The following was first published on Wed Jun 30, 2010 at 05:00 PM EDT. It's well worth re-reading and taking note of the content- CJ
KosAbility is a community diary series posted at 5 PM ET every Sunday and Wednesday by volunteer diarists. This is a gathering place for people who are living with disabilities, who love someone with a disability, or who want to know more about the issues surrounding this topic. There are two parts to each diary. First, a volunteer diarist will offer their specific knowledge and insight about a topic they know intimately. Then, readers are invited to comment on what they've read and/or ask general questions about disabilities, share something they've learned, tell bad jokes, post photos, or rage about the unfairness of their situation. Our only rule is to be kind; trolls will be spayed or neutered
I am on disability for aortic stenosis - leaking of the aortic valve in my heart. I am also bi-polar and have ADHD. Through medication and talk therapy I have most of the symptoms of these under control. This diary is about my PTSD, which I wish to heck I had under control.
I was a girl. Just a little girl. He was the Uncle. A very distinguised uncle that everyone admired and looked up to. He was president of the Pet Milk Company, on the Governor's staff in Tennessee and a devout Christian Scientist. He was the financial supporter of my grandparents as long as they lived. He was the head of many charities and, in my family, one spoke his name with the same reverence as one spoke the name of God. Everyone loved him, for all those things and more. But he was also more than all those things. He was also a child molester. Of me. Just a little girl. And a very little girl at that.
I have reached back in time over and over to try and discover when I wasn't being molested and I come up with nothing. So my best guess is that I was around two. If that old. And, of course, like all little children, I didn't, at first, realize it was wrong. I know it was uncomfortable and I didn't like it, and, being raised in an old-fashioned southern family, I knew at a fairly young age that "down there" was dirty and I wasn't supposed to touch it, so I'm pretty sure I didn't think my uncle should be doing such dirty things.
There were many occasions for my uncle to do whatever he liked, as he was often left to babysit with me. My sisters are twelve and fourteen years older than I and were out joyriding in their convertibles while I was being abused. There were times when he would babysit for hours on end. And as I grew older I began to suspect that something wasn't right as we were always alone when he molested me, so I figured he didn't want anyone to know. And then came the time when I was eight and my mother and aunt drove up the winding driveway and my uncle knew within five minutes they would be in the house. He quickly put my yellow seer sucker pajamas back on and told me if I wanted to tell anyone what happened, that I would be dead before it came out of my mouth. And it all came crashing down on me in those few seconds. Lightning, literally, flashed through my head. Bright, white lightning, and I have always believed that was when I originally went crazy. It was a bad thing I had been doing and of course, the uncle who was revered couldn't have done anything wrong, so all the guilt was on me. And that's when the migraines started. And scratching my arms and legs until blood came out. Sometimes the pain was so great that it only went away when I could see the blood.
All the guilt was on me. And pleasure. That's something they don't often talk about. I only do it here to explain one reason the trauma is so bad. That the hated thing, the thing you tried to run away from any chance you had, was also at times the pleasurable thing if you were caught. I cannot express in words how awfully filthy I felt I was. I truly hated myself. And, for sure, I wasn't a child anymore.
This went on until I was thirteen and my uncle died. Of course his death didn't rescue me from anything. In some ways it made it worse, as he was at least, the only person in my family who paid any attention to me at all and now I didn't even have that.
Until a few months after he died. My mother, father and I went to visit my sister and her husband a few hours away from where we lived. It was Christmas time and the weather was lovely, so I spent all one day outside playing with a few boyfriends that lived near my sister. We had a great time playing hide and seek in the woods, chasing each other, climbing trees. I was still thirteen at that point and emotionally much younger and we didn't play any games like "You show me yours, and I'll show you mine," or kissing or anything. We just did rough and tumble things. And when I went back home everyone but my father was gone and he had "the talk" with me. I was becoming a young lady, what did we do in the woods, well, if not today, some day I would be expected to do certain things for men and he was going to teach me so I would know what to do.
He then led me into my sister's bedroom with the white bedspread on the cherry furniture and he raped me. You know, I didn't even actually call it that for a long time until after quite a bit of therapy. I mean, he didn't have a gun or a knife, he didn't threaten me, he just said he was going to show me what to do. And I didn't run.
Afterwards we cleaned up in my sister's bathroom and by the time everyone got home, the house seemed normal and nobody knew I was headed for my next "nervous breakdown" at that point. Many years later after I had that second breakdown my father came to the hospital when I was being released and wanted me to drive off into the sunset with him where we would live happily ever after together. I refused, because by then I had vowed never to be a victim again.
