Sexual Abuse in my Past

by Anna

I was sexually abused as a child. The first memory that I got was when my father said that he wanted to see my pee pee thing. He was always drunk when he said this. I could smell the whiskey permeating the air around him. The whiskey smell was always combined with the smell of pipe tobacco. I swear that I can almost smell that same smell now.

The second memory that comes to me is being in my parent's room. My mother was massaging my father's butt and I reached over and innocently touched my father's butt. He turned around and laughed and my mother angrily ushered me out of the room. I'm not sure, but I think that I may have been only about two years old at the time. I was still sharing the crib in their room with my brother who was one year older than me.

Another memory that I have is of my mother taking the stitches out of my father's penis. He had been circumcised. I was ushered out of the room again. Now, I wonder why they just didn't lock their door. The door had not even been all the way closed.

I remember one time that I was over at my grandmother's house. I walked into the bathroom just as my grandfather was coming out of the shower. He stood there totally naked. I'm sure that I was four years old, because that's how old I was when my parents left me and my brother Chris with our Grandparents for one summer. I just stood there looking at my grandfather. At first he seemed shocked and frozen, and then, a smile started to come over his face. It seemed like my grandmother came out of nowhere when she grabbed me, yelled at me, and carried me away. She was intensely angry at me for a week after that.

I was playing with a neighborhood girl one day. We were both around ten years old. She went into her house and got a deck of cards that she said were her father's. She showed me one of the cards and it was a picture of a naked woman. I had the most horrible feeling. I turned around and ran home and I didn't play with that girl again.

My cousin Sheila was a very beautiful girl. She had been adopted by my Aunt Teresa and Uncle Phil. Sheila was always very sexually active, even when she was very young. I saw her trying to seduce a neighborhood boy until he agreed to have sex with her. I kept trying to leave, but Sheila wanted me to stay and be a "look out" just in case her mother came back into the house. I remember praying that her mother would come back into the house, but she didn't. I don't remember how old I was at that time.

One time when I was just starting to develop breasts I walked into the kitchen where my father was drinking with his hunting buddies. My father came over to me, pulled my sweater tight around my breasts, looked at his friends and said, "Look how much she's grown". I felt mortified. My father and his friends started laughing. I looked at my mother for help and she was just smiling. She often smiled when I was hurt. I pulled away from my father and ran into my bedroom.

When my breasts got to a certain size, one of my brothers started to grab at them and pinch them. It really hurt. I kept yelling at him to stop it, but he seemed to just do it more when I did that. My mother said, "Oh, don't do that" to my brother. When he just kept on doing it to me, my mother gave up and went into another room. My brother was much bigger than me and it was hard to get away from him.

When I grew up and got married, my ex-husband was sexually abusive. He wanted me to dress sexy and go out to bars with him. He said that he didn't want to feel like he was out with his wife, he wanted to feel like he had a beautiful woman on his arm. He said that he didn't want me unless other men wanted me too. He said that he wanted other men to see what he had. One time he asked me to undress in front of his friends. I refused, and left the house. As I was leaving, I heard one of his friends telling him that he shouldn't treat his wife like that. Later my ex-husband said, "I don't know what his problem was."

My ex-husband wanted anal sex. I didn't want to do that. I tried to do this one time and it hurt so bad that I never wanted to do it again. I started screaming while he was doing it, but he wouldn't stop. I hurt down there for a long time after that. I felt raped. When he asked me to do it again, I said no. He said that I was not a real woman unless I agreed to do that with him. I still did not want to do it. I didn't want to have regular sex with that man, let alone anal sex.

It was years before I even started into recovery about my childhood. My ex used to say that I did not fulfill his needs. I kept wishing that he would just find someone else to fulfill his needs and leave me alone. He was always so flirty with other women, even when I was with him. I didn't really care if he was faithful or not. He used to tell me that I should be grateful to have a man who didn't fool around. He didn't realize that I wouldn't have cared if he fooled around or not.

I really want to get totally over the sexual abuse that I experienced in my past. It's not easy. I feel like I have been damaged. I want to know that sex is not the demon that it was when I was a child. I know that I've already come a long way, but I want to heal completely, and I know that I can.

Response from Dr. DeFoore

Hello Anna, and thank you for your powerful contribution. I really like the strong determination you express at the end, that you want to heal completely, and that you know that you can.

If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend that you write in detail about all of the abuse you experienced. What you've written here might cover it, but if you need to do more then by all means do. This will help you. You will find a guide to "Trauma Writing" and other journaling processes on this page.

I highly recommend that you use these imagery processes, and go back into each of the above memories for emotional healing. In each case, remove the perpetrator, and go to the younger you, offering comfort and reassurance. Follow the above process, and add to it as you feel the need. I think this will help you reach your goal of healing.

You are a brave and good person, Anna. You can do this. You are a survivor. Rescue those child-selves and younger "you's" from your memories, and create new, healthy memories in the present.

My very best to you,

Dr. DeFoore

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