Rising from the Shadows of Childhood Sexual Abuse: You hurt me but you didn't break me!

What he stole from me...

I thought it would be a long time before I addressed the topic of childhood sexual abuse on this blog, mainly because I hadn't felt as though I've got to a place in my own recovery journey where I was able to even talk about it, let alone write something that I would deem as constructive or helpful to others, which, I have always held to be my main motivation behind this blog.

However, over the past week, quite unexpectedly actually, I seem to have stumbled into a bit of welcomed inner strength towards my situation, perhaps even a bit of solace - something I never thought I'd find.  

From past experience, I know that these periods in which I cautiously delight in this new-found inner strength are often not lasting, though, to my comfort, they do tend to return from time to time.  

In spite of this, however temporary it may be, I have decided to try to make the most of it and realised that there may never be the 'right time' to break down my barriers to talking about this topic but for the first time I felt able, able to share somethings I hope to be of use, help or interest and I decided that for now feeling able was more than good enough for me.

It is not my intention for this post to be triggering, I won't go into any great detail about the incidents of sexual abuse that I suffered (that is a bit of a no-go zone for me anyway).  More the focus of this blog post will be the attempt to 'move on' with your life after enduring childhood sexual abuse, which is the situation that I, and sadly many others, am currently trying to navigate.

I find it very difficult to think that there are people out there who are going to be able to relate to my own experience because, like most people, I hate to think of others suffering in general, let alone facing such a cruel, harrowing and terrifying reality that to be honest no words really do justice.  However, if you can indeed relate in some way then in spite of the fact that I'm sorry that you can, I hope at least that there is something positive that you can take from what I write.  

Equally, if you are more reading this out of curiosity, wanting to understand more about how lives are affected by childhood sexual abuse, then firstly I salute you and I hope that you do gain something from it - simply taking the time to understand the issues that affect others shatters notions of taboo and breaks down barriers to providing the support and care we all need from time to time.

I use the term 'moving on' reluctantly because I don't think you can ever truly 'get over' something so traumatic, nor should you be expected to, rather through this blog post I hope to convey a sense that instead of having to find a way to 'live with' what happened, you can seek to find a way to live in spite of it.

First of all, to get it out the way and purely for the purpose of context...

My own experience consists of the reality that I was sexually abused from the age of five to seven years old and despite the fact that it is a reality that I can't escape from and am reminded of every day of my life, that really wasn't easy to write, but it's there.  My abuser was a friend of my family and the abuse occurred multiple times, at least five times and those are just the times I can remember.  There was also another incident involving my abuser's son who was around the same age as me at the time.

You might read all sorts of stories or accounts of childhood sexual abuse but as far as my own experience dictates, there is no one way that you're 'supposed' to feel when it happens to you.

And what I can say is that I feel multiple different ways about it.

Right now, I feel very detached from what I have just written - it happened to some other little girl who comes from a very far away place but not necessarily a girl who feels like me.

As I developed Dissociative Identity Disorder resulting from the trauma of the abuse, different parts of me have very different perspectives on what happened.  There are some parts of my system that are in complete denial, as far as they are concerned nothing happened and are very dismissive of any notion that it did - that denial protects them, it made it feel more possible to try and resume my 'normal life' as it was, or was expected to be, rather than facing the horror of something that I didn't understand nor wanted to understand.  Yet even for those parts, it was as though a shadow was hanging over me my whole life and that shadow was sexual abuse - I couldn't run from it, I couldn't hide from it, no matter how excruciatingly hard I tried to simply 'get on' with my life, it was always there.

Even now, every so often, I can find myself running into a bit of a false sense of security - I can feel like a functioning member of society, I get up early, I go to work, I work with children and for those hours of the day my focus is almost entirely on them, I have a smile on my face; I feel indistinguishable from any other trying to be adult going about their daily business.
My past is pushed the very far corners of my mind.

