It was in the summer of 2009 that I disclosed the incest to Randy, my therapist. He was incredibly gentle with me, most likely knowing how fragile I was at the time.
Immediately after the disclosure, I felt relief. Only an hour or so later, the panic set in. I was convinced there would be horrible, frightening consequences from my telling. It felt as if I had done something terribly wrong. I had betrayed my brother...in fact my entire family. Even though I don't believe in the dead coming back to haunt us, I couldn't shake the fear that the grave was not enough to shield me from my brother's wrath.
I didn't feel like a rational adult. I felt like a 13 year old girl, a very small and frightened one at that.
Randy continued to be patient and gentle with me. As I grew more comfortable with him knowing my secret, and less panicky, he began pushing me a bit to face the truth and stop minimizing and denying what had been done to me.
That wasn't easy, and it didn't go too well, especially at first. I argued every time Randy used the word abuse. I would go home and scour the Internet for information so that I could "prove" to my therapist that sibling incest wasn't necessarily abusive nor traumatic. I didn't find anything I was willing to show him.
Months later, I had faced enough of the truth to be able to email this to a new member of my support group:
I buried my incest for years and was convinced that it didn't bother me. Even when it was happening, I was convinced it wasn't at all traumatic. It was just "that weird thing" and was completely separate from the rest of my life.
But then the memories surfaced, but I still thought it was no big deal, not even worth bringing up in therapy. After all, we were dealing with real trauma, and not some harmless stuff from years gone by.
Turns out I had been hiding from the truth for years. The incest had a profound effect on me, everything from sexual fantasies to my ability to trust men. We are shaped by our earliest sexual experiences. When those experiences are incestous, it makes sense that our shaping is not as healthy as it should be. I just never realized that, in a way, I had been "acting out" and reacting to the incest ever since it first started.
I'll warn you. It is not an easy thing to face this stuff, especially if you still love your abuser. (I have a hard time with that word.) I'm filled with a lot of confusion and unresolved questions...and a deep sense of sadness. But I'm still in the middle of trying to face the truth of what happened.
