Broken, Burdened, and Blessed

Those years were mine and he took them.

2012-02-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

I think i have moved past something, and yet weeks go past and I find it still there hiding beneath a rock in my heart. I thought I had finished grieving for everything lost. But I haven't. There is still a part of me that mourns, what could have been. These days it is not so much the in-tangibleness of the life I would have led if this had never happened. Rather, it is the years lost to the depression that followed. The opportunities I could not savor because I was simply trying to hang on to living. The moments of happiness lost in those years. The experiences I could have and should have had. Gone.

I lost 2 years to the abuse itself. I spent the next two years in denial. And then it knocked me off my feet for the next five years as I fought depression. That is nine years. That is 1/3 of my life. Twisted, impact, changed. And its not fair.

I wish I could explain to him all that I lost. I still have moments where I wish his life was hallow and empty. Not to be spiteful, but because I still hurt. I still grieve. I still mourn. I want all those years back, I want and deserve to have had them filled with happiness. I don't know how you get over it, besides putting one foot in front of the other until the 9 years shrinks with the perception of time and distance. While the weight of the loss gets smaller as new memories are made, the underlying truth never disappears: I should never have lost all those years and I want them back.

stark truths

2012-01-26T20:46:00.000-08:00

I feel like I need to say something, document hopes and dreams. If only to stand in contrast to the hurt and despair contained within these pages.

In my heart I still hold a fear, a fear that this time too my world will collapse. I don't know if that feeling will ever leave. Because it is not so much a fear, as an awareness. One that is not irrational. It is a stark truth. A necessary evil. Its presence a reflection of the innocence I loss. The naivety taken away.

I understand that I can get through most anything. There is a strength in the knowledge of resilience, knowing that this too shall pass. Promise lying in the knowledge that if only you can stick it through it will get better.

I no longer mourn what was. What could have been. Mourn the years lost. The person changed. I am here. I cannot change that. I have come to terms with that at the least. I know there is evil in the world. But it is tempered by hope and compassion.

Milan Kundera

2011-12-12T00:17:00.001-08:00

The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.

Kahlil Gilbran

2011-12-11T23:22:00.001-08:00

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Rose Kennedy

2011-12-11T21:51:00.001-08:00

“It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”

2011-12-07T00:02:00.000-08:00

Dear Younger Me,

It has been twenty years since the abuse started. Three years lost to the abuse. A year to the aftermath. Then you picked up your feet and moved forward, went to college. You coped by living, but you lacked the confidence to stay strong in the wake of fear. When your last grain of trust was broken, you felt alone and being with yourself was the last place you wanted to be. You were scared and you fell apart.

Sweet child, it is okay. It is alright to stumble. It's okay to fall. You shouldn't feel shame about that period in your life. You should feel proud that you stood back up. You should feel pride at the courage it took to dust off your pants, seek help, and keep living. You are courageous. You are strong. Remember life is not measured by what has happened to you, but by how you respond to it. You responded gallantly. Be kind to yourself. Someday this will all be a blip on a your history, an experience that will fill you with compassion. I hope you can find pride in what you have been through. That the guilt and the shame would be no more.

I want to tell you that life is easy from here on out. That the days ahead will make up for the past. I know that is what you want to hear. But I can't tell you the future. I can't assure you that you will make no mistakes, that you'll never made the wrong choice. I can't tell you that you'll never be hurt, have your heartbroken, or lose your way. I want to tell you that you will be loved, that you'll feel secure, that you'll be fulfilled. Because you deserve those things. You deserve so much more.

What I can tell you is that as long as there is a future there is hope. You can do anything you want with your life. But there is a difference between wanting and working for it. If you want your degree, if you want to work abroad, if you want to support a family, if you want to feel secure, you are going to have to work for it. But you knew that already. You also know, that it is those things that you have to work for the hardest that mean the most.

Work hard because you want those things, not because you feel you have to in order to measure up, in order to feel worthy or of value. You don't need to prove yourself to anyone but yourself. You never need to live up to anyone's expectations but your own. You are intrinsically worthy, no one can take that away. If I had a wish for you, it would be that you felt free and unburdened to live without grief, or fear. Living with a open heart, in addition to your open mind.

I know you didn't think it would happen. You didn't think your heart could ever heal. But unbeknownst to you, it has. Think about all the relationships in your life. The people you love. It is proof that you have overcome. Proof that you are okay. Proof that you can be and do whatever you want.

-Me
*This is part of a series of letters I have written in counseling.

Ironies of Anniversaries

2011-10-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

There is an irony existing in my life these days. A week from today is the eight year anniversary of when my abuse began to be made public. I woke up that morning and went on a 15 mile bike ride. It was a crisp fall day, warm with blue skies. I rode from my house up through the wineries and back. It was perfect. It was also my abuser's birthday and I thought about him all day. I didn't talk to him, but I wanted to. It was also the day that a women he had an affair with came forward, causing people to doubt the person he was. Fueled by this doubt in his integrity, they started digging deep into my abuser's life and found his relationship with me at the bottom.

My counselor said recently that I need to actively make new memories to associate with this time of the year. I've been actively doing that these last weeks. Sometimes to a fault. I've made myself so busy I don't have time to think on all these anniversaries. I've been so busy hanging with friends, working, applying to new jobs that I couldn't remember any of the 'dates' that I had clung to. But I didn't want it sneaking up on me, so I sought it out in a moment of downtime, when I knew I would have time to process things.

What I discovered is that a week from today, on the anniversary of when my world began to fall apart, I will actively take a step to build my life now. A week from today, I begin a new job. A good, amazingly paying, respectful job. I've been working and working hard these last 18 months as I fought off the holds of depression. But the depression caused me to question my worth, to doubt myself and my abilities, and to undervalue myself. With each week, I've gotten a bit better. I think the new job is like a big bright sign in the sky that says "I am no longer depressed!" I guess the irony for me is that this day of triumph, would be eight years to the day that it all began to feel apart in the first place.

Laughing at the irony is not what I expected when I sat down to look at the calendar and inevitably re-live that confusing time in my life. But that my response would be laughter says something in itself. God, I am so thankful to be here.

Dear Me,

2011-10-19T23:02:00.000-07:00

Once again you are at an anniversary of the days where your life was spinning off its axis. It has been years. Yet, it feels like just yesterday. It feels like just a moment ago that you sunk onto that turquoise carpet. You couldn't hold it in anymore and you broke down in tears. No one in the world understood. No one could know. Your world was shattering and you couldn't tell a soul.

Its so funny to be on the flip side. To have your life come into focus and be able to tell anyone and everyone. Well maybe not quite everyone. But the people it truly matters to share it with, you have already told them.

Years ago you stood in front of a mirror and no longer saw yourself. That moment was a beautiful blessing. Because you got to start over. Yes, you brought history and baggage, but you got the opportunity to start over. You had to feel your way at times, but you will grow into a woman you can be proud of.

It will take you four years to fight for your life back. There will be time lost to depression. But please, please, please, don't give in. Wake up every morning. Put one foot in front of the morning and eventually you will live again.

I wish you didn't have to go through the years ahead of you, but you do. They will shape you and mold you. You will have sympathy, empathy, and integrity in spades. You will have work ethic, and compassion, and understand the truly important things. It will not be easy getting there, but it will be okay. In the midst of the hard days remember that. It will be okay.

With much love,
You. Me. Us.

Grieving a Piece of Me

2011-09-22T00:09:00.000-07:00

"It's always good to have a master plan in life. Call it a goal, guiding force, whatever you need to stay determined and focused.Then be prepared for the derailments. The times when life just doesn't work out the way you anticipated. The times when it seems most unfair, and you find yourself walking through some alternate reality, sure that the one you're living can't be yours because something went wrong. Something threw you off course. Those moments that rock you to the inner core, shake you in such a way that once the dust settles, you're left missing a piece of yourself forever."

I could have read this a week ago and it would not have sucked the air out of my lungs quite like it did today. I spoke virtually the same words today in counseling. I have come to the conclusion that I need to grieve for a while. The person I would have been otherwise. Without the unstable home, without the abuse, without the depression. Without these things that have built into each other.

My counselor said something that struck me today. She said unless I dream and I fight for those dreams I am going to end up grieving for this time in my life too. I don't want to grieve. I want to live. Ironically I am so fearful of losing a part of me by some derailment of my life, that I am having trouble reaching for those dreams. But if I don't reach I will end up losing another piece of myself anyway.

Grrr... I thought I was done with posting here and being angry and sad. But I guess its never really completely gone from my life.

Moving Out

2011-09-16T20:51:00.000-07:00

Shortly before starting this blog, I moved home. I didn't know where else to go. I know in some ways it was the best thing for me. When I moved back home, I never foresaw myself being here two years. In those two years I was able to become emotionally stable and did a bunch of growing up. I spread my wings. I jumped. I soared. But it has been more than two years and I've been talking about moving out for a long time now, except the truth is I don't want to move out. It's not that I'm not ready. Because God knows I am. But rather moving out means moving in somewhere and that feels permanent. Not in the sense that I could never move back in, but in the sense that I am not moving back to the life I had.

I so desperately want to make my life into as close a replica to that old life. I know I've made choices and doors have closed, but not all have. And it would be different, but getting there would not be easy. I feel torn like life puts you on a path and you should just keep walking on it. But I want to go back so desperately. There was happiness there and I want that again.

co-existing

2011-09-16T20:39:00.000-07:00

I had it good for a while. In the years between the sentencing and the depression, I had it amazingly good. But as good as it was, I was coping by pushing forward, living in denial, boxing everything up and trying to forget everything that had happened. But I couldn't forget about it because it was a part of me; I didn't know how to co-exist between my experience and my shame. I didn't know how to love myself. But I made friends again. I worked hard. I was where I wanted to be. I remember being during that time being happy, even being conscience that it was good. Really good.

You can only be in denial so long before it catches up to you. I should have learned that from the man who abused me. And catch up it did. Two rounds of depression. I should have left school, but I didn't know that it could be any different. I had lived for years with the secrets of abuse and mustered through them to live. I thought I could muster through the depression. I know differently now.

Lately I am filled with the feelings of loss. The world that could have been mine if my parents hadn't divorced. The person I would have become if I hadn't met him, if he hadn't abused me. If depression hadn't caused me to stumble. I think I will just need to grieve for a while. I need to be sad for what could have been.

And amongst it all, even during the abuse, there were good times. Like everything with the abuse it is multifaceted, filled with mixed emotions. It is not simple. It never will be. Yet I find myself angry that it can't be simple. I find myself longing for it to be different. I want resolution that I will never get. I want that happiness back, but I wonder if it is possible without the denial.

Written August 27, 2011

2011-09-02T04:36:00.000-07:00

Dear *******,

I have heard it said that "the human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it." And with everything within me, I hope that sentiment is true.   To know that I am greater than the things that happen to me gives me more strength for the future, whatever it may hold. I know better than most that life dishes out hardship, but between you and I, you not "life" placed this particular hardship on me. You and you alone are responsible for the pain, for the distrust of the world, for the depression and lack of self confidence. And yet, here I stand.

The thing is, even if I was strong enough to overcome the pain it did not give you the license to hurt me. Because that is what you did, you hurt me. And I may be strong, but even the strongest will carry scars. I will carry scars for the rest of my life.

More than that, though, you changed my life. You took away what could have been. I have worked so hard to overcome the hurt, but I can never overcome the potential of my life without that pain. I think more than anything that saddens me the most. If my life otherwise would have been brutish and short and even if my life now is all rainbows and roses, your hurting me was not justified.

That's the short of it. And whatever my life becomes will always be in spite of you.

-Me

Goodbye

2011-06-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

If I have not yet said it a hundred times, I'll say it again. This is not the path I would have ever chosen for me to walk. I hope I would never willingly choose to go down this path. I would never wish it on anyone. It is a path that for lack of a better word sucks. But as I sit here looking back on this last decade of my life, I understand how it has turned me into the person I am. Someone I am proud of.

Standing in the courtroom, facing the man that abused me feels like yesterday. But it was eight years ago and I was only a girl. I have come so far. I wish I could close the door to this past of mine. I wish I could be done with it. I have so many wishes for the future. Wishes that don't include this. But I know that it doesn't work that way. I know there will always be days where I think of my abuser, his family, the people in my life then. I know things will trigger unresolved issues. But I also know I can handle it when it arises.

It occurred to me today that I'm no longer broken. I'm no longer pristine, but no longer are there gaping holes. I am not just good, I am confident, I am positive, I have faith in the world again, and I am so excited about the future. I will likely not post here for a while, because I am out there living my life, but I am going to leave this blog up. If you stumble across it, and you've gone through anything similar, please delve into the posts. Know you are not alone, know it does get better, know you deserve so much more from life.

All my love.
-A

Dear Littler Me,

2011-05-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

It is alright. If I could tell you anything it would be that. There are going to be hard days and weeks and months and even years ahead. I can’t assure you it will work out perfectly, because it is life. And seldom does it. But it is going to be okay. It is going to be alright. Right now it hurts and is confusing. Life feels big and scary. But I promise you that while what happened to you is life altering, it is not life shattering. You will never get over it. Because it is not something you can just get over. But as you live more of life, it becomes less weighty. It hurts less, becomes duller. It will sadden you, but you will move past the anger.

Someday you will understand just how wrong it was. You’re going to stare into the eyes of a 15 year old and be shocked. You’re going to need to mourn that time in your life. You’re going to need to mourn the innocence lost. Whatever has happened, know that everything he did was wrong. And at the same time, whatever you feel about it is valid. It is still okay if he loved you, and it is even more okay if you loved him back. And feeling that doesn’t change the fact that it was wrong. Both can coexist in your heart.

Regardless of what you think society says, know that you are still loveable. In fact, you deserve to be loved. Truly loved. Cherished and worshiped and respected. You deserve to have someone hang on your every word and truly believe you hung the moon. And someday, I promise you that will happen. You will know what real love is: not a facsimile of manipulation mascaraed by love and affection. Deep inside you know this to be true: you are capable of loving and being loved. You will question that, but never let go of the fact that you are worthy of love.

Warmly,

The Me in 2011

Dreaming of Life

2011-02-16T20:58:00.000-08:00

I will admit that I often come here to bear my soul. Not as much as I use to, but I guess I have this need to act as if I have my life together. Act as if I don't have scares all over my heart. And so, besides my counselor, I don't really talk about this stuff with anyone. Instead out pour the sorrows buried in my heart, the insecurities and the pain. Rarely, here at least, do I rejoice in my life's lot.

20 months ago I moved home from college. Nearly finished, I couldn't. I was mentally and psychologically in a very bad place. I moved home and have yet to go back.

My old life at college feels like a dream. A wonderful, blurry dream. Where you have woken up, but you can't shake it. But you get out of bed and start your day because that is what you have to do. And the business of life takes over and you forget all about it. But in the quiet stillness the memories return to you. So strong, for that moment you forget it was a dream. And you fall into it.

These days I can't get over the feeling I am not living the life I am suppose to. I find myself wishing I was living that old life. That I was there and not here. That my emotional breakdown, and the abuse that underlies it, had never occurred. I wish it had been different. I can't undo it. I can only offer myself grace and work to get back there. If only getting there was a simple as laying your head on the pillow and closing your eyes.

mediocre

2011-01-29T23:26:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a while. Mostly 'cause I didn't want to admit that I wasn't okay. Which is not a new theme for me, by the way. What's new about it is saying... I'm not. And that's okay.

I'm struggling. I've been struggling for months, years really. My entire life, I was told, I was more. And yet, today, I feel small. I feel insignificant. I feel frustrated with where I am in my life. Frustrated with myself.

I don't know where the idea came from, but being mediocre is simply unacceptable. It never has been. And yet mediocre is exactly where I'm at. It is where I've been stuck for months. Hung up on the same things. Stuck at the same problems. Talking and thinking myself into circles until I am paralyzed.

Seven Years

2010-10-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

Today is his birthday. Seven years ago today, he celebrated with his wife and children unaware of what awaited him the following afternoon. I wonder what he wished for as he blew out the candles on his cake.

Today is the anniversary of the last day before the carefully constructed facade of my life, of his came tumbling down.

Seven years ago today the grain that tipped the scales was dropped. It set in motion a series of events from which there was no turning back. Police, attorneys, counselors...

Seven years later, I wonder if he will pause tomorrow. I wonder if he'll stop for a moment and wonder what could have been if he had acted different. I wonder if he feels relieved now, or sad, or angry. At me or himself. I wonder if he looks back with regret at his actions. And I wonder if he has changed at all. If seven years, attorneys, jail time, therapy have managed to "reform" him.

I've wrestled for years with the repercussions of his actions. I've struggled to go on as the walls of my world came tumbling down around me, even as I desperately tried to hold them up. Even as I desperately failed.

I can't change it. Life has gone on. I've moved forward. I've done great things. I've experienced marvelous moments that likely would not have happened had my abuse not come to light. I know that, but sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if our paths had never crossed, if this hadn't been my cross to bear.

Maybe I'll always be contemplative in the last week of October. Maybe I'll always need to take a moment to mourn. To express grief at what could have been. To feel sorrow for everything unknowingly lost, and everything unwittingly gained.

Today is his birthday.

"There are cracks in that sunshine smile of hers, slight lines so invisible to the human eye that only [those who love her] are able to see them. She's like a vase that's been broken into a thousand pieces and repaired, and although she is mended, she is never fully the same; she'll never be what she was before [his] terrible possession of her," I read today.

Good or bad, because of him my life will never be the same.

Beyond a Clean Slate

2010-08-31T13:41:00.000-07:00

I once ran away from home. Not litterly, but figuratively. At 19, I left this city and went to the East Coast for college. Now most would say going off to college is not running away. But in this case it was. And I established a life there on the other coast. Away from my family. Away from the life I had. And for a time I felt giddy with contentment. I felt like I had proved myself.

But the fact that remains is that even though I might have physically run away from having to face my history, it was still buried inside of me. After a time I began to lash out towards my friends. I became self destructive. I hated myself and didn't think I deserved my life. So I let it fall to pieces and shatter around me. Until there was nothing left but having to return to what I had run so far from. I was left with no choice but to face my history.

I was depressed. And angry. I was angry at everything. Slowly over the last year I have come to terms with that history. I have stared it in the face unflinching. I overcame.

In so many ways I am thankful for the last year. I truly believe that I would never have been happy without this introspection, without addressing the parts of my history that I had tried to deny. You can't ignore reality. Ignoring it, painting over it, pretending like it isn't there, well, it doesn't work. It just made things worse.

I worked really hard. And there are parts of me that are content, happy, wonderful. But there is a part of me that feels lost. That feels like I've overcome these hurdles, but in the process of scaling these hurdles of my past I've lost a part of the person that I am now.

Someone who I love, once told me the sagely advice, "With the exception of a few things like babies and death, nothing can't be undone." She was encouraging me to go out into the world, even if it meant making mistakes. I am not perfect. I've made a lot of mistakes and I feel like I have spent the last year addressing regrets - one after another - rectifying them. Crossing them off my to-do list. And I am succeeding. I have five left to do. Slowly I will get there. But in wanting so desperately to right these mistakes, by fixating my focus on rectifying my regrets, undoing my wrongs I've lost sight of what I want beyond a clean slate.

I am the only decider of my destiny. I can live life as it happens to me or I can live life with goals and dreams and aspirations. I can set my sights on them and work towards them and achieve them. And I so want to be that person, I so want to live that life, but then I stop and pause because I don't know what I want that life to be. I don't know what I want to fill the slate with once I cleaned it.

Path of Regret

2010-08-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

I'm good. For the most part I'm happy. I'm thriving. I'm acting responsibly. I'm making friends. I'm earning a paycheck. By my and society's standards, and even my therapist's, I'm doing wonderfully.

Except there are moments, underneath it all, where there is sorrow hidden. And sometimes it surprises me. Feelings of regrets... of what ifs... of if onlys... they sneak up on me. Surprise me because on the surface everything feels so normal that I forget they're there.

And I know I can't live in the past. And I know I can't change it. But I sometimes I feel the ghosts of could have beens rising around me and I don't know how to push them away. Its in those moments where I long for it to have been different.

I wish one thing somewhere could have changed and the sorrow that rests in my soul would never have come to reside there. And even though I will find happiness and go on with my life I wonder if I will always carry these with me. For as proud as I am to have come out at the end of this path, I can't help but wonder what the path would have been like if I never was forced down this one.

Debt

2010-07-29T02:06:00.000-07:00

Imagine for a minute you're standing in line at the check out counter at your local grocery store. You're browsing through a magazine, because really aren't we all a little curious about the alien twins that so and so is said to have birthed, and trying to resist buying a pack of gum. You've come in to buy the three things you need. You really don't need the gum. But at the last minute you grab it and throw it on top of the pasta sauce, broccoli, and ice cream that you picked up to finish dinner.

You're still absorbed in the magazine, and so the clerk's voice catches you off guard. You couldn't have heard her correctly you reason. "What?" You ask her.

"That 'll be three hundred and thirty two dollars and 48 cents."

She smiles at you as you stare in shock. "There must be some confusion." You tell her. After all its only four items.

"No confusion ma'am. Your total is $332.48."

"But..." You go to say.

"The person before you didn't pay for his cart of groceries, so I added his $300 dehbt to your total." She explains.

Again you stare at her thinking, ummm, that's not how it works. You're suprised at the emotions flowing through you. Confusion leads to anger, then resentment. Its unfair. Unfair!. You want to scream. How dare they do this to you. You, who have done nothing to bring this on. You're simply flabergasted.

Now in the above senario, you'd never just accept the situtation and pay for the other person's groceries. You'd call over the manager. You'd sort it out.

And while you'd likely not come back to this particular grocery store again, you'd still go buy groceries at another store. You'd not just stop buying groceries.

You wouldn't blame yourself. You wouldn't blame the person waiting in line behind you. You wouldn't stop trusting everyone and every store because of this one incident.

Sometimes things happen in life that thrust us into situations that are unfair. And we're left feeling used and abused and hurt. We're filled with anger and confusion and resentment. And that's okay. Those emotions are normal.

Sometimes it feels like the man who abused me left me a debt. A debt that I am paying on and paying on and paying on. In my relationships with others, in how I see myself, in the trust I struggle to give. When I choose to let his life affect how I live mine, when I live or die by what happens in his life, I am payuing that debt.

Often I forget that I have a choice in whether I pay. I can stand at the check out counter of life and get upset. I can yell and scream. Or I can address the situation. I can call the manager over. I can be calm and rational. I can declare I am only paying what I owe. I own my part of the bill and let the rest go. That $300 debt is not mine. It was not ever nor will it ever be. Not because the person in front of me, or the clerk, or society or my abuser say it is so. I know better.

We're on year nine since the abuse started. Nearly seven since it all came out. And its only been in the last six months that I have learned how not to pay that debt. It is so much harder than it sounds. Its a choice I have to make every morning when I wake up and start my day. It is a choice I have to make multiple times during the day.

No longer will I let myselfwalk around in fear that someone will hurt me.
No longer will I let myself fear giving trust, in case someone breaks it.
No longer will I let myself be angry for the wrongs done to me.
No longer will I let myself be responsible for choices I didn't make.

I am not ready to forget, nor am I ready to forgive. I'm just not sure how to do that. Someday. I hope. But for now... now I feel like I am controlling it, instead of it controlling me. Each day it gets easier. And likely there are going to be hard days still ahead. But I've found when I trust, when I laugh things off, when I confront my own fears, when I stop approaching every situtation with a protected heart... life becomes easier.

After all, I'm not paying someone else's debt.

A Medallion

2010-06-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

Right now, hanging over my jewelry box is a medallion. I took it off last night after it spent the day resting around my neck. It took everything within me to not put it back on this morning.

If you've read this blog for a while, you'd know that I row. I rowed in college and now I row with a local team in the city where I moved this time last year. Yesterday afternoon, I rowed in a boat with 3 woman who I have come to respect and adore at one of the largest regattas on the West Coast. We knew we were going up against stiff competition after the battle to qualify for the final.

