I’m used to being told to shut up. For whatever reason I thought that standing up and stepping into “self employment” I would somehow be free from this phenomenon. It just grows.
⚠️Content Warning ⚠️ Suicidal Ideation, Inappropriate Sexual Behavior, Topics of Incest
I have tried to be honest and vulnerable in hopes that in doing so I can let others know they are not alone. This does indeed usually help me since I am the very last person to whom I readily offer compassion and kindness and support. When I read a story like my own or one close enough to see little Sabi scared and alone in my memories I soften my grip around her throat. Let her speak, I say, let her shine and glow and thrive. If not for other brave souls who display their scars boldly I would never let little me off the hook.
I’m sorry to be so graphic but I have no other way to express the fact that I don’t feel I deserve to exist. A few days ago I tried to be open and honest for myself, trying to fuel a feeling that my voice matters and that my life deserves to be nurtured and loved and that I deserve support. Immediately I was told in different words “get over it.” A big long winded comment to tell me to shut up and stop talking about it.
I already want to shut up about everything every day. I already carry a deep wish in my bones to cease my existence on this plain. I don’t know why I am even writing this at the moment. Yet here I am with an undercurrent thrusting me deep into the chaos and the waters that drown me everyday.
If I slip away in the shadows no one will notice.
I’m not encouraging. I’m not wise. I’m not strong nor experienced. I am “young” thanks for the reminder you’re so kind. Put me in my place right where I belong, surrounded by shit and left behind. Why did you bother to even read my stupid little post? I’m just a dumb kid. What do I have to offer anyone? Just trash…
Disappear, you dumbass, leave everyone to be happy and away from your shit. Just die… Leave them alone… Stop trying to “give” anyone anything. You’re still broken and you will never be whole. You’re worthless, pathetic, weak and pitiful. A useless beggar trying to fool everyone into letting you steal their money. You bitch.
As I navigate healing from trauma I’m constantly trying to self soothe between therapy sessions and keep going. I’m trying to do what’s best for me and those I love dearly. The more I see others helping so many people the more I tell myself I can’t help anyone. My art is sad and raw and stuck in a pit of despair. I want to give up. Maybe I should. Why hope to have anyone commit to monthly support? Even voicing this pain makes me feel twisted and evil. Why should I hope that anyone finds value in my dreams? They’re slipping away from me buried under my chronic pain and my fragile mental health. I don’t feel I deserve to be alive. I am indeed hiding. I have been outside myself too much to even tell my therapist. I am disabled but refuse to give myself grace or understanding.
When will it end? When will I stop crawling in my skin because someone genuinely cares about me? It just makes me scared. It makes me wonder if they will think I am worth it next time. It makes little Sabi desperate to prove like a performing monkey that their hard earned money wasn’t thrown away to the trash. It makes little Sabi desperate to try and disappear and hide ready to be punished for asking for help, ready to be punished for being weak and sickly and helpless and useless. I keep bracing myself to see my mother and my bunny get punished and hurt because I am in their life and “they deserve better.”
The pain and self hatred hasn’t stopped since I had that conversation with that stupid women from HR of my ex employer. It was probably already lingering since my friend asked her community to support me. It feels stupid that I feel so alone when one person took everything she had to lobby for me to keep a roof over my head along side my other friends. I feel like a big fat fraud.
The few times my father was kind to me were all laced with poison. If it was a “compliment” it was always tied back to how great he was. If it was time spent with me and we supposedly had a great time at some point later it was revealed as a lie. It’s hard to trust.
The one time I let a man get close to me emotionally it was all a game. I just found out on Wednesday night that he is now dead. I knew since October 2019 that he had cancer and that was the beginning of me freeing myself from his grip. I don’t trust men. Since childhood I was either looked at as if I were a meal to be devoured or completely ignored and I might as well be dead. For whatever reason this man felt safer because he was married and perhaps like a fool or because I was naïve or innocent I thought I could have a friend, a new brother and probably replace my father.
