I was Raped

I see those words, three little world that carry the world, those words in the title and my heart stops. I hear those words and the world stops.  I can write them and it feels like those are words that are very far away, words for another time and place.  Those are words that happen to good innocent girls, those are words that happen to people who tell and find support and love and care.  Those are words that fit others but not me.  Those are words that some how don't fit me because no one noticed, no one cared. Things happened to me as usual  and  I just kept on living doing everything that a little girl is supposed to do. No one stopped to care that this little girl was being hurt like this all the time;

 no

 one

 cared

 to

 notice

 Things were not seen and so much looked over.  All these things left a little girl all alone trying to understand things that should never have been a part of her world.  

Someday I want to be able to stand up brave and strong and say those words. Say the things that have happened to me  without feeling less than and gross and disgusting. I want to be able to say the truth and not be ashamed; not feel like I am less of a human, not feel like such an outsider. I want to say the things that have been silent, and hiding for oh so many years.

Somehow speaking those words makes things clearer and more real than they have ever been and its more than difficult. Somewhere In my head I know those are the things that happened and somehow by not saying those words I can keep it far away and use other words that don't sting so much.  I can say I was hurt, I can say people were not nice.  I can say that people took things that were not theirs to take. I can even say that people just didn't listen. Those are things that I have learned to say and can  come out of my mouth so much easier than the real words.

The real words don't apply to me because I always just cleaned up and kept going.  There was no time to rest and recover,  there was not time for healing.  Night after night, day after day this is just something that happens to you. 

The shame in the things that have happened to me is enormous, and that is also a part that keeps things silent. Things have happened to me that I don't have words for.  Things have happened that I remember every detail of and can not bare to get them out of my mouth.   These are the words that have happened to me my entire life,  Before I even knew what it was that was happening. These words have happened to me before I can even remember.  These words are so full of violence, and to fully comprehend that is unimaginable. 

There are bits and pieces that I try to explain but words seem empty, when my heart is scarred. When  My words today feel so heavy,  I feel terrible that I need to speak them.  I feel like a burden,  that I don't deserve the love and support all this time later.  I mean I am living and breathing, why burden someone else with the things that have happened to me.  

There are so many factors that come into the picture with words like this.  There are the truths, the reality the hard facts that are to terrifying to understand.  Then comes  the body memories.  There are nights that I wake up and I literally can not feel my legs.  There are nights that I wake up and the literal pain that I am in doesn't even have words.  My body hurts just like it did on those exceptionally hard nights when his parts were fully working and I was the one who had to suffer.  There are mornings my hips kill me because of the sins of my father and his little girl whose body wasn't made for what he wanted.  I often get angry when my mind went away , I have said that a million times.  Somehow that feels like the easy way out.  Yet in the same breathe I believe that the pain was so great there was no other choice for my little mind as I had to endure things not meant for anyone ever. My little mind had no way to comprehend the things that were happening and the things that I was feeling. My little mind just wanted to be seen and so loved

I can remember a counselor once saying that it might have felt good ,what was happening to me and that was ok. That sometimes a body would just respond And I felt my insides screaming because there was nothing that was done to me that felt good.  My body didn't respond, there were no good feelings just pain , such pain that I had to go away because it hurt too much to be in my own skin.

There are pieces of me that know the pain and pieces of me that know the real words that happened to me.  Those things happening at the same time feel so completely overwhelming.  Like my brain can't comprehend that I was in pain because of those things because I was being raped.  

I feel like my words aren't making any sense and I am rambling, because they have been quiet for so long.  There is a part of me that says it was just sex don't make such a big deal. As a little girl it was a big deal because the pain was inconceivable.  As I got older, things were so much less painful, and I just learned to go away rather than have to experience the look on their faces, they liked what they were doing and I was just there for parts. For so much of my childhood I was floating as far away from my body as I could get.

Those things were just for my father and Albert.  For Don and them there was a different level of violence.  I didn't have a small body anymore, at least not like a little girl of 5.  I was more aware, I knew what they were doing at least some of the time, but then again things happened that I don't have words for that I didn't even realize could happen to a person.  I think that once I realized what was happening there was a fight, I fought with all that I had , it wasn't enough, they were bigger and there were so many of them but I tried,  I tried to make it stop, make them see me as a person.  There was nothing I could do,  and after fighting for so long, I felt like I lost. Much of that day is a blur, there are pieces of things I remember, then there are parts still so clear .    