But it will only take something small - a smile, a laugh, a look, a word, a moustache (it was a pair of sunglasses the other day) and it hits me, it hits me hard, some days so hard that I struggle to see anything else - it's very all consuming.  When those parts of me who hold those memories of the abuse are thrust to the surface, not only does it hit me that it happened, it actually feels as though it could have happened yesterday or even as though it is happening or is about to happen.  Those parts of me are trapped in the abuse, it's the lens through which they see everything and it makes the world seem like a scary place - that's my motivation really to process the trauma so that they won't feel trapped in that terror forever, so I won't feel trapped.

What I do know now is that at the time, I had absolutely no idea that what I experienced was of a sexual nature, I had no concept of that all, I didn't for quite a long time after as well and perhaps that actually is what makes the act itself so damaging -
You are forced into a world that you don't understand, one that you're not meant to understand and really there's not a lot there to be understood - it's incomprehensible to anyone, let alone a child.

All I knew and remembered was the way it made me feel and that was enough to change and shape the course of my life.

It can be quite overwhelming to reflect on how childhood sexual abuse affected you - it might even fill you with a sense of helplessness to admit that it did.

The truth is though that these were all natural, valid and legitimate responses to what you went through.  There can be no shame in that response, we are not prepared or wired up to be able to deal with awful things like that happening to us, we just do what we can, be how we need to be at the time and that in itself is an achievement, no one could expect any more or less of us.

These are the ways in which childhood sexual abuse affected my life...
~ I became afraid of anything and everything I associated with the abuse (this was a post traumatic response) - these fears included fear of going to sleep which lead to chronic insomnia, fear of lying down, fear of moustaches, alcohol, men laughing, men in general, summer barbeques, certain times of year and certain times of day, large family social occasions, bathing, showering, going to the doctors; it made me struggle with physical touch from others (even now I struggle to hug people or even shake hands) and it made me struggle to trust other people.
~ I developed OCD rituals that I saw as protecting me from future abuse - I had rituals around the positioning and checking of doors, I lined cuddly toys up around my bed in a certain order and I had to say goodnight to each one in a particular order or I thought something bad would happen to me or my family (and that's just to list a few!).
~ I carried a lot of unrealistic guilt and over responsibility towards others - the main thing I blamed myself for was the fact that my younger brother saw one of the incidents of abuse and ever since, I held myself overly responsible for him - if anything negative happened in his life I held myself personally responsible.  I'm pleased to say that I no longer feel like this but for years it felt like I had a lot of baggage weighing me down.
~ I developed an eating disorder.  I have previously written about the reasons why I think I developed anorexia but in short, when I was being abused, it gave me the sensation of fullness and so I became afraid of feeling full again.  The abuse also dramatically changed the way in which I perceived myself and my body - I sort of wanted to disappear and so I restricted my food intake significantly as I saw there being less of me as the next closest thing.  It often upsets me that I developed an eating disorder at such a young age (7) as I hate to think of a child worrying about so many things that they really shouldn't have had to - I guess I wish I had the classic carefree childhood that everybody hankers after.
~ I was already quite a socially anxious child prior to the abuse and suffered from selective mutism but the abuse made me withdraw inside myself even more.
I became very conscious about standing out, drawing attention to myself and being 'looked at'  or 'watched' by others, I felt like if people didn't notice I was there then I wouldn't be abused.
~ I suppose all this culminated in the reality that by the time I reached adulthood I was suffering from a number of complex mental health conditions, most notably CPTSD, BPD and DID.  Feeling unable to cope with my symptoms, I became severely depressed and suicidal, ended up in crisis and had a short spell in inpatient care.
It is difficult for me to weigh up the extent to which the abuse directly lead to my later crisis but without a doubt, being sexually abused as a child changed the course of my life significantly - far beyond anything I envisioned for myself at that young age.
 (I either wanted to be a ballet dancer or a gladiator!)

Listing it all like this, it can make me feel that the abuse stole a lot from me and in truth it did.  It basically stole my childhood and took many other things along with it.
It's incredibly important with a view to recover that you try to fully acknowledge what you lost and almost allow yourself to grieve the childhood that you wanted but couldn't have.  Sometimes it's just about allowing yourself to feel what you need to feel - whether that's sadness, anger or relief that that is not your life now.  There is nothing wrong with feeling and expressing emotions, it's actually very healthy and I've learnt that the emotions aren't the problem - it's what you choose to do with them.
At the same time though I've come to realise that there are some things in life that the person who abused you can't steal from you - I hope to expand on this later...

