post script on sexual abuse

**As I was writing my blog yesterday, I discovered that I wrote this but never posted it, following my sexual abuse post. I wanted to post it now. Consider it a late P.S. 
Sometimes I think I'm "over" the things in my past, I spend months in a place of homeostasis. Then something happens, and suddenly I'm having vivid nightmares again. Please know, if this is your story, too, that you're not alone. After writing the post on Sexual Abuse and PTSD, I almost gave up my blog. I didn't write or post for months. It was the hardest thing I've ever written, and it still knocks the air out of me sometimes. But, as my friend, Cyn, says, "You are talking and you are ok." If this is your story, please don't stop talking. We share more than you know.**

The thing that happens with sexual abuse is, like a surgeon, it skillfully and exactly severs the tie between your soul and your body. It then strangles your soul until all you are left with is a shell of who you were, walking around empty. It doesn't leave you alone, though... when it steals your soul and life, it leaves you with companions - post traumatic stress, fear, self-hatred, isolation, loneliness, guilt, and shame. So you walk through life with companions you never asked for. With dreams you never wished upon. With feelings you question. You learn to never trust yourself, and certainly to never trust anyone else.

from victim to survivor - my own story.

NOTE: This post discusses child sexual abuse and may be a triggering subject for some readers.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

-Socrates

A little girl in a white night dress sits on the floor of her closet. Knees pulled up to chest, arms wrapped tight, she makes herself as small as possible. The door is cracked open, but the darkness is prevailing and only a tiny shaft of light falls across her form. She closes her eyes and prays that the sights and sounds outside the door will fade and that she will be safe within this room. She hopes someday that she will be able to open the door slowly and emerge into quiet peace.

I was a young child when I was sexually abused. Now I remember pieces of what happened, I remember sights and sounds. The smell of a man, the aftershave he wore. The red and black checks on a flannel shirt. The weight of him on top of me, crushing my life and suffocating me. The color of the walls (yellow) and the carpet (brown shag). But when I remember it, I remember it as a third party, watching from above, in the corner of the room.

Throughout my life, until I was 24, I blocked those memories out, along with most of my childhood. I went on with my life, as "normal"; as I knew "normal" to be. I didn't realize that people don't just block out years of their life. I didn't realize remembering a 6th birthday party was something most people take for granted. I thought it was normal to have violent nightmares every night. I argued with people who said it was impossible to die in your dreams, and if you did you would die in real life. I had died too many times to count in my dreams and I remembered every time thinking, 'it's not so bad.'

Every night when I fell asleep, the dreams would come. It seems like they were always there. I was in a house, or a building. I was hiding, always hiding, fearful of being discovered. I remember a clock that always showed up in my dreams, signaling that I would have to come out of hiding, and I remember always being chased and, sadly, caught by my captors. Waking up nightly in a sweat, completely silent, biting my lip until the blood came, I would open my eyes and lie still as a statue. I would look around the room fearfully, getting my bearings, then eventually drift off to another nightmare. It happened for so long, I grew accustomed to it. I knew no other life.