floor. At the same time, though, I was already dissociated from my emotions. I could not feel anything. My emotions were bottled up somewhere. I just knew anger existed even though I could not feel it. I could not feel pain either, but I had reacted to what I had seen, and I was overwhelmed by it.
Instead of coming after me, my aunt called her neighbor friend from across the hall to be on the lookout for me. The neighbor came out and saw me, and asked me to come into her apartment. I trusted her enough to follow her in looking for a way to be comforted in my shock. The neighbor told me that my aunt told her what happened and what I saw, and then the neighbor attempted to explain to me the situation. Before the neighbor could tell me anything, I told her what I already knew by way of a question. “She’s going to die, isn’t she?”
The neighbor was not quite forthcoming with information and simply told me that my aunt was very sick and had been sick for a long time but was getting treatment. The neighbor stressed that I need not worry, but she obviously did not know how saying such a thing would only cause me to actually worry and show my distress. In that moment of listening to the neighbor, I immediately felt a stab of pain in my heart. My face felt hot, and tears began to flow.
In the background of my thoughts, I could see there were always signs that my aunt was sick, but those signs either did not register to me or I willingly tuned them out because of my child-like lack of understanding. Yet, memories flooded me when I connected a flood of conversations my aunt had with my parents and grandparents. These conversations were always secretive. Yet, I remember the dazed looks of my mother and grandmother that expressed elements of fear.
I also noted a handful of times when my aunt appeared extremely fatigued by a simple walk. Then there were a number of times when she appeared tearful and sad for seemingly no reason. Other times she took various type of pills, smoked pot for what she claimed were health reasons, and visited with a support group where she allowed me to go with her once for an end-of-group celebration. At the time, I just thought these were times of my aunt being who she was because of a life I did not know, but in the neighbor’s apartment, I had confirmation that my aunt was not well.
I was stunned and hurt by the revelation that this neighbor shared, and I broke down and cried even harder. I cried for a long time, and I regretted that I had such anger towards my aunt. Although I had felt betrayed in so many ways, I also felt that I had let my aunt down a great deal of the time while with her. I could not make sense of my emotions. Was I angry with my aunt because she was sick and dying and did not tell me or was I angry because she was sick and dying and the circumstances of what had happened to me made things worse for her?
As a child would do in these types of situations, I internalized the information the neighbor told me and blamed myself for making my aunt’s illness worse. So much had happened that summer that appeared to boil down to problems with me. Had my dad not given in to both my aunt’s and my pleadings to stay with her, then there might not be any issues between my aunt and me. There were so many things that I wished that I could take back, and there were even more things I wished to reverse.
It certainly was not helpful that the neighbor’s daughter later told me that I was the reason that my aunt was more stressed since I had come to stay with her. I can almost remember this girl’s exact words to me. I remember how she talked to me in such a matter of fact way as if there was nothing closer to her truth. “My mother said you’ve been nothing but trouble since you got here. Your poor aunt is always stressed about you. She’s ready for you to go home. Everybody is ready for you to go home. Nobody even likes you here because of all the trouble you have caused. I don’t even really want to be your friend anymore because my other friends think you’re a very bad person.”
To say that I was crushed by this girl’s words was an understatement. I felt cut with a painful reality. If I could go back to the time where I was not trouble for my aunt, I would have readily done so, but there was no going back. For me, that was the most unfortunate truth. Yet, instead of quietly accepting this girl’s words, I mouthed back at her angrily, “So, I don’t care.” But the truth of the matter is that I did care. I cared a lot.
Instinctively, I knew that this girl’s words truly did echo what everyone around me thought of me even though I spent the bulk of my time isolated and on my own. The more hatred and dislike that others seemed to project onto me, the more dissociated I became until I found ways to vanish from their presence. I functioned in my introversion by simply doing life alone. Despite having grown distant towards everyone around me and shrinking out of view, I was apparently still viewed as a problem. This girl’s words confirmed it.
If Only Life Events Could Be Reversed
Although I did not connect the girl’s words with the sexual assault against me, I took note of the fact that I could not walk anywhere in the neighborhood without the silent, judgmental stares and often open rebuke and ridicule from others. All of this – every ounce of rejection I received – I internalized and took to heart, and I wished that I could take whatever it was that I had done back and restart it all over, but somehow I was not sure that it would have made any difference.
I sincerely regretted the hurt that I caused my aunt. I cry about it even now as I blog this. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for her to deal with a terminal illness and have the stress of a child on her hands who had been the survivor of sexual assault. I imagine that she was deeply conflicted and even afraid and not just for herself, but perhaps for even me. I could only imagine that she may have had to distance herself from my trauma to deal with her own.
I do not even know any of the struggles outside of the illness that my aunt faced, and I regret that I never asked her in an effort to show that I loved her and cared for her. If only life events could be reversed, then I know things would have been so much different or at least handled differently that they had been. If circumstances could have been different, I really wish for both our sakes that they could have been, but unfortunately, neither of us will ever know.
Stay tuned for the next post.
My Voice Unchained 