It was bad enough.
By this I mean, it doesn't matter how many times the abuse happened, the act itself was bad enough and whatever suffering you endured as a result is valid and legitimate.  If it happened once, then that alone inevitably will have such a huge impact on the victim and has the capacity to change the course of their life significantly.
Every survivor of childhood sexual abuse has their own story and I don't like to think of one story being regarded as 'worse' than another - isn't it bad enough as it is?
I often think about just how scary it is that one fleeting moment in your life, one cross of a boundary, one break in trust can have such significant, near catastrophic consequences.
And we might tell ourselves that it was only once or twice, it could have been worse, I asked for it, it wasn't really abuse, but these are just things we try to tell ourselves in a desperate effort to cope with what happened.  The truth is, abuse is abuse, it doesn't matter how it happened, it doesn't change the fact that it's abuse and nobody would ask for that, let alone a child.
As with any experience, traumatic or otherwise, we all experience them in our own unique way.  I have listed a few points about how childhood sexual abuse affected me personally - there may be some similarities to other survivors but ultimately, we have our own personal stories and it is important that others respect that.

No one is truly broken.
Though I think we can all feel a bit broken from time to time, I certainly have felt very broken - broken into a thousand pieces in fact, pieces that couldn't find their way back together again.  And I think it's alright to feel broken, it's perfectly understandable!  No one has set out a rule book on how you are meant to feel after being sexually abused, how you are meant to go on and live in a world of which all your trust and positive illusions were shattered.  I suppose the point is that these vile things aren't meant to happen, we aren't designed to cope with something that should never happen.
Yet despite the fact that we might all feel a little broken, I don't think it's possible to truly break a person and this little quote helped me to realise that...

However broken a person may feel, there is still just as much potential.
They may have been hurt and I'm not trying to lessen or make light of that hurt but they also survived and there is great strength to be found in that, even if we don't always recognise it - we all feel weak from time to time and that's okay.
As I touched upon earlier, I've also realised that although my abuser may have taken a lot from me, there are some things that he will never be able to take away from me.
He will never be able to take away the fact that I survived, that I'm still here, living.
Life may not have been plain sailing but I've achieved quite a fair amount of things I'm proud of but sometimes it's the smaller things that make me recognise it - every time I smile, laugh, those moments where I'm outside with the sun shining and feel happy to be there, every time that I'm reminded that there are some good people in this world, not everyone will hurt me and there are some people that I trust - these are all things that my abuser can't take away from me.
I don't feel as though I have to do all this to prove to him that he didn't destroy me - he doesn't deserve that and besides that puts the power back with them - you have to reclaim your life - it's yours and no one else's.
You don't owe anything to the person who hurt you for they are not worthy of that.
You owe it to yourself, you owe it to the part of you who survived.
Childhood sexual abuse may have stolen a lot from me but I owe it to myself not to let it steal my future.
And so one day I would like to be able to say to my abuser 'You hurt me but you didn't break me'.
I'm not there yet but sometimes it does feel possible that I will reach that place and that gives me hope and I hope it will give others hope too... (lots of hope :)

Having the support of others is a bonus but if you don't have it, don't let it hold you back on your journey
By this I'm sort of referring to disclosure.
In recent years, when I've mentioned to the odd trusted person that I did suffer some sexual abuse as a child, most will assume that I spoke up, told someone at the time and that the person who violated me is safely locked behind bars.  They're usually quite surprised or even confused when I tell them that neither were true.  I fear I'm repeating myself but each individual has their own story, there should be no stereotypical 'childhood sexual abuse story' and although assumptions can be easy to draw, they shouldn't be made in these cases.
The truth is, I never told anyone about it until I was 22 - over 17 years after the abuse began and even then not in any great detail.  Perhaps though the hardest thing in all of that was admitting it to myself.

