[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. In this post I'm relating events that happened in the spring and early summer of 1956, when I became 7. The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]
I only spent a few boring days at Mina's house. Mina lived in a row house in Maryland, near Rock Creek. I was actually glad to see my parents, when they finally came to get me, just to be going some place that had books.
By the time I was back in Fort Devens, there was only a week left of 1st grade. It ended without further incident. I still have my report card. It shows the number of days I was absent each quintile of the school year except the last. For the last quintile that space is left blank. I believe I missed more than a month.
With the end of school I was still recovering from my injuries. The bandages came off my head first. My wrist continued to have to be in a sling for at least two more weeks.
One day, after some sexual abuse by my Mother, Alex told Kona how he could be summoned in an emergency. He said to just think of a certain line from an old Hawaiian song. It was one of the few lines that I could still remember after the surgery. It was a line which loosely translated meant, "please transport me to heaven."
A day or two later, as Kona, I sat down at the coffee table in the Sun Porch with paper and pencils and called Alex and asked him to sing for me, and help me draw. I needed help because he had to enable me to use the left hand. Ordinarily Kona drew with my right and Alex wrote with my left. Basically Kona needed Alex to allow Kona to guide his "writing" of pictures, and wanted Alex to sing along.
It was a meditative session, following the instructions in meditation that I remembered Lani and Lono giving me. I started with a seed drawing of a symbol representing a target state. My target was integration. The seed was two vertical lines joined by three parallel horizontal syzygies. I drew around it while chanting. I knew the chant was all wrong, but I hoped the magic would work anyway.
My Mother crept up on me, catching me in the act of chanting. She screamed at me. "How many times have we had to tell you not to use Hawaiian in the house!"
She demanded to know what I was drawing. I told her they were sleeping mat designs. She said she wasn't going to allow me to waste my life making sleeping mats or basket weaving "like useless ignorant natives." I had to get an education and a career, so she wouldn't have to support me forever.
Then she said, "I know what would put you in your place." She got a large envelope from her bedroom and threatened to show me the contents. She said there was an X-ray in it that would show me why she was so sure I was "on my way to being a basket-weaver." I didn't know what she was talking about at the time. It wasn't until I was almost 35 that I saw the X-ray she referred to. It was an X-ray taken upon my admission to Tripler Medical Center on my first birthday. It showed the extent of the brain damage I suffered that day.
She decided not to show me the X-ray. Instead, she suddenly shifted gears as she noticed that I was holding my pencil in my left hand. She said, "Show me how you've been drawing." When I drew a little with my left, she said, "So! You've switched personalities. Let's see, you used the left hand, that means the artist is in the right side of your head."
So she took me to the Play Deck and banged the right side of my head repeatedly on the brick wall there. The idea was to kill "the artist personality." She tried to do it so as not to leave any marks. After a while, she decided that wouldn't work. "If I don't do it hard enough to leave a mark I won't kill it either." So she brought me back to the Sun Porch and stuck the pencil back in my left hand and told me to draw. As soon as I drew a little she grabbed my left hand and burned the back of it with her cigarette.
When I stopped screaming, she said, "Draw some more." She threatened to beat me if I didn't. When I did, she burn the back of my left hand, being careful to burn it at the exact same place.
After that even threats wouldn't get me to draw for her. So every minute or so she took my hand with the pencil in it and forced it to draw a line, then burned the same spot.
She spent about half an hour at this, using up at least three cigarettes. Finally she said, "Are you going to use your left hand any more?" I told her I wouldn't. She said, "Good, maybe that personality won't get its way anymore."
Two or three months later I came home with a note from my teacher saying my penmanship had become terrible. My Mother said, "Why is your penmanship so bad suddenly? All through first grade you got high marks for penmanship. Your writing was beautiful."
I said, "Don't you remember? You made me stop using my left hand. That was the hand I was using to write with."
"No!" she said, "You were using it to draw with that day! That's what I remember. The artist was using the left hand!"
"I was only using it to draw then because I couldn't use my right hand, remember? It was in a sling."
"So what are you saying, you wrote with your left hand?'
"Sure. You didn't ever notice?"
She hadn't cared enough to notice before. Both my Mother and my Father wrote left-handed. My mother switched hands according to task, just like I did. She wrote with her left, used scissors with her right. But she couldn't be bothered to notice any of that, until she could see in it a justification for torture.
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label torture. Show all posts
Monday, December 3, 2007
Monday, November 5, 2007
Torture and Retaliation
[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. In this post I'm relating events that happened in the spring of 1956, when I was 6 "going on 7". The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]
After my first phone call, the long-distance collect call for help to my Aunt Alta, 400 miles away in Washington DC, I felt wonderful. I had done what needed to be done. Help was on its way. In two weeks Alta would be there and, maybe with the help of the police, I'd be taken away to safety. I played happily on the play deck off my bedroom.