Crossing the half way mark at 500 meters our bodies switched from aerobic to anaerobic and the lactic acid began building up in our muscles. We were tired, sore, and our legs felt like they were on fire. Trailing two boats going into the last 250 meters of the race, we stepped on the power and began pushing through the boat in front of us. With each stroke I thought about how hard we had worked, the long rows, the erg pieces, the training, conditioning, the battle with tendinitis I fought in April. I thought about how much I wanted to go home with a medal. How much I wanted my teammates to be taking home a medal. With every stroke I found myself saying, "I want this. I want this." Stroke by stroke we gained speed and closed the gap, bow ball to bow ball we raced towards the finish line for second place. And when we were called off at the end of the race, we didn't think we had caught them. We turned to our coaches on the dock and they didn't know either.

We pulled the boat out of the water to our teammates cheering. We knew we would be taking home a medal but its color was uncertain. Setting the boat in slings, the four of us gathered with our coxswain and coaches in a little circle to debrief the race. We were still in the circle when my dad came up and asked us if we wanted to know the official results. He said that the time separating second and third place was half a second. Half a second!

And we had taken second!

It registered in my head as I saw it registering on my teammates faces. There was screaming and jumping up and down. We had done it, we had over taken the other boat. In that moment, I experienced sheer joy.

Upstairs handing over my jewelry box is a silver medal.

In a way it represents how hard I've worked this last year. A year ago, almost to the day, I moved across the country. Not because I wanted to, or because of the opportunities presented, but because I didn't know what else to do. It represents the roots I have begun to put down in a city I had fled due to the reminders of pain and abuse around every corner. But here I am.

It represents the blood, sweat and tears of the last year. A year ago I had just suffered a major defeat, internally I was in pieces, I didn't know who I was or what I should do. I felt like crap, like I had failed. Like somehow the abuse had won over me. I had been living by the mantra that I would be okay if I could just convince everyone I was okay. But when you fail in front of everyone, how can you pretend like you've succeeded, overcome your abuse.

I could feel myself teetering on the rim of depression once again and I didn't know how to fix it. But I reached out for help. I got back into counseling. I have overcome so much in the last year. I examined my life. I came to terms with my history, with the abuse that happened to me. And slowly I began to see myself apart from it. I began to just see me. The abuse became just one small part of what made up who I am. I grew to like the person I was, the person I was trying to be. Slowly I learned how to be happy again.

There is a silver medallion hanging in my bedroom. And I couldn't be happier.

enjoy.

2010-05-20T16:01:00.000-07:00

An update on my new year's resolution....

I feel good about my life. Like I'm on strong footing. Ready for a wave to sweep past, but confident enough in my stance to know it won't knock my feet out from under me.

I am working. I am going to school. I still volunteer, though not nearly as much.

I work out. A lot. I joined a competitive crew team and in addition to our 3 practices a week, I work out 5 days a week at the gym.

I am liking the physical me a lot more. And I am adoring the person I am inside.

I still feel sometimes like I am going through the motions, but I am enjoying the things in my life more. I have a plan of action for the future and I think that helps immensely in the outlook of my life.

I am still doing the STP, but between crew and the gym and walking my dogs finding many hours a week to bike isn't happening. And so I am at the moment harping on myself. But I guess this is me. I like to cut things close. It gives life a bit of a thrill. That risk of failure. Perhaps it is the years of hiding the abuse, the threat of getting caught was like a drug. And in someways I feel the need to get a fix of that drug. Shrug.

And I know I'm in great all around shape, but these last few weeks I've felt tired. Weary. Like I want a break. I deserve one, but its not in the picture for another10 weeks or so. The next 4 weeks will be tough. But I can get there. I think.

I've started giving some thought to starting to go to church. I feel like I am ready. I am feeling the desire more and more. I am praying, even if it is short little prayers, more genuinely.

Sometimes I find myself crying while driving down the road. Sometimes I forget how much is still all bottled up inside. But then I realize how far I've come. How unburdened I feel. And I do think I am enjoying my life and I'm proud of myself.

I've given a thought to what would make an enjoyable summer and I think the following list sums it up:

Knit Something.
Sew Something.
Make a great attempt at completing the STP.
Get out with my camera more.
Cook some yummy food.
Get my closets organized. Donate the extra stuff in my life to charity.
Make the yard look presentable. And enjoy getting it there.
Give my best friend a hug. Hard to do when she lives 1,500 miles away.
Sail a little.
Kayak a bit more.
Read a couple books.
Make a ton of progress on my Chinese.
Visit the beach with my family.
Spend some one on one time with my dad.
Laugh until my sides hurt.

So summer, here I come.

Choice

2010-05-13T18:08:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about choices. There are very few things I have been given power over. I have power over my feelings, my thoughts, my actions, and my choices. Nothing else. I get to choose how to live my life. No one else has that power. No one else can make me happy. I and I alone have that power.

Conversely, I don't have the power over anyone else's feelings, thoughts, actions, or choices. I don't have that power over my abuser. I can't stop him from abusing someone else. And if he does, God forbid, its not my fault. Because I don't have the power to stop him. Just like there is nothing that I could do to make him abuse someone. Nothing I could have done to make him abuse me. Those choices remain his and his alone.

I have no power over the storms that sweep into my life. And I can sit here and struggle against the wind or I can choose to not wage a battle that I know I can't win.

In many ways I feel like I am back where I was after my abuse came to light. I am attending the same school, living in the same city, living in my parent's home.

Intellectually I know that I've done so much, come so far in the years since. Heck I've traveled half-way around the world and back. I'm so close to my degree I can feel it. But sometimes I forget how far I've actually come.

The difference between where I was and where I am, is not a matter of where I live or a diploma on the wall. The difference is the way I feel inside. The difference is how I choose to see the world in front of me.

I have no control over the future. I have no control over the past. But I can choose the direction I point my compass. I can choose to stand up. I can choose the direction in which I walk forward. I can choose to take the steps no matter how laborious or light they feel. I choose. No one can stop me. No one can make me. Only me.

I have chosen to accept what happened to me. I am choosing to view it without the guilt or the shame or the self-blame that I have in the past.

And an interesting thing has happened... for the first time in a long time I don't feel broken. I don't feel burdened. I feel normal. I feel happy. Which to you might not seem like a lot, but to me it is the world.

For the first time in a long time I am allowing myself to be happy. A choice that for many reasons I didn't know how to make before. And in the wake of my choice, I find myself smiling more, laughing loudly, simply, enjoying the world around me.

I have chosen to accept, along with everything that's happened, the person I am. I am the person I am not because of what has happened to me or in spite of it. The person I am is a direct result of how I choose to respond to the unforeseen shadows that cross my path. I choose.

I am taking ownership over my life. Because it is my life. And I want to be happy, even if its in the wake of immeasurable pain. I can't erase that pain, but I can own it. And here's the thing: I can still grieve for the potential of my life I lost. I can still mourn the loss of my innocence. And I can do those things while choosing to be happy.

These feelings are not mutually exclusive. They're a choice. My choice. I choice I am choosing to make.

yoga

2010-05-11T11:57:00.000-07:00

I've been going to yoga weekly for the last several weeks. I have a young, male instructor who I liked right off the bat. And I was really enjoying the yoga.

Normally I set up my mat in front and to the right. But today I was late and positioned myself in a gap to the left. Now I don't know if it was the placement of the mat, or the fact that we were doing balancing poses and so I had my eyes opened more looking at him or the fact that he is growing some facial hair, but about half way through the class today my heart fell to my stomach.

I realized that my yoga instructor bares a strong resemblance to the man who sexually abused me.

Being in yoga I was conscience of my breath and worked hard to keep it even. To keep my mind on my body, to not let my thoughts wander. But again and again, I found myself examining his face. More and more he began to look like this man who hurt me so deeply.

I tried not to make a big deal out of it. I smiled politely when he caught me looking. I walked out of class with my head held high, but I couldn't shake the thoughts swirling around in my brain.

Did I initially like him because of the resemblence to the man I once purported to love? Did I now dislike him once I became conscience of it? What does that say about what my heart truely feels?

Do I go back to Tuesday yoga or do I find a new class with a new instructor? Or do I do like I think I should, and say screw it I am not allowing this to interrupt my life? And yet allow myself to go through the emotional turmoil week after week? Is the point that important? Is not going back tucking my tail between my legs and running? Is it a failure or self preservation that should be celebrated?

I just don't know.

But what I know is that this right here is the legacy that sexual abuse leaves. And it sucks!

Dear Abuser,

2010-05-04T22:37:00.000-07:00

I wrote the following as homework for therapy. At first I balked at the idea of writing an unsent letter to the man who abused me. Just the idea made my stomach churn, my head spin. I was and remain fearful of giving that man any power over me. I don't want him to know just how deeply he hurt me. And yet, I want him to know the realities of his choices, the repercussions of his selfish actions. I wish with every fiber of my being that he one day gains an understanding of just how destructive, hurtful his actions were. Nothing will ever make up for what happened. Nothing. And somehow I have to find a way to live with that.

To the man who sexually abused me,

How I wish this letter would purge you from my memories, the effects of knowing you purged from my soul. But there is no power on this earth that can undo the horrors you have inflicted on my life. And let me get this straight, knowing you was a horror. I regret having to admit that I know who you are. But let me tell you, I KNOW! I know you are a pedophile, a sexual predator, a molester. You are a monster that manipulates and preys on little girls for your own sexual pleasure. And I hope you never forget that somewhere in this world walks a person who knows the disgusting, abomination of a person you are at the depth of your soul. Never forget that I know what you are capable of. You see I will always remember, I will never forget. I will never allow myself to.

Do you remember what you did to me? Do you think on it with regret or do you remain sick and twisted thinking of the pleasure? Do you relive it? Get off on it? Do you remember it with fondness? I cannot imagine how a person could be attracted to someone half their age to a fourteen year old little girl. I can't stomach the gross pleasure you must have gotten from manipulating me, bending me to your will, training me so well that I would not just do whatever you pleased, but initiate it. And the most horrendous part is that I firmly believe that you thought I wanted it. But you're wrong. Never for a minute did I really want to have sex with you. I only wanted to be loved. But you never let me have that option. I deserved to be cared for, protected. If you had really loved me, cared about me you never would have allowed a sexual thought of me to cross your mind, let alone have sex with me hundreds of times.

No matter what delusions you had or have in your mind, it wasn't my fault. IT WAS NOT MY FAULT. None of it was my fault. Nor will it ever be. You see you brain washed me. You used affection as a carrot and withheld it as a stick. You taught me how to feel guilty, when you were the only one who should have felt that way. Least you forget I was a 14 year old girl when we met. FOURTEEN! I was 15 the first time you hugged me, 15 the first time you massaged my back, 15 the first time you kissed me, and 15 the first time you put your fingers down my pants, 15 when in your 3 month old daughter's room you took off my pants and touched me and then gave me money afterwords (at the age of 15 you made me feel like a whore), 15 when you had me take your penis in my mouth, 15 the first time you had sex with me, 15 when you raped me.

Yes, you raped me. You raped me hundreds of times until I was 17. I never had the power to consent, you never gave that to me. Oh, I may have thought I did. But we both know the truth, you never would have let me walk away from you. Never did I have that authority. I was just a scared little girl inside, terrified that you wouldn't like me if I said no. And I did say no. Do you remember that first night in the Church? I said no, and still you pushed yourself inside of me. And only an hour later, I protected you to my father.

I lied for you. I will always regret the way I sold out myself to protect you. I will not stand before God, nor man to atone for your sins. I will not defend your actions, justify your choices, explain away your behavior for one more minute. I will not now nor will I ever be made to feel blame, or guilt or shame for the decisions I made. Decisions I was forced to make. Because I should never have been placed in a situation to make them to begin with. Decisions that stemmed from your choices. I will not be made to ask for forgiveness for the deceit lived for you, lies I told to keep my world from falling to pieces, or the way I deceived myself to keep my heart from shattering that much more in the destruction arising from your selfishness. I cannot any longer.

I remember. I will never forget. I will have to face it time upon time for the rest of my life. You left a legacy of hurt and anger, distrust at the world and myself, you taught me to confuse sex with love, and you made me feel cheap, hollow and used. I have to face the legacy of your actions every day. But I refuse to relive it. I refuse to feel hurt any longer because of what you did. You do not have that power over me. I simply refuse to feel your guilt. But you, you have to feel guilty the rest of your life. No matter how deep it goes, no matter how hard you try to rid it, the guilt will remain. It is there, and there are days where I hope it eats you alive. I hope you can't look at your daughter, your sister, you mother, any woman without seeing it. Without knowing the monster you are inside.

I firmly believe somewhere inside of you is a conscience, maybe not much but I know without the shadow of a doubt that it exists, and I pray that someday you will understand how many lives you destroyed. Your sickness, your perversion has DESTROYED many of the people you profess to love. You broke us at our very souls. You shattered our faith in people and our trust in the world. Although we might have healed, we may have walked out the other side, we have forever been changed, scarred because of your action, your choices.

You see you had a choice. You had the choice not to cross the line with me. You had the choice every morning you woke up to stop. You had the choice to walk away. The choice to get help. But you didn't. And each day you had sex with a fifteen year old girl, you did it with a smug superiority in yourself, you did it with the belief that you wouldn't get caught. The erroneous belief that the rules didn't apply to you. You were egotistical, self centered choosing to neither empathize or sympathize with another soul, with the feelings of a child, of me. You are sick. You are filled with a perversion, a sickness. And that in no way justifies your behavior. There is nothing that justifies your behavior. Not even the fact that you may have been abused yourself, that justifies it. You had a choice. You knew which choice was right and you still chose the wrong one. You chose.

And in this you have proven that you cannot be trusted. You have proved that you are a threat to society. And I am not so egocentric to believe that I was special enough to be your first, nor your last, or the only girl you abused. I am convinced that you have and continue to prey on the thought of little girls. I firmly believe that you are still sick and I will do everything in my power to not allow you to have easy access to another little girl, not even your own daughter. I will not stand idly by and allow you to do this again. I hope in reading this you will be consumed by guilt, a soul crushing darkness of disgust in yourself and your actions. So consuming that you would rather die than live with it. I hope that the guilt is so consuming that you would never allow yourself to be near, talk with, look at, nor touch another girl in the way you did me without feeling ILL at the thought of what you have done, feeling DISGUSTED with yourself for the fragment of an idea of what you are capable of doing again. And if you ever get close enough to another child to have the opportunity to hurt them the way you hurt me, I pray you are overwhelmed with a repulsion towards yourself. A repugnance so deep that it will literally paralyze you at the very thought of breaking another girls heart the way you broke mine.

And yet, I pray that somewhere in yourself you can find the strength to find a way to get help. I PRAY that you will be so CONSUMED with a need, a desperation a drive so strong that it can't be ignored, a need to CONFESS your sins to everyone in your life confess your sins to STRANGERS on the street. I pray that you will find a way to ask forgiveness and admit your wrongs and admit that you need help.Not court appointed help to give you the privilege of serving less jail time, but real continued accountability because YOU want it, because YOU know YOU need it. I pray that this is in the forefront of your mind for the rest of your life and I pray for some MIRACLE that you can find a way to do something to repair some of the damage you have done. And all the while, I hope you realize that you deserve nothing in this life. You do not deserve the air you breathe, the freedoms you have, the joy you can find in life. You deserve none of that.

I do not wish for you to wallow in a place of shame. Don't get me wrong, I want you to feel shame and I want you to feel guilt. But shame and guilt aside, mostly, I long for you to fully own your mistakes. I don't want you to dwell in that place of guilt, I want you to embrace grace. Both God's grace and your own grace.Because as much anger as I have harbored towards you in the past, I hold it no longer even though you killed the potential of my life. You killed the person I could have been had you and your choices not stomped across my life. I wish with everything within me that I could hate you. I wish I could despise you, detest you, loathe you. But I can't. The only emotion I feel for you is pity. I think of the life you must lead and I feel sorry for you. You lost your job, followed by your wife and children. You lost your freedom, your integrity, your aninimity all in one fatal swoop. And that was no one's fault but your own. Least of all me. And yet none of those things makes what I feel inside any better. No sentence served, no amount of money, no words of apology will ever undo the long pain strewn journey that became my life.

I don't know if I can ever forgive you, but I pray that someday I will be able to, not for your sake, but for mine. That I will be able to let go of all the anguish and hurt and damage you did. That I will be able to love and have a life that you no longer have a hold on. Because I deserve that much, I deserved to be loved and cared for and protected. I deserve to find joy in life. I am a beautiful, wonderful person that you didn't deserve to know. Who didn't deserve to be used or manipulated for your own sexual perversion. That is the truth, and the truth I will never forget, the truth I will always remember.

Sincerely,
Broken, Burdened, but Blessed

the fuel of decisions

2010-04-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

When I was an intern in college, I worked with a gal who had moved to our nation's capital to follow a boyfriend. As things go, the relationship didn't work out. And even though she had a great job at a great company with many doors open to her, she eventually decided to move back to her parents' house in Florida and go back to school to become a personal trainer.

At her goodbye party as she explained her reasoning, I looked at her like she had sprouted horns or turned green or perhaps sprouted horns AND turned green.    I remember her saying, "if I had come to DC for different reasons, on my own terms, perhaps I would stay." I didn't get it at the time.

After my abuse came to light, I worked really hard at pretending everything was okay. I hoped if I could convince everyone else I was okay I would be, even if I was crumbling inside. I didn't know how to fix the brokenness inside, so I set out to fix any cracks in my outward veneer. To me even an impression that things weren't fine there in the big city would be admitting defeat.

I worked really hard and got into a great East Coast college. No one would question why I was leaving the Pacific Northwest, because the opportunity was too great I rationalized. I hoped no one would realize I was running away.

But that is the truth, I was running away. Running from my life, my abuse, my pain, from this place I had been raised.

I thought if I could put physical distance between me and everything that made me question my self worth I would be okay. I mean I had convinced everyone everything was okay during the abuse, why could I not do it in the wake?

And so away I ran. For 4 years I studied. And for the last 3 I struggled through depression. There were moments my junior year where I just hoped a bus would hit me as I crossed the street. And I am sad now, because it affected me academically. There were great opportunities in front of me that I was in no shape to take. In hindsight, it saddens me.

For the last year I have worked hard to get through that pain. Coming back here, to a place I vowed I would never return to, forced me to deal with it. And I am so thankful. Because I have found how to find worth in myself, apart from the prestige of the school I attend, or the fancy degree, the money in my bank account or the title of my job.

I have one last requirement to graduate. One last task to complete.    And I wonder if I should go back to my university to fulfill it or utilize a different perhaps less expensive avenue to get there.

And I think of her words, "perhaps if I had come to DC for different reasons...."

Part of me wants to go back. This time with different reasons.   Not to convince anyone else that I'm okay, not even to convince myself. Nor because anyone else requires it, or expects it, or judges me for it. Simply, to do it for me, because I know I am capable of doing better, attaining more, seeking my own path.

Yet, this isn't the biggest reason to go back. That reason remains simply because I want to. Nothing more, nothing less.

And that co-worker, she eventually came back to DC too, on her own terms. And is doing great!

Inside of Me

2010-04-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

A month or so back I read this story from the Washington Post about the world's most famous golfer's breakdown last Novemeber. In it Thomas Boswell writes:

Everybody, not just the famous, has both a public and a private face. Those two versions of ourselves are never completely reconciled, nor would most of us want them to be. Our interior life, our soul, our truest sense of ourselves, whatever you call it, is too difficult and changing a thing to summarize easily or share widely.

But when the gap between the public face and the private self becomes a vast gulf, people go into crisis. The split inside you becomes intolerable. You feel that you are "living a life of a lie." You become reckless, partly out of self-hatred ("my behavior was disgusting"), but also because you want to put the warring sides of yourself back together, even if the cost is huge.

When I was a child I just remember being the person I was. But once the abuse started there was a part of me no one knew about.   I learned a valuable lesson within the first days after the actual sex started. A pastor at the church came up to me and asked me if everything was alright. I dismissed him. But I quickly learned how to control what people saw. The part that can smile, and laugh, and pretend she's happy even when falling apart inside.

Yes, the man who abused me was aware of some of it. But I managed to keep even thoughts and feelings hidden from him. And within that was born my intensley private self. In the days after the abuse came to light I felt intensely raw, like everyone could see into my soul. They knew something about me I didn't want them to know. And it hurt when they saw this private part of me and they judged me, rejected me, blamed me.

So I kept to myself. I withdrew from the world. And yet I didn't.

I took that lesson I had learned about managing my public persona and applied it to my life. Deep down I thought I would be okay inside if I could convince everyone else around me that I was, even if inside I was dying. And I was successful with this approach for the next 2 years.

I got into a great college on the other side of the country. I had a great internship. If you didn't really know me you would have thought I was doing great. The detective on the case said she had no clue that my motivation for getting into a college on the East Coast was to leave home.   She had no clue I was running from my life. I had decieved her. I tried to decieve myself.

But I failed. By the end of my sophomore year of college I feel into depression. I didn't want to get out of bed let alone go to class or study or party or do any of the things you are suppose to enjoy in college.

I got help, I was on medication for a while and spent a lot of time in counseling. And although I struggled through my senior year I look back on it fondly. Mostly because I was accepting what happened to me, I was accepting my faults, my brokenness, I was accepting who I was.

It has only been in the last nine months that I have bloosomed. I freely talk about what happened to me. I don't try to disguise it. It is a part of me, I wear it as a badge of courage. And I have come to see that there is so much more to me that this single part of my life.

I may not have a paying job. I may not be independently supporting myself. I may not be successful in the eyes of society. But I look in the mirror and I like the person looking back at me. I am slowly working to become the person I want to be. For the first time in 8 years, I am genuinely happy. And that is what matters.

I would like to think that the progress of these last months came because I had enough strength in myself and trust in the world, to allow the private person inside myself to come out in this blog. It was cathartic. In the beginning there were absolutely no ties to me. There was safety in that and as I became more trusting, as I gained my confidence and voice I wanted to share. And so I let my guard down.

Someone who I love read this blog. And the aftermath was not pretty. She was not prepared to see that inner part of me. To accept that part of me.  And it saddens me greatly, because I want her to love all of me. And now I know she doesn't and it hurts.

Grace

2010-04-03T15:59:00.000-07:00

Right now, I am struggling. God created us knowing how broken we would be. He created us knowing we would betray him due to the free will he created us with. And yet in his perfect plan we were saved because of that same free will.

There are days where I think, God you're one needy SOB, to want all of us to love you, worship you, praise you! You make us go through this hell in your name.

But then I stop and realize, out of love God gave a part of him to us in the form of his perfect son. A son who had the exact same free will of Eve, and yet loved us enough to make every choice, face every temptation, form every thought perfectly. Who carried a cross on his back and was physically broken for us. Out of love. Before we ever stepped a foot on this earth.

And I know in my soul, its not about us praising and worship God. But about us allowing him to love us. And yet I struggle to accept that love. Accept Jesus' spilled blood.

Ironically I struggle to accept his grace out of the very brokenness that needs the redemption of that grace.

I am a Christian. I not only believe in Christ, but have a personal relationship with my Lord and Savior. But to tell you the truth, right now, I am also struggling in my relationship with God.

At this time of Easter, blogs abound with posts about Christ's death and resurection and how we are saved and you can be saved too. But I can't write that post. I can't.

Yes, tomorrow is Easter. But I'm struggling.

And it seems selfish and trivial, because I know how broken I am. I know just how desperately I need His grace, His redemption, His love.

Even in the face of that feeling in the depths of my soul, the truth is I don't know if I want to go to church tomorrow. I simply don't know if I will.

And I ask myself, how can you not simply accept it. Why can't you simply accept God's terms for the recieving of His grace. For I am nothing without it.
To the outside world, it might appear that I am not thankful for all that was given for me. Christ, having never spoken a single word untrue, hurt a single soul hung suffering on a cross, buried like a criminal. For me. It is not that I am not thankful. I get it. I really do. And perhaps that is why I can't. Because I understand the true significance of the sacrafice made for me and I have no intention of trivializing it.

I know God doesn't mess up. I know he is perfect, with a perfect plan. Except today, the day before we celebrate the most important of Christian holidays I can't seem to shake that his plan wasn't perfect.

I get the larger picture. The picture that says when God was creating the earth in 6 days, he knew what would happen with Adam and Eve in the garden. He knew Eve would be tempted and would fail. He knew that in that moment every person in the world, each and every one of them who He desperately loved would be seperated by Him from sin.

