Well, that fear is back again. It’s the fear I was experiencing months ago, resurfacing to remind me that I am not free of it. The continued headlines where these men in Hollywood, and in our political landscape, have been found sexually assaulting, molesting, and abusing others, from children to adults, has been a repeated one-two punch on my nervous system.
Each new headline makes me think back to when I was a child, and to when I was a teen, to when I was a young adult. Those instances where I was touched without permission, or made to do things I didn’t understand, they keep screaming in my face, and running the icy tendrils of fear up my spine. I have combated these fears every way I know how, by fighting back in the ways I could, in ways I felt I could make things better for everyone else who was molested, assaulted, or abused, but I found, over time, it wasn’t just pockets, but that the system was rife with it, from friends, to family, to the supposed authorities and everyone in between. It has all converged on my already overloaded brain, and is beating me into submission.
I honestly do not know how much more I can take. No, I never received therapy or treatment for any of these incidents that occurred, where I was taken advantage of in one form or another. Only a few people know about one of them, and aside from the vague statement I gave earlier in this post, no one knows anything about the others.
You know, my poor mother had things like that happen to her as a child, and as a teen, and as an adult. I don’t know how she deals with it. I haven’t told her a single incident of what I’ve seen in the news, because she hasn’t had therapy for it, either. Those in her family who knew essentially told her to be quiet and not make waves.
When I was a child, I did the same. I was silent, I did not make waves. Now there is this blowback, this feeling that I have to carry these burdens alone, and while I know some would tell me I don’t have to, I must say that even when there are people there to share in my pain, I still carry these burdens, and will do so the rest of my life. No matter what I do to try and make these feelings go away, they refuse to leave. I have tried to combat what happened to me directly, but found after a time I simply couldn’t take it, because each time I tried to do so, it left another black mark on my soul, and though there was a small victory in striking back, the damage it did to me was ten-fold.
My mind is whirling chaos these days. On the outside, I look calm and collected. You might even catch me smiling, but it masks a horror I wish would go away forever. Sometimes I consider making it go away forever, but I hold those thoughts down, sometimes forcefully, because I know that the end result of that action is just the end, and while I wish to never experience these feelings, these memories again, I do not wish to lose the people I love and care about here on this earth.
Still, each day becomes more and more difficult to tolerate. I know my mother must be made of sterner stuff, though I do know stress caused her multiple strokes. Maybe she’s just better at hiding it than I am, maybe she feels she has no one else to talk to but me, and like how I try to help her, I wish I could do more. I just want this pain to go away, and each day, each new headline, each new reminder of what I experienced, and what I have seen, just eats away at my mind. I do not know what to do. Therapy for such issues in the United States is woefully inadequate, horribly misconstrued and misunderstood by the public, and the so-called justice system is more likely to harm you than help you, which makes me feel there is nowhere to turn. No salve for my soul, no remedy for my heart and mind, which just wants to love, be loved, and be free of these awful memories.
So for now, the fear has returned, and I cannot get it to leave. If only there were a god to pull me through, but then if there were, they could have kept it all from happening in the first place.