poison in the sun turns to something else

I try to use my writing here to add things of value and beauty and hope to the world. Even when I write about pain and hardship, I attempt to do so in ways which focus on transformation and healing. I’m not sure I can do that right now, but I’m still writing in the hopes that letting the nastiness out will somehow change it.

For the longest time, I thought that my father had only molested me once. Recently, though, two more memories have surfaced. When I was seven, my father attempted to abuse me again but I stopped him by threatening to tell. When I was twelve, my father did rape me again. We were outside, raking leaves, and I asked him for a hug and he raped me.

I don’t think that words can truly describe how much pain and anger and raw hurt I am in, drowning in, torn apart by, a screeching clawing monster in my throat encased in numbness, part of me, forever? I’m scared that trauma turns my words and sentences into cliches–how many metaphors can one come up with for pain and violation? There’s some interesting trauma theory about the nature of the “unspeakable” and Arthur Frank talks about “chaos stories” which can’t be told because the nature of intense suffering is to destroy narrative. But, also, of course, we need stories to live, especially in times of suffering. If I’m worried about trauma turning my words into cliches, I know it’s turned my mind into a broken record–I keep thinking, over and over again, my father raped me when I was twelve, I don’t want to be alive, my father raped me when I was twelve, everything inside of me is broken. As if through enough repetition, the words will become part of a story that somehow makes sense.

Here’s another story: I went to a noisy, crowded social gathering last night, even though I didn’t want to, because I felt obligated. People wanted to hug me and I let them because it seemed too difficult and complicated to say no. It took me a while to realize this, but after people hugged me, my desire to die flared up and became much more intense. This is what my father’s violence has done to me, made every touch feel like rape. I don’t know how to respond to that, or to my intense world-breaking feelings, the storms inside which were hidden but have now erupted into sight. I do know that silence=death and that the only way to survive is to keep telling my story, even if it falters into cliche or fragments into chaos, I must keep speaking and striving for coherence.

Tags: Arthur Frank, chaos narrative, childhood sexual abuse, incest, perseverance, silence, stories