I sat up and put my feet on the cold, grey speckled linoleum floor with its peeling edged and small rips sticking up here and there forcing you to watch your step lest the floor catch and cut your feet.
I looked at the sheetless striped bed with the crater in the middle. The naked spring that I has fought to avoid stood there, laughing at me, knowing it would catch and stab me eventually and more than once.
The floor was cold almost wet. The thermostat would only be turned on once all the occupants were awake and mulling about the main floor of kitchen, bathroom and living room. As soon as the furnace belched loudly and began to force the warm heated air reluctantly through the ducts, it was a mad dash as the half dozen children scurried and fought for a seat next to the wall grates.
My preferred task at first light was to slyly make my way to the basement, to the area around the washer and dryer. There it was the unpleasant but necessary chore of picking through the pikes of semiwet clothes upon the floor in a search for underwear and socks that were the driest and cleanest looking. It smelled foul down there as the washer would pump out water to the cement sink to be disposed of down the drain yet the drain was often clogged with, I don't know really, clothes, rags, garbage? All I know for sure it that the drain would get stopped up and dirty wash water would flood that area of the basement floor.
The washer usually was working. The dryer not so much. Clean clothes rarely made it upstairs or to the bedrooms as wet clothing was considered unsanitary and thus it stayed in the basement, in piles.
I'd hastily eat breakfast, if breakfast was available in the form of cereal or oatmeal.
Then off to walk the few blocks to school with my brothers.
When I sat on the edge of the bed, I knew that at some point my father would get me alone, maybe in the basement, a bedroom with the door still on its hinges, in the garage or in the car. He'd get me alone and molest me. I hated that. I hated knowing my future for that day and most days, that I'd have intimate, sexual contact with my own father. There was no choice, no fighting back, no hiding from it; sexual abuse would happen to me.
I had to pretend I was not a walking wounded rape victim. Every day, I had to pretend and hide my true feelings. In the family home, I had to hide the incest from most of my siblings, as well as from my mom, even though it was common knowledge what dad was doing, mom and family members all pretended it didn't exist. I had to play along.
Once outside the house, I had to keep hidden the incest, physical abuses, starvation, and the extreme filth and poverty that fostered within. I could not show any pain or discomfort. I was to appear cheery, normal and unabused to neighbors, school students and personnal, and of course, to the priests and fellow church goers.
There was a lot I had to work to hide and pretend about.
Being alive hurt with a pain you cannot imagine.
I hated being alive.
I carried shame, humiliation and the fear of embarrassment that someone would discover what a whore I was and what a sex slave looked like upclose and in person.
I was the scum of the earth. Or, well, it felt that way anyway. I never saw an end point. My sexual abuse had been a part of my daily life since I was in diapers. Why would I even suspect that it was abhorrent, criminal, not something every child went through, and an aberration?
It was routine, my normal.
I was alone, completely alone within a large family of people appearing or claiming to love and care for me.
I didn't have the words to say what was taking place in secret and out in the open.
Three decades later, with three different therapist's and weekly and twice weekly therapy sessions, I can now say I no longer hate my life.
I'm in an uneasy peace with all the transgressions that took place. It's like opening a sewer and sorting through the sh*t, piece by piece. It's difficult work but it needs to be done.
Never ever give up, no matter how awful or painful it currently is.
You chose to live with the secrets and shame or you can decide to heal and seek counseling.
I truly do not know how an individual can overcome sexual assault without a trained therapist.
Be strong. Seek help. People want to help you.