My brother had always been the “safe” man in my life since childhood. He didn’t hit Mom, he didn’t scream at me. He did call me stupid and gang up on me along side my father when Mom wasn’t around but I thought that was my fault. He was a kind and supportive brother supposedly, that’s why I trusted him with my stories and thought he would teach me about writing and all the things he knew about books. You see I was told by my father that I don’t know how to read, but my brother was an avid reader like my mother, so it seemed he had access to a strength that was way out of reach for “stupid little Sabi.”
I haven’t even breached this in therapy, though maybe I hinted at it. I am not even sure what to make of it. Maybe part of me always knew my brother was only half safe and eventually not safe at all. I didn’t understand why he shut me out. It confused me deeply. My body knew something was off, my body still knows something was off.
At some point Mom was forced to work nights, Dad was out we assumed “working” too but later I connected the dots and knew he was drinking somewhere. It left teenage Bro and preteen me alone at night with Dad’s stolen cable and TV that was far too sexual for any child. It seemed off but I had no adult present to tell me it wasn’t healthy or normal for my brother to watch those things and muchless with me there. I was just drawing and working on homework etc.
We were two kids watching R rated content alone; which my parents often took us to R rated movies but the bloody action kind not the soft core porn kind. I was often scared of looking at the screen but heard everything. I still cringe hearing the words “silk stalkings” or even “red shoe diaries.” I was in a freeze response that I still know to this day as I was too scared to walk away and go to my room. Honestly, my home also had a strange ghostly presence that seemed to follow me at night so I was scared to go to bed alone too, I always waited for my brother the “protector” to escort me to bed.
For years I have said to myself “nothing happened” I knew something was weird. I’ve always been slow to sense sexual tension or assumed that it was something I never experienced unless it was blatantly obvious like the old me that would stare at me when I was 12 years old and I could tell they wanted me in a way no man should want a child. It never dawned on me that my own father might have been struggling with such things when he looked at me. I still don’t know what to make of anything. My brother and I used to pretend to be characters from our favorite shows and video games. Ninja Turtles and Final Fantasy 6. When we role played as final fantasy characters my brother would escalate the stories to be sexual and I want to be clear the role playing was always just voice acting but nonetheless these moments haunt me because I have no idea if it was okay.
Now you might be wondering why this is all being addressed right now. Why am I thinking about this, why am I writing about this? I never knew that these moments that seemed innocent and for a long time like a normal stage of sexuality when two kids are left alone and neglected. I also had no clue that it left me wide open to be groomed by a married man well into my adulthood.
As I mentioned earlier, there was one man who I trusted to get close to me emotionally. As I also mentioned I felt like he would replace my brother and father and I thought he was safe like they were safe to not care for me only because of my body. I felt the curse of having breasts and a vagina was not the case for once in my life. He did in fact replace them but the lines of what was okay and not okay had been blurred long before I met “That Asshole Michael” as my friends and I call him. So what was a friend to me was a narcissistic man slowly getting into my head, knowing all my weaknesses, playing me like a fiddle as he told me his wife emotionally neglected him and that’s why he had an online gf (another reason why I thought he was safe, if it wasn’t clear to me as a default that I am undesirable in my mind a taken man would never see me that way and he had two women even more “safe” I felt). I also felt bad for him. He seemed lonely and misunderstood, he seemed hurt and abused and that landed him his toxic and disfunctional life. I have told this story before… Eight months into the “friendship” he coerced me into having cyber sex with him. I felt I was in love, I felt I ruined the friendship as I often feel when I end up being attracted to a friend. I’m demisexual so it happens. He used this guilt and shame to his advantage, I was the prefect source for his narcissistic needs. I was states away, we only interacted online, I was being retraumatized. To this day I’m sure that his plans for the time we met in person were to fuck me and dump me. He still called me a friend up until then. I still thought we were friends who were struggling to set boundaries to not hurt the people he claimed to love. We had dinner and after I had my first kiss that I will always regret. We didn’t get past making out. I didn’t really feel safe and thankfully I was on my period and that also held me back.
