Achievement Unlocked: Repressed Childhood Trauma

CW: physical abuse, trauma, molestation

"Being oppressed does not make you a good person." Nothing I will describe here is a reason why you should love me again or forgive me. These are merely things I wish I could share with you, things that I wish I could have talked to you about. You were always so reassuring towards me, so caring, so kind, so loving, so everything good. Now I can only close my eyes and imagine the warmth of your caring embrace. Above all, I just wish you could've known this about me. It doesn't excuse any of my actions, of course, but for me it explains why I have always felt so helpless and weak. It explains why, even when I knew you loved me, I felt like I was never good enough. I am so sorry for all the pain I have caused you, for all the issues I didn't work on and didn't know how to work on. I am praying for your health, for your happiness, for your security, for your prosperity, for you to feel loved, liked, and appreciated. 

~Begin~

In the process of therapy, I have written you many times. Each time, although it is sad thinking about losing you, in some strange reason it gives me hope for the future. There is clarity of thought and emotions that comes through as I try to express my thoughts in written form. While it is always difficult for me to talk about my feelings (or even know about them), forcing myself to try has been, let's say, somewhat enlightening. 

One day, as I was writing to you I thought about extending this exercise to someone, and I had a curious thought: "what is my favorite moment with my ______  from my childhood?" For privacy concerns, I would not like to write who it is. I thought about it for a while (and quite depressingly) I couldn't think of anything! I could think about favorite memories with other people easily, so why is it that I couldn't for this person? The more I thought about it, the more negative memories came up. As I searched for light, I found more darkness. I began writing, listing actually, every bad memory that came up. The list grew and grew, filling up pages on pages. My fingers ached from writing so much. Even my penmanship shifted from the normal relaxed, haphazard letters to smaller, angry etchings written in all caps. I felt true rage for the first time. 

In the middle of writing, something clicked for me. Something buried deep in the recesses of mind sprang forward. Though I have remembered the incident before, I'd always doubted myself: "maybe I was misremembering?" But I realized, this moment was not itself singular, rather it was part of a pattern that continued throughout my childhood up until around the 5th or 6th grade. 

So, no easy way to say this: I think was molested. 

I recall, vividly, being in my bed on the bottom bunk, resting on my blue blankets when ______ came into the room to "tickle me." While I don't remember the actual type of touching, I know that sometime earlier I had learned at school about "private areas" where adults were not allowed to touch you. To this day, I do not remember the actual type of touching involved (was it actually tickling or something else?), but I do very clearly remembering being touched in a private area. At that age I would not have been able to register if a type of touching was sexual or playful, hence why I was never sure if it was actual molestation. I remember screaming something along the lines of "you can't touch me there," but nothing after. Even if it wasn't intentional molestation, there was definitely a series of prolonged physical interactions with someone in my family that led to me feeling eternally weak. This type of touching and playing would repeat throughout my childhood, where ________ and I and sometimes my brother would "wrestle." As the youngest and smallest one, I never won. I never even had a chance. They were always stronger than me, always able to overpower me, and I was never able to actually fight back. I remember _______ enjoyed playing like this, often laughing when I would really try. My exertion and effort was so insignificant as to evoke a pitied laughter. In another instance, two males (neither were ______) from that same side of the family picked me up, carried me outside, and "dunked" me headfirst into the snow because I refused to wipe something off my face. The top of layer of snow was icy and it scraped my chin, causing bleeding. 

This species of male interactions, I now realize, had profound effects on who I am today and who I was then. Since I grew up feeling weak and small, I never participated in gym class. I didn't play sports because I never felt good enough. I never tried to workout because I felt I would always be small. I was scrawny, unconfident, and nervous, because _______ had always made me feel that way. There are other reasons too, but it is mainly for this reason I have always struggled with my masculinity and what it means to be a man. It shapes how I relate to people around me, and how I love. I am hyper aware of all my failings, even if it doesn't seem like it, but because I have always felt weak and powerless, overcoming them seemed impossible. You could look at therapy as an example: "what is the point of going to therapy if I will always be depressed?" Thus is the logic of the mentally ill.

I am trying to take this back, to recognize that I have control over how I see myself, but it has been extremely difficult, especially after not realizing/acknowledging it for so long. On the one hand, I am worried that me getting into shape is playing into the logic of the oppressor, ie. I am accepting the proposition that weak = bad, strong = good. On the other hand, I am trying to learn that fitness and strength, mental and physical, is a continual process of growth for me. I am beginning to accept delayed gratification in this regard, but more importantly that effort in itself is not just a means to an end, but could be the end. To take joy from the process of trying, even if failing, and growing from it may be more rewarding than the result itself. It takes the pressure off at least by not looking at things as permanent but instead constantly changing.