Sheldon's statement

Sheldon wrote to my parents as well. This is a portion of his letter:

I have learned that many of those who are molested react with shame. Although they are the victim, they blame themselves. This encourages secrecy and prevents disclosure; thus, the abuse continues. Only the truth revealed can set people free and begin the process of healing. Even this process of healing can bring glory to God.

I have seen that God often brings instant forgiveness and healing of our spirits, but the healing of our bodies and souls usually takes time, even a lifetime. Deep wounds leave scars.


Someone I know had surgery as a child to repair a hole in his heart. His parents were told by the surgeon that the repair -- the scar -- would become the strongest part of his heart.

I take comfort in that.

Letter to my parents

This letter has either already arrived at my parents' address, or should arrive any time now:


Dear Mom and Dad,

This is probably the most difficult letter I've ever had to write. The subject matter is extremely painful for all of us. For years, I wanted to spare you that pain. I thought what I endured was my burden to bear alone. But when I finally told Sheldon my shameful secret, his immediate response was, "That explains so much." Suddenly things made sense to him. My regret is that I did not tell him sooner.

That is why I am writing this letter. My intent is not to cause you any more pain. I love both of you more than my feeble words could ever express. In no way do I blame you for something you had no way of knowing. However, you as my parents deserve to know the truth.

There is no easy way to say this, no gentle way to lead up to what Sheldon already told you on the phone. Without going into gory details, Damien began molesting me when I was 13, and the sexual abuse continued for years, escalating in severity. What he did meets the commonly accepted definition of incest ("sexual contact between those so closely related that it would be illegal for them to marry") and, although I have no memory of actual intercourse occurring, it meets the newly accepted Justice Dept. definition of rape ("penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim")

Those words are painful to read, I know. I wish they weren't true; I wish none of it had happened. It has been terribly anguishing for me to deal with the ugliness and shame of it all.

I'm sure this raises many questions for you. Why did I let it happen? Why didn't I tell? Why didn't I make Damien stop? Why did I act, all these years, as if nothing was wrong?

Remember when my aunts feared, because of how compliant I was with Damien, that I would eventually fall under the spell of some man, in such bondage that I would do his every bidding, even if I knew it was wrong? Their fears proved correct, only it happened much sooner, and it was with Damien. By the time I was 13, he could get me to do almost anything. It's no secret he could be tyrant-like. Even as a child, he wanted to be world dictator. He found in me an all too easy subject to exert power over and to control. That's the essence of sexual abuse -- it's far more about power and control than it is about sex.

The way I attempted to cope while it was happening was to pretend it away and refuse to think about it. It was as if I was in an unrelenting fog. I became a master at denial. In the place of the truth, I created a fantasy world, wherein my life wasn't filled with shame and despair; my brother wasn't sexually abusing me or pressuring me to read porn, drink alcohol and take drugs; instead, he was World's Best Big Brother, wonderfully protective. The truth -- that the brother I so loved and admired would hurt and betray me in such vile ways -- was something I couldn't bear.

So I put my dark secret in a box, locked and sealed it, and buried it as deeply as I could. Unfortunately, the toxic slime that kept oozing out of that box poisoned every aspect of my life, not just during those awful years, but all the years since then.

It was incredibly difficult, but I finally managed to get Damien to stop, to promise to leave me alone, to stop trying to convince me that there was nothing wrong with an incestuous relationship other than my unwillingness to submit to him. Although he never asked, I forgave him. It was over and done with, and I tried to leave it in the past. In those days, I didn't completely understand forgiveness. I thought it meant reconciliation and restoration as well, and that I had no right to treat him any differently than if the years of sexual abuse had never happened.

Up until 2009, I had told only one other person, a therapist that I saw in college. She was no help whatsoever. I left and never returned. When I began seeing Randy, my current therapist, it took me months to finally tell him what I referred to as my "deepest darkest secret". Actually I couldn't even get the words out at first. He had to say them for me. It didn't come as a shock to him; the red flags were all there.

The ways I coped back when I was 13 -- the things I did to prevent going insane or being plunged into even darker despair -- helped me survive. But they aren't healthy ways of coping with life over the long haul. They aren't how God intends for anyone to live.

What we have been doing in therapy is, in many respects, like cleaning out old, festering wounds that should have been treated decades ago. In addition, we are exposing the lies that have kept me bound most of my life, and we are replacing them with truth. A friend of mine describes this as "soul surgery". Eventually all will be repaired and stitched up, every gaping hole mended, every wound cleaned and healed.

