My Story

I have debated about this post for a while. Written many versions of it, fought with myself whether or not to post it. After all, the whole point of posting something online is so other people can see it. But do you want to see this? It is something I certainly want to share, and not for selfish reasons. I want to share this to bring attention to it; to make people aware stuff like this happens closer to home than you might think. So in my opinion, it is important you see this. Not so you feel sorry for me, not so you can give me sympathy. But for the plain reason of knowing this shit actually happens. It could have happened to your best friend and you didn’t even know. Only a handful of my friends know this about me because, when is the right time to tell someone something like this? You can’t just drop it on them in the middle of an average day. You can’t ruin an amazing night out; it’s better to carry on having fun than to cry to your friends about something which they might not understand. Truth is, there is never a right time. And I want people to know. And like I said, the reason I want people to know is so they realise this happens. This shit happens.

So I’m guessing by now you are wondering what the hell I’m talking about. There is no right or wrong way of saying it, and I admit typing it is easier than saying it out loud. When I was six years old, I was molested by my ‘grandad’. I hate that word, molested. It sounds so violent and harsh and disgusting, but I suppose that’s the feeling we get because of the meaning of the word. Yes, I was a victim of abuse when I was too young to even know what was going on. What I will not do is go into details as to what exactly happened, I already loath the times where I relive it and I do not wish to do so willingly. However, I will tell you about the journey I took of understanding what this meant and how it affected me.

Like I said above, I was between the ages of six and seven when this happened to me, however, it wasn’t until I was fourteen that I realised what actually happened. Have you ever heard of someone who was able to block a memory/memories so well that it’s literally as though it’s left their mind… until something triggers its return? Well, now you have. I won’t say what triggered it for the respect of one of my old school friends, but something was said and it all came back to me. It was as though I had woken up and suddenly remembered the bad dream I had had; parts of it coming back one at a time. It was overwhelming. I questioned myself as to whether it was true, but I knew it was. I knew what had happened to me and now I was older, I understood how serious it was. No words can describe how dirty and disgusting I felt. And how ashamed and guilty that I didn’t tell anyone at the time. My ‘grandad’ died when I was 13, which only increased my sense and agitated feeling of hopelessness. I started to remember how after it happened, I didn’t want to go to my Nan’s and Grandad’s anymore. I recognised the feeling but I never really knew why, until now. I remember feeling scared, not wanting to leave my parent’s side, just wanting to go as far away as possible. And then, at 14, I felt exactly the same. Scared, confused, helpless.

Who was I supposed to tell? Would they believe me? Did it happen to my siblings as well? But how am I meant to ask them without revealing myself? I found a way which confirmed it was only me. I was faced with the fact that if I told my family, it would completely destroy them. It would cause misery and upset and I did not want to be the cause of that. So I went on, every day I thought about it and every day I cried. I didn’t see it at the time, but I was constantly angry and constantly afraid, shouting at people for the wrong reasons, getting into arguments when there didn’t need to be one. I guess others (including myself really), put this down to mood swings and puberty. I questioned myself, I even questioned my sanity and it hurt, deep in my chest it hurt and made me do and think awful things.

I honestly didn’t realise how long this post was going to be, so thank you for sticking with me.

During this time in my life, I was having some truly awful thoughts. These thoughts I won’t share, I have only ever shared them with my mum and sister and I never want to divulge in them again. They were my thoughts, and they will remain that way. It felt as if there was no escape, but I realised I had a choice. I could either carry on like this, day by day, hoping to push it to the back of my mind again, knowing full well this would never happen. Or I tell someone; find help.

I first told my sister. It was the most heart wrenching thing I’d ever had to do. She had lost her ‘grandad’ just over a year previously, mourned him as I had done, and I was telling her that he was an evil, disgusting man. But she believed me. She questioned me, but not on the truth of what I was saying. She believed what I told her and she hugged me and cried with me. It was a few weeks later until I actually found the courage to tell my parents. There was an argument at the dinner table and I ended up shouting at both of them. I immediately regretted this and my instant thought was ‘They don’t understand why I’m like this. They need to know.’ So my sister helped me write a letter. I couldn’t say it out loud again. It had become impossible.

So I gave this letter to my mum first; it explained what had happened and why I was such a mess all the time. It was honestly one of the hardest thing I have done, watching my mum read this and breaking her heart. I can just remember that she wasn’t sure what to do, but just processing this information. After a lot of tears, she then went on to show my Dad the letter, who also broke down.

