It’s a cruel irony of child abuse, from the admittedly small sample size I’ve seen, that most memories of actual abuse are erased completely from the mind. Because, in my case, now my already faulty memory has reason to be doubted just that much more, because there are only three moments I remember where there was actual sexual abuse. There’s a chance I’ll never know if that was the extent of it or not; my gut instinct tells me there’s more that I’ve blocked out, but at this moment, I can only make peace with what’s there. It’s been there for 13 years now, so I might as well resolve what I can.
There’s a well-regarded Golden Girls episode that actually captures the feeling of violation really well, the first season episode “Break In,” where the ladies return from a night to find their house vandalized, with no clue as to who was there. The episode focuses on Rose’s growing paranoia that comes from not knowing who came into the house, what they wanted, and if they’re planning on coming back. Eventually, she breaks and almost shoots one of Blanche’s dates and attacks a man trying to help her. Of course, the sitcom plays some of it for laughs, but this kind of response is exactly what’s been happening to me since being abused. I have no idea who, aside from Michael N., was involved, what he did, or how often it happened; all I know is that I’ve been living in a burglarized house since the first night he took advantage of me.
I was 11.
That night, Michael N., Julian, and I had come back to my house to play games. It was September, and the evening had cooled down outside faster than the days before. We sat down in my bedroom, tucked away in the far corner of the room, furthest from the door, behind the bed. They suggested we play Truth or Dare. A brief glimpse of the memory from 3rd grade resurfaced, when I had to kiss my friend, and I hesitated for a minute. But the Nick from that memory told me to continue, because now I really am the cool older kid.
Everything was pretty tame, until about the third or fourth dare I did. Michael N. asked me to take off my pants. I did it. Then he told me to take off my underwear. I pulled them off and sat down with a shirt on but my penis exposed. We kept playing the game for a little while, until Michael N. reached over and told me that he could show me how to make it feel good. He touched me and fondled me. Told me that it should feel good, and that he did this all the time. I didn’t know how to react. Then, they dared me to take off my shirt and pretend I was a stripper. I did that, and they laughed as my scared, pale, prepubescent body wriggled out of a t-shirt.
Then, a knock. My mom are into the room, but not before I darted back to the closest and shut the door and crouched down, naked still, holding my clothes next to me in a messy pile.
They lied. They lied to my kind, sweet, mother, and told her that we were just playing a little game, and that they dared me to hide in the closet. She’d asked me where I was, and I responded accordingly. “Yeah, om, we’re just playing a game! No reason to worry.”
She left, and told us to be ready for dinner later on.
I came out of the closet - a foreshadowing for something that would make a passage of pride rather than shame, one day. But that night, I went back out to face my two “friends,” who had these smirks on their face that they’d just gotten away with something. And they did. And they also knew that I would never do anything about it.
My memory stops there.
That night, Michael N. stayed over, and we both went to sleep in separate rooms. The next morning, I woke up first, and went and found my parents in the living room, watching HGTV like they always did. At the top of the hour, a new show started up: Designing with the Sexes.
Immediately, I shifted in my little body. I was disgusted, and I wasn’t quite sure why. My parents noticed, and asked me what was wrong. I said nothing. They asked me if the word “sex” made me uncomfortable, and I said “no,” but my body language snitched on me. By that point, I was shaking a little, and curled up in a seated upright fetal position on the floor. They changed the channel and we didn’t talk about it anymore.
After that, I draw blanks. Not just for that weekend, but the entirety of my life in seventh grade. No fights, no successes, no stories to tell. Just fragments of things that feel like a fable, passed down to me by someone else, even though I was there. It’s so weird to look back on your life and see it as impression marks on a paper, like where you erase something written in pencil and the indentions in the paper stay behind. I can make out little things here and there, but otherwise, I’m hopelessly lost.