More than ever before, I believe in a redemptive God. What men meant for evil, God will use for good. God can redeem anything, even this.

Please know that, no matter what -- past, present or future -- I love both of you very much. I am thankful beyond words that God blessed me with such wonderful parents.

I love you!
Annie


The letter does contain a partial truth...or partial lie, depending on one's perspective. I don't blame my mother in the sense that I believe she would have prevented or stopped the incest had she known. But I do blame her for creating a family environment that allowed incest to flourish for years.


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Struggling

When I started this blog, my idea was to chronicle how far I've come on my healing journey. My hope was that the people who would most benefit from my story would find their way here, and find comfort and strength in my words. At the very least, they would no longer feel so crushingly alone.

But the events I wrote about in my previous blog entry have made me feel like the lonely little girl I once was.

Sure, I have Sheldon. Don't get me wrong -- he has been amazing lately, not just as a husband but as my friend and ally. I have Randy. I have my support group. That is all great, and I am so, so thankful.

But I'm still that little girl.

Only now my secrets are out.

It's both relieving and horribly scary. I'm not sure what I want, other than to hide in my bed. I want some sort of reassurance. I want to feel safe.


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Why no nice secrets to face?

I wrote this in October 2009 to a member of my support group who had reminded that truth was healing no matter what:


Thanks. You're so right. It's just that I'm getting a bit weary of the process of uncovering more and more painful stuff in therapy...all this having to face difficult truth. Just once, I'd like to uncover something nice in therapy -- have some sort of happy realization, such as:

Wow, my mother was an even better mother than I ever thought. Plus, I've always had her approval and acceptance. How cool to finally realize that!

No one in my family abused me. It was all done by some other guy. What a relief!

The rape? Just a bad nightmare. None of it ever happened!

Yeah, that's the sort of stuff I'd like to uncover in therapy, instead of having to admit that the truth is that things were much worse than I've tried to pretend all these years.


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The truth isn't all it's cracked up to be

From October 2009:


I kinda got dragged into therapy. It started out with members of our family seeing the therapist because of a family crisis. Then, during a session where it was just me, something really triggering happened and it seems like the next thing I knew, I was having weekly sessions and trying to finally process my rape. I thought 6 sessions would pretty much fix me. I thought we'd deal with the rape only and then everything would be hunky-dory.

Wrong. I can't believe how wrong I was.

Somehow, in the context of dealing with my PTSD and rape, reading stuff, and trying to work through this mess, all these other issues started coming to the surface. Stuff I thought was no big deal. Stuff I thought I was long over. Stuff I was in major denial over. Somehow my mind-reading therapist knew all that stuff existed and was even able to figure out what some of it was before I told him.

That's bad enough. But the really hard thing is that Randy is not in favor of leaving things sealed up in a box, deeply buried. He seems to belive that some sort of toxic mess manages to ooze out and poison the rest of my life.
So yesterday we were dealing with the contents of one of those boxes. After I'd finished reading my journal to him, he started restating what I'd written.

I tried to argue with his choice of words, but I had to admit he was being accurate.

"You're making it sound so horrible!" I protested.

"It was horrible," he said.

I left the session feeling, for the most part, that sense of relief that comes from unburdening painful secrets and not having the therapist gasp in horror and disgust. Unfortunately that didn't last all that long. Feelings I didn't even know I had hit me like a sledgehammer.

The grief and anger is kinda overwhelming right now.

I've spent all my life carefully maintaining this fiction that my family was near-perfect and I had a near-perfect childhood that was marred only by school. My parents were wonderful. It made no sense that we had issues because our parents were the best parents in the world. My brother was the best brother.

For some reason, Randy wasn't buying this idyllic picture. He didn't think, for example, that my depression at age 14 was just teenage moodiness brought on by my making a big deal out of nothing. He didn't think I was humorless and over-sensitive.

Gradually stuff has come out. I've disclosed some really painful stuff. He has used awful words to describe it, words I never wanted to attach to my family, words I'd like to argue with but can't.

So I'm grieving over the loss of that near-perfect family. I'm grieving over having to admit that some of the people I love the most in the world hurt me in ways I can't bring myself to write about. I'll never have an answer to my question of "Why did you do all that? How could you?" I've lost this pretty picture I had painted and, in it's place all I have is confusion, grief, and anger.