The pain in the physicality of what was done is horrendous  Today I struggle all this time later there are moments that I can still feel what was done to me. There are times I can still feel their hands, I can smell the smell , hear the sounds and taste the tastes.    There are times my arm goes numb because I used to have to reach up and hold his cross so it didn't make any noise. That deep ache inside that I know today exactly where it comes from Those are the shameful things that are my life.  I don't know how to process all that was my life. So much hurt, all alone.

As I matured and got older the pain lessened, and for that I will be grateful.  The physical pain of a five year old is far different than the pain being caused by those same things at thirteen.  At 5 I knew my body was in pain with no real knowing , as you get older the knowing comes and the shame that comes with that I can't even measure.  I am ashamed of who I am, what was done and that still to this day, my heart is so broken.

The shame just grows and grows and grows as you come to understand as things get names and you suffer in silence because please who in the world wants to hear the things that have been done to you.  How in the world does a person talk about the horrendous things that have happened, it doesn't lessen the pain or the knowing or the hurt in your heart that no one really cares what has happened to you anyway.  So you keep breathing keep living, keep putting one foot in front of the other trying to remember to breathe and be a real live person.  

Then again I just wanted to be normal  and things were taken,  only this time he put a pillow over my face on purpose.  I knew as soon as I saw the pillow coming , I was gone .  I was in a place far far away that he couldn't reach .  

I don't know how a person survives all of this in one life.  This just was my life.  Somehow adding those words seems so hard.  Parts of my brain know but an even bigger part of my brain wishes more than anything that I didn't so understand these three little words. 

I

WAS

RAPED.

I heart your heart. 

This well of sadness

There is such a well of sadness that comes from the smallest parts of me.  I think that  Callahan is running free and there should be no sad left. I see her smiling and happy in ways that she could never be.  I see her little spirit able to play and make noise, and yet I start talking about her little life the things that we missed and the sadness seems to ooze from every cell.  It is such a deep sad.  A sad that I am not sure I can even put words to.  

I think of little Callahan and she no longer has to hide in the corner,  Really, she doesn't hide at all, she is everywhere .  She is not worried about the noise that she is making.  She is not at all concerned about much,  she doesn't have the world on her shoulders anymore and that is a feeling we do not have much experience with.  Just when I think that I am done with the tears, I hit another well and it knocks me off my feet. I want to be done with the sad, that deep deep sad that feels so overwhelming.  It's the kind of sad that I wonder if it will ever end.  I wonder if I will ever see the bottom of the well with no more tears left in it.  

Wednesday the well opened for a time, and the tears just wouldn't stop.  They came like the rain and are exhausting.  Because each time I hit the well I think surely there can't be any more, and yet there are so many. 

My little life so many things that were missed, things that were taken away that I never got to experience.  So much missing , being left out, being abused and tortured, raped before I even knew what was happening,  battered and bruised yet expected to live the carefree life of a child. 

And so that well of sadness seems to fill instead of drain.  So much was taken so much was lost and that is something so unimaginably hard to understand.  When I think there can not possible be any more tears , they still come. 

So many sadnesses, oh so many and I want there to be a day when I can talk about them and they not break my heart.  I want there to come a day when I feel strong because I have survived them.  Not ashamed that they took what wasn't theirs to take. I missed being innocent about the world, I missed being special, I missed having a body that didn't hurt all the time. I missed being cared for, ,and protected.  I missed being heard and kept safe.  I missed everything childhood and that is hard to get my head around. 

I have worked more than hard, letting little Callahan have all of those things, and I can smile and hold my heart grateful that she can be free, that she can run .  Her mind is free, she knows that she is safe and her little body doesn't hurt anymore. 

At 46 I woke up this morning and my body hurt.  I felt it in my very bones,  the hurt the ache the pain and I want to crawl in a hole.  After all this time I don't want to feel it, I don't want to remember .  I don't want to understand why my body hurts and why I can't make it stop.  These are the days I could run a million miles and then some just to try and forget.  

Today that well of sadness is overflowing, my body aches and I remember that little girl being at work with my father hiding in the bathroom wanting my body to stop hurting.  The UTI was more than painful.  I would dread using the restroom because my body hurt so much.  It's amazing the things that a little girl can learn.  The longer you hold it the less pain that you create for yourself. I was so afraid in that restroom the lights only half on, and then he came looking for me.  Such fear in my heart the moment that I heard him.  My body in pain from the night before, still bleeding why would I even be sent to work with him. I am not sure if I have spoken about that day before. It's still in my mind clear as crystal,  that poor poor little girl.  Every sense on high alert, I remember every moment,  I was maybe 6 or 7.  That poor girl.  I can remember the lights the sounds, the pain, even the smell of that bathroom.  How does a child understand that,  how does a child just do what needs to be done with no thought in the world to tell someone that I was hurting and needed help.  That I can not get my head around.  