And yet, He still created us. He still placed each and every one of us on this earth. He still loved us despite.

He knew when creating the earth that He would have to sendHis perfect son, so all of humanity - the humanity He created - would be spared from the grips of evil by His spilled blood. Our lives saved by the sacrificing of His life.

Because there lies the perfection of his plan. I am nothing without that sacrifice.

God at the begining of time also knew what would happen to me. He knew evil would reach down into my life and he knew the pain and the sorrow I would feel.  The abandonment and the hurt. And I know that I should be thankful for this life, and for the grace that God has bestoyed on me.

But I can't get over it. It feels like He wasn't there.

I was doing what he asks. I was serving in His church and a man sexually abused me within its walls. If I hadn't had a relationship with Christ, if I hadn't been willing and eager to serve Him, I wouldn't have been placed in the position I was.    I know this is Satan talking in me. I know these are not the words of the Lord.

But even Christ had his doubts, in those last moments Christ called out "Father, why have you forsaken me?"

Christ was forsaken, so I wouldn't have to be.

And yet I can't see past the fact that I was only 15. I was a child of God. And today it feels like He didn't protect me. He didn't stop it. He let me be hurt.

I know God did not wish nor will these events upon me. I know these events were orchestrated by Satan and Satan alone. But I also know that God had the power to stop it, to intercede.

Today, I can't help but feel that if I hadn't accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior at the age of 8. I would not have been sexually abused at the age of 15. Because the walls where those two events occured are one in the same.

Christ spilled His blood. And tomorrow we celebrate that with Communion. And I cannot partake, angry at the Lord. I can not trivialize His blood to do so. Because His blood is too important.

I know God does not want me to come tomorrow half-heartedly. I know he doesn't want me to partake out of obligation or pity. Because God at the beginning of time made this about Choice. Eve was tempted because she was made by God with choice.

God made Eve with free will, and he made me with free will. And he made you with free will. He made Christ with free will.   Christ who choose perfectly, acted perfectly, lived perfectly. You and me, we are not perfect. Evil in this world - temptation - is too great.

Yet knowing this, God made humanity with free will, so we would choose to love him as he loves us. So we would choose to believe and choose to worship and choose to praise.

The real reason why this happened to me, is because that man who abused me had free will and he was tempted by Satan. The man who abused me chose wrong.

And yet I am no better. For we all fall short. My abuser and I both fall short. We both sin. We are both seperated from God. In truth, I am no better than him.   I am no more perfect, no less sinful.

And I need God's grace. The grace given by the spilling of the blood of perfection. For I am nothing in this world, or eternally without it.
Christ's blood covers both of us.

But today I don't want to accept that. Today, I don't want my abuser to be redeemed by Christ's spilled blood. I don't want to share in the grace with my abuser.

And I think of Christ hanging on the cross, bloody, beaten, pierced, torn and abused. Broken. Broken because of my brokenness. And I think, why can you not accept his grace? Why can you not allow Christ to take your brokenness and redeem it. Because the truth is, he's redeemed me already. I just must accep it.

Except, I am just not ready.

And yet, I know God loves me despite this. He loves me enough to give me that choice even though he desperately wants me to choose to love Him. And I do, I just don't want to play by His rules. Because the rules say His grace - the spilling of Christ's blood - extends to us all. Me and my abuser.

Today, I want to be selfish. I want to take delight in my abuser's eternal suffering. And that is not the person that God has called me to be. I can't see past my hurt. I can't give myself the grace. I can't give my abuser the grace. And I don't want God giving him grace either.

And if I wasn't broken before, if I didn't need Christ's redemption before, I need it now. And I am mad at myself for being unwilling to accept it.

I thought I was over this. I really thought I was.

God loved me so much he gave His Son for me. But God also loves the man who abused me so much he also gave His Son for him. And I wouldn't want God to do otherwise. I'm just not ready to accept it yet

One Day

2010-03-31T00:24:00.000-07:00

I'm moving on. But I'm not over it.

I'm sick of living my life defined by what happened to me. I am tired of framing everything happening in my life at this moment through a view created 8 years ago, against my will.

There are days where I am in denial still. And days where I am filled with sadness. But there are also days where it doesn't even cross my mind.

Right now I am mourning what could have been. I am grieving the loss of those first wonderful emotions of first love.

He took the possibility of beautiful and left it laying in a heap as he swept out of my life.

And in some ways I am angry, because he took all those things from me. He left me never wanting to trust another person, love another person again.

Worse, I've been left doubting myself. For all those moments I thought I was in control, I had power, it was all a facade, a mirage. And I am left reeling as I struggle to surrender control to anyone. Even God.

I am trying to move forward, away from what has happened. But the repercussions, the consequences are great. I carry a great deal of baggage with me. It is a heavy burden that I desperately wish I could live without.

So I kept going through life one day at a time. One day further away from what happened to me. One day further from my life as once was. One day closer to my life as I desire it to be.

Someday I hope to be able to forgive him. But I know before then, I have to find a way to first forgive myself.

The Truth

2010-03-28T22:18:00.000-07:00

For a long time I resented how easy it was for my mother to walk out of my life. But with hindsight I wonder if that is really the truth. Did she really just walk away?

I was thirteen and I was waking up in the middle of the night to find my stepfather sitting next to my bed and stroking my arm. I would stir and roll against the wall next to my bed trying to get away from him. Finally, I told me mother.

And I know in my head that she talked with him that the behavior stopped. But in my heart I wanted to see her fight for me, choose me. I didn't feel safe in my house any longer and so I went to live with my dad. My mom ceased being a presence in my life.

In a lot of ways I felt she picked my stepdad over me and sent me away to live. Atleast that is what it felt like at the time. I was 13, so that is a long time for resentment to have time to build up.

But what if she allowed me to leave because she was trying to protect me. If she thought the safest place for me was away from my stepdad which meant that it was also away from her. Maybe for a decade I've had it all wrong.

Perhaps sending me away was an act of love, not an act of punishment.

I know that this single act left a hole in my heart. A hole that left me ripe later to be sexually abused and emotionally manipulated. For a long time I couldn't see past that. But what if the acts that left this hole was really my mom trying to prevent me from being abused in the first place. Even at the expense of relationship with me.

What if in sending me away she was really trying to protect me? What if she was loving me the only way she knew how? What if that's the truth?

Hair

2010-03-25T23:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I want a change in my life, I go in to the stylist and get a new do. 3 years ago as I was struggling through the beginnings of depression I chopped off my beautiful mane into a bob. Hey, bobs were in style back then.

But then when life is going well I don’t cut it at all. Every six months perhaps. I think it was Thanksgiving when I last got it trimmed. It is now inching on past my shoulder blades. Sometimes when I’m driving I catch my hair behind me like a reverse seat belt.

Well, tomorrow is wacky hair day at the school wear I teach. So I went tonight and got some kool aid. Sadly the store only had red. And instead of turning my hair a neon color, I look like a red head. Or at least bordering on one.

This dying my hair (albiet temporarily) is completely outside my comfort zone. I like safe, comfortable, thought out, choices.

Recently my aunt told me something that stuck with me. Besides children and death, nothing is permanent. Everything can be undone. And although I don’t wholeheartedly agree with the statement, I do agree with the basic principle.

So I am trying to live more. Trying to take more chances. Or atleast give those out of the box experiences a little more consideration.

And truthfully it feels good. Scary, but good.

I row competitively and my coach is always telling me that when I am working on improving something in my form, it should feel awkward. It should feel strange. If it feels good you haven’t changed anything. Sometimes its hard to make those changes, to work against muscle memory.

That’s what I feel like I am doing right now in my life. And as awkward and self-conscience and unsure as I feel some days, I try and remind myself that those are actually good things. It means I’m doing something different than the status quo. It may not be perfect, but I’m trying.

Iam trying. And so tonight I dyed my hair with kool aid. Because why not, right? It can always be undone. So why not try?

Predator & ****

2010-03-24T23:51:00.000-07:00

I wrote earlier this week that at the conclusion of his first interview with the police, the man who abused me told the detective, "I think I'm a predator."

I think I'm a predator.

I've been thinking about that statement a lot since I first heard it last Friday.

I think I'm a...

...predator.

I kept getting caught on that one word.

Predator. You can't have a predator unless there's a prey. Its inherent.

And then today it all snapped into place.

I was his prey.

Walking out on a Limb of Hope

2010-03-24T23:43:00.000-07:00

Today was absolutely goregous out. Blue skies. 70 degress. What was not to love.

And even though I had talked with my mom on the phone earlier in the day, I was in the neck of the woods near her office and so I called again. I debated it for a couple minutes first. I didn't want to push the limits of our tenacious relationship. And secretly I was afraid she would say no.

But in the end I did call. I asked if she wanted to play hookie with me for the rest of the day.

And guess what? She did!

So I picked her up and we headed to a nearby coffee shop and enjoyed iced beverages in the sun. We chatted. It was really nice.

Later I returned her to her car and followed her towards the freeway.

I was directly behind her as we sat at the metered on-ramp. I was bored and we were moving really slowly, when I noticed that the ends of my hair have begun to split.

Which I guess makes sense because I haven't had my hair cut since Thanksgiving.

But the more I looked, the more split ends I saw. I guess I had been concentrating on my hair mightily. Because I was startled by my cell phone. It was my mother.

"So how much does a hair cut cost?"

I glanced up and saw her staring back at me through her rearview mirror. Meeting her eyes, I cracked up laughing. Full belly laughs. I had been caught having been completely oblivious to the entire rest of the world.

I tried to get her to drop it. But she just said, "I'll write you a check."

Inside I was secretly pleased that she would be willing to, insistent even. And for a moment all the other baggage of our relationship was left behind. Driving home, I realized how happy I was that I had taken the chance and called.

A Girl at the Bar

2010-03-24T23:28:00.000-07:00

I've had a standing date with my dad every Tuesday since arriving home. Every Tuesday he buys me dinner. Same place and normally the same order. Afterwords, I head home and my dad stays to play poker.

Well I was running a bit late yesterday and by the time my food came, the poker game was in full swing. So I sat at the bar and enjoyed my dinner alone.

I was talkin' to the guy next to me, you know idle bar chit chat, when he started coming on to me. A caress of my arm. His hand on my shoulder. Both of which were unwanted. And then when I finally said I was heading home, he tried to invite himself home with me.

Yes! Really!

I am not sure how my simple friendliness was mistaken for something else entirely... in hindsight I wish I had had the guts to full on call him on it, instead I politely refused.

But I still saw it for what it was. I recognized the red flags. Later, I didn't defend his behavior.

My counselor says these are all good things. She says I am making progress and this shows a marked change from my behavior 3 years ago. She says I should be proud.

The Truth

2010-03-21T00:30:00.000-07:00

Its hard to accept the truth. Accepting the truth sounds like the easiest thing in the world, but it is probably one of the hardest things anyone has to do. Writing it is hard. I don't know if I've fully accepted it. I think my abuser accepted the truth long before I did.

At the conclusion of his first interview with the police, the man who abused me said, "I think I'm a predator."

The man who abused me by his own words is a predator. No matter the treatment he has received, the help he has sought, the amends he makes he will always be a predator. His name not being available in the public database of sexual offenders, does not change that he plead guilty to two counts of sexual misconduct of a minor and rape of a child.

Just yesterday I was told by the detective who handled that first interview, "No, I don't believe you we're his first victim. I can't prove it, but during the investigation I contacted the camp where he had been a counselor. They were not open to talking about him with me."

I am likely neither his first nor his last victim. He was just too good at what he did, for either of those things to be the case. I was likely not the only girl he victimized. There is nothing special about our relationship. Over the course of a year he slowly beat down my defenses until I was open to his sexual advances. He is not my abuser. He is the man who sexual abused me for 18 months. There is a difference.

Yesterday I told the detective, "I have done everything that was ever asked of me by society. It is no longer my responsibility to ensure he doesn't abuse another girl again. If he does, it was the system that failed, not me."

Will it hurt if I find out he has hurt another girl. Yes, desperately. But I have given and given and given. First emotionally, then sexually, finally with my time, energy, and thoughts. I can't do it any more. I just can't. I can't live or die by what happens in his life. I just can't.

I am no longer angry. I hate what happened. But I don't hate him. I feel sorry for him. I pity him. I wish that the lives that he and I are living, weren't our lives. I wish none of it had happened. But I'd hate even more to lose the rest of my life to it.

I was sexually abused. It is something that happened to me. But it is not who I am. It is a tiny part of my life. It has shaped me, molded me, it continues to affect me, but it is not who I am.

I did not become the person I am because of the abuse and I did not become the person I am in spite of the abuse. I am the person I am because of how I responded to what happened to me. How I responded.

I feel hollow writing these words. Its hard. But they are the truth. They are the cold, hard reality that I have worked so hard to understand. I wish it was different. I really do. But its not. And no matter if I'm in denial or I try to wish it away, present it with a different spin. The truth is short and its simple: He abused me.

That is the truth.

Harsh Realities

2010-03-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

When I talk about missing my abuser, I'm talking about the facade of a man I thought I knew. But I know that this man doesn't exist. Even in my memories, he's there but I know its not really him.

I have a hard time reconciling the man I loved, the man who I thought loved me with the man who calculated a way to have sex with a 15 year old. I know they are the same man and yet... even though I know its the truth, its hard to superimpose the sex offender over my first love.

Sometimes, I just don't want to do it. Because that means facing the harsh reality of what really happened. There are days where I would rather live in denial than be forced to deal with it all.

Its hard when I think back about what happened. Because I did care for him. In my own way I did love him. A coping mechanism to handle the stress of it all, likely. Was it true love, probably not. But at the time I did deeply care for him, even if that emotion was manufactured.

And yet, what he did was monster-like. I was 15. I was a child placed in a precarious situation. Delusioned into believing she had the power to consent, when in fact she was powerless. What type of man does that? What type of man - married man - has sex with a 15 year old? It leaves a sick taste in my mouth and an even worse feeling in my tummy.

An yet I miss him.

I've come to the conclusion that its okay that I can't reconcile everything in my head. Its alright that the pieces don't fit together perfectly. I think accepting that there is no black and white is part of becoming an adult, part of moving on.

I wish I could tie up my abuse into a box with a perfect ribbon on top. But I am a realist enough to know that it may not ever happen.

I only know one side of the story. Mine. And I can hazard a guess, an educated guess, and make deductions and draw conclusions to fill in the rest. But they will never be fact. The answers aren't there for me to know. I think I'm a bit relieved actually. There are days I don't want to know the answers. But there are also days where I want them so desperately.

But if given the opportunity I don't know if I would want to know them , because I can't trust the man who does have the answers. Heck, he may not even know them himself.

8 years

2010-03-16T14:26:00.000-07:00

8 years ago the abuse was just beginning. A Sunday morning between church services. We were sitting in the video booth up on the third floor overlooking the worship center. The scrape of plastic wheels on the tiled floor. Him telling me about a dream he had. A sexual dream. And I was flattered. I really was, but I had no clue what to make of it. Completely inappropriate, but he was the adult in the situation and so I just listened. He was planting the seed. Waiting to see how I responded.

Days later I was sitting at the computer. It was dark in the room. He placed his hands on my shoulders. I jumped a mile high. He told me to relax. I trusted him, so I relaxed and allowed his hands to go to work. Even though I thought it was wrong, that the door shouldn't be shut, I trusted him. And so his hands moved and he began the process of desensitizing me.

Days, weeks, months, a year passed. All those moments packed away in my mind.

Its hard to imagine that it is over. That its been 6 and a half years. There are days where I want to crawl back into the world of the abuse. Strange, it may seem. Life was easier back then, less complicated, even if that's only my naivety talking.

My heart didn't feel so heavy. The truth seemed more finite.

And there were moments that really were good. There were moments that I felt loved and cared about. But there were also days where I felt cast aside, where I was left reeling in my heart with no one to talk to.

There were days where I wanted to scream in frustration. Where I couldn't believe the will power I had to lie to his wife, to his boss, to my father, to the pastor of the church. And somehow I did. Because love is powerful. And the need to be loved is even more dangerous.

There are days I miss him. I desperately miss him. But I also want to scream at him. HOW DARE YOU! I want to say. I want to cry and I want him to open his arms to me. And I hate him for that. I hate what he did to me.

It doesn't feel like 8 years has passed since it began. 8 years and I still don't feel whole inside.

The story of a boy.

2010-03-13T21:50:00.000-08:00

This is the story of a boy. And me. And a city named Dodge.

I ran into this boy at the bookstore several weeks back. Actually it was the evening before Valentine's Day. Love was in the air, even though I was trying to ignore it. Anyways, I was reading a book and enjoying a coffee when he called my name. I knew him from that era in my life long ago before the abuse. It was nice to see him. Nice to talk with him. I enjoyed his company. We had dinner. I gave him a hug when we parted.

Apparently I smiled when I talked about him.

He was cute. I liked his values. His eye towards God. His priorities. His dreams. I liked the person I saw both inside and out.

But deep inside I was scared. My counselor told me it would be good for me to have a positive relationship with a male member of our species whom I wasn't related to. But I was scared of having my heart broken again.

My counselor asked if my fears were valid. "Did I see any red flags?" she asked. And I didn't want to admit to the one's I had seen and so I painted it in a different picture than what it was. We had coffee a couple times, but it was never just about catching up. I always saw something hidden underneath.

And then it occurred to me. He was trying to recruit me. Using words like "dreams" and "aspirations" and "God's calling" and "His providence for my life." But I didn't want to accept it. I wanted him to like me. And then it happened. He presented me with a "financial opportunity." And the next evening I was sitting in a meeting watching him shake his head in agreement with everything the man speaking said.

As I sat there, red flags were flying high. Afterward I wanted to say an unequivocally no at the opportunity. But instead I said I would think it over. I was afraid if I said no, this boy wouldn't want to see me again. He wouldn't want to be my friend. I still wanted him to like me.

We had coffee again to talk about said "financial opportunity" and I told him I felt God calling me in a different direction. He pushed for me to review the materials again. "I don't want you to miss out on a good opportunity," he said. Even though I knew in my heart it was a no, I agreed to review them again. I wanted the excuse to see him again.

And I did see him again. But when I again said it wasn't for me, well his body language changed. He looked at his watched. Packed up his bag. Looked towards the door and at his watch again. He didn't really meet my eyes and I knew. Even though he talked about getting together for coffee again, I knew that I wasn't more than money to him, I was just someone he could recruit.

It saddens me. Because I did smile when I thought about him. My eyes danced when I talked about him. As much as I would have liked that "good experience" I know that in the end I would have ultimately been disappointed and the experience wouldn't have been so great. I know this to be true, because he wasn't the person deep down that was presented to the world, to me.

I don't think he ever was intentionally deceiving or manipulating me. I think he was naive about the financial opportunity. For it really was a scheme. Perhaps I am giving him too much credit. But I do know he allowed himself to be sucked in, he refused to see the red flags, or at the least was in denial about them. Regardless, he is allowing himself to be manipulated by someone, and I just don't want someone like that in my life.

We'll remain Facebook friends, I am sure. But oh how I wished it could be something more. How I wish it was that great experience. How I wish it was a relationship that restored my faith.

Yes, I could have stayed. I could have entered into that scheme to make him like me. I could have allowed myself to remain in denial about why he was interested in me. I easily could have. But I didn't. My heart breaks a little at what could have been. It hurts because I did like him and I wanted him to like me.

I made the right choice. I know I did. I may have not been direct in my reasons why I wasn't interested, but at least I got the hell out of Dodge. At least I recognized the highway signs announcing I was approaching Dodge before I reached the city limits.

This relationship or lack there of may not have restored my faith in men like my counselor had hoped. But it did restore my faith in myself. Just a little bit.

2010-03-13T16:22:00.000-08:00

Most days I feel good. I feel like I am scaling the mountain of my abuse. I feel like I've climbed out of the valley and looked above the ledge and seen possibility in the distance. But boy is that view vast. And that vastness is scary. I'm scared. I'm really scared. I'm scared I'm going to screw up. And I want to duck down below the ledge and return to the valley where it is safe, where I know the paths and the trails. But I've worked so hard to get here that it seems like such a loss to allow myself to slide backwards back into that valley. Yes I'm scared. And yes its easier to slide backwards instead of pulling myself further up. But I think that I'm more scared of never trying, then trying and failing. And so I continue to climb even in the face on my fear.

Nightmares of a Dream

2010-03-09T22:42:00.000-08:00

I had a nightmare Tuesday night. I dreamed about my abuser. At least that is what constitutes a nightmare for me. Occassionally I'll have the you haven't started working on a project ooops, the last month disappeared and you've now flunked the class dreams. Once I dreamed my brother was shot. But mostly my nightmares are about my abuser.

My dreams always take place in the present. Or atleast I assume its the present because it is always after the abuse has come to light and he's been convicted. In the dreams he is always a registered sex offender.

The dreams started after my abuser was let out of jail. 5 years ago I had the first dream. In it I ran back to my abuser. I was aware of what he had done to me and still I ran back to him. I remember being away at college when the dream changed for the first time. I screamed NO! right at my abuser. I told him no. I was so proud of myself when I woke up. I guess that wasn't really a nightmare. The next mornign I called my dad. I think he cried with joy after hanging up the phone.

I always feel so out of control while I go through life in these nightmares of a dream. I still feel out of control when I wake up and I am always unnerved. I'm rattled, I'm shaken, and I want to go back to sleep and dream about a world other than my own life.

This time the dream was once again a bit different. This time, the dream wasn't necessarily about going back to him or even saying no. In actuality the dream didn't even start with my abuser in it at all.

In the dream, I went to see his ex-wife and kids. Just watch them from the street. I think I was trying to assure myself they were okay. I watched as the three of them walked out of the house and got into a car and drove away. My abuser then proceeded to walk out of the house and straight to my car. I rolled down the window and he convinced me to get in his car with him. BIG MISTAKE.

From that moment on I knew something was wrong. He was taking me to an RV in a parking lot. I knew what he was getting away with inside. Deep down I knew about the next little girl he planned to bring there. And I wanted to scream that having the RV was in violation of his parole and then I realized he was no longer on parole and I began panicking.

I knew something was really wrong. I knew something horrible was going to happen.

I wanted to get out of his car, but he wouldn't let me. He wouldn't stop. And so at a light I bailed out quite ungracefully. He pulled over his car and followed me on foot. And all the while I was screaming at the top of my lungs for help. Desperately I was screaming for anyone to hear me. And it was like everyone was deaf. No one could hear me.

I knew if he caught me I would not like what he would do to me and so my desperation grew. I was screaming that he was trying to kidnap me that he was a sex offender. And no one would listen.

I had read somewhere that if someone ever tries to abduct you, you should toss your shoes so there is physical evidence that you are missing. And so I was desperately throwing my shoes across this parking lot as far as I could. First awkwardly without one shoe I ran. Then in my stockings I ran and ran the pavement digging into my feet.

Finally shoeless I came to a gas station. The gas station was not one of those with the full fledged convenience stores, but rather the plexiglass booths in the middle of the island with a clerk inside. And as I rounded the station, there was a uniformed police officer. What a sight I must have been. My hair crazy, out of breath, screaming hysterically.

I felt relief but I pleaded with the officer to save me. I was hysterical. My abuser was right behind me, he didn't see the officer. I was going on and on about how he kidnapped me, how he was a sexual offender. And much to my relief the officer took out his cuffs and pulled my abuser into the infamous position with his hands behind his back. The officer was about to snap them on when his partner told him to hold up. After a moment of us just standing there - a moment that felt forever, when in actuality it was barely a few seconds - the fellow officer declared that my abuser's name was not in the database. And I remember watching in horror as the cuffs remained open and my abuser walked away.

And I woke up. I lay in bed for half an hour trying to get that picture of those cuffs open and hesitating out of my mind and I couldn't. All I wanted to do was cry. I felt so helpless. So out of control. And there wasn't a thing I could do about it, but get up and go through my day and hope the image went away.

The image didn't go away and its still here now. And inside I just want to scream.

wanted: glimpses of the future

2010-03-01T19:18:00.000-08:00

Wow! What an experience. The Olympics were amazing. I'd say they were a once in a lifetime experience, but it was actually the second time I was fortunate enough to attend the Olympics. But this time I had people I love to share the experience with and that made all the difference. I will hold these days in my heart for years to come.