In the late afternoon my Father left for some reason. He may have had extra work at the office, or he may have had a night out with the guys. In those days he still played poker or bridge occasionally while my Mother stayed home. I don't remember the reason, I just know he took off for several hours.
When he was gone my Mother found me and cheerfully told me she had a special treat for me. She led me to the bathroom between the Sun Porch and her bedroom, the Master Bathroom. I happened to note the time on a wall clock just before we entered. I also saw the clock on the way out. The special treat lasted an hour and a half.
It consisted of repeated enemas. After each one I had to hold it in or be beaten. I'd get beaten after awhile, because I couldn't hold it in forever. Or I could, so there'd be another. Either way, there'd be another, with the same rules.
[Right: Torturers and child molesters look like this.]
After the fourth or fifth time, I was screaming for her to please stop. She said, "I'll stop when you tell me why I'm doing it. You know why I'm doing this. I want you to tell me why."
It was an hour and a half of torture in every sense of the word. I had to confess a "crime". I wasn't told what the crime was that I was supposed to have committed. In the meantime the torture continued.
I never knew what to confess until my Mother let it be known that she had gotten "a very interesting phone call from Aunt Alta."
While I'd been playing by myself on the play deck, my Mother had received a call from Alta. "WHO DO YOU THINK SHE SAID CALLED HER THIS MORNING?"
I confessed that I called her. That didn't help. There was a long round of screaming and more enemas and beatings. "SHE TOLD ME WHAT YOU SAID TO HER! NOW YOU'RE GOING TO SAY IT TO ME!"
I tried to tell her what I said to Alta. I just wanted it to be over. I don't know what I admitted. I don't think it really mattered. I think she stopped when she did just because she tired of it.
During the torture Kona became aware of the watching of Alex. After she let me go and I crawled into bed, we felt reunited. United against my Mother, and against Alta.
After my first phone call, the long-distance collect call for help to my Aunt Alta, 400 miles away in Washington DC, I felt wonderful. I had done what needed to be done. Help was on its way. In two weeks Alta would be there and, maybe with the help of the police, I'd be taken away to safety. I played happily on the play deck off my bedroom.
In the late afternoon my Father left for some reason. He may have had extra work at the office, or he may have had a night out with the guys. In those days he still played poker or bridge occasionally while my Mother stayed home. I don't remember the reason, I just know he took off for several hours.
When he was gone my Mother found me and cheerfully told me she had a special treat for me. She led me to the bathroom between the Sun Porch and her bedroom, the Master Bathroom. I happened to note the time on a wall clock just before we entered. I also saw the clock on the way out. The special treat lasted an hour and a half.
It consisted of repeated enemas. After each one I had to hold it in or be beaten. I'd get beaten after awhile, because I couldn't hold it in forever. Or I could, so there'd be another. Either way, there'd be another, with the same rules.[Right: Torturers and child molesters look like this.]
After the fourth or fifth time, I was screaming for her to please stop. She said, "I'll stop when you tell me why I'm doing it. You know why I'm doing this. I want you to tell me why."
It was an hour and a half of torture in every sense of the word. I had to confess a "crime". I wasn't told what the crime was that I was supposed to have committed. In the meantime the torture continued.
I never knew what to confess until my Mother let it be known that she had gotten "a very interesting phone call from Aunt Alta."
While I'd been playing by myself on the play deck, my Mother had received a call from Alta. "WHO DO YOU THINK SHE SAID CALLED HER THIS MORNING?"
I confessed that I called her. That didn't help. There was a long round of screaming and more enemas and beatings. "SHE TOLD ME WHAT YOU SAID TO HER! NOW YOU'RE GOING TO SAY IT TO ME!"
I tried to tell her what I said to Alta. I just wanted it to be over. I don't know what I admitted. I don't think it really mattered. I think she stopped when she did just because she tired of it.
During the torture Kona became aware of the watching of Alex. After she let me go and I crawled into bed, we felt reunited. United against my Mother, and against Alta.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
My First Phone Call
[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. In this post I'm relating events that happened in the spring of 1956, when I was 6 "going on 7". The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]
My clever plan worked. I started writing about the very bad chain of events, and the sheer act of writing about it broke the stupidity-lock that was preventing me from recalling the timing of the events.
I forgot about Spring vacations. My 1st grade school broke for Spring vacation. The next event in the chain happened around the third week of March.
My Mother was being especially sadistic because I had demonstrated an ability to recall things that happened to me even before I was one year old. Rape/tortures increased in frequency and severity. I was ready to do something desperate to get out of the situation.
I got the idea to try and get help from Aunt Alta.