There were lots of factors that meant that I didn't disclose the abuse at the time...
~ I suffered from selective mutism and didn't speak particularly well or clearly about anything even to the people I was closest to
~ I didn't really have the vocabularly to explain what happened to me
~ Within the culture I was brought up in, it was considered taboo to talk about anything related to sex and associated parts of the body
~ This probably sounds really sad but it didn't really occur to me at the time that if I had a problem I was able to go to a trusted adult and should tell them about it
~ In a way I didn't actually feel I had a trusted adult who I could turn to in the way I needed - it might sound harsh but both my parents sort of had their own problems to deal with, they weren't very emotionally available to me.  My dad was an alcoholic, I was terrified of him and he was barely around.  My mum who I adored and cared for me was very unwell herself - if I ever went to her when I was hurt or upset she would just get upset herself and say she couldn't cope so I learnt not to.
My mum was severely depressed and as a young child I sort of learnt to understand that as meaning that I had to avoid putting stress on her as it could send her over the edge and then she could leave us for good (she came close to taking her life a number of times but that's how I understood it at the time).  It was for this reason that I continued to go most of my life without telling my mum - I thought she wouldn't be able to cope with it or would blame herself, though I never once blamed her!
~ I became very cut off and disconnected from what happened to me - this was the result of a dissociative split in my identity occurring around the time of the abuse.  Throughout my teenage years, the dominant part of my identity had absolutely no notion that I had been abused, I was in complete denial and basically worked myself to the ground, scheduling in activities for every hour of the day so I wouldn't ever have a moment to think about what 'might' have gone on in the past.

So the years past and my silence continued until it could no longer.

It certainly wasn't easy to harbour that dark secret everyday for all those years - it weighted me down and made me feel so different and distant from the people around me.  I would always like to think that every child out there would have someone to turn to if something traumatic happened to them - I think I've even strived to be that trusted adult that others could turn to.  However, it would appear that sadly, for whatever reason, some children don't tell, or worse, feel they can't tell.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who stayed quiet for so many years...
Needless to say, I did obviously eventually tell somebody.

There came a distinctive point in my life where I could no longer ignore those fragments of memory, the flashbacks, the odd fears and sensations...
At 21 I started my job as a learning support assistant and I worked with some children who had suffered sexual abuse.  Having done all the relevant training and knowing full well this could be an element of my role, in my familiar, complete denial I didn't forsee this as being a problem at all - it would be no more difficult for me than it would be for anyone else.  However, the moment I saw one of those children, I can't fully explain it, but it hit me.  My past was there staring me in the face, I couldn't run from it anymore, I couldn't ignore it, it was there and I just crumbled.
All my symptoms flew out of control, I came to the conclusion that I needed to seek help for my mental health and when turning to professionals for that help for the first time I added in that little, heart wrenching comment that I have some memories of being sexually abused as a child.  That's how it stayed for a good while - just that little thing I knew I should say but didn't want to and it would just cause a silence where nobody would find the right thing to say.  Once my own silence was finally broken though I figured that if I had managed to tell one (thoroughly unhelpful person), I might be able to tell someone I at least knew and kind of trusted.  So I told a couple of close friends, it was awkward to find the words, it must have been even more awkward for them to find what to say in response but as with good friends, their real power was in the strength of them simply being there.
One of my friends persuaded me that I should really tell my mum about it - I put up my various protests as to why I couldn't do this but what she said has always stuck with me...

There will never be the right time but whatever happens, it can't be anywhere near as bad as you carrying this alone for all these years.

(Thank God for amazing friends like her!)

