***Trigger Warning – mentions grooming as it pertains to sexual abuse
No Honor For Me In My Community
When my father and I left the home of the instructor’s mother, we walked down the street to where my dad had parked near his uncle’s home. We visited with my dad’s uncle for a bit before his uncle said that I was no longer allowed to come around any more. He claimed that I had caused him problems amongst his neighbors because of my “wild imagination and accusations”, and he did not want those kinds of problems.
“You bring a lot of problems wherever you go,” my uncle said to me, but he oddly smiled at me when he said it. “I’m not trying to be mean because I think you’re a good kid, but I have to live here, and if I allow you to come for visits, then that is going to cause me problems with my neighbors, understand? [The instructor’s mother] can be an old bitty if you understand where I’m coming from. She pretty much rules this neighborhood.“
“So, in other words, the woman is a bully,” I thought to myself.
Although I told my uncle that I understood, I was hurt. My father graciously thanked my uncle for the conversation and told him that we were visiting with two other families prior to leaving in the car. So I walked with my dad to visit with to other sets of families – one family who were long time friends of his family and the other family who were my mother’s relatives. Looking back, I realize that my father was circling neighborhoods to gauge where I stood within the community. It was at this time that I came to learn that I had no honor. Everyone was on the side of the instructor.
Sadly, no one wanted me around their families particularly within the neighborhood where the instructor’s mother lived. It appeared that the instructor’s mother had influential power, and the neighborhood of people who lived there respected her. I was just a child in their eyes, and even though I belonged to a family with a well-known and respected name, I was viewed as an insignificant nuisance who had already exhibited a host of problems. I was long since viewed as a black sheep, and I simply did not fit in anywhere or with anyone.
Of the two families we visited, the first family cast an overall frown upon me and told my father that basically this situation was as the changing seasons and would hopefully pass for my family, but in the mean time, it was said to my father that I should hopefully learn a lesson about talking too much without understanding the consequences. This comment struck me as odd to say simply because I spoke up about wrong doing. Why would that be viewed as talking too much?
The second family, which was my mother’s family – her aunt and cousins, seemingly wanted to stand by me, but because of their standing within the community, they thought it best not to be involved at all. Although I do not think that my father was looking for support, the gauge of how these two families and his uncle had responded to me was all that he needed to know in terms of where I stood within the community.
Basically, I was done for and nobody believed me. It was a situation that was better left untouched by anyone, and that is exactly how people responded. They did not bother to get involved, and if they did, they stood on the side of the sexual abuser. By this point, some of my classmates knew, and not one classmate that knew me stood on my side.
Instead, I was blamed, talked about, shunned, and zeroed in on for jokes and innuendos. But my fragmented selves stepped up their game and simply ignored the talk and mistreatment. Remarkably, I never let the drama phase me on the surface. I ignored a lot and acted completely aloof towards my dissenters which made them believe I was indeed crazy.
My brain had literally stepped in and dissociated from the entire situation as if it had never happened because on a deeper level, I had been dismissed. Despite my dissociation, I headed for a downward spiral into deep depression. My entire family seemed to be against me with the exception of my brother. However, it was simply too much for him to wrap his head around. He could not handle knowing that the instructor had violated me. It was a hard concept for my brother to swallow, but he silently stood with me in his own way, but I could not say the same for my sister.
The distance between my sister and I grew, and she was blatant about who she stood with in the end. She was desperate to fit in and often befriended people that viewed me in a negative light just to spite me even though she claimed that it was all innocent. I always gave her the benefit of doubt, thinking that she was just young and foolish.
When I found out she befriended the instructor’s youngest sister (the one I had revealed the truth to about the instructor), I knew that there was an agenda to get to me by the instructor’s sister using my sister against me. In a conversation, my sister basically called me a liar too.
My sister: If [the instructor] really did what you claimed he did, then why didn’t he do that to me too? I think you were just jealous that you weren’t the only one he was giving attention to. It must have been hard for you. That’s why you would always follow us when he wanted to talk to me.
I hated my sister’s smugness. She was an arrogant piece of work always attempting to get a rise from me all the time and then cry as the victim so that I would be punished for shutting her down. I resented her as a child because she intentionally caused a lot of unnecessary problems just so she could always side against me.
After many such attempts like this from my sister, even as a child, I grew never to trust her words at all. If I was the labeled liar, then she was the great deceiver. She lied all the time and could pretty much get away with it because she cried and was the youngest. When this situation happened with the instructor, her crush on him clouded her judgment of the truth.
My sister was oblivious to the fact that I stood in the gap to protect her from a predator, but instead of seeing the truth about it, she chose to side with the instructor in his darkness and stand with his family against me. I was mortified by this. We shared the same bedroom, but she was my enemy. More than mortified, I was broken by this, but I attempted not to show it. It was as if even my family was intent on breaking down my spirit. If I was not resilient, I probably would have never recovered from this.
Stay tuned for the downward spiral in the next post.
My Voice Unchained 