Looking back on my childhood I am often pleased at how stupid the ideas I had then were. It would really annoy me now were I to have had amazingly brilliant ideas all the time as a kid. No one wants to be one-upped by their own 6-year old self. I'm glad that I was so ignorant when I was 6. It's because of that I've been able to show so much improvement over time.
Not only did I not know Aunt Alta very well, having only met her a few times when she came to visit during holidays, but she was my Aunt because she was the sister of the woman abusing me. So she was emotionally involved, and altogether the wrong person to seek out if the goal was sanctuary. Of course, the goal WAS sanctuary. I was not looking for her to use her influence to change my Mother's behavior. A plan like that wouldn't have occurred to me at 6 going-on 7. I didn't get that sophisticated until I was 9 or 10.
To ask her for help was a trick, because we lived in Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and she lived at the time in Washington, DC. Her phone number was in a flip-up record book on the table where the phone sat, but it wasn't a direct-dial number. Direct Distance Dialing, using area codes to call without the use of operators, began earlier than 1956, but people weren't using it much by then. If my parents knew the area code for Washington DC, they didn't bother with it, being satisfied to do things the way they always had. My Father actually would say Direct Dialing was "idiotic" -- there's no reason anyone should have to use numbers that long.
["1-206-725-5555" -- idiotic. "PA5-5555" -- silly. "Parkway 5, 5555" -- too many numbers. "Myrtle, could you connect me to Gertrude, please? You, know, Gertrude across the street from me? Thanks." -- genius.]
Fortunately my parents had taught me how to use a phone in case there was ever an emergency. There was one emergency number in those days. You dialed "0". An "operator" answered. She took care of it.
So one Saturday morning while my parents were out shopping I called the operator and told her I needed to talk to my Aunt Alta in Washington DC. It was my first phone call, ever.
I didn't know what a collect call was. I just gave the operator Alta's local number and said I wanted to talk to her. The operator asked how old I was, and I said 6 going-on 7. She said, "Do you have permission from your parents to make this call?" I said no. She said, "Well, then I shouldn't let you put the call through, until you get permission."
I wasn't prepared for that. I thought the operator was just supposed to put the call through. I thought phones were entirely a prepaid service. I didn't know each long distance call added to the bill. I broke down in tears and told her I couldn't get permission from my parents, that's why I had to make the call. I had to get away from my parents.
The operator said, "Why do you have to get away from your parents?" So I started to tell her. I told her my parents had wanted to kill me. I told her that my Mother had tried to smother me with a pillow two years earlier. The operator was concerned but said, "But that was a long time ago, right?" They're not hurting you now, are they?"
So I was forced to try to describe the recent abuse, which was mostly rape and verbal abuse.
No matter how severe verbal abuse is, no one thinks much of it until you act it out for them. Over the years I got really good at acting out my Father's verbal abuse, and I can now do it pretty well. When I do it now, it scares people, and they get it. But as a 6 year-old I didn't have the skill, the voice, and the sheer size to pull off an impression of my Father's abusive verbal attacks.
So that left the rapes. I was forced to find words to describe anal rape, over the phone, to a complete stranger, when the only vocabulary I had consisted of words that were forbidden to me.
As luck would have it the operator was well-suited for her line of work. She was a good listener. Through the tears and my casting around for safe words she finally said, "Oh my God, I'll put you through collect right away."
Alta was reached and she accepted the charges. Now that I was finally talking to her I had to do it all over again. I had to tell her what was wrong and why she should come and take me away from my parents. She wasn't a total stranger, but, really, I knew her mainly as the Aunt who gave me shirts five times a year. I thought she would help because she was said to be a "Good Christian."
[Left: I had seen the family album many times by then, and had often seen this picture of Alta holding me in 1949. She looks happy to have me.]
I went through pretty much the same ordeal I went through with the operator. Like the operator she wanted to discount old news. Maybe neither of them believed I could have reliable memories that old. So I had to describe the rapes. Alta wasn't as good a listener as the operator, and I ended up spelling it out more. I told her my Mother was feeling inside me and making me hurt.
Finally, she said she was planning to come to visit soon anyway, she could just move her trip up. She asked me if I could manage for the two weeks it would take her to get there. I said yes, and she said, "Then it's settled. I'll come in two weeks, and I'll take care of everything. You don't have to worry about a thing."
Yep, she'd take care of everything. I was pretty psyched. Everything was going to be Hunky-Frikkin'-Dory.
My clever plan worked. I started writing about the very bad chain of events, and the sheer act of writing about it broke the stupidity-lock that was preventing me from recalling the timing of the events.
I forgot about Spring vacations. My 1st grade school broke for Spring vacation. The next event in the chain happened around the third week of March.
My Mother was being especially sadistic because I had demonstrated an ability to recall things that happened to me even before I was one year old. Rape/tortures increased in frequency and severity. I was ready to do something desperate to get out of the situation.