And as great as the Olympics were, as much as they encase this season of trying to enjoy my life, I made a conciseness decision to not think about my abuse. I tried to take the abuse from the center of my life where it has been residing and place it towards the periphery.

I was not always successful, but for the most part I succeeded. And the interesting thing? Thoughts of the future flooded into my brain. Desires for the future. A unbridled hope to obtain a deepness in my relationship with the Father. I don't know what next week, or month, or year look like and I find myself straining for the tiniest of glimpses. Yet, not even a sliver has been shown.

But this is what I do know... I am a work in progress and there is a ways to go. God has crafted my life experiences, my heart for the things He plans for me in the future. He has made me the person I am for a reason. He has placed obstacles in my path, burdens on my heart, He's let problems go unsolved, tasks uncompleted to put me at a specific time and a place. I may not know exactly where I am suppose to go or even in what direction I am suppose to step, but I am trying to trust that God will open doors and close others to put me exactly where I am suppose to be.

I can't get over the feeling that this season of my life is coming to a close. Not today, not next week, or even month. Rather it is a feeling that this season of my life is but one step on a much bigger journey. A journey I can't wait to see.

The Potential of Tomorrow

2010-02-20T23:53:00.000-08:00

It's almost midnight and I cannot sleep. There is a lot on my mind right now. But its not the usual cast of characters that fills my mind. This weekend I am try not to focus on it, even if I manage for only a little while. I am going to try and set my past aside, the hurt, the anger, the rejection, the feelings of inadequacy, and my questions for God. All of it.

For 24 hours I am not going to let any of it consume my life. I am not going to allow any of it to creep into my life. Or at least I am going to try.

Little a kid, I am filled with excitement. The potential of tomorrow runs through my mind as I try to quiet it to sleep.

I run through my mental list again and again. My car is washed. My bag packed. My winter coat is laid out. My electronics charging. Passports and tickets are put in a safe place. American flag purchased. All is ready.

Tomorrow I am going to live in the moment. You see in three short hours I am going to climb into my car and embark on a trip. I am heading out of the country. I am going to the Olympics. And I intend to enjoy every second of it. I deserve it.

Unredeemed

2010-02-19T01:12:00.000-08:00

The following post is written in response to thoughts provoked by Selah's song Unredeemed. Take a moment and listen.

To say that being sexually abused has impacted my life and my relationship with God is an understatement. In actuality the abuse has been the center of my life for nearly the last decade and became even more pronounced in January when I realized my abusers name had been removed from the public sexual offender database. I have only recently begun to see the skill with which he manipulated me and the situation for sex. I have only come to realize the heinousness of what he did. And it feels like at the very moment I have come to understand it all, the justice system has minimized what he did to me.

There is a huge part of me that wants to keep fighting that wants him to hurt as bad as I feel inside. There is a part of me that sees this as a battle - him versus me - and I just can't let him win. It feels like all the pain would be for nothing. I can't let him hurt another girl the way I was hurt. I just can't. To me that is unacceptable. But I've also come to realize it is not my responsibility. I can't control what he does, the choices he makes, or the person that he is. Those things are out of my hands.

I could fight the rest of my life to make my world feel safer and securer with the threat of him contained, but I think if even I got his name back on the public registry I wouldn't feel as safe or secure as I deeply desire. My world would still not be made right. What happened to me can never, ever be undone. But I can move forward. I don't have to tightly cling to my abuser or my abuse. I can learn to stand strong on my own to feet and in the process I can begin acting the way God asks me to.

You see, I am a hypocritical Christian. I want God's grace, I need it. But I don't want my abuser to have one ounce of it either. I want God to act in the manner than would bring me immediate comfort. I want God to be vengeful towards my abuser. And when he is not, I get so mad at him. I just can't do the right thing, because I have a hard time trusting God's plan. How can something like what happened to me, ever be a part of God's plan for my life. I don't want it. There are still plenty of days where I don't understand how he could let what happened to me happen, in the walls of his Church no less. If this is what God allows in my life, if this is what he thinks is good for my life, how can I trust Him with my future.

Unredeemed was one of those songs that I listened to over and over again, hundreds of times on repeat. As I listed I wished and hoped that somehow God would redeem my life. When I first heard the song about a year ago, it was instrumental in the choice to let go of my anger. It was instrumental in the realization that I do want a relationship with God. But for the last year I have wanted a relationship on my terms and not His. But I am slowly realizing that somehow I need to find a way to trust Him that He will redeem.

I know deep down that I sit at a crossroad. For the first time on this long road, I am being giving the opportunity to choose which road I will walk. Deep down I know I need to walk away from this hold my abuser has on me. But that is so much easier said than done. I know that of the two roads that is the road that takes more strength. Yes, one must be strong to carry the burden, but taking this part of my life that is shattered and laying it before the Lord takes so much more than I ever imagined. I just don't know if I have it in me. I don't know if I trust God enough to redeem.

strong enough?

2010-02-17T17:17:00.000-08:00

There was a time in my life where I never would have imagined the following words flowing from my lips. In truth they startled me when- tasted them on my tounge in my weekly counseling session today. They shocked me because there was a time in my life - my victim impact statement - where I venementally declared that never the day would come. But I wonder, perhaps, if that day is here.

Maybe its time to move on. To put this behind me.

Does it sadden my heart a little. Yes. But I wonder if the day has arrived to close this chapter of my life.

I don't mean forget what happened. Or pack it up into a little box to never be examined again. The effects are just too great for that to be the case.

You see I have been thinking. I have been tossing and turning the word change over in my mind.

Is the man who sexually abused me capable of changing? Or will he always be a sexual offender, always capable of the heinous crime he committed?

If I believe the sexual offender treatment fixed him then I can walk away. Because if he has changed than he is no longer a threat, no longer a risk.

And even if he's not capable of changing, if I believe that sex offenders, my abuser included, will never change that they'll always be a threat I could still walk away with the trust that the justice system will work and society would be protected. I don't think this is the case. I don't think the justice system works like that.

And even if I believe neither of these things I can still walk away. But I don't know if my conciounce would allow me to. I think I would forever be worried that he would hurt another girl the way he hurt me. And I don't know if I could live with myself if I didn't step up and try. Particularly if someday I faced the knowledge that I did nothing and he hurt another girl.

I wish I knew if he could change. If the treatment actually worked. If he was no longer a threat. I don't know the answer. I wish I did. Oh how much easier this would be.

5 years ago, charges were brought against the man I loved. Rightly so. But the prosecutor and the police detective were adament that this relationship was wrong. Eventually I came to see it too.

But the decision to file charges and the decision about his sentence and plea deal were never mine. They were never my choice, my wish. For what its worth I am beyond thankful how it turned out. That he did plead guilty. That he did serve jail time, even if it was only 85 days. That he is a registered sex offender, even if its not public. All these things have allowed me to heal.

In the 5 years since, I have been able to understand what happened to me. And why its was and is a crime. And I am filled with sorrow, because just as I have come to see the heinousness of what happened the justice system is dismissing what happened to me as not horendous enough.

And it hurts. It hurts deep down inside.

I have two paths in front of me. I can fight or I can let go. But I wonder in fighting to get my abuser's risk level moved back from low to medium if I am really fighting for something else. Fighting to keep my hold on him.

Recently I was faced with the quote, "do not confuse stubborness with strength" I wonder if I am confusing my stubborness with strength. If in trying to be strong, to overcome what's happened, if I am only being stubborn.

The abuse started out of love, out of my desire to be loved. And I do believe he did care about me on some level, even if misguided. I wonder if trying to hold on so stubbornly to him, is a desire to hang on to that love, affection, attention that he showered on me. Becasue the choice to sever our relationship, to come forward to the authorities was not mine, it was his. This path I have been forced to walk down was never, ever of my choosing. For the first time in everything that has happened on this fateful road I am facing a choice that is mine and mine alone. And truthfully, I am terrified.

I will never be the person that I could have been. And I don't know if the person I am now is the person I am in spite of what happened, or becuase of what happened to me, or because of how I responded to what happened to me. Likely a mix of the three.

The person I am wants to feel safe and secure in this world. In my heart, I know that is what is driving this, I don't know if I will ever feel that with him out there. And even if his risk status is raised from low to medium, and his information is once again public there are no guarentees that it would make me feel safe and secure. Safer and securer, yes. But it would never just fix the issues of trust he created in my life, it would never remove the threat of the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of other people out there who prey on children.

I could work my entire life to fix the system and the world (for me) might not feel any securer than it does now. Perhaps I need to find a way to feel safe and secure independent of my abuser.

I can't undo what happened to me. I am the person I am now. There is no changing it. It's a part of my life. But I don't want my life to be defined by my abuse. I don't want the abuse to be the center of my life. I don't want this to be my life.

I have two roads in front of me. And I wish I knew which one to choose. I just don't know. But I am beginning to see that the choice that shows real strength may very well be giving up the fight, severing the cord that ties me to my abuser, walking away and finding those feelings of safety and security in myself. I just don't know if I am strong enough.

secure and stable my childhood was not

2010-02-16T01:21:00.000-08:00

Tonight my mind keeps turning back to a line I read in a book. "[Her] children are all well cared for, well trained, and deeply loved. They are stable and secure enough for their true personalities to shine."

Yes I know, its not the most poetic of sentences, but the sentiments sure nag at the corners of my mind. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mean to discourage the person I am. I've worked very hard over the last year to accept that this is my life and this is who I am. I am a strong, resilient woman. But that doesn't stop the wonderings, because I grew up in anything but a stable and secure childhood.

I moved 15 times before I left for college. I went to 9 schools. If that wasn't enough, every week I shuffled back and forth from my mother's to my father's home. And in the week I lived with my mother, I felt like I didn't exist to my father. When I was with my father, my mother wasn't a part of my life. I had a step-father and step-sister take over in my bi-monthly absences until I was 13. And then in my mind my mother chose my stepfather over me, as I went to live with my father full time. After that I was lucky if I talked to her once a week, saw her once a month. Sometimes she would show up at my school events or softball games and I would wonder why she was even there. It felt like she was there more for herself and to assure everyone else that she was a good mother than a true desire to see me.

Needless to say, I grew up questioning the love my parents told me they had for me. Because their actions didn't ring true to their words. If you really love someone, then you want to be with them. And it didn't feel like they wanted to be with me, even if they did want to. When I was 12 I dreamed that both my parents died in some sort of accident. Which was ironic, because they were hardly ever in the same room. But I dreamed they died, and someone else fought to raise me. This person wanted me. More than anything in my childhood I wanted to be wanted.

Someone came along and told me, showed me he wanted me. Sadly, he would go on to sexually abuse me. He would manipulate my desire to be loved into allowing him to use me for sex. But I willingly went along because for the first time in a long time I felt loved. And truth be told, I knew it would really piss off my parents.

I am sure my abuser saw this in my eyes, in the way I carried myself, the way I responded to him. When Oprah interviewed the four sex offenders last week, it was a theme that was reiterated again and again. They target certain children they see that they can use affection to control. More than anything I craved some sort of affection. I craved someone who could make me feel safe and secure. Simply, I wanted to be loved.

I was susceptible to him because I did not feel stable or secure. And under his hands I did become more secure in the person I was. Well at least to a point. Because no longer did I just need any affection, any love, I needed his. I craved his affection, like a drug addict craves a drug. He knew that and he had no qualms about using it to his advantage.

the perfect fullness of time

2010-02-14T21:35:00.000-08:00

Two years ago, my family went through a heart breaking situation. Every moment of every day, I clung to the following quote I had read on someone's blog

God knows our days, our hours and our minutes. He doesn't waste one, nor does He cut them short. He's never early, nor late--for there is no rush in eternity. He does all things in the perfect fullness of time.

I was always struck by the idea of the perfect fullness of God's timing. There was and is great comfort there. Today, in my quiet time with God. I came across Habakkuk 2:3.

"But these things I plan won't happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, be patient! For it will surely take place. It will not be late by a single day."

Only last night, was I praying to God. I was praying about desires on my heart, desires about the future or at least the uncertainty of it. And so reading the verse was like God speaking directly to my heart saying "patience, my dear child, patience." Reading it was like a peace washing over me, an answer to my questioning, my prayers.

You see the thing is, I want to push myself harder, deeper, faster. I want to step on the gas and zoom forward into life, but God's placed me in neutral.

But this verse is confirmation that He's put me exactly where he wants me at this moment in His time. I know I am back here in the northwest surrounded by people who love and support me because he wants me here. He's put people and books and quotes and situations in my path so I may heal and grow. So I may understand.

Right now, more than anything, I want to arrive at the point in my life where this all, my abuse and the pain from growing up the way I did, melts away and I understand why. Why this happened to me. Yes, I understand why my abuser targeted me, but that's not what I mean. I mean, why me. Why did God allow this to happen in my life the way he did?

The truth is while living on this earth I may never know. When the day comes when I stand in front of my Father and He allows me the opportunity to ask, well I know on that day it will not matter. At least, I hope it doesn't. I hope the fears and worries I have melt away in His presence and He opens His arms and I go running into them.

In truth, I hope I find that moment long before I reach heaven.

So right now God and I are working on trust. Again and again He brings people into my life who speak to God's plans for my life. As they speak it's as if God is whispering in my ear, "trust me child, I have plans for you. Great plans, but you must trust me."

So we - God and I - are working on trust, we're working on patience, and we're working on pride. We're working on it, so that in this life long before heaven, I will run with gusto into His presence.

And I know we - God and I - will get there. Because God works in the perfect fullness of time. Soon, His promises to me will be fulfilled. They will not be a single day late.

Change.

2010-02-14T11:32:00.000-08:00

This one word feels like it is haunting me.

Do I think people can change? Do I think God can change people? Are people changable or are we who we are? Is the man who sexually abused me able to change? Or is he now and will always be the person he was who did such horrible things to me?

I don't know the answer.

Do you think people can change?

2010-02-11T08:02:00.001-08:00

I've long thought back on a reoccuring pattern during the abuse. He would push me away. At first it was emotionally, then it was physically, sexually.

I'd always thought that the pushing away was guilt. At least that's how he explained it. In fact in the 6 to 8 weeks prior to the abuse coming to light, he had pushed me away again. That's not to say we didn't have sex at all, because we did. Just that it wasn't happening as often.

What I realize now (actually since watching the Oprah special) is this was a tactic on his part. In withholding his affection he was in affect priming my engines. He was making me miss his attention. He was making me want it. He was making me seek it out, initiate it. And in doing so he made me feel complicit in his scheme.

In 24 hours I've gone from thinking he was feeling guilt to seeing him as guilty.

Oprah

2010-02-08T23:08:00.000-08:00

Currently watching today's Oprah special, where she sat down and talked with 4 child molesters. You can watch it in its entirety online... part 1 , part 2, part 3.

After watching all 2 hours, I have so much I want to say. So much I am still processing. I knew most of what they had said already, but hearing it was hard. Listening to them explain the process of grooming, of their justifications. The guilt and regret. It was very hard.

But as tough as it was hearing it, I wish it had been coming out of my abuser's mouth. I wish I had heard him admit those things.

I think the greatest fear in everything happening right now, is that somehow he has tricked the system so he can go out and do it again.

I've said for a while now that I don't want to see or talk with my abuser because I could never trust a word that came out of his mouth. I don't know if I could ever trust him again. Because what happened to me, happened because of a misguided trust.

But as I come to better understand what happened to me, I am beginning to trust myself, trust that I am strong enough now to be able to tell a truth from a lie, even if I wasn't strong enough then. And I am able to trust myself to know wrong from right. I am able to begin to trust myself that I wouldn't run back to the abuse.

And although I don't fully trust myself yet, these small steps towards that feel like giant leaps. And it feels good.

when something so wrong feels so right

2010-02-08T08:22:00.000-08:00

On some level I knew it was wrong. I knew a 30 something year old having sex with a 15, 16, 17 year old was inappropriate. It was culturally taboo, but our society is also filled with stories of unrequited love. In fact our society says that unrequited love, a love that has to overcome an obstacle is a truer love. Romeo & Juliet, anyone? Hasn't every little girl been taught to want to be loved in the face of adversity? Snow White? Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty?

For a girl who felt unimportant to her parents, who felt growing up that she had to earn her parents' love, whose best friend had just moved away, whose grandfather had just died love, particularly an unrequited love would be powerful. And so its no wonder that I unquestionably accepted this answer. Because being loved in spite of the fact that he was married, loved even though it meant putting his job, his kids on the line meant his love for me what that much more potent.

And yes, there were signs that it was wrong. But all the lies and the secrecy were masked by the fact that he was married. Our relationship couldn't be public, it had to be hidden, because he didn't want to put his job in jeopardy if it came out he was having an affair. He didn't want the mother of his children to take his children away in a divorce. Since I adored his kids too, because I adored him I wasn't about to take those things away from him out of a selfish desire. So I stayed quiet. I didn't tell.

There were many times where he even acknowledged our relationship was wrong. And there were days where I could see the guilt consuming him. But I rationalized the guilt away... he was guilty of an affair. I wanted him to feel that guilt, because it made his love for me more powerful. And because of that explanation I never allowed the idea of abuse to enter the equation until after it was all over and I was blatantly being told otherwise.

After all the relationship wasn't what I thought sexual abuse was suppose to feel like. It was not traumatic or scary. On the contrary, I was feeling more loved than I had at anytime in my life. And the fears, confusion, frustrations I was feeling could be explained away by all the other factors in the complicated situation. I saw red flags that things weren't right that the relationship was not kosher. But I was so grateful for the love, the affection, the praise that I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. I wasn't about to question his love, because I so desperately desired it.

Add to it what was happening to me didn't fit what I thought most sexual abuse was like, why would I tell. In fact it makes perfect sense why I wouldn't tell. Why I would lie. Why it would rationally make sense not to tell.

Perhaps you can explain this post all away as grooming. And while I do think grooming played a role, I think more was going on than anyone has ever aknowledged. But that still makes what happened wrong. A 30 something year old should never be having sex with a 15 year old, even if at 15 I didn't want to understand that.

I should never, ever have been placed in the situation to say no to his love to begin with. Because a 15 year old isn't able to question the motivations behind and for the love. Particularly when it is someone she looks up to, someone she has been told she can trust. He was older, wiser, why wouldn't I believe what he was telling me. The truth is a 15 year old can't understand what she is concenting to beyond being loved. Because if I was concenting to anything, it wasn't the sex it was the love.

Trauma

2010-02-07T22:32:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Susan Clancy's The Trauma Myth. And I've never read anything that resonated so deeply. Again and again as I read I found myself agreeing with what she wrote. I found comfort in the fact that I wasn't alone in my confusion towards how I viewed what happened to me.

I understand that you may not agree with my following narrative. I will be honest and admit that it goes against everything society has been taught about sexual abuse. But I kindly ask that you respect that this is the way I feel, this is the way I see my abuse. I am not discounting the severity of the abuse, nor am I justifying it. Simply, childhood sexual abuse - particularly abuse based in affection and not trauma - is not generally or fully understood by society.

The truth is my abuse wasn't traumatic. It wasn't. And for years I have struggled with making sense of it because of that very fact. I have had trouble talking about it, not because the events are hard to talk about (on the contrary it is not painful to talk about the memories), but because of the fear that what I experienced would be minimized, misunderstood, discounted because of how I explained it or even worse how I experienced it.

You see, there was no force. There was no oppression. I didn't think my life was being threatened. At the time I would never have objectively said that my life was in danger. And I didn't subjectively feel any of those "traumatic feelings" like intense fear, horror, or helplessness that a traumatic event would bring.

No wonder I didn't run for the hills. No wonder I didn't tell. No wonder I didn't end it when I had the chance to. No wonder I lied when confronted. In my mind it wasn't something scary or frightening that I needed to be rescued from.

I always thought that maybe I liked "the abuse" - or better stated sex with my abuser - because I didn't want to feel traumatized. Perhaps I was suppressing the memories of my true feelings. I thought perhaps I was just choosing not to remember what it was like in the beginning when I was fearful. Perhaps over the months I adjusted and it just became a part of life. Perhaps I was just strong enough to not allow myself to feel fearful. Perhaps I was just really good at coping through the trauma. Perhaps one of those reasons is why when I look back I don't feel like it was traumatic.

But I don't think that is the case anymore. My abuser went out of his way to make me feel like I was in control. He was respectful of what I wanted, how far I wanted to go. Yes he pushed and blatantly crossed boundaries, but he also went out of the way to make sure I didn't feel any pain. He was sweet and kind. It was hard not to love him. I loved him not because of Stockholm Syndrome, but because I did adore him.

Perhaps that's what makes it so bad looking back. Because from everything I've read I wasn't suppose to love him. I was suppose to say no. I wasn't suppose to enjoy it. I wasn't suppose to want it. And surely, it was so horrible I would never have sought it out. Abuse, I had been taught was suppose to be traumatic. It was suppose to be scary. I was suppose to hate every minute of it.

And so now I hate myself for not hating it.

The current cultural script, the script about sexual abuse since the 1970s says that childhood sexual abuse is traumatic. Society - through movies, books, and the news - fosters the belief that sexual abuse involves fear, force, and coercion. Why? Because to the majority of adults, the idea that an adult uses a child for sexual gratification is disgusting. It's physically, morally, and psychologically revolting! And if to an adult it's traumatic to think about then they assume that it was even more traumatic for a child to live it.

But the truth is, for most victims of childhood sexual abuse the abuse itself wasn't revolting at the time you were living it. The cultural script is wrong. Because sex feels good. It's biologically meant to feel good.

The pain and trauma of the abuse doesn't come from the event itself. I am sure if you really talked with victims of childhood sexual abuse based in affection you would hear a very repetitive narrative. You'd hear that pain of the events didn't happen until the victim understood it was wrong. When the abuse was brought into the light. Because when it was going on, it didn't feel wrong, it felt good.

And so when we are told it was suppose to be traumatic. When we are told that we were suppose to hate it. And we didn't feel that way. We think something is wrong with us. We believe we were just as perverted as the person who abused us. We carry guilt about what we did. We are disgusted with ourselves. We feel shame for being a willing participant. And we don't think we can ever trust ourselves ever again when it comes to sex or love. Because we liked it when we shouldn't have.

pain, part 3 - the betrayal of trust

2010-02-06T16:26:00.000-08:00

I was writing a series of posts on the pain of my abuse (part 1, part 2), when life was interrupted. I'd like to return to those posts.

I was never pushed into a wall. A gun was never held to my head. No threats were made against me or my family. In truth at the time of the abuse it wasn't traumatic. I was just very, very confused. I felt burdened by the secret I was carrying.

But I also was feeling loved and validated. And the sex felt good. It felt great to feel wanted.

And in truth, in the grand scheme of things the abuse hasn't ruined my life. Living with the abuse has made my life harder. But I am still living my life. I love to ski, sail, take photographs. I've traveled around the world. I went to college. I love my job. I enjoy getting up every morning. To those people who look at my life from the outside, I probably have a great life. A successful life.

The pain of my abuse did not occur when I was living it. The pain of my abuse came from the fear of what would happen when it stopped. And those fears came true.

What I needed most in those days and weeks and months after the abuse came to light were to be surrounded by people who told me the truth. There were people there who did: my father, my extended family, the police officer assigned to the case, the prosecutor, the judge. Those people never for one second allowed me to believe it was my fault. They squarely placed the blame on my abuser.

But even though they were telling me the truth, they were leaving something out. No one ever told me that it was suppose to feel good. That it was okay that I wanted it. That I sought it out. It took years for someone to say that to me. And even longer to admit it out loud.

And since no one had ever told me, I looked to the other side of the equation. I didn't understand how what he did to me was wrong.

And there were a lot of people who didn't see what he had done as wrong. There were a lot of people who stood behind my abuser. And they are still standing behind him. They stand there because he didn't force himself forcibly on me. And what that says to me is what he did to me was okay. That it wasn't wrong.

And that's what he was saying to me. That even though it was wrong, it was okay. It was okay that he was older than me, that he was married, that he supervised me at the church. It was okay because he loved and cared about me. The sex was okay because it was just a physical manifestation of his feelings.