Such  a monster of a man, I sit here and my eyes see it as someone else,  and yet I know that little girl is me and her strength is undeniable.  I see it as a third party yet am aware of every feeling. She survived and I am oh so sorry that was her reality , this was her life; this was the way that things were for her.  So small and so used to what happened. 

I am sitting here and can hear the birds outside, its even a little cool and I am grateful that I made it, that somehow I didn't fade away, somehow I was able to see and hear those birds and  find some peace.  I am grateful that there was always something to help me through to make me feel not so alone. To help get my mind off the pain, and I am forever grateful.  

So many pieces of this puzzle that is my life.  I don't know how or why I survived such cruelty, sometimes it doesn't feel like surviving at all, because today it feels as if I am barely breathing.

 Everyone is still sleeping in my house, I am grateful as the tears continue to fall, that my children have had a life that is so far away from the life that I lived.  I don't know how to understand this, I don't know how to process this.  Such evil and so many questions.  I hope as this day goes on, the pain will subside, and I find even a little peace.  My life was not ok and today I am not sure if that well of sadness even has a bottom, it feels oh so never ending.   

I heart your heart. 

 

I cried in Wal-Mart

 Last Sunday I got up early and ran to Wal-Mart.  And while waiting in the checkout line, there was a dad .  A kind dad a gentle dad a dad whose face lit up when he talked to his little girl. Those dads , that kind of man was something that I never knew.  It made me more than sad.  I was sad for me that I didn't know what that was like. I was sad for me that I will never know that feeling.  I will never have someone look at me, like that dad looked at his little girl.  His whole face lite up as he was talking to her,  it was in his eyes and you could see that through his mask.  That is something special.  I do not believe that I was ever anything special to my father.  I do not believe that he ever truly loved me.  I do not believe that he valued or treasured me as his daughter.  That is such a huge loss.  And its on days like this I can see just what a huge loss this is.  

I have never been one to look around and think I want them for a dad.  I do often think I wonder what they are like, or if they are good dads.  I know that I look around constantly wondering if each and every man is a good dad.  I wonder if the person that they are putting into the world is the same person that they are at home.  I wonder if they are loving and kind. I wonder if they leave the light on at night just to ease a little girls heart.  I wonder if its ok to run into his arms at night when he gets home and feel safe and sound.  Those are things I didn't have. I want to know what its like to be held and feel like nothing in the world matters.  I want to be seen as valued and important,  I never ever felt those things. 

Sometimes I pretend it doesn't matter that there isn't a huge hole in my heart then other times, it becomes blaring and aching and I realize that I missed out on so much.  I never had a good kind man on my side that is supposed to love me forever.

The first time that I realized that was with Neil.  It was after we had filmed for the documentary.  He was going to be with his son, whose grandson was coming into the world and was saying his goodbye.  He put his hands on my face, so gently and said that I was brave.  He gave me a hug.  And for the first time ever I felt heard and safe and I went into the hotel crying asking why couldn't I have had a dad like that.  And the tears just wouldn't stop.  I wanted Neil to be my dad in those moments more than I ever wanted anything.  That kind of gentleness and comfort.  I can only imagine that having a good dad would be something like those moments with Neil.  I will never forget that day, and I will be forever grateful for a glimpse into what it might be like to have that all the time. 

As I get older, I think those wants and needs diminish.  I think they have to because there is a realization that those things just weren't meant for you.  But there are times, when the kindest man says things that I imagine a dad would say and I could tell him all my worries and he would be there and with those words; all would be well with the world, because someone has your back and someone understands.  There are times with Mark, I think you know what if he was my dad and stood up for me and was kind and made me believe good things about myself.  Oh, how my life would be so incredibly different. I wonder things like if he likes being a dad and I want to ask so many things.  Because there are times his kindness is overwhelming and I wonder if just for a day I could feel and understand having a good dad a dad that would keep me safe and protected and do everything to make sure to make sure my heart was taken care of .  

So for whatever reason,  that dad in Wal-Mart hit a nerve and I so wanted to be that little girl who for nothing more than breathing she made him so very happy.  I wanted to be that little girl , she made him happy just because she was.  That is something special.  I never had that. My children have never had that I am hopeful that someday my children will have their own families and have that. Vincent will be a dad and Mariska will have a husband who loves and cares for her with his whole heart.  I wish that for them that they will have an experience with a good dad a kind man and their children's lives will be better for it.  That is my wish, because for me I will have days like Sunday when no matter how old I am I will wonder what that must have been like and be lucky enough that if even for a few moments I was given a glimpse into what it must be like to be so cared for.  

I heart your heart.