I got the idea to try and get help from Aunt Alta.
Looking back on my childhood I am often pleased at how stupid the ideas I had then were. It would really annoy me now were I to have had amazingly brilliant ideas all the time as a kid. No one wants to be one-upped by their own 6-year old self. I'm glad that I was so ignorant when I was 6. It's because of that I've been able to show so much improvement over time.
Not only did I not know Aunt Alta very well, having only met her a few times when she came to visit during holidays, but she was my Aunt because she was the sister of the woman abusing me. So she was emotionally involved, and altogether the wrong person to seek out if the goal was sanctuary. Of course, the goal WAS sanctuary. I was not looking for her to use her influence to change my Mother's behavior. A plan like that wouldn't have occurred to me at 6 going-on 7. I didn't get that sophisticated until I was 9 or 10.
To ask her for help was a trick, because we lived in Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and she lived at the time in Washington, DC. Her phone number was in a flip-up record book on the table where the phone sat, but it wasn't a direct-dial number. Direct Distance Dialing, using area codes to call without the use of operators, began earlier than 1956, but people weren't using it much by then. If my parents knew the area code for Washington DC, they didn't bother with it, being satisfied to do things the way they always had. My Father actually would say Direct Dialing was "idiotic" -- there's no reason anyone should have to use numbers that long.["1-206-725-5555" -- idiotic. "PA5-5555" -- silly. "Parkway 5, 5555" -- too many numbers. "Myrtle, could you connect me to Gertrude, please? You, know, Gertrude across the street from me? Thanks." -- genius.]
Fortunately my parents had taught me how to use a phone in case there was ever an emergency. There was one emergency number in those days. You dialed "0". An "operator" answered. She took care of it.
So one Saturday morning while my parents were out shopping I called the operator and told her I needed to talk to my Aunt Alta in Washington DC. It was my first phone call, ever.
I didn't know what a collect call was. I just gave the operator Alta's local number and said I wanted to talk to her. The operator asked how old I was, and I said 6 going-on 7. She said, "Do you have permission from your parents to make this call?" I said no. She said, "Well, then I shouldn't let you put the call through, until you get permission."
I wasn't prepared for that. I thought the operator was just supposed to put the call through. I thought phones were entirely a prepaid service. I didn't know each long distance call added to the bill. I broke down in tears and told her I couldn't get permission from my parents, that's why I had to make the call. I had to get away from my parents.
The operator said, "Why do you have to get away from your parents?" So I started to tell her. I told her my parents had wanted to kill me. I told her that my Mother had tried to smother me with a pillow two years earlier. The operator was concerned but said, "But that was a long time ago, right?" They're not hurting you now, are they?"
So I was forced to try to describe the recent abuse, which was mostly rape and verbal abuse.
No matter how severe verbal abuse is, no one thinks much of it until you act it out for them. Over the years I got really good at acting out my Father's verbal abuse, and I can now do it pretty well. When I do it now, it scares people, and they get it. But as a 6 year-old I didn't have the skill, the voice, and the sheer size to pull off an impression of my Father's abusive verbal attacks.
So that left the rapes. I was forced to find words to describe anal rape, over the phone, to a complete stranger, when the only vocabulary I had consisted of words that were forbidden to me.
As luck would have it the operator was well-suited for her line of work. She was a good listener. Through the tears and my casting around for safe words she finally said, "Oh my God, I'll put you through collect right away."
Alta was reached and she accepted the charges. Now that I was finally talking to her I had to do it all over again. I had to tell her what was wrong and why she should come and take me away from my parents. She wasn't a total stranger, but, really, I knew her mainly as the Aunt who gave me shirts five times a year. I thought she would help because she was said to be a "Good Christian."[Left: I had seen the family album many times by then, and had often seen this picture of Alta holding me in 1949. She looks happy to have me.]
I went through pretty much the same ordeal I went through with the operator. Like the operator she wanted to discount old news. Maybe neither of them believed I could have reliable memories that old. So I had to describe the rapes. Alta wasn't as good a listener as the operator, and I ended up spelling it out more. I told her my Mother was feeling inside me and making me hurt.
Finally, she said she was planning to come to visit soon anyway, she could just move her trip up. She asked me if I could manage for the two weeks it would take her to get there. I said yes, and she said, "Then it's settled. I'll come in two weeks, and I'll take care of everything. You don't have to worry about a thing."
Yep, she'd take care of everything. I was pretty psyched. Everything was going to be Hunky-Frikkin'-Dory.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Memory Tests
Having evidence that my memory stretched back even before my first birthday had an effect on my Mother I could predict now, after another 51 years of experience with human nature, but which made no sense to me at the time.
