confessions

By the way, this post isn't safe for little eyes. If you don't want to have to explain some things to kids, don't let them read it. But I felt that I needed to post this.

Well, it's only really one confession, but there's lots of little things that tie into it. So let's go way back to last summer, about one week before I left for Catholic Heart Work Camp...

Anyone eighteen or over had to go through Protecting God's Children, which is a course to make adults in charge of children or working with children aware of the warning signs and dangers of child sexual abuse. So I got to go through this wonderfully fun course as well. Fortunately, what was supposed to be a 4-6 hour training was only 2.5 or 3 hours long...only two of us were taking the course because I needed before leaving for CHWC the next week.

Before I keep going with my story, I'd like to share some stats with you. Approximately one in six women are victims of some kind of sexual assault at some point in their lives. Fifteen percent of these victims are under the age of 12. As for the people who perform the crime, 60% are never reported to the police, and fifteen out of sixteen never spend a day in jail. And two thirds of them were known by their victims.

Some pretty bleak statistics there. Gotta love being reduced to a statistic.

Because I'm one of the fifteen percent. And one of the the one in six. And my abuser one of the fifteen.

So, how does it feel to be in that statistic? Quite frankly, it feels dirty. Something that the website doesn't mention, but that the Protecting God's Children workshop and my own experience shows, is that we take the blame on ourselves. It wasn't his fault; it was my fault. I did something to provoke it. Granted, I was only three, but I still must have done something to deserve it.

So the bad stuff that happens just feels like it's what I deserve. It feels shameful. I didn't tell anyone until CHWC. No one knew. I don't know why I didn't tell my parents soon after it happened; I don't remember a lot of the details. I tend to suppress unhappy memories - I literally have been told that I was bullied by my teacher in grade school and I cannot remember it. I can't remember most of second grade, even though first grade and even kindergarten and a lot of preschool are pretty clear in my memory. Even after the workshop brought the memories to the surface, they've been marred by the scars of time...they were buried for over fifteen years. And I don't really want to remember everything. I'd like to forget what I can remember.

According to RAINN (Rape And Incest National Network), lots of bad things come as results of sexual assault. Other than some strange fears and occasional depression, I missed out on a lot of it. Thank heavens. I was lucky. Sorta.

I still fight a prevailing lack of self-worth. I have a very hard time believing that I'm worth anything. Sometimes I feel that I'm more worthless than a plain little pebble, one of millions on a sea shore. Sometimes it's almost debilitating. How can I, a woman who had that happen to her, ever be worth loving? I'm broken, I'm useless.

You can't see it to look at me. I look happy, confident. But sometimes I'm cowering inside, wondering why on earth there's so much fuss about something as worthless as I am.

But then I fight out of it. I have life, and family and friends who love me, and so many things that make life worth living. Even if I don't deserve their love all the time, they're there for me every step of the way. Love saves me, every time. As it saved my soul.

-enna