And I believed it on some level all while the abuse was happening, because I wanted it to be true. I wanted to be cared about. "'Cause when you're fifteen and someone tells you they love you, you believe them" to quote a famous singer. I didn't want to think about what the alternative was, there are days I still don't.

When the police first became involved when I was 17, I never thought of it as abuse. I thought of it as sex. Period. We were having sex. And I loved him. And I thought he loved me. Even though he was married and had another life involving his wife and two children. I thought if it was wrong on any level and he was feeling guilt, it was because I was the mistress he was sleeping with.

Since I liked it, and it didn't feel wrong and it felt good. I had a hard time excepting that it was wrong. Because no one told me that even if it felt good it was still wrong. If I didn't object, even if I sought it out it was still inappropriate. Taking these two narratives and putting them together was like trying to put a square peg in a round hole.

It took months to even begin to see it differently. I remember sitting in a counseling session I was being forced to go to, and emphatically denying that it was abuse. I didn't see it that way. Needless to say that counseling relationship didn't work out. It would be nearly a year before I accepted that I had been a victim, many more before I used the word survivor to describe myself. Even now when I write "my abuser" the term feels wrong. Because it didn't feel like abuse when I was living it.

It didn't feel like abuse, because he never punched me and he never hit me. He caressed me. He kissed me. He held me. He did all those things that I thought meant love. And then I was told that he didn't love me. That he sexually abused me. That he was just using me. That it was wrong. He was being charged for what he did to me. He would go to jail for it. He did go to jail.

And eventually I accepted that it must have been wrong. But I still couldn't reconcile that it felt good.

And it was and is in that acceptance where the pain lies.

More than anything my abuse colored the way I feel about sex and intimacy as an adult. Because if what he did to me was really wrong, than perhaps that's not what love or sex should feel like. And in truth it wasn't. I came to believe that sex was how you showed your affection.   And when I felt lonely, when I needed to feel like someone, anyone loved me, I went in search of sex. And it felt hollow. And I felt hollow. In truth it felt more like what I imagine sexual abuse feels like, than what happened to me in my adolescents. I felt dirty and used.

I felt that way because I didn't know how to have the intimacy I had with my abuer. Because you can't have intimacy without trust. If I trusted the man who abused me and it turned out I shouldn't have, how can I ever trust myself to judge someone again? How can I trust myself to judge a situation correctly? How can I be that open with anyone again in fear that they will come in and use me. And if anything on this long journey was traumatizing it was that breach of trust.

It was that breach of trust that sent my abuser to jail and it was the physical grooming before the sex when I was fifteen.   Not the kissing, but the petting and the genital contact when I was fifteen.

But the sex that happened when I was sixteen and seventeen, those charges weren't simply because of the sex. Because the truth is in this state sex with a sixteen or seventeen year old is only a crime if you are in a supervisory role over them.   Supervisiory role = trust. He went to jail for the breach of trust, not the sex itself. If I had just met him at a coffee shop one day and slept with him, he never would have seen charges.

And I don't know how to reconcile all of this in my head. I don't know how to face the fact that I liked it. That there were days where I initiated it.   There were days where he told me no and I convinced him to have sex with me anyways. There were days where he wanted to walk away from the relationship and I wouldn't let him. And I struggle because he lost his life, his wife, his family because he had sex with me. Sex I wanted. Doesn't that make me a bad person?

At my weekly counseling sessions, my counselor tries to instill in me that the reason it was sexual abuse was because I wasn't old enough, mature enough, to sort this all out at the time. I wasn't able to fully consent because I didn't understand what I was consenting to. And there was no way to seperate the loving affection from the sex. I wanted the loving affection and I couldn't get it without the sex. And that's why what he did to me was a crime.

calling on justice

2010-02-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

"Does forgiveness mean we do not call on Justice? For justice is the only thing that can prevent this from happening again."

~ Ed Smart, talking about the abduction and abuse of his daughter Elizabeth

I was making my morning cappuccino as I was getting ready for the day. The television was on in the background, although its normally not. And amongst the whirl of the espresso machine, I stopped dead in my tracks. Ed Smart's words were exactly, exactly what I have been trying to say these last several weeks. I replayed his segment on my Tivo again and again, allowing the words to sink into my being.

I wish this was all easier. I wish I didn't have to worry about the motivations behind every feeling, the response to every situation. I wish I didn't want to cry and scream at the same time due to my frustrations at living my own life. I wish this wasn't all so tangled up in my head.

But the fact is, it is tangled up. I want to be a good person. I don't want my behaviors to be motivated by anger or hurt or vengence. I want to be compassionate. I want to see the good in people. But I struggle with my abuser. I struggle to show him compassion.

I struggle becuase I desperately fear he will hurt me again if I allow him. Because I did allow him to hurt me the first time around. And it hurts so bad, I never want to feel that pain again. I don't want anyone else to feel that pain. Not by his hands. Not by anyones.

And so whenever I think of this situation I find me and my abuser in now, the doubts start. And I worry I am being vengeful for calling on justice. But Ed Smart pointed out that justice and forgiveness are not mutually exclusive. It is okay to forgive and call on justice in spite of that. But it is also okay to not forgive and call on justice because of it.

Justice must be there because the pain of the situation does exist. But the justice is not about what happened to me. Justice is not about the pain, the burden, the confussion I carry. Justice is about preventing this from happening again.

three a.m. phone call

2010-02-01T00:25:00.000-08:00

I've spent the weekend giving input to my brother about his college essays. I pulled out what I had written when I, myself had applied to colleges 5 years ago at the age of 18. Its ironic how things come full circle, at how poignant my words from then are now in light of the last two weeks. But underneath, they speak to how raw that time was.

I was awakened in the pitch black hours of the morning by the shrill of the phone. A quick glance at the alarm clock showed that it was 3:48 a.m. A three a.m. phone call is always unnerving and this undoubtedly would be one of the worst I will ever receive. My head was swimming out of the fog when I was greeted with an automated voice telling me I had a message from the county’s department of corrections. As it asked for me to insert my pin number to retrieve it, I already knew in my heart what it was going to say.

My fingers first hit the one on the keypad; my breathing quickened and my heart beat faster and faster. I feared that it would break. The number two came next. I tried to take a breath and calm the fear inside of me, but it too flowed faster and faster. As my fingers pushed the zero key, twice in rapid succession, I just wanted the voice to stop. When I hit the pound key, it did. In the silence of the moment that followed I braced myself for the words that were to come. Suddenly they were there telling me syllable by syllable that the man who sexually abused me for 18 months would be released from prison within the next hour. As I looked once again at the clock, my heart finally broke and tears washed down my cheeks and the phone lay discarded as sobs over took me.

I could count on my fingers the number of times I had cried over the three years that had led up to that moment. Although my heart has broken on countless occasions for the pain the situation had caused so many people, I had refused to cry over things I could not change. Only 85 days earlier, my abuser had stood in front of a judge and finally admitted his guilt. After a year of negotiations and two days before the trial was suppose to start, he pled guilty to multiple counts of child rape. The child he had raped was me. He showed no remorse for the eighteen months he took from me and no guilt for the pain he inflicted, so selfishly across my life. I was fifteen, I can never be fifteen again and I can never regain back that which was stolen from me.

Although my abuser was twice my age he had been a family friend for years. I had looked up to him, trusted him, but most of all I had respected him. I had baby-sat his kids on countless occasions and he worked at the church in which I had grown up. I had been taught as a child that we are to serve others and give back. From the age of fourteen I spent several hours a week volunteering my time there, by his side. My parents did not worry, because I was at our church; a place that was safe and they thought I was protected. Within the walls of this perceived sanctuary, my abuser would go to unfathomable lengths to deceive and manipulate, and the abysmal number of times he raped me has left a permanent scar on my heart.

As the hours crept by towards dawn, I wanted to believe that none of it was true. But I could see it so vividly. I could remember the tiniest of details, the taste of fear in my mouth and the way my body would shake from simply being scared. I could see his face, hear his voice. I could smell his cologne, causing an ad nauseam sickness to overtake me. In those early hours, I could not stomach the injustice that stared me in the face; the 85 days he had served paled in comparison to this perpetual hell that I have undergone.

There is something about the predawn hours, before the world has awakened, where the past has a way of mixing with the present. Yet, the light of dawn always brings with it a new day, a new perspective, and a new hope. I stared out the window as tendrils of shell pink, crimson and coppery orange seeped into the indigo of the predawn sky. It was like watching an artist wash the landscape with a sweep of color and light. My own guilt over the sentencing subsided and I was filled with peace for the first time in months. I had given my consent to the plea bargain that had been reached, I had to live with my decision. In exchange for entering a treatment program, while under probation, he received a severely reduced sentence. As much as I had wanted to see him sitting in a jail cell, in the light of day I knew that it would help no one, least of all the man who had abused me. My decision, however, was about helping the next little girl. She was what mattered now, not my own retribution.

Four months have passed since the morning my abuser was released. Even though there is justification, I cannot hate him. I hate what he did, but I only feel sorry for him. I share with you my story, because I want you to understand the severity of what has happened to me. I am only eighteen and I have faced a great deal of pain in this short lifetime. I could count on my fingers the number of times I had cried over the three years that had led up to that moment. Although my heart has broken on countless occasions for the pain the situation had caused so many people, I had refused to cry over things I could not change. Although I might not be outwardly expressive about it, there is no way to describe the dull ache and sadness that is inside me. I wish that I could turn back time, that I could wave a magic wand and it all would be okay, but I live in a world of reality.

I am no longer the girl who started this journey. I can say I am stronger, resilient, more determined and I have overcome great obstacles in my life. But even though I have overcome them, they still shadow my path. I want to move forward, to stop looking behind me. I want to feel proud of my past and even prouder of who I am, to have the world at my fingertips and the opportunity to choose the journey that is my life. My abuse has brought me to this point. On my own I would never have chosen it for myself. But I stand here, resolved to move forward, if I do not the good that could come from this horrible feat will wash away with my tears.

direction I'm heading

2010-01-31T12:29:00.000-08:00

"Without knowledge of where we've come from,

we can never truly understand the direction we're heading."

~ Shirlee McCoy of And Then There Were Seven

I'd amend those last to words to say: without knowledge of where we've come from, we can never truly understand the direction we're meant to go. We can head in any direction we choose. But when we don't listen to the opportunities God gives us, he closes the door on the blessings and opens it to someone else.

I pray I am listening. I pray I am doing things because God wants me to, not because I am driven by my pain, anger, or hurt. I pray I am not being vengeful. I pray that my intentions are good. I pray my intentions are God's.

He Held Both

2010-01-30T23:08:00.000-08:00

"I can’t shake this thought,
even though it’s really hard for me to dwell on right now:
Jesus hung on that cross to take more than my own sins.
He also hung there to carry the sins of others that hurt me deeply.
And in that same instant, He hung there to carry the pain and sorrow

I feel because of those sins against me.
In the very same moment, He held both.
Wept for both. Bore the eternal burden of both.

So that both of us could be free."

~Alece from Grit & Glory

Oh how I struggle with this. I have struggled with this for 6 years. And even though I know it, I struggle in accepting it.

Its my pain. It happened to me. So why should God be allowed to grant him forgiveness? And even though I know the answer, I still get mad at God. Because after everything that’s happened I want God to pick me. I want God to choose me. I know it is selfish. I know its wrong, but I want God to love me more. I want God to love me so much that he couldn’t want the love of the person who hurt me.

Yes, its a double standard. And yes, I have a hard time accepting that my sins and the sins from what this man even begin to compare. Yes, I know in God’s eyes they are the same. But is it okay, that the thought of that hurts desperately inside?

I try and see past it. I try to view the man as God views him. But I struggle to see past my own hurt. I struggle to trust God. After all it was a staff member of my church who abused me within the church walls. And I felt so alone.

And I worry. I worry that my abuser will convince God he’s sorry even if he’s not. That God won’t see the master manipulator that he truly is. Irrational I know. But I worry that God will forgive him when really behind the mask evil remains. Even though I know Jesus in the desert was able to see Satan’s evil.

And it saddens me that I feel this way. It reminds me how much I do need God’s redemption. It reminds me how broken I am. And I want, ney need to accept God’s grace, but I don’t want to do it without attaching strings to His offer. Strings that exclude him allowing to give the same grace to my abuser.

I wonder if I am trying to hurt God. If he so desires my love, perhaps I am using His love for me to try to force His hand. Perhaps I am simply trying to spite him for not saving me from this heartache.

At the end of it all, I’m left feeling like such a horrible person for feeling this way.

taking it to the next level

2010-01-26T19:51:00.000-08:00

I come here tonight with a broken heart. I come here tonight sorrowful. God did not answer my prayers. He did not grant my wish of making this quick or easy. He did not grant my wish to soften the hearts that needed to be softened.

But I do not come here tonight angry with God.

The response from the district attorney's office today was not what I hoped, nor wished. The deputy prosecutor assigned to review the case was not moved to make a recommendation.

Not because he feels there has been no injustice, not because he doesn't believe my abuser is no longer a threat, but because he doesn't feel he has the pervue to direct the police department or override the ~~computer program~~ tool recommended by the state legislature to designate an offender's risk.

Yes, the local police department is using a COMPUTER PROGRAM to assess the risk of sex offenders. That to me is unacceptable.

And so I will have to take this to the next level.

trusting God to be venegful

2010-01-24T15:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I said, I wished my abuser had spent 10 years in jail. The maximum sentence possible for his crimes against me. Then today, I came across this quote from a prison inmate:

"There are general feelings of hostility and hopelessness in prisons today and it is getting worse with overcrowding... . Art workshops and similar programs help take us out of this atmosphere and we become like any other free person expressing our talents. Being in prison is the final ride downhill unless one can resist the things around him and learn to function in a society which he no longer has any contact with. Arts programs for many of us may be the final salvation of our minds from prison insanity. It's contact with the best of the human race. It is something that says that we, too, are still valuable."

And all I could think was that I am such a bitch. Because I want my abuser to feel hopeless. I don't want him to feel valuable. I don't want him to be free. I want him to pay. And so I want him to sit in a prison for years.

Am I a bitch for feeling that way?

There is a huge part of me that struggles with this. There is a part of my that doesn't see him as a monster. That sees him as my former lover. That knows he can be sweet and kind. That knows he is talented. That wants him to have an understanding of what he's done, so he won't do it again. That wants him to receive treatment. That wants him to live his life to the fullest. That wants to one day see him walking the streets of heaven.

But then I stop. Because I wonder if this is the years of manipulation talking, or my own desires. I wonder if really what I want is for him to love me. That his relationship with me wasn't abuse, it was love. I want to be in denial.

And then the anger creeps in. And I find myself feeling vengeful. I want to see my abuser punished and punished again. There is no punishment that will make up for these feelings inside. But feeling vengeful feels safe. It feels good. I find comfort there.

In that comfortable place, I get to thinking. I wonder if I am being vengeful for the right reasons. If I am being vengeful about the abuse, or his cheating on me, or for making this all so mixed up inside my damn head. And I get angry all over again.

But "vengeance is mine" says the Lord.

And so I find myself yelling at God, "This is my pain to carry. This is my anger. I don't want to give it up."

And God says, "vengeance is mine, I'll repay."

And I say, "But God, this hurts. And it's my pain. How can you forgive for my pain?" Because at my heart I don't want my abuser to be forgiven. I am afraid in forgiving I can't carry my pain. I will be made to forget. I want to remain vengeful.

And God says don't you trust me to do the right thing, vengeance is mine. I know right from wrong.

"But God," I find myself saying again.

And in circles God and I run.

Until last June when I gave up my anger towards my abuser. And yet right now I want to rip that anger out of His damn hands.

Right now I am angry for being asked to give the original anger up. Just like I am angry about being asked to approve the plea deal.

And God says, "Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good." He says, "abhor what is evil, cling to what is good."

I know I need to give the anger up. I know I need to let God be vengeful.

I know these things. I really do.

But I felt and continue to feel like God stood idly by and allowed my abuse to happen. He allowed a church employee to abuse me inside the walls of the church. He allowed it to happen for 18 months.

And so I guess this discussion with God is driven by a lack of trust.

How can I trust God to be venegful towards my abuser if he didn't protect me from him in the first place?

stomping thru life

2010-01-24T01:23:00.000-08:00

Reposting this from November 2009, as I need to be reminded that tip-toeing through life isn't going to stop this nightmare that I am in. Instead I am giving myself permission to stomp. Tip-toeing or stomping God is going to love me and I need to remember to turn towards him, not away.

My entire life I have tip-toed through life. It's as if I tell myself if I don't rock the boat then I won't make waves. And if I don't disrupt the precarious balance then nothing bad will happen.

But the truth is even if you do everything right, everything as you are suppose to, even if you are perfect... horrible things will still happen.

Cars crash, people get sick, they lose their job, their house, they may even lose their lives.

And these things would happen even if we were perfect, because this world that we live in is broken. Even if we have to confront hell on this earth, it isn't punishment.

God may be vengful, but he is not spiteful. He does not hold grudges, He does not punish us because we aren't perfect.

He loves us in spite of it. He loves me in spite of it and He loves you in spite of it.

So when the bad does happen, because it has and it will continue to, look to God. Not because He caused it, but because he wants to be there to comfort us when it does happens.

searching for justice

2010-01-24T00:34:00.000-08:00

As I walked out of the courtroom that fateful day 5 years ago where my abuser was sentenced I felt on top of the world. I felt validated. I felt like justice had been reached. My abuser was going to jail. He had been denied work release and had been sentenced to the maximum amount of time under the plea deal, 6 months.

But 85 days later. Those 6 months were up.

And when I recieved the phone call he was being let out of jail, I no longer felt on top of the world. I felt at the bottom of it. The 85 days had flown by. And I was left asking how 85 days equated to the 6 months ordered. I was left asking how 85 days in jail made up for the 18 months he spent abusing me.

They didn't.

And for a long time I was angry. I was angry at the justice system and I was angry at myself.

I was angry at me for lending my approval and my voice to the plea deal. I felt it was one more time where my abuser manipulated me for his benefit.

And I was angry. Until one day having left my religion class at college, I was thinking back to the day's teaching about justice, particularly the death penalty. And standing on the brick walkway I froze. I had one of my life's most monumental revelations.

Nothing could make up for it.

There was no punishment, none that could ever make up for what my abuser had done to me. 85 days didn't make up for it, but 6 months wouldn't either. Not a year, or 5 years or even 10. There was nothing the justice system could do to give me back the time, the life that had been lost at my abuser's hands. He could lose his life and it would still not be enough.

There was nothing that could make up for what my abuser had done to me. No matter the sentence he received I would still be left feeling hallow. I would still be left doubting at what I said, what I did in that courtroom.

And so standing on that brick lined walkway, I came to terms with my abuser's sentence. Or at least I thought I had.

Because the truth is that when I heard my abuser's status had been lowered and he had been removed from the public database of registered sex offeneders, I was left doubting all again.

I found myself wishing I could go back to that moment in the courtroom and yell "STOP!" at the top of my lungs. I wish I could tell the judge that I wanted my abuser to go to prison. That I wanted him to go to prison for life. Or at the least the very longest amount of time possible. 10 years.

I wanted to tell them screw treatment. I wanted to tell them send him to jail where he never gets to decide what he has for lunch or dinner, or what clothes or shoes he wears, where even the decision of which brand of toothpaste to use is taken from him. Send him to jail where his life is not his life, where someone manipulates and controls him.

I wish I could tell the judge all those things. I wish as empowered as I felt leaving the courtroom that day, I wish I had felt that empowered walking in.

But I can't go back. And so I cling to the judgements handed down that day 5 years ago. And one of those things was registering as a sex offender, registering so everyone would know who he is, registering so he couldn't manipulate, so he wouldn't have the opportunity to manipulate ever again.

And at this moment, I don't feel like I can give up that last ounce of justice.

Nothing will ever make up for what has happened to me. But that just makes each ounce of justice that much more potent. That much more important. That much more critical to me.

And I can't give it up without a fight.

cracks under the paint

2010-01-23T00:58:00.000-08:00

It took me a long time to have the insight that it is okay not to be okay. And the people whose love really matters to me are going to love me even if I am not okay. Even if I fall apart they will still love me. And eventually I found it okay to acknowledge when I wasn't okay.

And right now I am hanging on by a thread. I feel like one of those cackled vases. The ones that look all shattered, but miraculously can still hold water. Their veneer is what is holding them together.

For a long time, even when my abuse was occurring I was in denial. Sitting in the interrogation room giving my statement to the officer assigned to my case I was in denial. I was there because my father said it was abuse. But all I could think about in my head, was why isn't he calling, why hasn't he attempted to see me, get a message to me, why isn't he in my life anymore. And for another 2 months I was in denial.

It was the prosecutor's decision to charge my abuser (regardless of how I saw the relationship) and then reading a story about coaches who prey on kids that broke that first phase of denial. I read the story and accepted it as abuse. But it wasn't until I read an accompanying letter on the front page of the local paper that things clicked. And there in black and white were the words written from a local coach to his high school female athlete. Words that verbatim my abuser had said to me.

And then I proceeded to fall apart. And slowly I stitched myself together, I applied veneer, at least on the outside. And along the way I came to the bright plan that if I could convince everyone else around me that I was okay, then I was okay.

Even if I was an emotional wreck inside, I was okay if everyone believed I was okay. I can't tell you the number of time I told someone "I am fine" or even "I am good" or "I am great." In a desperate attempt to convince them and by proxy myself that I was okay.

Even today, conscious of that modus of operendi, that coping mechanism I find myself falling back into it.

If I can put on a brave face, if I can get through the conversation, if I can get through the day without showing any weakness than they'll think I am okay and I will be okay, even if I am dying on the inside, I'm okay. Because if they think I'm okay, then surely I am okay. Even when I am not. Because hey I can still hold water, I can still pour it.

And I know eventually, with more counseling, more coats of veneer and paint you won't be able to see the underlying cracks. But I wonder if the cracks will ever fully go away. I wonder if I'd every really want them to.

the distance of "practically" - the distance from 2 to 1

2010-01-21T22:31:00.000-08:00

Updated to add: I understand the statistics that say only 8% of sex-offenders re-offend. But those statistics are misleading. What they mean to say are that of the sex-offenders who got caught the first time, only 8% got caught a second time. Sex offenders, particularly those who engage in affection based abuse, those offenders who know their victims (90% of victims know their abuser) are smart. They are master manipulators. If they can manipulate little girls, do you not think they have any problem manipulating the justice system? They got caught once and they know why they were caught. Do you not think they're smart enough to not get caught again? The answer is no, which means we as a society need to be vigilant.

_________________________________________________

I was desperate. In a way I still am, but not for the reasons I wrote in that post. I am desperate not because of my abuser's brokenness, but because of the brokenness of the system designed to protect society, protect children, from sex offenders and pedophiles.

I found my abuser. I found him practically where he had been all along. But practically in the same place is light years away from where he had been.

You see my abuser is still registered. He's still living in the same city, at the same address even. But his level status has changed from "medium risk" to "low risk." From Level 2 to Level 1.

And from medium to low, from 2 to 1 is a world of difference.

On an intellectual level I was aware that low risk sex offenders existed and I think that on some level I understood their information wasn't publically available in the database. I'd read the disclaimer, but I have never understood its true significance.

What I didn't have any knowledge of then was the fact that a sex offender's status could change. I erroneously believed that it had to do with the charges he was guilty of. But it doesn't.

His leveling can change at anytime. Any offender's leveling can change. And it is not up to a judge, or a prosecutor, or a parole officer, or anyone who has ever seen the sex offender's file, knows his story, has read the details of his case. It is up to a police officer in the city he is registered in.

And apparently they can change the status depending on how cooperative a sex offender is. Since mine completed treatment and parole someone somewhere has deemed him low risk. Even though there are less people in his life holding him accountable. Even though he is unemployed. Even though he is looking to start his own business that would put him out in the community more. Even though he continues to slander my name and blame me to people whom I once knew. Even though he hasn't accepted responsibility by informing them otherwise. Even though all of these things are true, someone somewhere who doesn't know what he is capable of believes he's low risk. So his status was changed.

And now the public is unaware he exists.

I share this because a sex offender could be living next to you and even though you are responsible and check the registry you would have no clue. In my state (that's the one furthest northwest) you must call the police and ask them to verify a name. They'll check it against the Level 1 list only if you first provide the name.