She wasn't in any danger of being found to be guilty of attempted murder. Not only was there no danger that anyone would believe my memories, but even if it was determined through a revisiting of physical evidence that I was run over deliberately, it was extremely unlikely that anything but my unbelievable memory could indict my Mother as a conspirator. All she had to do is remind everyone that she wasn't the one behind the wheel.
So the rational thing to do would have been nothing but to forget about it.
My Mother was not about being rational, except for public show. She began to test my memory more and more. The tests became an excuse for cruelty. She'd put something away in front of me without calling attention to what she was doing, like a pair of sewing shears. Then the next day, or the next week, she would order me to find it. She would say, "I know you can find it. You remember everything. If you don't find it I'll know you're just pretending you can't."
When I didn't find the missing items I'd be beaten, and sent back to look. When I did find them, I was subjected to rape and torture to remind me that I had better keep my memories to myself.
In hindsight it wasn't about shutting me up or convincing herself that I couldn't remember the attempted memory. Rather, it was about the proliferation of excuses to abuse. What I couldn't see then, because my Mother was so insistent about her rationalizations, was that my Mother was simply a sadist. Any rationalization of torture would do.
She wasn't in any danger of being found to be guilty of attempted murder. Not only was there no danger that anyone would believe my memories, but even if it was determined through a revisiting of physical evidence that I was run over deliberately, it was extremely unlikely that anything but my unbelievable memory could indict my Mother as a conspirator. All she had to do is remind everyone that she wasn't the one behind the wheel.
So the rational thing to do would have been nothing but to forget about it.
My Mother was not about being rational, except for public show. She began to test my memory more and more. The tests became an excuse for cruelty. She'd put something away in front of me without calling attention to what she was doing, like a pair of sewing shears. Then the next day, or the next week, she would order me to find it. She would say, "I know you can find it. You remember everything. If you don't find it I'll know you're just pretending you can't."
When I didn't find the missing items I'd be beaten, and sent back to look. When I did find them, I was subjected to rape and torture to remind me that I had better keep my memories to myself.
In hindsight it wasn't about shutting me up or convincing herself that I couldn't remember the attempted memory. Rather, it was about the proliferation of excuses to abuse. What I couldn't see then, because my Mother was so insistent about her rationalizations, was that my Mother was simply a sadist. Any rationalization of torture would do.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
My Hideousness
[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. In this post I'm relating events that happened when I was 6, 1955-56. The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]
My Mother's nocturnal visits continued. I'd estimate there were around four or five of those a month. Sometimes, as Alex, I would get up after one of the nocturnal rapes and go to sneak out of the house, to find my Father passed out on the living room floor. I'd go back to my bedroom for fear of encountering him when I returned.
One day they did catch me trying to sneak back in at dawn. I expected trouble, but I tried the obvious lie, telling them I'd only let myself out an hour earlier. Rather than the truth, that I'd been out since 1 AM. I was surprised when they bought it. They were prepared to believe that they hadn't noticed my leaving. They knew they weren't all that observant. I learned I could exploit their knowledge of their own weaknesses.
One form of inappropriate contact that increased was the way my Mother rewarded me. Other kids got cookies or candy for rewards, and grew up with eating disorders. I got my bottom petted and grew up sexually confused.
One time there was a drunken party in the Sun Porch, with twenty or more officers and their wives packed in, and it was my bedtime. I was able to undress myself by then and get into pajamas by myself. I came in to see my Mother in my pajamas and told her I was ready to be tucked in. She said she was too drunk to get up and go to my bedroom, and then she turned me around and pulled my pajama bottoms down in front of everyone at the party and pet me. Everyone in front of me dropped jaws seeing this, and I was too young and clueless to know why. I thought they were disgusted by my body. I had no idea that they were shocked by my Mother's behavior. I went to bed thinking I was hideously deformed. No one said anything to my Mother about it, that I could hear.
Another ongoing inappropriate practice was the genital fondling. My Mother continued to insist that I needed my genitals fondled on a regular basis, about once every three days, in order to keep me healthy. How she arrived at three days I don't know, but all the evidence points to that as being how often she herself liked to have sex, so she was probably projecting her desires on to me.
The fondling didn't bother me at the time, and I in fact liked it. She even got me to remind her whenever she missed a session. One time I had just gotten up and was still in my pajamas when I remembered it had been four days since the last fondling. I told her as she was vacuuming the Sun Porch, and she cheerfully stopped and took care of my "need."
If the object really was to eliminate my need for sex she did it all wrong. She always stopped a half minute or so after I began to show signs of arousal, saying that was enough. The effect wasn't to produce any relief but to tease me and make me think about sex constantly.
That's in fact what I did. I spent hours every day day dreaming about rolling around naked with girls my own age. My plan to kiss all of the girls in first grade was supposed to be stage one of a prolonged systematic plan to get a room full of girls to take all their clothes off, form a pile, and let me dive in. A lot of this day dreaming was probably driven by my desire to distance my sexual desires from my Mother, by diverting them elsewhere.