I knew she was so right and I was persuaded.
I decided to write a letter to my mum - I didn't tell her everything (I still haven't) but I told her more than I thought I would - I told her of one incident of abuse that had occurred.  I figured that a letter was the best way I could put across what I wanted to say, explain that I didn't want her to blame herself and speaking has never been my strength at the best of times.
I guess disclosure can come in a variety of forms - there is no one right way, it's about finding the right way for you to put across what you need to say.
Then came our one and only conversation about it...
Following my letter, she sort of trapped me in our home office, asked me a number of difficult questions through tears and then came the clincher - "Are you sure it wasn't just a bad dream?!!!!"
That was it!  It didn't matter what she said after that, as far as I was concerned, she didn't believe me and that's all I needed to know.  I kept my cool (as always) as we finished our conversation but I had already made my mind up there and then that it was the first and last time I was ever going to speak to her about it.
I came away on the one hand thinking - it could have gone a lot worse and I had gone in knowing that in those situations it is very difficult for people to know the right thing to say, but on the other hand it really could have gone a lot better!  And that's definitely true!
I was kind of thinking sarcastically to myself - Well, that was absolutely great!  After all those years of worrying about how she would take it, bottling it up, carrying it alone, I finally tell her and she says that...
She never mentioned it again.  Neither of us have and I've come to the conclusion that for now that's alright.  It may sound strange but for me, telling my mum about the abuse I suffered doesn't feel like a priority right now and I've decided that's a good thing - sorting out how I feel about what happened to me comes first.

My reason for sharing this long tirade is that I want to put it out there that disclosure isn't always what you think it's going to be.
I think in order to almost protect yourself, when you are considering having that conversation and disclosing that you were sexually abused, it helps to consider beforehand what kind of reaction would be helpful to you but also how others may react and what you will do to look after yourself if they don't respond in the way you'd want them to - it was you it happened to and you are the most important person in all of this.
It can be such a great asset to have people in your life who you can turn to for support in the most difficult of times and I am very grateful for the fact that I have some close friends who are always so supportive towards me but I often feel that there are limits to how much I can share with them.  I'm very conscious that it must be incredibly difficult to hear such traumatic details and I guess I fall into the trap that many others probably do where I become very worried about traumatising others, which is the last thing I'd ever want to do.  In these instances, I think this is where it can be best to talk to a professional who is trained to deal with these kind of things.  Of course, even with a professional, it takes time to find the right person and to build enough trust to share but when you do, the support is invaluable.
What I also want to get across is that it is great if you do have people around you within your circle of family and friends who you can turn to at the most difficult times in your life but sometimes you don't, or the person who you would have expected to be supportive towards you isn't, and if that's the case, don't let it hold you back - it's your life, your recovery and you're the most important person in all of this.
I suppose we're all told that the first person we should be able to turn to no matter what problem we come across in life, should be our parents, or most often - our mums.  However, experience has taught me that this isn't always the case.  Don't get me wrong, I love my mum and in many ways she has always been very caring and supportive and it would be wonderful if she could support me through this but for now at least, that support is not there and I've accepted that.
Childhood sexual abuse isn't something you should ever feel as though you have to face alone and having the support of others is incredibly valuable but at the same time, don't underestimate the strength and support you can find within yourself.  My psychologist once suggested to me that perhaps I need to focus on providing the child part of me who was abused with the response that she needed and maybe I could almost become the trusted, supportive adult that she missed out on - that was probably the most helpful suggestion anyone has ever made to me but that's not to say it's easy.  If you take the plunge and disclose to someone that you were sexually abused and you don't receive the response you wanted or a response that is helpful or validating, perhaps the most you can do for yourself is to think about what kind of response would have been better and try to provide it for yourself.  Coming from a background in which at times you felt trapped, helpless and powerless, it can be incredibly empowering to find and recognise some strength within yourself that can carry you when others can't.

It really wasn't your fault!
It doesn't seem to matter how many times other people tell you this, it just doesn't seem to sink in so it may be something you've got to come to realise for yourself.
It's often a long road, made more complicated by the fact that as the abused, we often conditioned to think that it was and carry the shame and guilt that comes with that self blame.  That self blame may be there because our abuser told us that it was our fault in some twisted, disgusting way, or as I found, sometimes blaming ourselves can give us the illusion of taking back some of the power we lost - if we blame ourselves it can make us feel as though we can do something about it, it can excuse what happened a bit, make it seem less bad when in actual fact sexual abuse of any kind is inexcusable.
I've reached a place now where (most of the time) I am able to recognise that what happened to me was not my fault.  A number of factors may have made me a more vulnerable child but that makes what my abuser did all the more wrong!  There is no clear route I can identify that got me to this stance, though I know a lot of it came from processing some of my memories of abuse so I would definitely really recommend therapy!  However, what I would say that when you have memories of childhood sexual abuse, it is very easy to bypass the fact that you were indeed a child at the time.  Often at that stage of your development when the abuse happened, you naturally held yourself to be very central in the way your perceived the world around you - if I do this, this will happen, so if something particularly bad happens then by instinct you will think about what you may have done to cause it - making it easy or even automatic to place blame on yourself.
Bearing this in mind, I found as an adult, it helped me to think about if, heaven forbid, what happened to me happened to another child, would I blame them?  And of course the answer is NO.  A child can't consent to something they don't even understand.
It was awful enough that you lived through that horrific experience, you owe it to yourself not to go on blaming yourself every day for something that wasn't your fault and that you had no control over.