In my opinion the entire purpose of the sex offender's registry has been compromised. In only providing some sex offenders' names the police paint a false sense of security to the public. A sex offender is a sex offender. A sex offender, no matter the time served, no matter the treatment sought will always be a sex offender. He will always be a threat. There is no risk when it comes to someone who has prayed sexually on children.

In my (biased) opinion, the only reason to remove a name from the sex offenders registry would be if they were NO RISK. No risk means moved or dead. I don't think castrated would even count in my book of no risk. And the thing that gets me is that even by the police's own admission they aren't "no risk," they are low risk. Low risk. They are still a risk. THEY ARE STILL A RISK! And ironically in removing their names from the registry they actually become more of a risk.

If this is how the list operates, then what is the purpose of having a list if you don't include ALL the registered sex offenders? If you can answer that, you're smart then I am.

I thought I didn't have to fight anymore when I walked out of that courtroom 5 years ago. I was wrong. I still have a fight ahead of me. A fight I am committed to fight. A fight I am determined to win.

The prosecutor's office is reviewing my abuser's entire case file and I should hear back early next week with their recommendation. I have recourse. I have options. I have people behind me.

I am strong enough to fight this. I just wish I didn't have to.

Drowning

2010-01-21T21:51:00.000-08:00

I was on a boat. The shoreline was rocky except for along an area of the cove. There was a beach and people were standing in the sand. They were happy. I was happy.

I remember the water was clear. Not aquamarine clear, but clear like glass. And you could see down into the rocks. You could see into the crevices where there were fish and sea urchins and starfish.

And the next thing I know I am swimming in the water. I'm looking at the fish. I feel weightless. I feel delighted. I can't even feel the water around me. And I am enamored by the fish and delighted in their various colors. And I just want to get closer. I feel blissful. I don't have a care in the world, but the fish.

I put my head under water again and I swim closer and the next thing I know my hand begins to sting. Now its throbbing. It hurts desperately and all I can think is that there must have been a jellyfish in the water. And it stings and it throbs and I can no longer breathe. I can't see any jellyfish and I can't get air into my lungs. And I am floating down, further down away from the surface. I'm desperate to get air into my lungs. And further down I sink. I know my fate.

I struggle in one last attempt to move back towards the surface.

I turn my head from side to side searching for air.

And I wake up.

I dreamed this tonight. I normally don't have nightmares, unless you count the dreams about seeing my abuser, being in a time warp, and falling under his spell again. But your typical nightmares, I don't have them.

Except this one. Except this once.

And I share it because it is so apt to where I am at this time in my life.

pain overflowth

2010-01-21T06:00:00.000-08:00

I'm gonna borrow a practice from Alece over at Grit & Glory, Four minute Fridays. Except it wasn't written on a Friday (written on a Wednesday) and wasn't posted on a Friday (posted on a Thursday). And I'll probably write for more then four minutes, but hey this is my blog.

Go.

Today, I heard back from the prosecutor's office. My father was actually the one who spoke with them. When he relayed me the information I was in the car on the way to my weekly counseling appointment. As he shared the news (updated to include the link) at first I was in shock. I told myself I must be mishearing what he was saying. Slowly it began to sink in and it turned to heartbreak.

Today my soul was crushed. Today pain emerged from the darkest corners of my heart. Places and pain I didn't know existed.

I thought I was strong. I thought six years and I have this under control. But the truth is I don't. The truth is I feel revictimized by my abuser. And the judicial system.

I am not one to cry. But I cried my entire way to counseling. I cranked the local Christian radio station up and as tears streamed down my face and my voice cracked I attempted to worship the Father. Because I didn't know what else to do. Because I felt powerless in my own life.

I sobbed all the way to counseling. I dried my tears long enough to walk through the door. And the moment I kicked off my shoes and pulled the pillow onto my lap, she asked "Have you been crying?"

And I said yes before breaking into tears. Because I knew I couldn't hide the pain from my face. As much as I wanted to lie and say my life was perfect and fine and I have overcome everything he has done to me. I know the truth, today I hurt and I ache desperately. Today I hurt and ache desperately because of the legacy of his abuse in my life.

And I tried to lay it all out there. About things I have talked about here before and things new to me. I laid it out between sobs.

I didn't know I felt this upset. I didn't know I carried this pain. And it is startling and surprising.

It is scary.

As I arrived home. I did so to the news that the prosecutor's office has assigned a prosecutor to fully review my case, well more specifically my abuser's case. I will probably have to go in for an interview, but at this point I think it would give me an opportunity to say things I wish I had been able to say six years ago at his sentencing. So I am okay with it. I have a whole slew of questions I am dying to ask to somebody, anybody who has the answers.

I don't like what has happened. I hate it.

But I have recourse. There are things I can do. There are people in my corner. And I know they will fight for me and with me.

I know these things, but it doesn't make the pain hurt any less. It doesn't make me feel better.

Stop.

Not so Wordless Wednesdays.

2010-01-20T19:26:00.001-08:00

I heard back from the prosecutor's office today and I am wordless, except to say that this is how I am feeling tonight. Practically shattered, but still managing to hold it together.

on the verge

2010-01-19T21:19:00.000-08:00

For the last week I've poured myself out here on the blog. The words have flowed out of me. Word after word, page after page. And there is so much more I want to write. Not because I want to write it, but because I want it out of me.

In writing it feels like I can move the pain from the deepest darkest corners of my heart to the frontal cortex of my brain. Where instead of dark and mirky, the light makes the pain comprehendable, understandable. And I want every ounce of the pain to see the light, right now right this minute.

In confronting the pain and abuse, I feel free. I feel less tied down and I have found myself pushing more and more. I find myself pushing beyond my limits, beyond my boundaries, beyond what feels safe. Perhaps in an effort to convince myself that I can handle it. So I push even if perhaps I can't handle it. I push recklessly.

I know this is true because the choices I am making leave me feeling raw and empty. And there is nothing that is going to fill it. There is no quick fix. Pushing is only going to make me feel rawer, emptier.

Deep down I know that if every ounce of the pain I carry saw the light, right now right this minute, I would be blinded. I would close my eyes trying to block it out. I know trying to deal with too much too fast would be too much for me.

So I am acknowledging that I am tired. I am weary. No one called back from the Prosecutors office today. I am temporarily fostering a puppy whose former owners have left me contemplating the cruelty of love. A revelation by a lifelong friend of mine has left me reeling at how unfair life is. I don't know what to say to make it better. I don't know what to say to make any of it better.

I know pouring out the details is going to hurt me in the long run. And so I know enough to say no. To say enough. To stop myself from heading further into this spiral. Because as much as I want to feel free, I don't want to crash and burn either.

My Pain, part 2

2010-01-18T17:01:00.000-08:00

Guilt. Intellectually I know I am not guilty. But deep down I feel like I am to blame. I feel like somehow this is all my fault.

Am I? I don't know.

A court of law said I am the victim, he is a pedophile. But one day in court doesn't undo the 3 years he spent convincing me otherwise.

At the time I was made to feel like I was a willing participant. By the time the relationship came to light, I wanted the relationship as much as he did. I didn't want it to end. The truth is if he hadn't come forward to the authorities I doubt I would have. I actually had told him two days prior I wouldn't. He even had me convinced that in spite of his infidelity and added scrutiny on his marriage that our relationship could and should continue.

Perhaps that is why I pushed for it to remain a secret. Perhaps I wanted it to continue.

Or more likely my world was falling apart and I was desperately trying to hold up any remnants of the crumbling wall. I was questioning my self worth and the fact that for 18 months I had sex with him every time he asked, many times without him asking and he had still cheated on me. I was left trying to figure out what was wrong with me that made me not enough for him. Because knowing it would hurt me, he cheated on me anyway.

And even though he came forward to the authorities, even though he confessed his relationship with me to the police, I remember setting in the police station being interviewed and thinking that I had to protect him in spite of what he was doing to himself. In spite of the fact that he cheated on me.

I had to protect him from himself.

I did protect him. Although I never lied to the police, in that first interview I did omit information.

When the DA told my father that December that they were going to seek charges regardless of my participation (he had confessed, remember), I asked them to wait until after the holidays. Perhaps for my sanity, perhaps for his.

But do you see this cycle he had breed into me? For 2 and 1/2 years, 9 months of which was before he ever touched me he convinced me his happiness was in my hands. His wife leaving him, taking his kids, losing his job, going to jail, it was all in my hands. And since I was convinced he loved me and I him, I protected him. As much as I loved him and wanted him as angry as I was with him, I didn't want to destroy his life.

And yet I failed. I sometimes wondered if I had been enough, if he hadn't needed to turn to another women perhaps it wouldn't have all fallen apart. Perhaps he would still be living in his beautiful home, with his beautiful wife and children.

And I blame myself.

Even though I know my abuser brought this on himself I still find myself thinking that I failed. That he lost his wife, and kids, and house, and job and freedom because of me. Because I loved him too much, because I didn't love him enough.

I think about his wife and his kids often. I think about the precocious boy and the precious girl who did nothing wrong, but whose father is missing from their lives. I pray all the time for God's hand on their lives that He is blessing them.

And over the years I have unconsciously been driven to make it up. I befriended a single mom at the company where I was interning in college. We developed a friendship as she became my mentor. I saw similarities in what had happened with her ex-husband and the effect it had on her son and so I tried to help. I gave a lot of myself, truthfully more of my self than I was comfortable giving, in an effort to make right in her life what her ex-husband had done.

I tried to make right what her ex-husband had done because I hoped somewhere there was someone making right what I had done. This was my penitence. And when I had to walk away
and move back to Seattle. I felt like I had failed. Failed at making it up to my mentor, to my abuser, his son, his wife, but mostly I failed at making it up to me. My guilt wasn't acquiesced by my penitence and I fell into a depression for four months.

And now I volunteer in a job with children. Children who would be his daughter's age. And I can't help but wonder if the time I spend there every day is trying to make up for my guilt complex. That maybe if I can make another child's life an ounce better it will make up for the way I crushed hers. And I did make one little girl's life better, but that hasn't acquiesced my guilt, it hasn't stopped me showing up everyday.

I don't ever know if I will be free of this guilt. I think the guilt is my choice to carry. You see to give up the guilt, I must also give up the lie. Because the guilt only comes if I believe my relationship with him was consensual, if I believe the relationship was built on love, not lies.

But if I accept the abuse, if I accept he abused me, then I have to give up the illusion of love. I have to accept that every word that love was built on was just lies and manipulation. Those times he said I was wonderful and special, those hundreds of times he said I was desirable that was a farce to get me into bed so he could use me to fulfill his needs.

So I have a choice I either choose the guilt or I am left questioning my self-worth. And I don't know what the lesser of two evils is. I don't know which one to pick.

Because I already struggle with self-worth. Because of my mother, because of the hole in my heart that is parental love, because he cheated on me I already struggle. And his love that breeds that guilt takes away those pains just a little bit. It takes the edge off. And I don't know if my self-worth can take one more hit. I don't know if it can take accepting that even my abuser couldn't love me.

And so I choose the guilt.

In challenge and controversy who are you?

2010-01-18T14:06:00.000-08:00

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy" - Martin Luther King, Jr.

desperation

2010-01-17T15:05:00.000-08:00

I feel desperate inside. My fingers fly over the keyboard. My heart pounds. My pulse races. I search and I look. And with each passing minute I realize I can't find him. I can't find him anywhere.

I know my abuser's parole ended in July. But, I know that he had to register as a sex offended for 10 years. And I can't find him. He was there and now I can't find him.   I can't find him in any of the sex offender databases.

And I grow more desperate by the minute.   It hasn't been ten years. It's been six and I can't find him.

There is something about seeing his name and photo in the database that gives me assurances. Assurances that he won't try to find me. Assurances that he is being held accountable. Assurances that no unsuspecting little girl will be hurt again.

His picture on the police website reminds me that what he did to me was wrong. A court of law said so. Society says so. And I can't find him. Do they not say so anymore?

I know it was there. I have proof that it was there. But now it's not. Now I can't find it.

Finding his name missing from the database, I find myself doubting. I find myself wondering if his sentencing was all a big dream. I find myself asking do my memories deceive me? I struggle with letting go of the blame and placing it on him. It was not my fault. What he did to me, the emotional and psychological manipulations, was wrong. The sex was wrong too. His name in that database reminds me. Reminds me that it was wrong.

My greatest fear remains that I'll run into him again. He's out there. He's out there somewhere and I don't know where he is.

And that scares me. So I find myself desperate to find him. Not in real life, but desperate for his name to reappear. But there is no where left to look. And I want to break down. I want to scream. I want to cry. I want this pain to go away.   I don't want this to be my life. But it is. And that webpage, his name in that database makes it just that much easier to bear. And it's not there.

I would break if my abuser, if I found out he, ever touched another girl again. I would find him and the outcome would not be pretty. I have long said, that as hard as being abused was. My abuser found some justice. He plead guilty and only served 85 days. Although his sentence sickens me, there was still justice. I was strong enough to protect the next girl.

I was strong enough to get through it and I couldn't stand it if my pain was for naught. I can live with the pain if it means no other little girls ever gets hurt by him again. I don't know if I could live with it, if another girl got hurt by his hands.

And so I'm desperate because his name is not there.

I know first hand that sex offenders don't look like sex offenders. They don't look scary or creepy. They are people we love. People we can love. They're boyfriends, husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, neighbors, bosses, even church staff. My abuser was all those things and he still abused me.

It pains me that right now, someone could be running my abusers name in the registry and even though he's a sex offender it won't come up. And the parent, the adult would go about life and give my abuser the opportunity to reoffend, to hurt another girl. That's where my desperation comes from.

I don't know if this desperation is rational. But I do know the likely hood of my abuser reoffending is high, given the right situation. I know the only thing holding him in check is accountability for what he's done. The sex offender registry is about accountability.

And right now it is not holding him accountable.

On Tuesday, I'll call the prosecutor's and sheriff's offices. But until then I know my heart will remain heavy.

To finish I would like to leave you with the name Sarah Haley Foxwell. A precious 11 year old girl, raped and murdered by her Aunt's boyfriend. A man who was a registered sex offender. We owe it to every child to check the sex offender registry for every man who has access to our children. And we owe it to every child to keep the sex offender registry accurate.

My Pain, part 1

2010-01-17T09:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I shared my story. Over the next few days I am going to share about my pain. I'm going to share about the effect of those events on me psychologically and emotionally. At least so far as I can articulate them.

My pain is double layered. It is a one, two punch. First, there is the pain I felt going through everything, particularly in the end when everything came out. Then there is the pain of reality. The pain that comes from distance. The pain that comes when I think about the events with an understanding of what actually occurred. The pain of accepting what happened to me as abuse and seeing his actions as those of an abuser, not a lover.

It's tough.

In the beginning I was naive to what was going on. I felt a profound loss with the absence of my mother and my abuser filled it. He made me feel better. So in a way, I was even seeking his attention. I wanted the attention. I craved the way he made me feel special. But it came with a catch, the sexual catch. As much as I felt violated, there was also a need in me being fulfilled. And I think in a way, I was okay with it. I coped with it.

But then I had to answer the question why I? Why was he involved with me? Particularly when he had a wife.

And he told me. He told me I was special, I was wonderful, I had a gift, I got him, I understood him. He told me, how could I not love you? And eventually I believed him, because any explanation is better than none and I didn't want to accept that he was abusing me.

He told me he knew a relationship with me was wrong, but he couldn't get me out of his head. He was constantly thinking about me. And I was flattered.

I was hesitant at first, but over time I grew to love him. How can you not grow to care about someone when day after day, week after week you are intimate with him? I have now come to understand this as Stockholm Syndrome, but I was clueless at the time.

And since he never physically forced himself on me, since I didn't understand affection based abuse it was harder to see the psychological manipulation. Harder to accept that he was grooming me, convincing me to be a willing participant. At the time I was in denial because I needed and wanted to be adored by him.

Somewhere during those 18 months I became less violated and found myself wanting to see him, wanting to kiss him, wanting to make love with him. I found myself pushing for the relationship.

And I was jealous. I was jealous of his wife. I felt like the other women. I felt like he was having an affair with me. He acted like he was having an affair with me. And although I came to want more, I was okay with my role.

But then 3 months before his relationship came to light I knew there was a problem. I could sense it. Deep down I knew. My radar went off when this other woman was around. About that time I was to go on a trip with my friends and he push, really pushed for me to go. And while I was gone he slept with someone else. Someone I knew. Although I didn't know it at the time he slept with that women.

Shortly there after, on day after we had sex as he was buttoning his pants and turned to me. He asked me if I ever worried about him cheating on me. Yes, that how he phrased it. And I plain as day remember saying, "No, because unlike your wife I know what you're capable of." But the truth is, seeing his expression I knew. I knew he was capable of cheating on me. I didn't know he had, but I knew he could and it was heartbreaking.

Two months later his relationship with this women came out and put my life in jeopardy. I felt cheated on. And I struggled with my self-worth. I struggled with his love for me. I struggled with everything he had ever said to me. But I loved him. And I didn't understand how I wasn't enough for him. How he slept with someone else.

The thing is although I would have been hurt if he slept with his wife, I would have understood. I had been understanding in the past. But with this other women, I felt betrayed. And yet, I couldn't tell a soul of his betrayal of me. And the pain sat and simmered and it hurt. I don't think I've ever hurt like I did that week. Never in my life has the pain been so excruciating, so all consuming.

And in there lies the first part of the pain. Because I did love him. He was the first man I ever loved. Whether it was a true, pure love seems somewhat irrelevant in the scheme of things. I did love him and he will always be the first man I loved, even if there is an asterisk to that love. And he cheated on me. He cheated on that love. And even though I felt like I was a mistress, if he loved me back - or at least I thought at the time - if he loved me like I loved him he would never have slept with her.

And to this day it hurts.

My Story

2010-01-16T13:59:00.000-08:00

6 months and 100 posts (yes this is the hundredth post) and I haven't told my story. I've told bits and pieces. I've eluded to when my abuse came out, the trial, the pain surrounding it, my own life events that led to it, but I've never told anyone about those day to day memories. I've never told you my story.

My story is a pain birthed from love that has left me desperately hurting inside. But my story is also one of redemption and of healing.

The short of it: I was sexually abused for 18 months by a staff member at my church. I was 15 when it started and 17 when the police became involved. In 2004, my abuser plead guilty to "Rape of a Child in the Third Degree" and "Sexual Misconduct With a Minor in the First Degree." He was sentenced to 5 years in jail. This verdict was set aside in exchange for his entering into a sexual deviance treatment program. Instead of 5 years he was sentenced to 6 months in jail. He served 85 days. He is now a registered sex offender.

The not so short version: When I was 8 my mom walked away from her marriage to my father, and over the next 5 years slowly walked away from my life. The absence of my mother's love left a hole inside and left me susceptible to the manipulations of my abuser in the years to come.

I started going to church with my father shortly after the divorce. I dedicated my life to Christ when I was 9 and at 13 was baptized. I began serving in the church's youth group and eventually realized I had a visual gift with movies and graphic design. I was a born leader and loved serving. While serving the body of Christ I came to meet my abuser, a male, 30 something, married staff member at the church.

He began grooming me in 2001, shortly before I turned 15. It began with psychological manipulation and eventually turned physical. At first his advances were slight, a hand brushing mine here, a hug that was a little too long there. Until in April 2002 he touched me sexually for the first time. By the summer I turned 16 he had sex with me. The sex continued until I was 17. Hundreds of times we had sex, until in 2004 my abuser's extramarital affair with another women brought intense scrutiny over him. It took him a week but he, not I, came forward with a confession about the relationship.

Within 24 hours the police were involved and I was in denial. I admitted the sexual relationship had occurred and trying my hardest not to lie protected him by omitting details. I would remain in denial about the true nature of the relationship for another 6 weeks until I read a photocopied note on the front page of the local paper. It was part of a series they were doing on coaches and teachers who abuse kids and get away with it. Things clicked. I was reading verbatium words this man had said to me.

It has been over 6 years since my abuse came to light. Since I accepted that it was abuse. In that time I have dealt with severe depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and a host of other issues. I was broken. I have gone through years of counseling, but am only now coming to accept my life in its whole. I have a deep desire to come to terms with this part of my life, in hopes that I can help myself deal with the pain that was painted across my life. For years I was a member of the walking wounded. It took everything within me to focus on getting through each day, but I have recently found myself asking "how do I want to live my life?

How do I want to live my life in spite of the pain and burdens that I carry? The mother that walked away, the sexual, the emotional abuse. All that pain has never left me.

But the answer to the questions is that I want to live life, I want to live with full abandon. I want to live my life with my eye on Christ. And I want to fully embrace what life has to offer: the good, the bad, and the ugly. I don't want to miss this life I have because the pain overshadows it. But at the same time I don't want to cram all the pain into a box and put it on a shelf. Because you still have to carry it. It doesn't just go away because you will it or wish it.

I can no longer shove my past into a box and label it "done" because the truth is no matter how hard I pretend that the pain isn't there. It is. It drives my decisions, my choices, my actions. And to deny that pain is to deny a part of myself. I am slowly learning to be thankful for the pain, my past. My suffering has shaped me. If I let it, it can be a beautiful part of who I am. Slowly I am learning to see my pain not as a burden, but a blessing.

I am begining to see that in my darkest moments, months, and years the seeds were planted so my life can bloom.

In the process I have slowly walked back towards God. I continue to strive forward in the relationship, but there are many hurdles I continue to work through. This has not always been the case. In my anger I walked away from Him. I hurt and I blamed Him. But His love for me has never wavered. He has accepted me in my brokenness. At the end of the day you, me, and my abuser are all broken. We are all broken.

I know by myself, because I am human, I will always be broken. But in His grace I have found redemption. And it is in His love that I can accept that brokenness as part of who I am.

In my brokenness is a huge blessing. And I pray that God will use me and this blog to glorify Him, to help heal me, and to be a blessing to others who desire their own healing. Because He heals.

The question of the day...

2010-01-16T12:05:00.000-08:00

Clearly there are people in my family who love me. I am not without love in my life, so why oh why am I so caught up in the emptiness of my mother's love?

I don't know the answer.

But I do know it hurts. And I do know it has impacted me in ways I am only now beginning to understand.

I wish it didn't hurt anymore.

And I don't know if the years lost will never not hurt anymore, even if someday in the future we did find everything.

Thankful Thursday

2010-01-14T23:42:00.000-08:00

Tonight I had the opportunity to talk with my dad. To really talk with my dad. I told him that I think that someday I am going to struggle with being a wife, but I know I will be a great mother. He turned to me and said when he was my age he thought he would make a good husband, and wasn't quite sure about being a father. But it turned out that he failed at being a husband but surprised himself with being a great dad.

He is a great dad. He is my steadfast supporter. I don't doubt one ounce of his love for me. In his words, in his actions it is there. Never for a moment has he allowed me to doubt it.

And I feel guilty in a way, because I know my actions burdened him. Yes, I know it was my abuser who made him ultimately feel like he failed as a father, to protect me. But he didn't fail. In the minutes, and hours, and days and weeks after the truth of my abuse came out I came to realize that no matter what mess I got myself into he would help me get out. I know his love is unconditional, because he stood with me every second of every day. I may not agree with every one of his actions, but I know the intention behind them was good and noble.

My abuse has only served to strengthen our bond. And the 2,000 miles between home and college allowed our relationship to change and grow. In finding my distance, I grew to see him as a whole person. I grew to respect him and his opinion, even if at times I ~~didn't~~ don't agree with it.

Growing up, I remember the strength of his relationship with God. How when he was serving God he was at his best. He rejoiced the day I dedicated my life to Jesus. Without question he drove 150 miles after receiving a phone call from me at camp saying I wanted to be baptized. And he walked away from our church for me. Because he wanted me to know I was more important than our church, than what people thought, that in action and deed I was what mattered most.

This last decade has been tough. At the beginning of it, he was at the height of his relationship with God. And year after year, he's taken hit after hit. I don't even know if there is a relationship anymore. But tonight I got to minister to him. About grace. About how I have faith that God restores. That He redeems. That I know my most bountiful days are ahead of me. That God has something in store for me I can only imagine. That in Joel 2 He restores the years the locusts have eaten. He restores the years. Not the crops, not the harvest, but the years. The thing about years is that you can never get them back, you can't turn back time and relive them anew, But He can make each year ahead of you that much better. He can and He will.