One other form of sexual molestation that I did NOT enjoy started up that year.
My Mother claimed to have a bad headache one afternoon. School was out that day but my Father was at work. The weather was bad so I had to be indoors. She told me she would reward me if I played quietly by myself for three hours. At the end of three hours she had me go with her to her bedroom for a "special" reward. The reward started out the normal reward. She took my pants down and petted my rear. Then she gave me enemas. Not one but many, so many that I lost count.
At first they would just be uncomfortable and embarrassing. But after the fourth or fifth enema I'd have involuntary physical/sexual responses that I couldn't interpret at that age, that were terrifying to me. As they continued they became more extreme and I became delirious and lost control of my bladder, at which point my Mother screamed and beat me, as if it were MY fault.
It was just the first time she resorted to multiple enemas. She used it later sometimes to get herself off on my responses and my distress, other times simply as a torture technique, as she began to at least acknowledge that I hated it.
I'm sure most people would understand how the enema sessions could have been traumatic for me and therefore fueled my later symptoms of PTSD. Actually though, the inappropriate touching that DIDN'T cause severe trauma at the time has been harder to deal with over the years.
Most public discussion of PTSD misses the key point that trauma can be delayed as well as the reactions to it. It's possible for an event to be meaningless to the child to be meaningful and disturbing to the adult who remembers it, and that later disturbance can result in the stress disorder.
Even though I believed it was totally wrong for a mother to fondle her son's genitals when I was 20, It wasn't until I was 35 that it suddenly occurred to me, while I was talking about it to a therapist, that it was wrong when my Mother did it to me, too. Before that, it was just a general rule that I'd never applied to her. I hadn't repressed any memories of it, I had just walled off the part my mind that knew it was a betrayal, because I couldn't face that conscious awareness of that much betrayal.
Whereas I had by then been well used to facing the betrayals represented by the enemas. That was old by then.
My Mother's nocturnal visits continued. I'd estimate there were around four or five of those a month. Sometimes, as Alex, I would get up after one of the nocturnal rapes and go to sneak out of the house, to find my Father passed out on the living room floor. I'd go back to my bedroom for fear of encountering him when I returned.
One day they did catch me trying to sneak back in at dawn. I expected trouble, but I tried the obvious lie, telling them I'd only let myself out an hour earlier. Rather than the truth, that I'd been out since 1 AM. I was surprised when they bought it. They were prepared to believe that they hadn't noticed my leaving. They knew they weren't all that observant. I learned I could exploit their knowledge of their own weaknesses.
One form of inappropriate contact that increased was the way my Mother rewarded me. Other kids got cookies or candy for rewards, and grew up with eating disorders. I got my bottom petted and grew up sexually confused.
One time there was a drunken party in the Sun Porch, with twenty or more officers and their wives packed in, and it was my bedtime. I was able to undress myself by then and get into pajamas by myself. I came in to see my Mother in my pajamas and told her I was ready to be tucked in. She said she was too drunk to get up and go to my bedroom, and then she turned me around and pulled my pajama bottoms down in front of everyone at the party and pet me. Everyone in front of me dropped jaws seeing this, and I was too young and clueless to know why. I thought they were disgusted by my body. I had no idea that they were shocked by my Mother's behavior. I went to bed thinking I was hideously deformed. No one said anything to my Mother about it, that I could hear.
Another ongoing inappropriate practice was the genital fondling. My Mother continued to insist that I needed my genitals fondled on a regular basis, about once every three days, in order to keep me healthy. How she arrived at three days I don't know, but all the evidence points to that as being how often she herself liked to have sex, so she was probably projecting her desires on to me.
The fondling didn't bother me at the time, and I in fact liked it. She even got me to remind her whenever she missed a session. One time I had just gotten up and was still in my pajamas when I remembered it had been four days since the last fondling. I told her as she was vacuuming the Sun Porch, and she cheerfully stopped and took care of my "need."
If the object really was to eliminate my need for sex she did it all wrong. She always stopped a half minute or so after I began to show signs of arousal, saying that was enough. The effect wasn't to produce any relief but to tease me and make me think about sex constantly.
That's in fact what I did. I spent hours every day day dreaming about rolling around naked with girls my own age. My plan to kiss all of the girls in first grade was supposed to be stage one of a prolonged systematic plan to get a room full of girls to take all their clothes off, form a pile, and let me dive in. A lot of this day dreaming was probably driven by my desire to distance my sexual desires from my Mother, by diverting them elsewhere.
One other form of sexual molestation that I did NOT enjoy started up that year.