And I wasn't. Until the stranger with the gun. I was twenty-two and working in Atlanta for Atlas Van Lines to support my divorced self and four year old daughter. It was an easy job for a young, only high school educated woman. Mostly I just answered the phone and filed and wrote up moving estimates. Often, I had a lot of time to read books. Only this day, on March 4th, 1966, I was reading the worst possible book I could have been reading. "In Cold Blood," by Truman Capote, the true story of a family being murdered by two psychopaths. I had just read where the father and son were locked in the bathroom before being dragged out and shot to death.
And that's when it happened. A young black man with a gun entered my office in the warehouse and wanted to know where my boss was. He wasn't there and I wasn't particularly scared, I just didn't want this jumpy young man to know I would be alone more than just any minute. So I told him this and he left. Before I could get up and lock the outer warehouse door, my office door flew back open and there he was. With a gun pointed straight at me and him demanding money. We had no money, we never kept money there and he locked me in the bathroom in the office and began searching for money. At that moment, I knew as sure as I knew my name, that I was dead. And I just stood there, hands folded across my stomach and constantly murmuring, "He can't kill me, I've got a four year old daughter." After what seemed like forever and no time at all, he unlocked the door, and holding the gun at my head, he walked me out into the warehouse. There he had me lie down on a crated up sofa, he took off my underwear, and he raped me. Actually, I didn't know if he really raped me because all I could feel was the cold, cold gun burning a hole in my head.
When he was finished he told me to lie there and not move and I am sure I would still be lying there now had the phone in the office not rung. When he didn't come back to shoot me, I knew he had gone, so I jumped up and answered the phone. That's when I felt the sperm run down my leg and I knew I had been raped. It was my boss's wife and we both hung up and called the police. I was transported by the police to Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta, where a resident examined me and did a rape kit. He was caught two days later and ended up serving a bunch of years in Reidsville State Prison, sitting around playing cards with the other inmates. In Georgia, in 1966, they still had the death penalty for a black on white rape. I've always been glad he didn't get it. And while he sat around playing cards, my ordeal of being afraid of anything and anywhere and everybody was just beginning. And another trauma - I lost all my friends from school - that I had known all my life - because no one would have anything to do with me after a black man had touched me. My family was ashamed and embarrassed and humiliated and probably never wanted to speak to me again either, but because they were my famiy, they had to. But the good thing is that there was no four year old girl at my house without a mother. If you wish to read a more detailed account of this you can find it in this rescued diary.
And after quite a bit of therapy, and with some medications sometimes, I can control a lot of my PTSD, but not always. I am afraid of the dark, of doorbells ringing, of being out at night, of elevators, of going to sleep for fear of the ever-present nightmares, of being around old men and many, many other things. Sometimes I will put off taking a shower, as the first thing my sister did when I got home from being raped by the stranger with the gun was to run shower water and force me in, as, of course, I was now dirty, having been raped by a black man. I take care of my eighty-three year old brother-in-law and the woman who comes to shower him is only twenty-four, and my heart pounds when she's here - even though he's a kind and honorable and good man and would never do anything to her, the age difference is too much like my uncle and me and it takes a while after she comes to settle myself down.
I think I am a brave and strong person and don't think I will ever be rid of PTSD. What is in my mind - like everything is okay and no one is going to hurt me again, is very different from what's in my gut, where I am always waiting to be hurt. No, not really always, it just sometimes seems that way. But I really am okay and I'm not anybody's victim anymore.
Upcoming Wednesday Diaries
Aug 31 pistolpeteMA
Sep 7 Clytemnestra
Sep 14
Sep 21 boatsie
Sep 28 ulookarmless
Oct 5
Oct 12
Oct 19
ulookarmless is the moderator of KosAbility’s Wednesday diaries and maintains that schedule. If you’d like to sign up for an open Wednesday, send me a private message or email me at ulookarmless[at]gmail[dot]com.
Upcoming Sunday Diaries
Aug 28 don mikulecky
Sep 4
Sep 11 Nurse Kelley
Sep 18 theKgirls
Sep 25 Julie Waters
Oct 2
Oct 9
Oct 16
Nurse Kelley (KelleyRN2) is the moderator of KosAbility’s Sunday diaries and maintains that schedule. If you’d like to sign up for an open Sunday, reply to this comment, send her a private message, or email her at KelleyRN2[at]gmail[dot]com.
Peace
CJ