It was towards the beginning of that 4 year situationship that I last saw my father and it was the first time I saw my father was even more of a monster than I ever imagined. On my brother’s wedding rehearsal day I met my father in person for the first time in I want to say at least a decade. The time before then was when I met my half sister who he treated better than he ever treated me, at least that’s how it seems.
I didn’t have a way to reach my father unless we talked on Facebook or if he called me on the phone. I had no job, no money and certainly couldn’t pay for a long distance phone call. His phone was registered in Cayman Islands where I was born. He had moved there after his second marriage ended and he was on his third.
We met up at the wedding rehearsal a few days after he called me to tell me he was going to be here in the states. I wasn’t super thrilled to see him, though little Sabi was desperate for Daddy to truly love her. It was the first time my mother had seen him in many, many years and I was scared about him hurting her again. She evaded him as she was with my brother practicing the walk down the isle. So I was caught off guard when he came up from behind to hug me and he started sliding his hand down the small of my back. I’ll add that I am a virgin and this was a month before I had ever been touched sexually by anyone in my life but I knew this wasn’t a warm loving touch a father gives his child. This felt predatory, this felt like a man that wanted my body. It scared me to the bones and I think my body already knew something that my conscious mind wasn’t prepared to take in at all.
I didn’t know what to do or say. I stepped away immediately diverted his attention to the rehearsal as he just smiled proudly at the thought of his golden child (my brother) getting married. Moments after Mom ignored hin as he called out to her and I could see his discomfort with not being the center of attention and he tried ti cater to my compassion telling me about his incontinence issues as I I was meant to care for him and know.
Later I told my mom about the way he grabbed me she was so shocked she didn’t seem to believe me. She didn’t think the man who fathered her children was that wicked though he had emotionally, physically and sexually abused her she thought he would never cross that line with me, his own daughter. Once it sunk in she was horrified and I was even more scared that she would physically confront him and end up in jail or dead. We told a man who I knew from church who was the man that was going to conduct the ceremony for my brother. He told me to stay away from my dad and that he would look out for me. I don’t know if I told my brother myself I was scared to “ruin his wedding.” I know he found out eventually and I stupidly thought he would finally stop “playing the fence” with being kind to Dad.
When my father passed away two years or so later I found out my brother still didn’t face reality and he still acted like my father was a big hero who loved his family telling me “you know Dad he’s stubborn.” No, I don’t know Dad, Bro, and he died never knowing me. Now that I find out my second abuser has died all of this is playing out in my head after reading a few more chapters from an amazing book (yes still getting through Believing Me).
I sit here and think still, my story isn’t like Dr. Clayton’s. My story can’t help anyone. After seeing a post by Dr. Patrick Teahan a few hours ago it all hit me like a bus. Most of my childhood is a haze. The everyday life I lived was one where I could be erased and seemingly “nothing would change.” Mom was the only one who ever saw me. She now is slowly forgetting who I am and it hurts more than anything. I ask myself will I die alone? Does it matter if I do? Do I even care about having a partner aside from life being easier to manage with my broken and traumatized body and mind.
I was an invisible child. Being seen and heard scares the shit out of me. I was the scapegoat who caused severe pain and hurt to the one person who loved me if I was ever seen or heard. This isn’t something I can just “let go.” Healing takes time. I am writing this against every fiber of my being right now. I am leaning into what I want to say to little Sabi and I want her to believe as much as I want you to know and believe in the depths of your heart and spirit.
You are enough. You are worthy of love and kindness. You should have support. You have so much to offer this world. You are a mighty and bold and brave human whose voice and light is needed. Thank you for reading and I’m sorry this is so raw.
I wish you love and peace always 💚🐇