stitchwhich (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stitchwhich) wrote2009-06-27 02:00 am
stitchwhich) wrote2009-06-27 02:00 am
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More of that childhood stuff
After reading ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
attack_laurel's latest entry I thought I was okay but as things go, my mind went down the memory-path of childhood and I've been brooding about one particular time. So I'm going to write about it just to see if that will purge the recording for me.
When I was a freshman in High School (aged 14/15), my little brother (11/12) and I got sent away to live with my paternal grandparents in Utah. Mom was growing more and more disturbed, deep into (prescription) drug abuse and the emotional pressure on me to nurse and support her as well as look after my brother had given me an ulcer. The doctor flat-out told her that she'd either make arrangements for me to live elsewhere or he'd call Children's Protective Services and have me removed from her custody. So she sent me to Utah and blackmailed my grandparents into taking on my little brother too... that worked out for her but set up a really bad situation for my little brother - they were mostly polite but made it clear he was unwanted, the 'bastard child of a whore' was the way they saw him and treated him, to one degree or another. Sometimes that involved physical attacks - I clearly remember seeing my grandfather come around the dining room table to grab my brother, wrenching him out of his chair and then holding Billy up against the wall by his throat, Grandpa's big hand wrapped under Bill's chin while Bills feet dangled above the kickboard.
My paternal grandfather molested me throughout that year we lived with them. (Gawd, it was hard to write that! And now I'm tearing up again.) I could have stopped it - I could have told my grandmother, or a teacher, or a member of our church. She would have blamed me, as "the child of a whore who is no better than she ought to be" and all that, and we would have been sent back to my mother again after a bunch of angry scenes... but I allowed it. Didn't encourage it. I still occasionally have bad moments when I can feel his crepey lips on me or his callused hands touching me, hear his voice full of shame whispering as he touched me, "I can't believe you're my granddaughter, you're too beautiful to me. You don't seem like family. I have to touch you, you make me do it." But still, I made the conscious choice to let him. Because if we had to go back to our mother early, she'd lose custody of us. And that would be my fault. She needed us. I couldn't let her down. I'd already let her down by getting the ulcer and not being able to hide it from the doctor. And if I let that old man fondle me it put him in a half-ashamed, half-relaxed state of mind and he'd leave off railing at or beating my little brother for as long as his shame ruled him. So it protected my little brother and my mother all at the same time. And, I have to admit, it kept me away from my mother for a little while longer - I needed the break from helping her through the DTs every couple of months and from fighting with her about me getting pregnant (she'd started pressuring me to "give her a baby" when I turned 13, ramping up the pressure by giving my boyfriends face-to-face permission to "go all the way and not use a condom"... it was kind of hard to be a girl who wanted to stay a virgin until marriage under those circumstances. Especially during an era of free love... there was something "wrong" with a girl who didn't "dish it out" like all of her classmates.
I feared and anticipated those bouts of molestation. It made my little brother's life easier in a world where he was never accepted so I was grateful there was something I could do to help him. For weeks, even, he'd be safe. And that was worth it. I never told him - he would have been angry ("I'm the man of the house!") and would have snitched if I told him at the time, and now, well, he grew up to be a man who views women as God's gift to men - subservient, obedient, less than men ever could be, the sort of "good Christian woman who'd rather die than lose her virtue". In the world of his religious views, I am no better than a whore for allowing that old man to paw me. And to claim that it was to save him from pain? That would make my sin twice as black, laying part of my guilt on him. It was a hard-line view taught to us in church by a faith that had purged nearly every strong woman from the books of the bible and even now I'd rather never tell him than face his condemnation for my choice.
So I ask you - if a person makes the conscious decision to allow themselves to be sexually touched in order to keep other harm from befalling those they love, does that make them a prostitute? Not a victim? It was a cold-hearted bargain I made, even though the terms were unspoken. Does that make me the accomplice and not the victim that time? Virtueless?
Because even now, after all these years and all the other stuff that happened in my life, I still feel like I don't get to claim "not my fault" in this one case. Because I knew what good came of it after that first instance - and I 'bought' that good from then on with my body and my silence. That is no different, really, than a desperate woman selling her body for money, is it? And we call women like that by a word other than "victim".