And I am thankful. Because I know his relationship with His Lord will be redeemed. I have faith that soon I will get to sit on the sidelines and cheer him on. Like he has done for me all my life. The day will come.

brown skates with bright orange wheels

2010-01-13T23:04:00.000-08:00

Today I went to the local skating rink. Really, I had only gone to stop in and say hi. But four smiling little girls later, who together asked so sweetly, and I found myself forking over the $7 dollars for a pair of beat up brown skates with bright orange wheels.

I was wobbly at first. And I felt a little silly. But seeing the girls smile I knew I had made the right decision. We did the Hokey Pokey and Snowball and Whoopie and YMCA. And the entire time I laughed and grinned and giggled. I danced to Mile*y Ciru*s and I felt like I was in elementary school again, where life was so sweet. In fact in elementary school I skated in that very same rink. Same disco ball, shag red carpet and mural on the wall.

But this time I held a sweet little hand in mine, and together we skated. Lap after lap, we caught each other when one was about to fall, and if one of us did end up on the floor we helped the other up. It was a perfect afternoon and I wouldn't have traded it for anything, because I found myself enjoying life like never before.

people and boxes

2010-01-12T23:23:00.001-08:00

I was hard on you mom. I know the state of our relationship does not rest solely on your shoulders. It rests on mine too. I do know that. And I know I have kept you at arms length. With some thought, I've come to realize I've done so because you don't fit in the box I've labeled MOTHER. There's a lot of people in my life that don't fit into their boxes. I don't do well when people don't fit in my life how I think they should. I want things to be black and white. I want them to fit. And I get cranky and upset when they don't. I stress about it.

My relationship with my good friend T fell apart when she became Best Friend AND Roommate. My relationship with my mentor fell apart when she became Mentor AND Boss AND Landlord AND Friend. It was just too much and I couldn't figure out what I needed to give, and what I should be getting. I didn't know.

It should be possible to have people fill these different areas of my life. Normally people can accept that. As life happens and roles change a little here and a little there, they can adjust their expectations. Me not so much. And once again I delve into my psyche, into my pain.

My abuser took our relationship and took something out of it that had no right being there. Somehow he made apple juice out of oranges. I volunteered under him at my church and somehow he extracted sex out of it. In the process he blurred it all in my head.

Anyway, when people start becoming too much, when I can no longer compartmentalize their roles in my life, I can no longer figure out what is expected. And I feel like I am going to lose that expectations game. Because changing my expectations often means changing my boundaries. My abuser walked all over those boundaries and so when I am forced to re-evaluate them, I shut down. The only way I know how to do that is to step back, step way far back and I don't necessarily do it with tact. Without tact and social grace the relationship takes a direct hit. Often all that's left is the charred remains, not much to base the future of the relationship on.

I wish I had something pretty to wrap up these thoughts. Right now I don't. Right now I am reeling from this revelation into my behavior. So this will have to be it for now.

Dear Mom,

2010-01-11T21:06:00.001-08:00

I love you. I hope you know that. I hope if you ever read this, you will keep my love for you in mind. Because I don't want to hurt you. I know first hand how pain birthed from love hurts more desperately than any other pain. Each word I have written has not been for spite, but out of love. I write this letter, because talking has never worked. I have tried to bring this up time and time again, but you get defensive and we end up fighting and I back away, because I'd rather have something of a relationship with you than nothing.

But the truth is I want everything. I want everything, but I don't think that will ever happen. For whatever reason, our relationship can't be everything I need and want. The honesty of that statement saddens me beyond belief. But still something is better than nothing and so I am afraid to talk with you. I am afraid to tell you the secrets at the depths of my soul. I am afraid to tell you my hopes and dreams. I am afraid to tell you my darkest fears. I am afraid to be open with you, for fear you will turn me away. I am afraid to push for everything, for fear that what we do have I will lose.

I don't really remember what it was like before the accident, before the divorce. The shuffling from one parent's house to the other that's what makes up the memories of my childhood. And I resent you for that. I resent you for making the choice to pack up me and Nate and walk away from your marriage, to walk away from our childhoods. To make me wake up every morning and have to choose. You made me choose between my parents. You choose to have only half my life.

In that choice, I was made to realize that I was only half your life. When we went to dad's, for that week we ceased to feel your love. And when we were with you, we couldn't feel dad's. It was like the other parent didn't exist as part of our life. Our life could be packed up into a tote bag, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't put you or dad into that bag. You made that decision. You walked away. You chose not to fight for us. In effect, you told me that only having half of my life was enough. That I wasn't important enough for you, I wasn't special enough to want you to have more.

I know that not wanting to be apart of my life was not the reason you left dad. I know for you it was complicated, a lot more complicated. But dad didn't choose to walk away from the marriage, you did. And perhaps that is why I hold you solely responsible. Because you packed us up and walked away. And in doing so you walked away from me. One day, I may better understand, but I am sorry. I am nowhere near ready or able to forgive you for that.

And if it was just that maybe it would be easier to forgive. But that fateful decision 15 years ago, has shaped every one of those 15 years for me. It has birthed great pain. It left a mother sized hole in my heart, which I tried so desperately to fill. And I still can't fill it. I still can't make it better. In every relationship in my life, I can feel this void that you have left.

But whatever resentment, pain, anger, or sorrow that I carry for these things I can carry them. I have and I will continue to and so all I wish is that you can admit that your decision 15 years ago, as right as you thought it at the time, has hurt me. I know you tried and you "did the best you could do," but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough for me. For once I would just like you to admit that your best just wasn't good enough.

Instead I get excuses. I get defenses and justifications. And the thing is I don't care about the why? I do hope you understand the motivations for your behavior and choices, but I don't care about why. I just want the excuses and defenses and justifications to stop. Because in each one all I hear is that these things were more important than me. That I wasn't important enough.

I think you do want to be a good mom. But instead of being a good mom, you have yourself convinced that being a good mom has absolutely nothing to do with your relationship with me or my brother. In your head you have convinced yourself that if everyone else thinks, believes that you are a good mom then you are. Trust me, I have been in that denial myself. But what others think should not be your priority, your relationship with me (and my brother) should be what matters. It should be the only thing that matters.

I think you want to be a better mom than your own Mom. I think that's what drives your denial. Time and time again, I have heard you say that you are so glad for our relationship, because you never had those moments with your own mom. I get that. And so admitting the truth is impossible, because that would mean admitting failure. Admitting that perhaps you weren't the best mom, you didn't right all the wrongs of your own relationship with your mother may seem difficult. But here's the thing, admitting that your decisions caused your child pain, admitting that you're not perfect, admitting that you're not the best mother actually makes you a better mother. Because you see, you're mom wasn't able to do that. You're mom too, held tightly to this false belief and it hurt you. You can make the choice. You get to choose. In admitting your failures, you become the mom I need. The mom I want. The mom I so deeply desire to have.

Because in admitting that you're not the perfect mom - that you haven't been -you admit that we only have something. And you declare that you too want everything. Because more than an apology, more than an admission, more than an acknowledgment of my pain, I want a relationship. I want everything, with you. And right now there is still time. There is still time to not just want everything, but to have it. And I so deeply wish you want it with me.

Love,
Your Daughter

Harlow's Monkeys

2010-01-07T01:04:00.000-08:00

In the 1950s Harry Harlow set out to prove that a mother's (parent's) love was developmentally important and essential to a child's welfare. This was blasphemy at the time; as pediatricians and psychologists alike were telling mothers not to hold their infants, not to pick them up if they cried, or kiss them too often for fear they would spoil the child. Or so I am told.

Harlow separated baby rheus monkeys from their mothers, placing them into a cage with two surrogate, but inanimate mothers. One made out of wire that would provide milk and one terrycloth surrogate. These baby monkeys on average would spend 1 hour with the wire mommy receiving sustenance and 17 hours on average clinging to the terrycloth mother. The results of his study showed that love/attachment was fundamental to development.

I had long been familiar with Harlow's work. But I recently read about one particular experiment in Between Here and April, a book I just finished reading.

Once the monkeys had become attached (bonded) to their Rag-a-Mommies, Harlow added a twist. "He retrofitted the [mommy] dolls with blunt spikes, which would spring out and injury the baby monkey quite violently whenever the doll was hugged. Even so the baby monkeys kept trying to hug this "evil" mommy. And kept trying to get back into her good graces, even going so far as to shun peers and even food in the hope of winning back her love. When the spikes were removed, Harlow claimed that the baby monkey's acted like the evil mommy monkey had never existed. They forgot the spikes all together.

The main character of Between Here and April, doesn't believe this and says, "But what if they didn't really forget? I now thought. What if every decision made from that moment on could be traced back to that early mistreatment? ... To fear the object of love; to love the object of fear: it was enough to drive a monkey crazy." (p.221-222)

To change topics for a moment, I have mentioned before how I wouldn't go back and change it, I wouldn't forget the abuse that has happened to me if given the opportunity of a magic pill. Because as painful as the abuse was it is a symptom, not the disease. And I can't fight the disease without the knowledge gained from the suffering of symptoms.

The needs in me were crafted long before I ever met my abuser. The were crafted in my own home. The were crafted when I was eight and a car accident took the mother I knew from me and instead left me with the retrofitted version full of dull spikes.

Instead of loving me, caring about me and for me all her energy went into herself. It had to. And the camel's back was broken one day when I was twelve and came to her. I left feeling that she choose my stepfather over me. You see I would wake up in the middle of the night and he would be sitting in my room staring at me, touching my hand. I was uncomfortable and so I told my mom. I am not sure what I expected her to do, but whatever she did it wasn't enough for me to feel safe. There the spikes were again. I understand now that she wasn't in a position to walk away.

And so I walked away. I went to live with my dad. And she didn't call. She didn't go out of her way to see me. I went from spending every other week living with her to seeing her once a month even though she lived 20 minutes away. She never fought for me.

And it left a gaping hole. It left me looking for attention, affection, and praise any way I could get it. I found it in my abuser. Her choices and actions left me vulnerable. And he took advantage of that. He told me I was wonderful and special. That I was pretty and smart and desirable. And as Taylor Swift sings, "'when you're fifteen and someone tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them," especially when you've got a gaping hole where a mother once was.

And I can't help but think what if the baby monkeys didn't really forget? What if every decision made from that moment on could be traced back to that early mistreatment? What if it birthed from the mistreatment a deep desire to be loved, a life-consuming fear you were unlovable? Perhaps the reason the monkeys desperately clung to their mother after mistreatment, was not that they forgot the spikes but rather that they couldn't forget them. The incident with the spikes birthed in them an irrational need for love, a need created by the mistreatment itself; a desire that negated any risk of being injured again.

And every decision the monkey ever makes goes back to that moment. Because that need trumps everything else. Years later that baby monkey might even allow herself to be sexually molested, in return for the praise and affection she so desperately desired. And after this new surrogate impales her with his own spikes, the hole created is even larger. And her deepest fear is seeing him again, because like the baby monkey did to its mother, she knows she would run to him and cling. And she would never let go if he promised to love her and not hurt her. Even though she knows that ultimately he would injure her again.

You see, for this baby monkey it all goes back to a mother's love. And although I try to accept that she gives every thing she can, its hard not to see her own inadequacy at motherhood as a reflection of who her daughter is - its tough to remember that even if she can't love me how I need, it's not my fault - I am not the cause of the inadequacy. I am not inadequate.

explanations

2010-01-07T00:49:00.000-08:00

"Man is a credulous animal and must believe something," once wrote Bertrand Russell. "In the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones." In effect what he is saying is wherever or whenever they are, people vastly prefer any explanation (however flawed or implausible) to none.

I wonder if I accepted that the underlining motivations of my abuser towards me were explained by love, because accepting the idea that he was abusing me was just to difficult. And no matter its rationalness, my misguided explanation was better than no explanation at all.

[The first paragraph is from A General Theory of Love.]

it hurts

2010-01-06T20:43:00.000-08:00

Today I cried during my counseling session. Not tears streaming down my cheeks, but definitely teary eyed.

I wanted so desperately to cry, because this hurts. Admitting the first man I ever loved abused me sexually, emotionally, and psychologically hurts.

In my soul, in my mind, in the fiber of my being... it hurts.

enjoy

2010-01-05T22:41:00.001-08:00

I wrote this in response to Alece over at Grit & Glory, who challenged her readers to choose a word for the year.

My word: Enjoy.

Why? Because I have recently found that I am going through the motions of life. I do things because I think I am suppose to or they’re the next logical step, which when thinking about it is ludicrous reasoning.

So in everything in 2010 I am choosing to enjoy. I am looking to delight. I am looking to go out of my way to do things that I like. I am choosing to be proactive with my life. I am choosing to do. Not because it is expedient or expected, but because I want to.

And even when it is tough and hard I want to face it with jubilance. I want to do it with thanksgiving. I want to shift my attitude to one of joyfulness in all things, especially those things for which God is calling me to do.

But mostly, I want to learn to enjoy life again. I want to live.

I'd like to take a moment to elaborate a little here. For the last several years, life sucked. Two years ago I went through a spell of depression. With it came suicidal thoughts. Not kill myself suicidal. But a passivity desire for death. I couldn't actually even contemplate killing myself at my own hands - I have seen the pain of those left behind first hand - but oh how I wished for a bus to hit me, or a fire to consume me, or anything to tragically end my life. "I wouldn't mind Lord, if you took me from this earth," I thought.

Fast forward to New Year's Eve 5 days ago, while out skiing I fell badly. A pirouette in mid-air. Somehow I managed to kick myself in the back of the head with my ski as my limbs tangled and I slid down the snowy slope. Thank goodness I was wearing a helmet. But I was shook up and had an egg at the base of my head. And that night as I lay in bed, well before midnight, I prayed to God that I would wake up in the morning. "Please let me live," I pleaded.

A far cry from two years previous and I am so thankful that God didn't grant that prayer. That he pulled me through, steering me clear of the buses. Life was tough. It was hard. And I didn't want to live it. I didn't want to carry the pain.

But in the last two years, especially 2009, he moved. He allowed me to see that even though I am broken, even though I carry this burden, I am still blessed. In the year ahead I want to cherish this life. I want to enjoy it. I want to see the world with child-like wonder, and adult-like appreciation. I want to appreciate the blessings. I want my life to be meaningful. I want my life to be authentic and real. And I have the hope that it will be.

2010

2010-01-03T16:05:00.000-08:00

I've remarked recently to just about anyone who will listen that time seems to be flying by at warp speed. I've barely felt like I have experienced something before it is a memory. I have found myself wishing that I could freeze time. To just slow things down so I can grasp the moment, to enjoy the moment.

With each passing day, I think of the teachings of Buddha. The noble truths, the backbone of Buddhism, teaches that A) life is impermanent and B) it is in the impermanence that there is suffering. He is saying that even in the happiest of moments where we believe there is no suffering, we know the moment will not last and in that we find suffering. A smart guy, Buddha was.

And so I am back to my original point, where the heck did 2009 go? So much has happened.

To recap, I flew to college last January to finish my senior year. I brought with me an espresso machine. I wrote for the local paper, covering Obama's Inauguration. I went to class, had fun with my best friend. I went to Senior Retreat and let go of some of my anger towards my abuser. I finished college (though didn't get my diploma, long story). I moved in with my mentor in the DC suburbs. That relationship fell apart over a question of expectations. I moved back to the Coffee Capital of the Northwest, practically kicking and screaming. I started to see a psychologist again. I flew back to DC to move my stuff to Seattle. There in a garage, I heard God talk to me for the first time. He began moving in my life. I began working with second graders. I procrastinated in studying for my Mandarin Proficency Exam to actually graduate from college. In November, God really began moving in my life. I looked in the mirror and liked what I saw. I went back to my church willingly for the first time in years. I had the opportunity to be there for one of my second graders and realized I was in Seattle for a reason. 4 officers were shot and killed in a coffee shop and I couldn't stop crying. Through this God brought someone into my life to encourage me in my walk with Him. I reopened friendships that I thought were broken beyond repair.

And although all this happened, it went by in the blink of an eye. Along the way I kept my 2009 resolution to stop biting my nails, which I am so proud of because it really is a horrid habit.

Looking back on 2009 I see all this stuff I did and all these memories I made, but the thing I got out of 2009 was that I learned how to appreciate myself. I learned how to step forward and reclaim my life and my story. To me that is huge and it is something I wouldn't have been able to do without this blog. And I know it is not complete. I know there is progress to be made and daily I continue to choose to climb the mountain in hopes that I will climb out of this valley and rise above the fog and clouds and bask in His glory.

I have no clue what is in store for 2010. But God does. I do have some resolutions: to complete the Seattle to Portland bike race in July and graduate from college. If I find an actual job along the way that would be good too. But I know that God is in control of that and so I resolve to keep my ear open and listen in all areas of my life.

But beyond those tangible completable resolutions I have a host of hopes for 2010. The big major one is to let go of the fear of the unknown in my life, to let the trepidatiousness go and begin to enjoy life. In the process I hope to be authentic and real, which will mean a change to my blog, I think. Along the way, I hope to take this appreciation I have for myself and catapult that into really liking the person that I am. I am not quite sure how to do it, but I am going to take baby steps forward and hopefully in 365 days I will be somewhere near there.

BTW: I just searched through my harddrive and found what I had written one year ago today about my hopes for this last year. Written January 4, 2009.

While I haven't said a lot lately, I have been doing a lot of thinking. In the last couple weeks I have identified that my hope for the new year is to learn to accept living life on its own terms. The last year has shown me that we really have no control over life, which is actually very terrifying. In the idea of the Buddhists, everything is temporary, because this does not align with our expecitation of the world, we are filled with suffering. I don't know about you, but I am tried of feeling disappointed.

For a long time I have made decisions about my life based on what I expected others expected me to do. Not only is that very twisted reasoning, it speaks to my underlying view of myself. I don't trust myself to make decisions about myself. Well that stops this minute. The only person who has to live my life is me, so it only makes sense that I make decisions based off what I want. I have spent the last several weeks trying to answer that question - what do I want - and I commend you if you can answer it for yourself, because I still don't have an answer.

There is a part of me that is exhilarated by the fact that the world is my oyster, but there is a part of me who is scared and blind walking forward into the world before me. At the end of my life - whether it is tomorrow or in seventy years - I want to be proud of myself. Not just my accomplishments, but the person that I am. So I am going to turn the focus away from the what of my daily life and towards what I want out of this life.

Having reread it, I do think over this last year I was able to be proud of the person I am, the things I have accomplished and the burdens that I do have to carry. And although I am not fully there yet, I do think I have a fairly good shot at eventually getting there because I have accepted that this is my life and I have the power to get up every morning and make of it what I will.

believing the lies and holding the blame

2010-01-03T15:44:00.000-08:00

Affection based abuse is a nasty beast. It plays on you emotionally and psychologically. It twists and turns things because a hug doesn't mean simply a hug, and a kiss does not simply mean a kiss.

And years later, you hate yourself for not saying no when he entered you the first time. Not screaming it at the top of your lungs. Not running down the hall away from him or saying something to someone, anyone.

And somehow you tricked yourself into thinking you were complicit, a willing participant. You've forgotten that in fact you did say no. You've forgotten how when he touched you, you would jump. You would shake. You've forgotten that even if you never told anyone what was happening, you were still telling people. You left hints and clues, even as you tried to protect him.

Because that's the thing about affection based abuse. Because it does feel good to feel loved. Because to get you to allow him to have sex with you, first he had to convince you that you wanted it. So he showered on the attention. He told you that you were wonderful and special. He told you that he loved you. He told you these things to make you feel complicit. He told you these things, because no one else in your life was. He made you feel like you were an adult, making your own decisions even if you were only 15. Because that was part of the plan... in making you think it was your choice, he could place the blame on you. In thinking it your fault, you would never turn him in. And since you believed his lies about love, you would never turn him in for fear of ruining his life. After all, you thought you loved him.

And so you've carried around his blame. Even years later you think of the marriage you destroyed, the children who now have to live with the fact that their father is a sexual predator. You ache for them and wish you could apologize because you feel like you single-handedly ruined their childhoods. You feel to blame for the life that ended up behind bars.

But it is not your fault. You did say no, even as you said yes. Because even if at first you didn't want to sleep with him, you wanted to hear the words. You wanted to feel special. And it felt good that he was risking his marriage, his job, his freedom for you. Except it wasn't really about you. It was about the need you were fulfilling in him. If he loved anything, it was that. It's a hard pill to swallow. But that's the truth. His abusing you, really had nothing to do with you.

You were just available and gullible. And so the idea that he did it because of some unrequited love is not only more poetic, it is easier to accept. It is easier to believe he loved you than it is to believe he is a sick bastered who preys on young girls.

But you know this now, so why isn't easier to shed the guilt? Why isn't it easier to set aside the blame? Or at the least place the blame on his shoulders?

Because it is easier to live the lie. If he had sex with you because he loved you, and if you had sex with him because you loved him. Then you are lovable, not gullible. If lives were ruined because of that sex than the blame is a medal of that love, not a mark of how he abused you.

Because if you admit that he abused you, that he preyed on you then you are no longer special or wonderful. So you shoulder the blame, because when you give up the blame you have to admit that every word he ever told you was a lie. And it is easier to live the lie than to admit the truth: you said no and he didn't listen.

pain

2009-12-29T14:01:00.000-08:00

This last summer, my abuser's parole ended. Yes, he still must register as a sex offender. And yes, he must declare he is a felon on any and all job applications. But it seems sometimes as if these tethers that tie him to the reality of his crimes are slowly slipping away.

And I may no longer be angry with him, and I may want him to seek grace in God. But there are days where it just doesn't seem enough. Because if his punishment is coming to an end, it only seems fair, that my pain come to an end too. Except I don't want it to end.

I find myself clinging to what happened. As if it is a medal of honor, a badge to be worn. Because nearly a decade since the charade of abuse began, the pain is still there. Tempered, but there none the less. And in a way, with his punishment ending I feel like I should let it go. He's served his time. Should I not also let myself out of this purgatory of memory?

Should tears not spring to my eyes when I think of everything I lost. Should my heart not break at the lessons I was forced to learn. Should my head not be fill with self-doubt and my soul with trepidation at the thought of learning to love again, of learning to trust.

And yes it gets easier. And yes I want it to get easier. But at the same time, it is mine. It is my pain. And I don't want to let it go. I just wish it was easier to bear.

two letters

2009-12-28T19:35:00.000-08:00

The first time when you say no, and he hugs you anyways... your first thought is no. No. NO. NO! But there isn't anything you can do about it. There is no where you can run.

So the second time when he puts his hand on your knee, you only say no. No. NO.

And the third time when you can feel his breath on your neck as his whispers of sweet nothings fill your ear, you only say no. No.

And it continues the fourth time when he gives you a massage. no.

And the fifth time when he kisses you good night. You barely protest. The no is lost as his lips cover yours.

And this continues until he has sex with you and you don't say no at all.

Your left wondering what is the point of saying no when he has proven that those two little letters hold absolutely no power over him.

a promise of hope

2009-12-26T21:58:00.000-08:00

Posting this belatedly...

Christmas is not about presents, or Santas, or stockings. It is a time for thanksgiving, of remembering the tiny babe who was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.

His entrance was not perfect in our 21st century eyes. There was no doctor, no mid-wife only several cows and sheep. Not the cleanliness of animals.

But he came to this world, knowing the feat in front of him. This babe came to Earth so he could die. He didn't look down onto humanity and say oh, I'll try. He came.

He came so we could live. Not just a life on this earth, but one in heaven with his father, with our father. He came so we could choose to live.

I am sure on his long road to the cross, that he wanted to know why. To understand it the way his father did. Don't we all. How often have we asked for understanding, for just a glimpse.

Oh how Mary and Joesph, scared and cold must have wished for some understanding. An understanding of why they had to go to Bethlehem, why there was no room for them in the inn. The must have asked, why them, why this little boy.

If Mary knew her child would be hung from the cross, that her little boy would have nails hammered into his hands, would she not have tried her hardest to stop it. Because for everything the little child represented to the world, he was still only her tiny child asleep in a manger.