My Mother claimed to have a bad headache one afternoon. School was out that day but my Father was at work. The weather was bad so I had to be indoors. She told me she would reward me if I played quietly by myself for three hours. At the end of three hours she had me go with her to her bedroom for a "special" reward. The reward started out the normal reward. She took my pants down and petted my rear. Then she gave me enemas. Not one but many, so many that I lost count.
At first they would just be uncomfortable and embarrassing. But after the fourth or fifth enema I'd have involuntary physical/sexual responses that I couldn't interpret at that age, that were terrifying to me. As they continued they became more extreme and I became delirious and lost control of my bladder, at which point my Mother screamed and beat me, as if it were MY fault.
It was just the first time she resorted to multiple enemas. She used it later sometimes to get herself off on my responses and my distress, other times simply as a torture technique, as she began to at least acknowledge that I hated it.
I'm sure most people would understand how the enema sessions could have been traumatic for me and therefore fueled my later symptoms of PTSD. Actually though, the inappropriate touching that DIDN'T cause severe trauma at the time has been harder to deal with over the years.
Most public discussion of PTSD misses the key point that trauma can be delayed as well as the reactions to it. It's possible for an event to be meaningless to the child to be meaningful and disturbing to the adult who remembers it, and that later disturbance can result in the stress disorder.
Even though I believed it was totally wrong for a mother to fondle her son's genitals when I was 20, It wasn't until I was 35 that it suddenly occurred to me, while I was talking about it to a therapist, that it was wrong when my Mother did it to me, too. Before that, it was just a general rule that I'd never applied to her. I hadn't repressed any memories of it, I had just walled off the part my mind that knew it was a betrayal, because I couldn't face that conscious awareness of that much betrayal.
Whereas I had by then been well used to facing the betrayals represented by the enemas. That was old by then.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
No Escape
[Reminder: Some of my posts, including this one, are memoirs of my abusive childhood. Today I'm relating events that happened the day of my fourth birthday, July 9, 1953. The links to the right can be used to follow backward through the memoirs, or to restrict viewing to other kinds of posts.]
I regained consciousness on the porch. My Mother was talking to herself loudly and excitedly. She cursed my Father for driving off with the only car and ditching her with me. She cursed me for bleeding. She cursed me most for waking up. "Why doesn't he ever die?"
She said, "What am I going to do? If I take him inside he'll bleed all over everything! I don't want him bleeding all over everything!" This was the argument that prompted her to get rags from the kitchen and wrap my head with them. It would be nice to think that some mothering instinct was at work but it's very hard to say.
Once I was wrapped up she dragged me in to the kitchen. She complained that my rags were already soaked with blood. I was fading in and out. Sometimes she seemed distant. My vision occasionally blurred and doubled. My head was pounding. She took off the first set of rags, lifted me up and rinsed my head under the faucet, and then wrapped me in fresh rags.
By now, her running monologue was veering into a new subject: what sort of permanent damage might have been done. She started to say things like, "What if he can't speak anymore? What if he can't speak Hawaiian anymore? That was the only chance he had of being useful! What good would he be then?" She interrupted her conversation with herself to demand me to speak.
"Talk to me! Say something! Damn it, say something right now, or I'll take you and bury you in the woods out back right now!"
I managed to say something like, "I can talk, Mommy, I'm OK, don't worry about me."
She laughed and said, "You're the one who'd better be doing the worrying if you can't still speak Hawaiian!"
Then she took me by one arm and half dragged me and half made me walk up the stairs and around to the bathroom next to the master bedroom. She stripped me and made me stand in the tub, and began raping me anally with her fingers. She said, "I want to hear Hawaiian! Now!"
It always worked before. Whenever she raped me, Alaka'i would come to Kona's rescue. Kona never had to bear being raped. Alaka'i was the "older" personality. He was the one there for the first birthday. He was experienced with horror, so he would bear it and shield Kona from it. Then, he would curse my Mother out in Hawaiian, which she would think was beautiful because she didn't know one word he was saying. Maybe I get my xenomania from Mother. Everything is connected to everything else.
It didn't work this time. I was there as Kona. Alaka'i didn't arrive. That rape was my first as Kona. As Kona, I didn't speak Hawaiian.
It went on for a long time. I don't know how long. Maybe an hour. Maybe only half an hour. She raped me until after I lost control of my bladder and bowels. She washed me with water, then raped me some more. I would have spoken Hawaiian to make it stop if I could.
During the raping I became light-headed and felt my consciousness fading, only to be screamed at, "You're not going to faint on me!" and have cold water splashed in my face and up my nose. There was no escape.
Finally she gave up and took me in and laid me out on her bed. I was glad that the raping was over for the moment, but I was in a panic about Alaka'i. It suddenly occurred to me that when I was in the driveway and thought I was dying, it could be that just one of us was dying, and that the other one would have to go on without any help.