They say revenge is sweet, I say simply living your life is sweeter!
Although I can understand why others may have thoughts of revenge towards the person who abused them, this is not something that I personally have ever experienced myself.  I am probably a bit too passive but the truth is, I don't actually think about my abuser very much at all, more my focus is on what he did to me and how it affected me.  There are probably several reasons for this...
1. I'm very afraid of him so don't like to think about him - a bit of avoidance!
2. There's probably a bit of out of sight out of mind at play - in the past, I did see my abuser a number of times after the abuse had taken place but not for several years now.  He lives in a distant area to me - not really distant but far enough away that there is very little chance I would ever bump into him.  Nonetheless I can still be badly triggered when I see someone who looks like him.
3. Perhaps I fear that thinking about my abuser gives him power and control over my life.  I try my best to keep my focus on myself, my life and my recovery.
This does in no way lessen or excuse my abuser's actions, they were inexcusable and intrinsically wrong on so many levels.  I think it's important to note that revenge and justice are two different things.  I am very much for justice, though I think it would be very difficult to find a prison sentence that is fully proportionate to the long term suffering that childhood sexual abuse inflicts upon its victims.  I think more I am for the protection of society and indeed children from such individuals, also with a view to prevent re-offending.
As I've already alluded to, I have never reported the abuse I suffered to the police and incidentally have never been to court and yes that bothers me, in fact it bothers me a lot!  It bothers me most when I come across other child sex abuse cases in the news - sometimes I actually almost blame myself and hold myself in some way responsible because in my view, if I had reported the abuse I suffered then there might be one less individual out there causing harm to young people.  I do recognise and accept my own reasons as to why this has not happened in my case but at the same time, I would like to be able to feel as though I have done everything in my power to prevent what happened to me happening to other children, even if it was just one, as no child should have to suffer that fate.  And so in short, I am strongly considering going to the police in the future, with the (very small) possibility that it might be taken to court but if you are thinking about going down this route, there are some things you should consider.
For some people, I've heard that going through the legal process, brings them a sense of closure.
However, if you were to receive the outcome you didn't want ie. not guilty - it could feel very invalidating.  It may be true that 'not guilty' does not imply 'innocent' but rather a lack of evidence, yet I can understand that it definitely wouldn't always feel that way.  The advice I've been given is that really you have to be in a strong enough place in your own recovery that you could accept either outcome.  I know full well that all I have is my word and pretty much zero in terms of evidence!  The chances are, my case would never be taken to court but my hope would be more that reporting what happened to me may cause others to come forwards and at least I would feel that I had done all I could at this point.  As much as it does cause a bit of a conflict for me, at the moment I know that I am not at a place in my own personal recovery to be able to cope with that process.
As with anything in this case, I think you have to weigh up whether taking a certain course of actions would aid or hinder your recovery - you have to think about what you would have to gain because ultimately you are the one who lived through it and so the focus should always be on your needs and concerns.

I truly hope that some of what I've shared has been helpful to you in some way and wasn't too much of a ramble!
I am not going to use the cliché and say that there is light at the end of the tunnel for survivors of childhood sexual abuse.  If there is then I certainly haven't found it yet!
Rather I like to think that if you harness that inner strength that comes from being a survivor, you can find and glow in that bit of light that has always been there - the light that's still there in spite of what happened, representing your life and your future - it's there in spite of what happened.

Love and Strength,
The One Day Seeker