It does get better. It's a painful process, facing the ugly truth, but it is the only way to healing. It's worth it...eventually.


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Waking up from denial

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.

Disclosing to my therapist

After a few months of therapy, something I had refused to think about suddenly refused to stay buried. I agonized over whether or not to tell Randy, my therapist. I even went so far as to tell him, "There is something I haven't told you and I'm afraid to tell."

Before that, my family of origin was off limits in therapy, except when I would describe how supposedly incredibly wonderful my brother Damien was. If Randy probed for the slightest detail of my growing up years, I grew angry and clammed up. Anything before the year I'd been raped was not up for discussion.

Needless to say, this was a major red flag.

Finally the burden of my secret grew too much for me. This is what I wrote to my support group for sexual trauma survivors. I couldn't even bring myself to mention what my secret was:

Last Friday morning, I somehow got up my nerve to tell my therapist what I think is my deepest darkest secret -- something I had so successfully buried that I hadn't even thought about it in many years, until recently. I was torn about telling, because I was convinced I was so "over" this thing, that it didn't impact my life today, etc., etc., But then I started wondering why, if I was so untouched by it, did I keep questioning as to whether I should tell, and why did I keep coming up with millions of reasons not to tell?

The only other person I'd ever told had been Dr. X, a therapist I saw briefly during college. We had been going around in circles during therapy. I wanted to talk about inconsequential things and she wanted, I suppose, to do something therapy-like. So I thought, aren't you supposed to tell your deepest darkest secrets in therapy? Before that session, I walked endlessly around campus, getting up my nerve. I may have even smoked a cigarette. Then I walked in, told her, made excuses, and walked out, never to return.

I told Randy, my therapist, that I was afraid I might do the same thing again.

Before Friday's session, I had tried to write it out in my journal. But all I kept doing is writing the prefacing remarks over and over again until they started sounding more and more polished and semi-eloquent. On Friday, I read them out loud. Got almost to the end of what I'd written and couldn't say the last few sentences. Randy assured me that he wanted to hear it, but didn't want to coerce me. Didn't want me to leave, either.

So I read the last little bit -- that only vaguely hinted at my secret -- and then I said, "That's all I could write." Suddenly even that had seemed way too much, and I put my arms on my raised knees, and buried my face in my arms.

Randy asked if he could ask me a question. He then guessed correctly at my secret. Pretty much the way we handled the telling part is that he kept asking questions and I answered them, with my face buried the entire time. Sometimes we would stop and he would ask how/what I was feeling, and he would reassure me. At one point he asked why I was hiding and I said, "I just can't look at you." But that wasn't all of it. I didn't want him looking at me either.

Towards the end, I felt much safer and was able to lift up my head. By the end of the session, I felt relieved that I had told.

As I left, I thought that if I was going to pick the perfect way for my therapist to react -- well, that's exactly how he reacted. I really thought it would not be some sort of nightmare to face him again. I felt drained, mostly relieved, and surreal.

Then, a few hours later, seemingly out of the blue, all that relief disappeard and panic washed over me. I felt like I could barely breathe, like my pounding heart was going to burst out of my chest.

It hit me: I told. Randy knows. Sure, he was all wonderful and everything, but there was no way I could ever face him again. Telling was a big mistake.

I felt overcome with guilt. My secret involves someone else, and I didn't have their permission to tell. I felt that I'd betrayed them.

Randy called on my cell phone, while I was driving down the freeway, to see how I was doing. I told him how much I now regretted telling. Told him I wasn't sure if I could ever come back. But I did promise that I wouldn't just disappear; I'd let him know what I decided. He, of course, kept telling me that I'd done the right thing in telling. I kept thinking, how therapish of him...

Since then, I've felt so confused and torn. One minute I will decide never to return to therapy with Randy again. Then I'll decide to return if he agrees to pretend Friday's session never happened. An hour later, I'll decide that we need to look at why I am so distressed over this. Then I'll decide to cancel my next appointment (on Wednesday) just so that I can have more time to sort through what I want to do.

I keep waking in the night, and the realization that I told hits me like a club.

I've told Randy some things that were really hard to admit, very painful...but I've never regretted telling him anything until now.

This hurts. And it's so confusing. And I don't know what to do.