But my Mother's monologue was now all about killing me. Her speech was racing. She paced back and forth in front of me at the foot of the bed. She was saying that my Father was probably gone for good, and there was no way she was going to take care of me by herself. She discussed with herself, as if I wasn't in the room, how she could finish me without being charged with murder. The discussion was frantic and chopped, with different refrains mixed together, repeated over and over again.
"John was the one who punched him. He's the one they'll convict," was one refrain. Another was, "I can smash his head with a shovel, and bury him so far in the woods they'd never find where I did it." Another was, "I don't have to smash his head, if I bury him he'll die soon enough anyway. Just so long as the police can't hear him making noise when they come looking for him."
Finally she decided she wanted to "get it [my dying] over with." She said I'd be easier to bury that way. She took the pillow out from under my head and put it over my face. As Kona, I felt relief again that I might be able to join Alaka'i in the ultimate escape. But I struggled anyway, because you can't help it. When someone's smothering you, the panic and fear and struggling just happens.
I regained consciousness on the porch. My Mother was talking to herself loudly and excitedly. She cursed my Father for driving off with the only car and ditching her with me. She cursed me for bleeding. She cursed me most for waking up. "Why doesn't he ever die?"
She said, "What am I going to do? If I take him inside he'll bleed all over everything! I don't want him bleeding all over everything!" This was the argument that prompted her to get rags from the kitchen and wrap my head with them. It would be nice to think that some mothering instinct was at work but it's very hard to say.
Once I was wrapped up she dragged me in to the kitchen. She complained that my rags were already soaked with blood. I was fading in and out. Sometimes she seemed distant. My vision occasionally blurred and doubled. My head was pounding. She took off the first set of rags, lifted me up and rinsed my head under the faucet, and then wrapped me in fresh rags.
By now, her running monologue was veering into a new subject: what sort of permanent damage might have been done. She started to say things like, "What if he can't speak anymore? What if he can't speak Hawaiian anymore? That was the only chance he had of being useful! What good would he be then?" She interrupted her conversation with herself to demand me to speak.
"Talk to me! Say something! Damn it, say something right now, or I'll take you and bury you in the woods out back right now!"
I managed to say something like, "I can talk, Mommy, I'm OK, don't worry about me."
She laughed and said, "You're the one who'd better be doing the worrying if you can't still speak Hawaiian!"
Then she took me by one arm and half dragged me and half made me walk up the stairs and around to the bathroom next to the master bedroom. She stripped me and made me stand in the tub, and began raping me anally with her fingers. She said, "I want to hear Hawaiian! Now!"
It always worked before. Whenever she raped me, Alaka'i would come to Kona's rescue. Kona never had to bear being raped. Alaka'i was the "older" personality. He was the one there for the first birthday. He was experienced with horror, so he would bear it and shield Kona from it. Then, he would curse my Mother out in Hawaiian, which she would think was beautiful because she didn't know one word he was saying. Maybe I get my xenomania from Mother. Everything is connected to everything else.
It didn't work this time. I was there as Kona. Alaka'i didn't arrive. That rape was my first as Kona. As Kona, I didn't speak Hawaiian.
It went on for a long time. I don't know how long. Maybe an hour. Maybe only half an hour. She raped me until after I lost control of my bladder and bowels. She washed me with water, then raped me some more. I would have spoken Hawaiian to make it stop if I could.
During the raping I became light-headed and felt my consciousness fading, only to be screamed at, "You're not going to faint on me!" and have cold water splashed in my face and up my nose. There was no escape.
Finally she gave up and took me in and laid me out on her bed. I was glad that the raping was over for the moment, but I was in a panic about Alaka'i. It suddenly occurred to me that when I was in the driveway and thought I was dying, it could be that just one of us was dying, and that the other one would have to go on without any help.
But my Mother's monologue was now all about killing me. Her speech was racing. She paced back and forth in front of me at the foot of the bed. She was saying that my Father was probably gone for good, and there was no way she was going to take care of me by herself. She discussed with herself, as if I wasn't in the room, how she could finish me without being charged with murder. The discussion was frantic and chopped, with different refrains mixed together, repeated over and over again.
"John was the one who punched him. He's the one they'll convict," was one refrain. Another was, "I can smash his head with a shovel, and bury him so far in the woods they'd never find where I did it." Another was, "I don't have to smash his head, if I bury him he'll die soon enough anyway. Just so long as the police can't hear him making noise when they come looking for him."
Finally she decided she wanted to "get it [my dying] over with." She said I'd be easier to bury that way. She took the pillow out from under my head and put it over my face. As Kona, I felt relief again that I might be able to join Alaka'i in the ultimate escape. But I struggled anyway, because you can't help it. When someone's smothering you, the panic and fear and struggling just happens.
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