Do I Really Want To Go There?

Ugh...I don't know about writing this. I've thought about it from time to time, but it's just ugly. I don't mind it, really. I'm pretty open, but I try and post blogs that are as still somewhat classy/entertaining, no matter what the topic is.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that with this one.

Guess I should get right to the point...

So I was molested.

At age 5.

By our next door neighbor who then continued to live in the house that bordered my bedroom for 12 years following the incident.

He was never charged, never arrested, never even reported as my parents never contacted the authorities.

I just got to live with it in the subsequent years, catching him peaking over the fence through my window at night or watching me from his tree while I swam in our backyard pool.

I know, I know, boo-hoo for me, right?

It's not a super big issue now.

He did what he did.

My family 'responded' the way they did.

It is what it is...

except when it comes to school.

On the first night of my child abuse class during my first semester I found out the courts dissolved the statute of limitations on child sex offenders.

I immediately got to work.

I was going to finally do what everyone else had chosen not to do for me decades prior, which was drag his decrepit and ancient carcass to justice. Retirement home or not, I didn't care, he would finally be exposed.

With the help of some family I got his location only to find he had died 5 years prior.

My heart sank.

3 months later I also miscarried.

(Can we say, "HELLLOOOOOOOO therapy!"?)

I've mellowed...again. It's a continuous roller coaster it seems. And I never expect it. I just had to read a book for this semester that was an autobiography about a woman who was almost raped by her mother's boyfriend and then was actually raped by her father and then by her oldest brother, not to mention a WHOLE lot of other things.

The men were never confronted (except for the boyfriend, whom the mother told him that if he wanted some, all he had to do was ask her...)

I finished the book in one day. I didn't want to keep having to go back, day after day, in order to finish the assignment.

I was in a foul mood when I started reading. Now, I think I'm just worn out.

Every family has its "secrets."

The ones kept in my clan aren't anything new, nor are they anything that doesn't happen all over the world. But they are in the past.

Mostly.

I spent a lot of time during adolescence being numb. I spent a great deal of my early adulthood sleeping in order to avoid the realities of parts of my life.

Thankfully, those times have passed.

Now, I live and I feel.

My marriage is healthy and we love our family. I don't have to emotionally protect myself anymore and I haven't, not for a long, long time.

Well, not until I get assignments like this.

And I'm forced to numb up, again.

And I hate it.

I'm not sure if I would have picked this major had I known ahead of time how I would feel. I see the courses and their headings, I know what to expect, and yet I never can seem to fight the physical responses.

Usually it is to run away, screaming.

Occasionally, I want to take a chair and start bashing the lecture room wall in.

And when it's really bad, I want to take a bat to a certain child molester's head stone just so his family will finally know what he did...

Most days, I just sit and color in a child's coloring book during lecture. (Mr. Spin is impressed with my outlining skills.)

The book is finished, and now I just have to write an 8 page paper on it.

*Sigh*

Just 11 more weeks...

I never imagined that my college graduation would taste so sweet. Bring on the sugar already!!