***Trigger Warning – contains potentially distressing material pertaining to sexual assault
A Summer Of Exploration And Adventure
Despite being sexually assaulted, the summer months I spent with my aunt were not all horrible. In fact, when I first arrived to my aunt’s home, she had me inundated with nothing but activities. In the beginning, I was never bored even though she worked and attended school. There were always places to go everyday.
Prior to my aunt enrolling me in summer camp, my aunt took a week off from work and classes to spend time with me. She took me on tours all over the city. Since it was and is a rather historical city, she took me on as many tours as possible. For the most part, it was the best school history lesson I ever had and totally reiterated all that I learned in class and then some.
Whenever my aunt grew tired from the long walks and hot days, many of our exploratory tours would be cut short. So I made it a point to carry around a miniature notebook to write down all the places I still wanted to see. In my mind, I was going to see these places one way or the other, and surprisingly, I did by the time my summer stay had ended.
Tales Of A Latchkey Child
When my aunt returned to work and school, she left me in her apartment alone. I felt like an adult. During the era of the 70s [and beyond], it was not uncommon for parents or guardians to leave their children at home without supervision. The term for these children was latchkey children because they were frequently given neck chains with keys attached (so as not to lose the keys) so that when they returned home from school, they could enter into their homes without having to wait for their parents to get off work.
I was accustomed to being a latchkey child since I was as young as seven. I was entrusted to stay home alone for at least an hour until my parents came home from work. As I got older, the time frame of being home alone with my siblings was a lot longer in length until I found myself given responsibilities to delegate to my siblings to create a more structured day. So, by the time I was nine, in my mind, I was accustomed to the responsibilities of handling myself without supervision.
Anyway, because my aunt was already aware of the responsibilities I could handle, she left me to myself until she returned from work and school. Although my aunt had a child, I was never left alone with the child. Other arrangements were always made for her child. So, all I had was me, and I found that it was a fantastic feeling to be somewhat on my own. I spent much of my time entertaining myself by walking all about the city exploring and making up for seeing sites my aunt would be too tired to take me to.
Although I was enrolled in summer camp, I skipped the first few weeks because of social anxiety fears. For whatever reason, however, I had no fear of walking around the busy streets, going into stores to buy snacks, sitting in parks people-watching, or finding amusing sites to learn a bit of the city’s history. I actually had no fear that any harm would come to me. I basically walked around a major city feeling unnoticed in a sea of people. It never dawned on me the dangers that were all around. It never even seemed to dawn on adults that a tiny nine year old girl was walking around the city all alone.
Unfortunately, a violent sexual assault crashed my world of exploration and adventure for a little while, and I was confined to the inside of my aunt’s apartment for two weeks. Pushed into a state of dissociation, I had to slowly relearn to navigate back to my freedom even though the appearance of those city streets were never quite the same again.
Yet, when I did re-emerge to the outside world, I discovered a lot of new things – particularly about myself. I had always been called words like weirdo, strange, and kooky. Yet, there was another word I would learn while checking out books in the library. This word opened me up and helped me to understand and accept aspects of myself when no one else ever would.
Basking In My Introversion
During the time that I was confined in my aunt’s apartment after the assault, I frequently complained to my aunt about boredom. I had already played and scratched my way through all of her musical records, read through all of her analytical books with as much understanding as a nine year old could take in, and memorized her television guides from front to back. Once I was allowed to venture back outside, the furthest place I was allowed to go alone for a while was the public library. It was just two blocks up the street from my aunt’s apartment.
Apparently, the news was out about what had happened to me, and although I was very dissociated from it all, I had a sense that adults marveled at my aloneness. Women that knew my aunt, in particular, always kept an eye on me. A few times, I would be followed to the library to make sure I would actually walk inside. Whenever I reached the library doors, I would go inside and quickly hide away down the many aisles of books. I hardly ever ventured into the children’s section because I was not into picture books and stories. I gleaned books for facts and information.
Anyway, during the morning hours that I would normally be at school camp, I instead went to the library. After the assault, school camp became a thing of the past. I was adamant not to return. There were far too many people, and the atmosphere was always too loud. The library offered silence, and since librarians seemed to frown upon noise, I knew no one would bother me. So my aunt agreed that the library was the next best option for learning.
Since I already had an interest in psychology and medical topics, I always careened through several books and searched for topics about personality. In my search, I randomly came across a section about introversion, and I was hooked on a book in its first paragraph. It was an eye-opening moment for me to discover that I was an introvert and not some rare weirdo. I was grateful to know that I was born with introversion as an innate part of my temperament.
Frankly, I was relieved to know that there was not something wrong with me, and that it was fine for me to want to have a lot of time alone to regain the energy I lost by being around other people. That book and others like it really explained a lot, and I tucked all of that information into the fullest part of my brain – the brain that had not dissociated. I was so relieved to know that nothing was wrong with me, and I recall a moment where I enjoyed what I read just a little too much because it resonated with me.
One section of a book stated that not a lot of people understood introversion and often thought of it as a person with an inclination towards introversion as being weird. I do not know why I found this so funny, but I became so tickled that I laughed out loud almost uncontrollably to the point that I had aroused the interest of others – particularly one of the librarians. I was shushed a few times, but curiosity must have provoked the librarian to come over and check out what was going on with me.
When the librarian came over to the area where I was sitting on the floor, she gave me a strange look over the rim of her glasses and asked me if I was “that child from down the street” who was visiting for the summer. I just looked at her and quietly said yes, but I could not take the grin off of my face. I vividly remember the look the librarian gave me when she asked me what was so funny. When I responded to her that I had just learned that I was an introvert, she looked at the cover of the book in my hand and responded with “Hmm … so you like these books, huh? Let me help you find some other books you might like.”
The librarian looked me over several times and seemed surprised, but then warmly smiled at me with kind eyes and proceeded to open up to me to a whole array of books on various topics for my age and maturity level. Before I knew it, I was a frequent flyer at the public library finding solitude in my introversion. Suddenly, I had a newfound freedom about myself, and this new freedom helped to make venturing back out into the world much easier for me.
Although I still lived progressively in a state of dissociation regarding the assault, only my body remembered certain triggers as fears. I was very wary of strangers, and I looked people in the eyes a lot less than I had before. Learning about an aspect of my personality actually made me feel less alone, and a lot safer when I felt less a part of the world. I also felt a boldness about exploration.
In fact, I made so much headway in walking around the huge city in freedom again that one day I came upon an old cemetery and spent almost an entire day looking at grave stones, walking around historical sites, and sitting at a park bench eating snacks while stuffing my head inside of a book. During that time, all I felt that I needed was myself because on other occasions I seemed to be such a nuisance to others.
I would often daydream myself into other locations imagining myself with people who wanted to be around me. Yet, even this form of escape was another way I mechanically coped with the aspects of my new world, but after I learned a bit more about myself, my life seemingly became different, and I began to care a lot less about people viewing me as an outcast. On some level, I was growing into myself and learning to love myself in spite of the terrible things that had happened to me.
In retrospect, it was the beginning of my journey to a form of healing even if the healing was not full blown and complete. I was beginning to find less of a reason to reject myself, and that was a good feeling even if no one else knew about it. That summer was the only summer I recall (outside of adulthood) having a time of complete solitude for exploration and adventure. It is a summer I will undoubtedly never forget because in less than a few months I would fall into an abyss of depression.
Stay tuned for more posts.
My Voice Unchained 