Nothing Happened: Trigger Warning VERY Traumatic Content!!

...Nothing happened...Nothing happened...Nothing happened...

Their story is a broken record stuck on a scratch of trauma. It simply can not play anything else.

It's not a mystery why my family avoids me..

I understand how trauma works.

Trauma gets stuck inside if it doesn't get processed

...Stuck inside, just like a scratched record, playing the same few words over and over, feeling as present and traumatic as it did when it happened, ...even if it was forty years ago.

We all try to run like hell to avoid traumatic memory that we can't process.  We deny, repress, dissociate, rationalize, minimize...

And because I can't outrun this horror

Because I have to process it,

My family avoids me.

I need to process this memory.
To figure it out.

I need to break its hold over me and my life.

Every time I am sick, every time one of my children is sick, and I need to go to a doctor, this memory is triggered.

Then denial kicks in.

How could my father have done this?

How could anyone possibly get away with something like this?

How can I remember the details so clearly when I was so young at the time? 

I know I did not ask for this memory and the havoc it causes me.
 I did not ask for the pain. The shame.  The humiliation.  The trauma.

It hurts me, still.

And I am going to share it in order to decrease its power over me.

 I am about two and a half. Tatty hurt me and I'm bleeding. 

I don't know exactly what he did to hurt me this time, just that he hurt me badly. 

  He pushed something inside me that felt like it was cutting me open, breaking me in half. 

It's not the first time he did this, and it won't be the last.  

But it's the first time I'm bleeding like this.

 Tatty takes me to the doctor.

I am terrified.

 I am screaming and fighting. 

 I do not want anyone to see what Tatty did.  

It's too shameful.  I know it's my fault.  I'm worried that someone will tell Mommy.  I need Mommy to hold me.  But I don't want her to know.  

And I don't want anyone to touch me, or to look at me. 

They are telling me I need help, to stop struggling, to stop moving, to cooperate. 

 They are trying to help me. 

I don't want help. I want to die.

 I want my mother. 

I am not given a choice.  

Adults are just stronger. 

There are at least three adults here, holding me down, taking off my pants, my underwear.  Holding my legs apart, looking at me, touching me.  Telling me I need help, to stop moving, they will help me.

  I need stitches.

It hurts when they look at me and touch me.  

NONONONO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What are stitches?

 I'm so scared and humiliated. 

 I don't want to have a body. 

 I don't want to have a bad part. 

Don't tell Mommy I'm bad. 

I have to get away and I can't.  
 I am desperate.

...But I am also a tiny bit hopeful. 

Maybe, they will really help me.  
Maybe, they will fix me so I won't be bad anymore. 

 Maybe, they will get Tatty away from me and not let him hurt me anymore.
I try to bite the lady's face that is near mine.  She moves her face away.

I see a needle.  

My stomach hurts; I'm so scared.

Stabbing pain in one side of my vagina.  I can't move.  I can't get away.  I feel another stab. 

 They are sewing me for real!

 I leave in my head.

I can't be real. 

 I will kill off this part of me.  

She is dead.  

She is not real.

The real me is safe.

  The real me has a Tatty who would never hurt me, and a Mommy who would know if I was really hurt, and help me.

At home, Tatty bathes me.  He wants to see if I'm OK.  I try to push his hand away.

  NO!

He lookes anyway.  He always looks.

Tatty says; If I tell Mommy about this he will hit me so hard I will never talk again.

I believe him.

 Tatty takes me back to the doctor. 

 The doctor and nurse and Tatty hold me down again. 

 Take off my clothes again.  

The doctor touches me again.  

Looks at me again.  

He says I'm just fine.  

Good as new.

Then something I could not have guessed happens.

The doctor hurts me on purpose.  

He pushes something in me down there.

His finger?

I don't know.

He is showing Tatty how to hurt me without making me bleed.  

I am such a bad shameful girl.

They think it's fine to hurt me as long as I don't bleed.

I deserve it.

At home, I take a needle and stab it into my hand on purpose. 

It's my way of trying to tell Mommy what happened.  

Without really telling her, because Tatty said I can't.  

I can't tell her anyway because

I have no words for this.

Mommy takes me to the hospital and I get stitches again. 

But unlike with Tatty, Mommy is not allowed in the room.  

She doesn't hold me. 

 She doesn't touch me when I need her.

This time I am wearing all of my clothes, strapped inside a purple streight jacket with only my bleeding hand hanging out.

This memory is inside me.

Stuck in my mind and body.

Twisting in my gut, every time I see a doctor.

 Every time I let a doctor touch me.

Every time I see a scene in a movie with a doctor examining someone.

My stomach clenches, and that familiar stabbing feeling of pain, terror and shame makes the world stop for a moment.

...Before I push it away.

I push it away together with  the little girl inside me who is crying,

Help me, don't hurt me. 

Hold me, don't touch me.  

Look at me, don't see me.  

Don't tell Mommy... I need Mommy right now.

The part of my mind that was stuck in this trauma knew how to make the memory stay buried inside so I would not have to talk about it or share it.

I would keep it buried by acting it out.

I knew how to shame myself and hurt myself.

I knew I deserved it.

 I didn't have a choice.

Some part of me knew it would happen again sooner or later.

Now I am doing something different.
Something safer....for myself.  For my hurt child part.

I, the adult, know the doctors in my present life, won't hurt me.

I know that now I DO have choices.
I go to a doctor only when I can do it in a way that feels safe.

I won't hurt myself anymore because of this memory.

And I won't continue to doubt this little girl who thinks she is bad.

I have never met a real little girl who is bad.

And I know that adults molest children all the time.

I know my father molested me.

I have many memories of him molesting me.

My childhood pediatrician is not someone I can get reliable information from.  He lost his license when I was about seven.
He murdered his wife .

She was found buried under the picnic table in his back yard.

http://articles.philly.com/1989-03-04/news/26130237_1_murder-charges-sugar-case-conviction

My mother was sad because she liked Dr. Sugar.
She told me, in spite of his crime she would have continued using him as our pediatritian if he hadn't lost his license.

 She liked that Dr. Sugar never made her bring us in for a checkup or give us medicine, even when we were sick.

 I can not get reliable information from my family about what happened to me. 

 They spoke openly about how Dr. Sugar killed his wife, and how he was our beloved pediatrician at the time.

 They spoke openly about how I stabbed myself with a needle and got stitches when I was two-and-a-half.
But they can not admit to the possibility that I was molested.
By anyone.
Ever.