***Trigger Warning – contains potentially distressing material pertaining to sexual assault
At some point during my summer stay with my aunt, we both became runaways. We both opted for a time to runaway from our problems, our fears, and each other. One day, after a heated argument, I stormed out of my aunt’s apartment and took to the streets. I literally took a walk around the block to cool off. I was probably not even gone from the apartment more than 45 minutes, but to hear my aunt, the neighbor across the hall, and that neighbor’s daughter speak on it, I was a terror with feet.
As I remember, my aunt was in one of her foul moods, and towards the end of my summer stay, her foul moods became more frequent. She was especially angry with me about how I had spoken to her boyfriend, but she obviously had not heeded the fact that her boyfriend had attempted to violate my personal boundaries through intimidation tactics that I would not heed to for my own protection.
I never saw her boyfriend again because he refused to come around to her apartment until I was gone. So, my aunt blamed me for her failed relationship with him. It did not matter that her relationship was a failure from the beginning. He was a married family man, but I digress, and I certainly digressed then as a nine year old. Clearly, she did not see that I was not the problem for her failed relationship, but I was certainly a great scapegoat to blame.
Nevertheless, my aunt ranted and raged about me being a thorn in her side from the time she decided to take me on for the summer. She had never regretted her decision to do so more. According to her, I had cost her countless amounts of money, time, medical trips, and court visits which all amounted to a great load of stress for her. Because of me, many of her friends did not want to even come around her. She had me believing that I was the common denominator and source of all her problems.
So in a fit of anger, I stormed out of the apartment. I first sat on the first floor step as I normally would in a fit of anger, but this particular time, I decided to take a walk, and it was the first time that I had ventured beyond the apartment since the sexual assault. It was the first time that I did not fear venturing out past the apartment. I remember the feeling so clearly, but it was not an emotional feeling. It was the feeling of a new day. Something had occurred in the atmosphere, and I felt just a bit freer than I had before. The sun was shining brightly, and the sky was a beautiful sea blue color. There were no clouds.
I walked around the entire block – first counterclockwise and then clockwise. I felt a sense of freedom that I had not felt before in such a long time. I stepped out feeling differently all the way around. It was a new day, and for some reason, I was a new me. Perhaps that awakening that I was no longer a little girl after a time of sickness from a trip to the beach had an even greater meaning in my life. I am not sure what it was, but I was happy to be out and about. I took in the air that something was different and something had changed with me. I felt a lot older – a lot more mature. The anger inside of me was even different.
Needless to say, I walked the block twice over, encountered some older women on the edge of the fence, and talked with one older woman in particular. “Oh my goodness!” said an older woman. “I’m so glad to see you out and about. It’s been so long since we’ve seen you out here!” “We’ve been praying for you. You look well … all grown up now. Everyone was so worried about you … that you wouldn’t survive what happened. I’ll have to tell [so and so] that you’re outside now walking around and about.”
I did not know the older women, and for a moment, I could not connect with what the one woman was saying. The women were carrying on so with such excitement that I felt it was not necessary for me to respond. I honestly felt detached and wondered if they were really talking about me or had me confused with someone else. As I walked away past them, I heard one of the women say, “I never thought that girl would be right after what happened to her. I heard her aunt was having a hard time with her … that the girl might need to be committed.”
Clearly, these women were talking about someone else. I remember my brain not being able to connect with their words at all. I tried to fathom who else they could have been talking about, and then I remember thinking that whoever it was, I hoped the poor girl would pull through. It never occurred to me that the poor girl was me. I was still dissociated, but it was a happier place of dissociation nonetheless. I was even more detached and could feel nothing and associated nothing correlated with a sexual assault. I remember this so clearly as if there was some story that I had heard from long ago … something that was so distant and far away, I would never be able to feel it.
Once I arrived back to my aunt’s apartment, the neighbor’s daughter from across the hall was waiting for me. “You ran away and had your aunt worried. She up and left your cousin with my mother! She didn’t say she was looking for you. She said she had to get away from you!”
Find out what happened in the next post.
My Voice Unchained 