I wonder as three decades passed and Mary saw things spiraling out of control, did she not wish to go back to the manger. Did she not wish to go back to the silent night, to the holy night when the Little Lord Jesus made his entrance into this world. To the night of her son's birth.

Because in his birth was a promise, a promise of innocence for all. No matter how trying times had been, or how trying times were to come with the birth of this little boy there was a promise of hope. A promise of hope to come, and hope to sustain. In his birth, we have hope of life.

Merry Christmas!

Virtue and Time Machines

2009-12-26T21:00:00.000-08:00

With everyone back in the Coffee Capital of the Northwest, I had time to take a break from the mayhem of the shopping season and catch up with some friends.

Last week I went to Dilettante's Chocolate to catch up with a friend from Jr. High whom I haven't seen since I was 14. If you are in the Seattle area and have never been to Dilettante's you're missing out on amazing cocoa and cakes and ice cream. Anyways over this amazing chocolate feast, this friend and I stumbled on to the most interesting of conversations (note: there is a long post ahead).

A conversation that started when he said, "I think that my 14 year old self would be disappointed in me. After all, my 14 year old self would not care about my high school diploma but only about the fact that I don't drive a Corvette."

As shallow as this statement might seem, it opened an entire world of thinking. What would my 14 year old self think of me? Would she be ashamed of what happened to me or proud of what I have overcome? But the conclusion I came to was that in the nearly 10 years that have passed I have experienced so much and gained so much wisdom that without having experienced it I wouldn't have a lot of insight to judge myself. Or at the least appreciate everything I have triumphed over.

But this conversation did lead me down a path of thinking to my victim impact statement. In which I said, "If I could turn back time I would." With 6 years of perspective, I have come to realize that it is more complicated than simply turning back the time. But if I could go back to 14, knowing the path I was going to go down, would I not change it? Would I not take the chance to remove the sorrow from my heart, to lift this burden I carry and put it back on the shelf before purchasing it.

That's a hard question. A very hard question. Because I do feel like I picked this door, but I did so with no clue what is behind door 2 or 3. And as hard as things are and as much as I wish them to have been better, door 3 could have been a whole lot worse. To say it another way, the devil you know beats the devil you don't.

But even with the opportunity I don't think I would go back. Not because of the fear of the unknown. But because I know deep inside that there was a reason my abuser abused. And he didn't target me for any reason other than availability. I was easy prey. So even if I made myself unavailable, some other girl would have been. And I couldn't live with that choice. I couldn't have put another child in harm's way.

But if I could go back, there is only one moment I would go to. A moment before I was fully brain washed and I knew it was still wrong. A moment before my world was turned upside down. A moment where I was given the choice, and I was too scared to take the road that I knew would lead to police and arrests and rape exams, to newspaper stories and being branded as "That Girl." Simply I was scared. If I could go back I would convince my 15 year old self to be strong enough to say yes he had sex with me. Instead, I categorically denied it. Because at that point it was already traumatic and painful and I was so, so confused. I was only 14 when he started grooming me. I was only a little girl.

But if I knew then what I know now, I would understand that as traumatic and painful as those first few times of having sex were, the complications that affection based abuse bring wouldn't have yet settled deep into my soul. The emotional scars wouldn't run quite so deep. And still the evidence would have been there to try my abuser. To send him to jail and get him help. To protect every other little girl.

But that is a pipe dream. Because I can't go back. I am here now, and this is the life God has chosen for me. I can only place my feet forward, step by step. And so if given the chance for my 14 year old self to look at me, I hope she could be proud. Not because I am standing here on my own two feet, but because I do so with virtue. Because at the end of the day my virtue is the only thing that separates me from my abuser. I am proud of that. And I hope God is too.

colors of innocence

2009-12-19T14:04:00.000-08:00

"Experience which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it."

In my victim impact statement, I told the court that the man standing in front of us all had stolen my innocence and I could never gain it back. With time I have begun to see that while it is true to a degree - I do have to carry what happened to me forever - I don't think innocence has completely been lost.

I do think for a long time it has been gone. Even now it feels gone. My life lacks a level of child-like simplicity. Like the way a newborn sees the world in black and white. But I now know that this world is too complicated for child-like simplicity. No one is ever 100% right or 100% wrong. Solutions are never perfect. And as screwed up and painful as it sometimes feels my life is, there are many people who are having a harder time navigating their own lives. Woe is me, to think that I have the answers or that I can judge them.

As much as I want this world to be black and white - a world of guilt and innocence, of blame and virtue - I realize it is not. Nor is it a gray scale. Think how boring the world would be if life was drawn with a box of 8 crayola crayons, or 24 or even that big box of 64. Life should be a full spectrum of colors. Some of the colors are just plain awful and painful to look at. What happened to me forced me to see these colors. But it also exposed to me a set of colors that take my breath away in their beauty.

I recently read the quote above by the essayist and playwright James Baldwin. In it I believe he is talking about not one type of innocence, but two: one from moral wrongs and one from a lack of education or understanding of the world. In effect he is saying that from an experience that opens your eyes to the moral sins of the world you can return to that innocence by building your own sense of moral right and wrong and sticking to it.

What my dearest abuser did to me opened my eyes to the evil of the world. The ugly mustards, and burnt oranges, and puke greens. But it also allowed me to look at my life and declare that I will not fall into moral decay myself. I can choose, as much as possible, to dwell in the hues and saturation that take my breath away. But knowing that those ugly colors do exist fills me with compassion and appreciation for the colors that do surround me. In that I can regain my innocence.

Weary

2009-12-19T11:59:00.001-08:00

I feel weary this morning. All I want is to curl up under my down comforter and forget about the world raging outside.

Soaping Down

2009-12-17T23:49:00.000-08:00

Tonight I gave Duke, my 2 and 1/2 year old Samoyed pup, a bath. He was so excited to see me when I got home from work. And when I pulled out the leash his tail was a waggin'. He eagerly jumped into the car and in his excitement had trouble settling down.

Much to his dismay we pulled into the self-service dog groomers. And before he knew it, he was being hosed off and soaped down and finally blown dry. He was not happy at all. He barked. He wined. He tried to play Houdini and at one point he successfully managed to get out of the tub.

And through all the barking and all the whining I talked with him. I told him all about the group of second graders he gets to meet tomorrow. How he is going to have so much fun reading books and watching a movie. I told him all about how excited they were to meet him, but he heard none of it.

He was so focused on the horrible experience of bath time that he couldn't see the forest for the trees. But being his Momma, I knew. I knew he had to have a bath and get his nails clipped if he was going to go on his outing tomorrow.

And I couldn't help but wonder if it is the same with God. He places us into situations knowing that we are going to whine and bark and grumble, because the situation really does suck for us. But he knows without the bath, without being soaped down, we wouldn't be able to delight in that which he has in store for us.

The Year of Fog

2009-12-13T20:15:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond. A story about how one woman wishes she could go back and change one moment. And boy do I relate. I've copied down some passages that stood out to me for one reason or another.

"...and I'm thinking it must be some girl, some tragedy that for the moment seems impossible to survive. And I want to tell him that you find a way, somehow, to get through the most horrible things, things you think would kill you. You find a way, and you move through the days, one by one - in shock, in despair, but you move. The days pass, one after the other, and you go along with them - occasionally studded, and not entirely relieved, to find that you are still alive." -p.283

"...I'm still trying to discover what essential thing in her nature has changed. How much of this new Emma is simply the natural process of growing up, and how much of it is the result of spending so many months with her kidnappers?" -p.361

"I did not understand then that I was at the beginning of something, that each choice leads to some other choice, and another, and another, so that a single, seemingly meaningless decision reverberates through an entire life. I did not know it was a moment in time that would help to shape the course of my life, that I would spend the decade and a half after Ramon's death searching for someone who could love me as completely as he did. Only now do I understand that it was this search that led me to Jake, and therefore to Emma" -p.376

"'You cannot step in the same river twice," Heraclitus said. Since the composition of the river changes from one moment to the next, it is never the same river. Everything in the universe is in a constant state of flux. Everything changes. Nothing stays the same. Once a moment has passed, it is gone. Any choice you could have made had already been made. I want to step again into the river. I want it back - the time, the choice, the tiny, irretrievable seconds." -p.377

"Of course, I was only nine. How much of this did I perceive at that moment, and how much do I supply now, from a distance of twenty-four years? Twenty-four years, and I cannot shake th ememory. Not just the images...but the emotions as well. All of it perfectly clear to me, as if I had experienced it only a moment ago." - p.382

"A few days ago, I went to the public library and returned the books on memory that Nell had checked out for me. They were several months overdue. It would have been cheaper to replace them insted of paying the fine, but I did not want to keep them. I would prefer to simply forget everything I've learned about memory, for none of it is knoledge that I can possess in the impersonal way one knows the names of foreign capitals, the number of rings circling Saturn, the date man touched down on the moon. No, it is a body of inforamtion that will always be associated in my mind with those long months of Emma's absence, it is tainted knowledge." - p.384

"Even if our scientists were able to solve the problem of memory, we would still be at a loss. Memory, by its nature, is merely retroactive, nothing more than a way of asknowledging how we got to where we are... Even if we can figure out some perfect equation by which to assess the past, we will never be able to devise a like-minded equation to solve the future." - p.397

taking care of myself

2009-12-12T12:56:00.000-08:00

At the end of every counseling session, my counselor a women with a penchant for the color purple and wearing leather boots with large metal buckles, looks at me and asks, "What are you going to do to take care of yourself this week?"

At first the question bugged me. I wanted to respond with sarcastic answers like "eat."

The fact remains I was a member of the walking wounded. I still am. Getting up every day and putting one foot in front of the other, did constitute taking care of myself. Even 6 years after the pain of my abuse coming to light.

Not putting one foot in front of the other, not getting on with my life has never been an option. In the weeks after everything came out, I couldn't sleep. I think I was maybe sleeping an hour or two a night. One morning I woke up ragging mad. My dad hadn't woken me up because he thought I needed the sleep. I was upset because I had a government midterm that morning and it was suppose to start in 10 minutes. I was mad, because in letting me sleep (which I did desperately need) I wasn't able to put that one foot in front of the other. My abuse had gotten in the way of living my life, even if that meant taking a test.

I find myself asking myself her question through out the day. When I know I need to get out of bed. Get into the shower. Take my dog for a walk in the pouring rain. When I need to do my homework. Make a phone call I don't want to. When all I want to do is collapse in a heap on the floor, I ask myself, "Do you need to do this to take care of yourself?" And it motivates me to get up and deal with whatever has to be done.

But I don't want to just successfully go through the motions of life. I want to live again. I don't just want to put one foot in front of the other. I want to want to run into my future. And so I am finding the question that my counselor asks taking on new meaning. "What are you going to do to take care of yourself?" no longer means what are you going to do to make sure you get through the day, but what are you going to do to help yourself to enjoy life again.

I don't know the answer. But I am going to start making long term goals. Goals towards things that I enjoy doing. Not just those things that I believe others expect me to do. But things I want to do. I think it is a start.

past

2009-12-11T00:51:00.000-08:00

I feel tired. I feel frustrated that after the string of insights over the month of November, December has been quiet. Yes, I am tired and I could use a break. But I just want to be healed.

And yet healed or not, the truth is I will never be without this burden. It may get lighter, but it will always be there. I will always carry it, even when I ignore it. My past will still be there.

allegations of allegations

2009-12-09T22:41:00.000-08:00

The Broadsheet Blog has an interesting take on the Biurny Peguero girl who cried rape case that is playing out in New Jersey. For a moment I'd like to focus on the last lines of the article:

"Feminists are often characterized as applying the "guilty until proven innocent" rule to rape cases and the "innocent until proven guilty" standard to allegations of a woman crying rape. But mark this feminist's words: Some women lie about sexual assault and some rapists go free -- but the response in either case shouldn't split down gender lines."

Honestly it is true. But it took a long time for women's (and men's) stories of rape to be taken seriously by society. There are a lot of women (and men) who don't come forward, myself included, because we don't believe anyone will believe us. So it sickens me when women like Peguero come forth with false allegations. These allegations only makes it that much harder for those who have truly been devastated by sexual abuse, assault, rape to seek help and justice.

forsaking

2009-12-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't written in a while. I was emotionally drained and needed some time to charge up my batteries. I was reading Linny's blog over at A Place Called Simplicity about the fear that is gripping her as she heads to China to be united with her daughter Jubilee. Her post inspired me to put words to ~~paper~~ screen.

I don't know about you, but I had a really good weekend. The kinds that leaves you all tingly toed and happy at the memory. The winter holidays are my favorite time of year mostly because of all the time my family spends together celebrating traditions.

In the last week or so I have felt like for once my life is together. God even brought someone into my life this last week to remind me that He has a purpose for my life and he is orchestrating it if I listen.

My life is not perfect. It's not necessarily how I want it to be, but I don't feel like I am standing by with duck tape and a glue gun in case something needs emergency repairs.

And as great as life feels at the moment, I can't help but think it is all going to fall apart again.

Don't get me wrong I am trying very hard to appreciate the sweetness of life. But there is this nagging little thought in the back of my mind. I worry that the very moment I put down the glue gun and set aside the duck tape I'll need them.

I walk around living in fear that the other shoe is going to drop. When I say goodbye to someone I wonder if I will see them again. When the phone rings or when I open my email, for a moment I find myself bracing for the bad news it may bring. I simply don't check my voicemail anymore, and those close to me know to not even bother leaving one. In fact I don't think I've checked it in 5 months and tell most people that it is broken.

My dad recently was complaining that I don't always answer my phone and its because sometimes I just want to lose the thing so I am not on constant alert. In fact, sometimes I do lose it and instead of being worried I am relieved.

I have distinct memories of being 7 and for weeks being afraid my house was going to burn down. I carry this fear to this day and there are working smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in all the rooms. But it doesn't seem to hold that fear at bay.

Fear isn't always rational. I have a fear of treadmills and Ferris wheels - but give me a full fledged upside down rollercoaster any day - after very terrifying incidents in my childhood.

And the fear creeps into my life when I am least expecting it. For most of my life I have to talk myself into things, not out of them.

To others it may seem like I am eager and willing to try new things, but that's only because I know I need to hold my feet to the fire. I project eagerness to hide the fear. As Linny said, "I don't want to wallow in the pain. I do not want to be fear-filled."

But I can't stop the images that invade my mind at every opportunity. I literally see them play out in front of me as if I were there. They are potent and I can taste the bitter taste of adrenaline in my mouth.

I think it is because so may times in my life the crisis, one after another, have hit. I've been conditioning to accept their possible presence in my life. I know that may sound like an excuse and it very well might be. It just feels like my entire life has been filled with crisis that sneak up on me with no forewarning.

One minute I am standing on top of the mountain and then I find myself down a well in the bottom of the valley. So I have learned to guard myself against the next thing, because I never know when my world is going to be turned upside down again.

I want to be able to enjoy life. I really do. Linny shared a quote on her post that I am going to spend sometime praying over in the next weeks. If you are feeling fear in your life I hope you will join me.

Glorify the LORD with me;
let us exalt His name together.
I sought the LORD, and He answered me;
He delivered me from all my fears
Those who look to Him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame.
This poor man called, and the LORD heard him;
He saved him out of all his troubles.
The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear Him,
and He delivers them.
--- Psalm 34:3-7 ---

He has shown me that he hears all my trouble that he has encamped angels around me. I know he has delivered me and will deliver me. I know if I take the first step and climb down onto my knees, he will meet me there. Sometimes it is just hard to reach out on faith to trust that he will be there.

an unsolicited letter

2009-12-02T23:48:00.001-08:00

Dearest Abuser,

I thought I saw you today. I thought I saw you walking down the street. And I was scared. My heart raced. I couldn't breathe. I was driving my car and I am sure that I would have crashed it into something if I hadn't told myself to snap out of it. Because although my eyes first told me it was you, with some thought I knew it wasn't. The nose and eye brows showed a hint of similarity and the color of the hair but everything else was different. And although I knew intellectually it wasn't you, I still had to tell my heart to quiet.

It's interesting that this didn't come up in my counseling session only hours later. A testament perhaps to the fact that sexually abusing me left scars a heck of a lot deeper. But that's for another letter. Today I wanted to tell you that as much as it pains me I do pray for you.

I do not wish for you to wallow in a place of shame. Don't get me wrong, I want you to feel shame and I want you to feel guilt. But shame and guilt aside, mostly, I long for you to fully own your mistakes. I don't want you to dwell in that place of guilt, I want you to embrace grace. Both God's grace and your own grace.

Because as much anger as I have harbored towards you in the past, I hold it no longer. Now I look at you with pity. I think of the life you must lead and I feel sorry for you. You lost your job, followed by your wife and children. You lost your freedom, your integrity, your aninimity all in one fatal swoop.

And that was no one's fault but your own. Least of all me. Let me be clear on that.

As a friend of mine recently wrote, "Stand behind your actions by way of fully admitting and acknowledging them to yourself. Don't lie to yourself or pretend they aren't as bad as others think or that somehow you were justified. You weren't. You are reaping what you sowed."

And on that note I don't care what anyone else thinks, we both know the truth. Your lying, deceit, and manipulation happened well before you ever actually touched me. Well before I realized what you were doing and I'd venture to guess, it started well before you even realized you were consciously doing it.

And that's the saddest part of all. Because once you were sucked in there was no where for you to go. No way for you to stop.

But short of uprooting your life, I don't know how you could have stopped it. With a job, and a mortgage, a wife and two kids uprooting your life was nearly impossible. Do able, but difficult nonetheless. Made more so, in that you couldn't admit to even a hint of impropriety.

And so you tried to will it to stop. I know you tried to, but by that time you were so firmly entrenched by inertia you couldn't get away. You were like a yo-yo. Even though you could force yourself to work against gravity, eventually the will would wain , you'd slip and gravity would pull you crashing back towards the ground. Back to me.

And I am sorry. I really am. Because that need for attention and affection that you flamed in me was the gravity. It pulled you back, I pulled you back. I enabled you.

But you had your own inertia. There was some need in you that I was fulfilling. Some need that wasn't being fulfilled somewhere else, and it was something a whole lot bigger than sex. Sex was just the vessel. I only had the briefest of glimpses of it, but I know it was there.

That need is what caused you to dance down this forbidden road. This desire to fulfill it even though afterwards the wound was stretched larger, made deeper. And even if I hadn't been there you would have found someway to fill that need. Some other woman, some other girl.

But I was there and available, right. I was your perfect dance partner. So we danced, both fueled by these needs. Short of one of us walking away, it would have continued. I'd bet it was a dance we would still be dancing now had things not changed. But they did change. We aren't dancing it now because you confessed. The confession was self-serving and against my wishes, but it ended the dance.

What you didn't realize at the time was that it began another. A dance of consequences, a dance of repercussions. It's a dance more painful than the one before, a dance still playing out today. A dance that will play out to the end of eternity.

But you have a choice of your dance partners now. God or Satan. You have a choice where you spend that eternity. Heaven or hell.

And although the idea of sharing Heaven with you raises emotions I can't even articulate, I'd really wish you'd choose to spend it with God. I don't wish for you to wallow in a place of shame or guilt or even ignorance for eternity. I really hope you have found a way back to Him. Because there is no one, no counseling, no rehabilitation program, no will of your own that can save you.

Only God's grace.

I am only begin to see the glimpses of the person God has created me to be. I am just beginning to see myself with the grace of God's eyes. I pray for you because I hope that one day you will see yourself how God sees you.

So yes, the idea of ever having to speak to you again scares the crap out of me, but I am slowly coming to terms with sharing heaven with you. Because I really do hope I see you in passing there. Just don't be offended if I don't stop to chat.

As always,
Me.

not for naught

2009-12-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

When things happen that I don't understand, I return to this quote and pray it is true...

"God knows our days, our hours and our minutes. He doesn't waste one, nor does He cut them short. He's never early, nor late--for there is no rush in eternity. He does all things in the perfect fullness of time."

...because the one thing I am sure of is that I have no control in this world. Yes I have free will, but God still knows. He sees the big picture when I can't. He watches the details when I've lost sight of said big picture.

And I need to remember to praise him and thank him. Not just for the things that I deem good. I need to praise him for it all: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Especially the ugly.

Because if this quote is true then it means that the ugly is not wasted. The ugly is perfect.

The crying, weeping, tears of pain and joy and frustration are not for naught. They're an essential element of God's plan.

And even if the tears fall for what seems like the shortest of seconds in God's eternity. He still knows every tear that falls down my cheek and every second of pain that has scarred me.

He knows. And there is comfort in that.

broken

2009-12-01T07:14:00.001-08:00

I awoke to the news this morning that the suspect was killed in a standoff with police.

I thought I would feel safer. At the news , I thought I would feel better.

But I don't.

This morning I realize just how broken our justice system is and now there are four families profoundly feeling that brokenness.

How many more will have to carry this burden before it is lifted? Our jails are so full with drug possession charges that the ones who are really a threat to our society at large are let go.

The murders, the rapists, the assaulters should be our priority.

But they're not. And so the man who sexually assaulted me hundreds of times spent 85 days in jail.

And the man killed this morning, the man who was paroled after receiving a 94 year sentence was able to move to my state. Where in May he punched a police officer in the face. Although he faced charges he was allowed out of jail without ever seeing a judge.

He went on to rape a 12 year old relative. And when he was arrested on that charge, he was able to post bond 8 days ago.

This rapists was out in our community. Free to murder 4 cops in cold blood.

This is our justice system in the United States. It is sad.

I thought I would feel relief when he was captured, when he was killed, but my anger has moved from this broken man to this broken system.

A system broken beyond belief.

grateful

2009-11-30T00:27:00.001-08:00

I have been trying to gain some insight into the reason why I have been so effected by the deaths of 4 law enforcement personal today.

The events have paralyzed me. I find myself crying for no reason. I want this man caught so desperately it takes my breath away.

And I realize there is one person in this world who heard every detail and still told me it wasn't my fault. She was a police officer. She was a detective.

Yes my father, family, even friends have supported me. But nothing to the degree of what Detective J did.

She fought for me when I couldn't even fight for myself.

When I couldn't see beyond the fog, when the world had been turned upside-down so many times I could no longer see straight, she steadfastly pointed the way.

There was never one moment that she didn't see my abuser for who he truly was.

I never would have receive closure, gotten justice if it wasn't for the painstaking job she did.

And I will always be grateful.

So to see her brethren killed for simply putting on a uniform and taking an oath to protect... it makes me sick and angry and mad. It fills me with sorrow and rage.

They were protecting the voiceless... and they were senselessly killed.

And although I have never met them, I am grateful.

yearning

2009-11-29T21:53:00.001-08:00

Earlier this evening, my local police department released the names and photographs of the four officers slain in cold blood this morning.

Today, I have been shaken to the core by how much evil is in the world. Pure evil.

I have wrestled for a long time about how broken this world is. And on an intellectual level I know why the evil is here, but in heart I just don't understand. I don't want to understand.

As I was washing dishes I turned to my father and said, "I know I am suppose to live this life on Earth to its fullest extent, but days like today make me yearn for Heaven. "

Today I long for Heaven. I long for a world that isn't broken. That is perfect. That is healed.

But until the day that Jesus comes back to this Earth it will remain broken.

And as hard as it is to understand, this world is broken for a reason. It is broken so that Heaven can be perfect.

So heaven can be a place where your only concern is praising God for his faithfulness.

Because even though we are all broken, God is perfect. He is faithful.

And tonight 4 officers share heaven. And as perfect as Heaven is, how they must long for home.

a broken world

2009-11-29T17:07:00.000-08:00

I am horrified, angry, sad, mad, and simply heartbroken today.

I am sick and tired of the senseless suffering and violence in the world.

I don't get its presence in this world. I don't understand it. And I pray I never will.

But mostly I want it to stop. I want it to stop, now!

Today, four of our local heroes were senselessly murdered here in the Northwest.

They were killed because they were heroes. And they died heroes.

And tonight the nine children of these heroes are being put to bed with one less parent in the world. One less person to tell them they are loved, and are special, and proud of them.

We as a community need to come around these people. We need to come around all people.

We need to love them. We need to love each other.

We need to come together as a broken people.

Together we need to say enough. This has gone on far to long and we need to say stop.

We need to bend broken knee and pray.