Keeping secrets for my brother

After all these years, it's hard to remember the first time that my brother urged/cajoled/threatened me not to tell my parents something he had done. But I remember a lot of instances. Here are a few that come to mind:

1. We were playing in the backyard. I must have been 7-8 years old. Suddenly and completely unprovoked, my brother threw a rock at me, purposefully hitting me in the head. It began bleeding immediately. I wanted to run into the house for help, but my brother blocked my way. He sort of apologized with "I didn't think you'd bleed this much" or something like that. He begged me not to go inside, or we'd both get in trouble...blah blah blah...we would not be allowed to play as much in the backyard...surely, I didn't want to get him in trouble, did I? He played on my heartstrings. I stayed outside until my head stopped bleeding. Later I combed the dried blood out of my hair and said nothing to my parents.

2. Around the same time, while we were walking to school one day, my brother decided to light something in an empty field on fire, despite my pleas to the contrary. (He was somewhat of a pyromaniac, at least in my eyes at the time, and I was extremely fire-phobic.) The fire spread much faster than even I had feared. He insisted we run to school and swore me to secrecy lest he be thrown in jail. And that would be all my fault for tattling. He also made it sound like I was somehow in on it with him and would also get in trouble.

3. Over and over again, he'd involve me in some childish misbehavior and convince me that we could not admit to it under any circumstances. He would say, "Act nonchalant" as we walked into the house. Apparently my idea of "nonchalant" was a dead giveaway. Usually, when my mother questioned us, I was the first to crack. My brother would later be angry with me and, at the same time, fill me with guilt. I hated being "mean" to him...which apparently I was whenever I "told on him".

4. A year or two later, he engaged in some petty vandalism while I begged him not to. He threatened me not to run home and tell. Then he somehow convinced me that I was just as much as fault and that it would be horribly mean of me to get him in trouble. I remember being petrified that we would be found out and arrested.

5. We "borrowed" some fishing equipment without permission and lost it before we could return it. My brother put the fear of my parents into me. He also insisted that, since he was older, he would get in more trouble than me, and it would be unfair, selfish and mean of me to confess to my parents, since it meant getting him in trouble.

On and on it went. I was convinced it would be disloyal, mean, selfish, horrible, etc., etc., for me to tell on my brother. I would be betraying his trust. I couldn't stand the thought of angering or disappointing him. Plus, I was convinced...by him, by my own insecurity, and by some of the former reactions of my parents...that the consequences of telling would be more than I wanted to experience.

I was afraid of my brother's anger and wanted to stay on his good side. In fact, I felt an almost desperate need for us to be the best and closest of friends. Maybe some of it was years of hearing my mother tell us that we were "made out of the same cookie dough", that we were each others' closest friends, and that we were not like other brothers and sisters. We were special.

My brother had a mean, bullying side. It didn't come out all that often, at least not in ways obvious to me at the time, but it was there. He was also a master manipulator. He was the family genius -- my mother reminded us of this almost constantly -- and could talk me into things just by exhausting my ability to understand what he was saying. I would figure he was right and I was wrong, or I felt helpless to argue my own point, since he would have a ready answer for my every objection. I would end up feeling tired, baffled, and stupid.

By the time I was 13, it took very little convincing...if any...for me to keep my brother's secrets, especially if they involved me.

Secret puppy

I was 6 years old when we got a cute little puppy, and I was besides myself with excitement. I couldn't wait to tell my friends at school!

On the drive home, as we were holding our new squirming puppy and discussing names, my mother suddenly grew serious. "You can't tell anyone that we got a puppy. Not anyone! It has to be a secret for now. I'll let you know when it's OK to tell people."

I have no idea why my mother felt a need for secrecy. She may have given me a reason, but it didn't make sense to me at the time and I don't remember it. What I do remember is that this was my first big lesson in secrecy. Here's what I learned:

1. There were certain things that, for very important reasons I didn't understand, people outside the family shouldn't know.

2. I was a blabber mouth with no sense, and I needed stern warnings about things everyone else already understood.

3. My brother was not a blabber mouth, and thus he could be trusted.

4. If I couldn't keep this secret, then my mother would never be able to tell me anything ever again.

5. Our family was special. Other kids could talk about their new pets, but that's because they weren't us. We were so special that other people didn't need to know everything that went on in our house.

6. I didn't understand. Obviously I must be stubborn or dense.

Maybe this was an "experiment" to see how long I could contain my excitement. Maybe it was the beginning of deliberate training in secrecy. I have no idea what my mother's motives were.

There were many more lessons that followed.