***Trigger Warning – contains potentially distressing material pertaining to sexual assault
End Of The Road
It was the end of my summer – cut short by at least three weeks. It had been the longest summer that I can remember, and it had been the most emotionally difficult summer that I can recall. Just when I was beginning to enjoy it, it seemed to have been cut abruptly to an end. It was the end of the road.
It was the end of the road for both my aunt and me. Our relationship had come to a bitter end. We were both exasperated with each other, and we had both reached our wits end with each other. My aunt felt more outdone with me than I ever could be done with her though. Yet, I had no idea that most of her anguish had nothing at all to do with me.
My aunt was very sick, and I never realized just how sick. I never realized that those daunting last moments with her would be the very end for me. I never realized that she was actually drawing closer to the end of the road in life. I never realized that her life’s journey had nearly reached its zenith and fullness, and it made sense for her to want to end any situation that was bringing her misery.
Sadly, my presence at the time had brought my aunt much misery and suffering. Although I was not the main culprit to her suffering, I do know that the posttraumatic stress that I suffered as a result of a sexual assault against me did not make life for her any easier. Empathically, I have always tried to put myself in her shoes (after the fact) and see her point of view.
If I had known then just how close she was to dying, I wish that I could have changed my behavior, suffered differently, and reacted differently, but it was the end of the road. There was no turning back. There was no repairing of our relationship. The damage was done. It could not be undone, and over time and throughout my life, I have faced that as a painful reality. If there was no end of the road, then maybe our lives could have been very different.
Not A Child But Not An Adult
Strangely, I seemed to fare better with life as I was nearing my end of the summer with my aunt. I had forged friendships with two sisters from across the street, and along with my neighbor’s daughter from across the hall, I was managing a new alter ego I called Vigilante. This alter ego knew no fear of the dangers of the streets. She was me, and I was her, and together we were only slightly aware of how quickly my mind seemed to be more than willing to forget the trauma of the distant but close past.
Yet, no sooner than I began this new life with a new alter ego, my aunt phoned my parents to let them know that I would be returning back to them. It turns out, however, that my aunt was not sending me back because of the stress that I had caused her. In fact, the stress of what I caused was not as surmountable a feat as the cancer that continued to attack her body and make her weak. She was simply too ill to take care of me, and it was becoming quite a chore for her to take care of her child as well.
Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I could see my aunt’s illness in all the ways she leaned upon me for assistance. When she did allow me to run errands, they were big errands for a nine year old who had very shortly turned 10. These errands consisted of walking to different locations to pay bills, walking to supermarkets to buy groceries, and going to the pharmacy to pick up prescription medication.
Sometimes I would walk far distances to some of these locations, but it never truly dawned on me that I was running errands for a very sick individual who no longer had the energy to do these tasks for herself. It just suddenly seemed to happen that these larger responsibilities were thrust upon me when it seemed that I was coming out of my own funk of depression and isolation. It was as if I was an adult in a child’s body or a child with an adult mind. I had changed tremendously.
I took note of how less angry I became when I walked around the city and took in the sights. I noticed how having responsibilities outside of myself conditioned my thinking. I was a child, sure, but my mind had matured and rapidly changed as if overnight. My thought processes were no longer the same, I seemed to operate different minds as if I had more than one brain. Some of those minds were busy protecting me while other minds helped me to navigate and makes sense of the world around me.
Although I had these responsibilities when I first arrived to the city with my aunt and had even been reported missing because of a mishap that disabled me from returning back to my aunt’s apartment at a designated time, after the sexual assault against me, navigating life in the city was far more different for me. I was a different person. I felt like a different person. I had a different mind. I had many minds. In fact, I had more minds than I had prior to the assault, and these minds were more mature in thinking.
I was not a child, but I was also not an adult. The summer had changed me, but I was now at the end of the road. There would be no opportunity for neither my aunt or me to see just how mature I could actually be. That renewed sense of who I had become had seemingly occurred too late because now I was going home. My aunt was simply too ill to handle me. She was sending me home. It was the end of the road.
Stay tuned for more.
My Voice Unchained 