It feels important on the verge of imperative to write about the incest memories that are surfacing after they have been withheld and hidden deeply within my self.
These things, these events, even though they are hideous and immoral and difficult to hear about, they really did happen to me. Some people are allowed to talk about their past but incest survivors usually do not.
Secrets are like monsters we keep chained up inside that are eating us away, eroding our health and esteem. We feed the monsters with our continuing silence, day-by-day. I'm done feeding the monster. I'm no longer using great efforts to keep them chained inside.
Writing about Incest Out Loud means the perpetrators no longer control me. Their idle threats have died along with most of them.
Today, I remembered how the incest began with my evil paternal grandmother. I was five years old. My family had just moved back to their hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Not only was little me getting used to a new family home and neighborhood, quite dramatically I inherited relatives to interact with every week.
I recall my dad taking me over to the house on Valley Street. Dad was trying to explain the relationship, what grandparents were. I was Autistic, so the concept seemed really difficult to grasp but it turns out my dad had a mom and dad, too. This just seemed way out there. I found myself in this other new house complete with all different furniture, walls and smells. The carpet was thick and dark brown. Dark brown stairs, piano, dining room table; it was quite dark especially if it was night time out and only the lights illuminated the interior.
I stood in awe, or frozen, as the case may be. When I was overwhelmed, I could not physically move. I guess you would say I had that "deer in the headlights" look to me. Frozen in place and highly startled. Too much emotion. Too much all new surrounding me with the actual place and then these "relatives" some of whom I had seen a few times before but briefly, and they were wearing different clothes and hair now.
It was loud, too. People make noises when they greet each other. And if there are many people to greet, the noise just goes on and on; one person making noise after the next person making noise. There were a lot of people at grandmother's house as the aunts and uncles all wanted to see us because we were close now, and not living across the state or states away as we had been.
I guess it would be safe to say that there were always ambivalent feelings about going to grandmother's house, on my part. The food was usually plentiful and good but the people were a mixture. I mean, some were nice and all but some were just plain loud and too touchy.
I don't know how long it was after our move back to the city before dad brought just me and a sibling or two over to grandmother's house during the late afternoon or early evening. The house and the people living in it, still felt new and scary.
Grandmother announced with a smile and a smirk, that "Amy needs a bath" and since I was, once again, frozen in place because I had no clue what she meant, the grandmother grabbed my hand and started directing me up the living room stairs with her.
The stairs were scary and novel, covered in this thick carpet and they twisted a bit on the first few. Well, I guess it was more like, there were two or three steps, then a small landing which held a set of shelves, then the stairs turned like 90 degrees and headed up rather steeply. It felt like I was walking into an unknown cave or second floor dungeon as it was dark up there before grandmother turned on the light. A tunnel, that's what it looked like, a thick, black tunnel I was being led into. I was definitely scared of this big unknown. I was being separated from my dad and my brother and taken to a new place with this still new person called grandmother.
"I needed a bath?" what did that mean? I had already been bathed that day but, somehow I had gotten dirty and needed to be washed. Boy, my mother would have been more than a trifle upset if she knew all her preparations for going over there were for naught. Mom made sure I was clean and in clean clothes and my hair was brushed, just for grandmother, yet she found me "dirty". This was not good. I felt like I was in trouble, in addition to my overall massive confusion.
This is were it got really weird, really bad, uncomfortable and abusive. You don't have to read it if you don't want to. It is disturbing. I have to write it for my own sake and sanity. It hurts just to think about and it will hurt more to write about but then, only then, can the healing begin.
The bathroom door shut behind us. She started the water running in this strange bathtub that was way different from the one at the new family house. She began to disrobe, talking and chuckling and trying to say things in fun ways. I didn't move. There was this funny looking, naked lady in front of me. I couldn't move. I didn't know what to do or what was happening or what was expected of me.
So, she undressed me. Uncomfortable was an understatement. I still stood there, unflinching. Smiling, she reached her hand into the water and made splashing sounds but resolute and confused, I stood. She ended up lifting me into the tall-walled bathtub. My feet felt the warm water rushing around me. Grandmother sat down at the not faucet end of the tub. Talking, she was always talking; her lips didn't stop moving much. She wasn't forcing me to sit. She was trying to coax me into sitting all by myself. After a bit, that worked. I sat. The faucet at my back had been turned off. There is an eerie silence when you are naked in a tub of water. It's like you are in a different world and all the outside sounds are muffled.
I'll summarize what happened next. Grandmother started washing herself with a washcloth. Then she would wash me with the same washcloth. Then, she wanted me to wash her with the cloth but I still couldn't figure out how to make my body move in such a dire, unpredictable situation. Again, she grabbed my hand and prompted it to move on her as she saw fit. I was grossed up but still deep enough in shock not to display any emotion. My mind could not grab the gravity of the situation or what was taking place. At some point, all the washing of bodies stopped. I was again, helped out of the tub and thoroughly, uncomfortably dried by her after she had dried herself with the towel, smiling and making light remarks the whole time.
Still stunned, she dressed me, fixed my hair and led me back down the stairs. The people in the living room cheered, or at least, it felt like they were cheering, smiling at me with big teeth and welcoming me back into the fold "now that I was all nice and clean".
This is me, my story, my family and the things that happened when I was a child, an Autistic child being introduced to yet another family member and more incest.
My life revolves around therapy twice a week. Each session takes 2 to 3 days to recover from. Most of the time, I'm sitting, processing ...