Originally I had this on a very tight filter but then the thought occurred that it may be relevant to someone not on that filter so... And remember, I'm just fine with you not reading it - I know it is a downer of a subject.
attack_laurel's latest entry I thought I was okay but as things go, my mind went down the memory-path of childhood and I've been brooding about one particular time. So I'm going to write about it just to see if that will purge the recording for me. When I was a freshman in High School (aged 14/15), my little brother (11/12) and I got sent away to live with my paternal grandparents in Utah. Mom was growing more and more disturbed, deep into (prescription) drug abuse and the emotional pressure on me to nurse and support her as well as look after my brother had given me an ulcer. The doctor flat-out told her that she'd either make arrangements for me to live elsewhere or he'd call Children's Protective Services and have me removed from her custody. So she sent me to Utah and blackmailed my grandparents into taking on my little brother too... that worked out for her but set up a really bad situation for my little brother - they were mostly polite but made it clear he was unwanted, the 'bastard child of a whore' was the way they saw him and treated him, to one degree or another. Sometimes that involved physical attacks - I clearly remember seeing my grandfather come around the dining room table to grab my brother, wrenching him out of his chair and then holding Billy up against the wall by his throat, Grandpa's big hand wrapped under Bill's chin while Bills feet dangled above the kickboard.
My paternal grandfather molested me throughout that year we lived with them. (Gawd, it was hard to write that! And now I'm tearing up again.) I could have stopped it - I could have told my grandmother, or a teacher, or a member of our church. She would have blamed me, as "the child of a whore who is no better than she ought to be" and all that, and we would have been sent back to my mother again after a bunch of angry scenes... but I allowed it. Didn't encourage it. I still occasionally have bad moments when I can feel his crepey lips on me or his callused hands touching me, hear his voice full of shame whispering as he touched me, "I can't believe you're my granddaughter, you're too beautiful to me. You don't seem like family. I have to touch you, you make me do it." But still, I made the conscious choice to let him. Because if we had to go back to our mother early, she'd lose custody of us. And that would be my fault. She needed us. I couldn't let her down. I'd already let her down by getting the ulcer and not being able to hide it from the doctor. And if I let that old man fondle me it put him in a half-ashamed, half-relaxed state of mind and he'd leave off railing at or beating my little brother for as long as his shame ruled him. So it protected my little brother and my mother all at the same time. And, I have to admit, it kept me away from my mother for a little while longer - I needed the break from helping her through the DTs every couple of months and from fighting with her about me getting pregnant (she'd started pressuring me to "give her a baby" when I turned 13, ramping up the pressure by giving my boyfriends face-to-face permission to "go all the way and not use a condom"... it was kind of hard to be a girl who wanted to stay a virgin until marriage under those circumstances. Especially during an era of free love... there was something "wrong" with a girl who didn't "dish it out" like all of her classmates.
I feared and anticipated those bouts of molestation. It made my little brother's life easier in a world where he was never accepted so I was grateful there was something I could do to help him. For weeks, even, he'd be safe. And that was worth it. I never told him - he would have been angry ("I'm the man of the house!") and would have snitched if I told him at the time, and now, well, he grew up to be a man who views women as God's gift to men - subservient, obedient, less than men ever could be, the sort of "good Christian woman who'd rather die than lose her virtue". In the world of his religious views, I am no better than a whore for allowing that old man to paw me. And to claim that it was to save him from pain? That would make my sin twice as black, laying part of my guilt on him. It was a hard-line view taught to us in church by a faith that had purged nearly every strong woman from the books of the bible and even now I'd rather never tell him than face his condemnation for my choice.
So I ask you - if a person makes the conscious decision to allow themselves to be sexually touched in order to keep other harm from befalling those they love, does that make them a prostitute? Not a victim? It was a cold-hearted bargain I made, even though the terms were unspoken. Does that make me the accomplice and not the victim that time? Virtueless?
Because even now, after all these years and all the other stuff that happened in my life, I still feel like I don't get to claim "not my fault" in this one case. Because I knew what good came of it after that first instance - and I 'bought' that good from then on with my body and my silence. That is no different, really, than a desperate woman selling her body for money, is it? And we call women like that by a word other than "victim".
Originally I had this on a very tight filter but then the thought occurred that it may be relevant to someone not on that filter so... And remember, I'm just fine with you not reading it - I know it is a downer of a subject.