Through the Looking Glass
it's so stupid how scary sex can be for the sexual abuse survivor.
you avoid it like most people avoid secondhand smoke and long grocery lines.
it's not that you hate the act itself...
it's just hard to enjoy sometimes knowing that you have no idea from one minute to the next how you're going to react.
and you can't EXPLAIN that to whoever it is you're with.
you can't just stop and say "oh hey, this just turned into a nightmare inside my head for some reason, can we call it quits for the night so i can curl up on the bathroom floor and cry?"
that's not normal.
and on top of that, there's absolutely no way you can word whatever it is you're feeling without making your sexual counterpart feel like shit.
you inadvertantly put them into the role of abuser, when all it is at the time is uncontrollable flashbacks to a scarier time in your very fragile life.
and if i were in their shoes, i would feel the same.
but i can never ever BE in their shoes.
once you've crossed over into the looking-glass world, alice, you can never come back.
you can press your face up against the cool, hard glass and stare at the people on the other side who pretend not to notice that you're separated from them forever by a clear shiny pane, but you can never travel dreamingly through that mist again, ever.
it's magic when it starts, a terrible, powerful black magic that blinds you and leads you with your hands stretched out as feelers forward into a horrible dream from which you can never return.
but of course you don't realize this at the time.
you're so confused, so very young and confused, and....IMPRESSIONABLE, that you do as you're told and don't even realize you've crossed an evil threshold until it's too late, and the monster whispers in your innocent little ear about secrets and threats and all kinds of pretty promises that your gut tells you will never come true.
"The child gives because the body can, and the mind of the abuser cannot." (maya angelou)
and they tell you it's 'our little secret'
as if that will make it all better
but when your mind is that young and undeveloped, your spirit is drawn to your mother, heart-first, with the insatiable need to share every single little-girl happening with her.
but you can't.
bad things will happen, and you cannot allow that.
so much responsibility, so much pressure on the tiny shoulder-bones...
you're a miniature version of an adult before you even understand what that means.
and you make it work, day to day, because you can't even begin to fathom the humiliation pressing down on your conscience. you assume that, because it is you who is feeling it, it must be a feeling belonging to you and you alone.
the grown-ups that muddle around you rattle on about your maturity, congratulating your family on how very precocious you are for being such a little girl, and you stare quietly, hands folded in your lap, and concentrate with all your might on erasing any last glimmer of pain from your shining eyes.
they must never find out.
by the time we reach the "adult" age of 18, we realize little by little that we're no longer under anyone's thumb of authority. we begin to grow into ourselves, and in some cases, at least in mine, we see our very first chance to behave as a child, irrational and impulsive and self-centered.
the unabused cannot grasp our immaturity at this point, exclaiming about how much better an image we portrayed at a much younger age, but they do not, and cannot understand.
our childhood was taken from us, snatched up rudely by a black leather glove in the middle of the night like a handful of gold jewlery, and all of the innocence they were able and allowed to experience is lost on us.
so we make our own sort of innocence, blending together that which is all we know, and that which we've always wanted but never experienced.
and we become like a reverse human being, everything a good person should be, but switched around, the exact mirror-image. we make bad decisions, harmful to ourselves and those around us, but we make these decisions with a blind excitement, a sort of mania built from the lego blocks of the blamelessness we've never felt we deserved to experience.
and so it is, trapped in the looking-glass world, that we have to choose each day between staring at the vacant normalcy we will never obtain, and getting lost forever in the fields of chess-boards and talking flowers that haunt our minds.
heavy stuff.
if you don't understand what i'm talking about, get on your knees and thank God, because it must have never happened to you.
namaste.
Ray
you avoid it like most people avoid secondhand smoke and long grocery lines.
it's not that you hate the act itself...
it's just hard to enjoy sometimes knowing that you have no idea from one minute to the next how you're going to react.
and you can't EXPLAIN that to whoever it is you're with.
you can't just stop and say "oh hey, this just turned into a nightmare inside my head for some reason, can we call it quits for the night so i can curl up on the bathroom floor and cry?"
that's not normal.
and on top of that, there's absolutely no way you can word whatever it is you're feeling without making your sexual counterpart feel like shit.
you inadvertantly put them into the role of abuser, when all it is at the time is uncontrollable flashbacks to a scarier time in your very fragile life.
and if i were in their shoes, i would feel the same.
but i can never ever BE in their shoes.
once you've crossed over into the looking-glass world, alice, you can never come back.
you can press your face up against the cool, hard glass and stare at the people on the other side who pretend not to notice that you're separated from them forever by a clear shiny pane, but you can never travel dreamingly through that mist again, ever.
it's magic when it starts, a terrible, powerful black magic that blinds you and leads you with your hands stretched out as feelers forward into a horrible dream from which you can never return.
but of course you don't realize this at the time.
you're so confused, so very young and confused, and....IMPRESSIONABLE, that you do as you're told and don't even realize you've crossed an evil threshold until it's too late, and the monster whispers in your innocent little ear about secrets and threats and all kinds of pretty promises that your gut tells you will never come true.
"The child gives because the body can, and the mind of the abuser cannot." (maya angelou)
and they tell you it's 'our little secret'
as if that will make it all better
but when your mind is that young and undeveloped, your spirit is drawn to your mother, heart-first, with the insatiable need to share every single little-girl happening with her.
but you can't.
bad things will happen, and you cannot allow that.
so much responsibility, so much pressure on the tiny shoulder-bones...
you're a miniature version of an adult before you even understand what that means.
and you make it work, day to day, because you can't even begin to fathom the humiliation pressing down on your conscience. you assume that, because it is you who is feeling it, it must be a feeling belonging to you and you alone.
the grown-ups that muddle around you rattle on about your maturity, congratulating your family on how very precocious you are for being such a little girl, and you stare quietly, hands folded in your lap, and concentrate with all your might on erasing any last glimmer of pain from your shining eyes.
they must never find out.
by the time we reach the "adult" age of 18, we realize little by little that we're no longer under anyone's thumb of authority. we begin to grow into ourselves, and in some cases, at least in mine, we see our very first chance to behave as a child, irrational and impulsive and self-centered.
the unabused cannot grasp our immaturity at this point, exclaiming about how much better an image we portrayed at a much younger age, but they do not, and cannot understand.
our childhood was taken from us, snatched up rudely by a black leather glove in the middle of the night like a handful of gold jewlery, and all of the innocence they were able and allowed to experience is lost on us.
so we make our own sort of innocence, blending together that which is all we know, and that which we've always wanted but never experienced.
and we become like a reverse human being, everything a good person should be, but switched around, the exact mirror-image. we make bad decisions, harmful to ourselves and those around us, but we make these decisions with a blind excitement, a sort of mania built from the lego blocks of the blamelessness we've never felt we deserved to experience.
and so it is, trapped in the looking-glass world, that we have to choose each day between staring at the vacant normalcy we will never obtain, and getting lost forever in the fields of chess-boards and talking flowers that haunt our minds.
heavy stuff.
if you don't understand what i'm talking about, get on your knees and thank God, because it must have never happened to you.
namaste.
Ray