I think the rest of that night can remain private. It’s the journey I went on afterwards that became important. It was hard. My mum set me up with a counsellor, something which I really did not enjoy. All I wanted to do was repress this memory, but all week I would think, ‘I have to see the counsellor in a few days… What are we going to talk about? What do I say?’ Making me think about it even more. Although, of course, she was only doing her job and trying to help, I found this women to just be the opposite of helpful. All that would happen when I visited her was, she would sit there waiting for me to talk. She didn’t ask me any questions or comment on anything I said, even if I was complete disarray and unable to talk, she would just sit there. So I asked for the meetings to stop; it definitely was not for me.

As I mentioned, all I wanted to do was repress the memory. So that is what I did. I went into what people call a ‘Safe Space’ and ventured on a journey of self-healing. This worked to an extent, as I was able to spend time processing what happened to me in my head and coming to terms with it. But I was still in a complete state of misery. Being with my friends helped me forget about it and enjoy myself, but I still felt isolated from them all. There definitely wasn’t a day where I didn’t think about it. It was mainly when I was alone, maybe in my bedroom trying to sleep and it would pop up in my head and it wouldn’t go away. I don’t know whether it’s too dramatic to say the memory of it tortured me, but it did I guess. Whenever it came back to me, I would just want to do things to forget about it again.

Christmas of 2012 formed a new chapter of this story. There is a reason why I have been typing ‘grandad’ as such. One evening, maybe a week before Christmas, my cousin, potentially drunk, came round our house with his now wife, and their son. He came round with the purpose of trying to ‘bring the family back together’. It was evident that he had not been told the news that his grandad was a paedophile. My cousin was trying to suggest that my Dad should make more of an effort to connect with the family again. The evening ended with my Dad discovering his Dad may not have been his biological father. A few days later, my Dad had it confirmed by his sister (my cousin’s mum). So the man who had molested me bared no relation to me. What conclusions did we draw from this? Did this man do this to me by way of revenge? Potentially. But what I have learnt is that there is no reason or no viable excuse as to why anyone would do this, except selfishly.

Fast forwarding to present day, nearly all my friends know I have an illegitimate ‘grandad’, but I have only told a few about what happened to me when I was young. There have been occasions when I have got drunk and went to a dark place and told whoever was there about it, but I honestly do not think they remember. Out of all the friends I lived with or was close to at University, I only told two. Like I said at the start of this amazingly long article, it’s not something you can easily just drop on someone. One of the friends I told did counselling as part of her course, and the way she handled and processed the information was admirable. She didn’t question me, but still spoke to me as though it was just part of life and nothing extremely dramatic. And that’s how I wanted it to be whenever I spoke to someone about it. I didn’t want them to gasp with horror, or start hugging me and crying or just looking at me expecting me to carry on talking about it.

And this is what this post it all about I guess. I starting writing this partly to finally get closure on what happened to me, but also to help people understand the importance of talking about this topic. For me, when I told my friend at University, it was the best feeling in the world. It was relief. It was weight taken off my chest. It was comforting, and she has no idea how grateful I am that she was there. We need to start talking about this subject more openly. If I felt people would be more accepting of hearing a story such as mine, I would have been more willing to tell people. I would not have thought ‘I would ruin their day if I told them’. The fact is, there is only so far self-healing can help. What I have found on my journey is talking about it, and feeling comfortable talking about it was the best kind of healing I could have. The more we talk about, the more people will come forward with their story. The more people that come forward, the more we can do the prevent it happening to others.

If you’re reading this, and you have your own story, please find someone to talk to. If you don’t feel you can tell anyone close to you, please visit this site: http://rapecrisis.org.uk/index.php and talk to someone. You can talk to me if you want to. I cannot describe the incredible sense of relief it gave me to talk about it. It loosened the grip it had around me and made me realise the feelings I had of blame and guilt should really not have belonged to me.

I still have dark days where I ask why this happened to ME and I wish I could somehow reverse time and stop this from ever happening. But I can’t. I was molested, and yes, it was bad, possibly destroyed a part of my life. But it doesn’t define me as a victim. My sister tells me occasionally when I’m having a bad day that I am the bravest person she knows. I don’t believe her most of the time, but then I think, if this hadn’t happened to me, would I be as strong as I am today? No. But that’s my choice. I didn’t choose to be molested, but I chose not to give up fighting the pain it caused me.

So that is my story. I hope it has helped some people see that it can happen to anyone; people you don’t really expect. I was ashamed of my story and scared to tell anyone for too long. But now I know that the best thing I can do is talk about it. It helps me and it will help others.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I understand how long it was, but I do appreciate it.

Waz x