For too long I have been silent. I have taken so many things in, held them close, and there they’ve stayed. I have decided that those days are over.

After I posted about my imperfections yesterday I found myself in a very pensive sort of mood. For me, it was a good thing. So I shifted and sorted my thoughts. I looked at each and every thought, every feeling and tried valiantly to give it its own place in the archive.

The things that Sperm Donor did to me do not define who I am. He did those things to me. I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t “seduce” him the way he tried to tell the court that I did. It has been a very long time, but now I’m pissed and I’m calling bullshit.

I was a child. What two year old could be so overwhelmingly seductive that a grown man was compelled to abuse her? None. Two year olds are NOT sexy or seductive. They are innocent and in need of protection. They are precious.

For far too long I have sat back and let the past exist without setting the record straight. I don’t know what I’ve been so afraid of. It’s not like I’m two anymore. The days of playing his victim are long over. I was a helpless child then and I couldn’t do anything about the things he did to me or to my mother.

It’s over. The abuse, the inferiority complex, the silence. All of it ends this very second.

I love that you come here to read what I write. I like knowing that sometimes my words reach people in very positive ways. For that reason, I have to say this, so please understand.

This is my life. However long or short it may be, this is my life. Finally, at the age of thirty-one I am ready to set the record straight. I am ready to speak up.

I will write about real life. I will write about reality and the difficulties that come with being married. Maybe I’ll even write about really hot sex with my husband again.

And I’ll write about Sperm Donor. I’ll write about childhood abuse. I will take off the gag and break my silence.

These are my stories and they will be told.

Email this post

It’s the one thing I’m not. The list of things that I’m not is much longer than all the things I am. As much as I would like to say otherwise, that’s just the way it is. Instead of fighting it, I have accepted it.

Sperm Donor fucked me up. Not for a little while. Not just in my sexual relationships. The things that man did shaped every facet of who I am in ways that I am just now beginning to understand.

As my father, as someone who was supposed to protect me, he failed in the most basic way a parent can fail. His actions violated my physical self as well as my mental self. Every single time he molested or raped me he promised that it would be the last time. He lied to me time and time again.

Not only did he lie to me, he played head games. I would fight him, yell and scream that I hated to be touched but he didn’t listen. Instead I was told that no one hates it, that I really liked when he violated me or took the time to (supposedly) school me in the ways of adult relationships.

I learned not to trust my body. I learned not to trust men. And I learned not to trust myself.

So here I am, all these years later, and what has changed?

Thanks to cancer, all the work I did on accepting my body, etc. has come undone. Oh, I’m trying. It’s just a very dificult thing to do.

I still don’t trust men. Or women. No one in positions of power. I try to develop healthy relationships with healthy boundaries but who am I fooling? I don’t leave my house except to go to the doctor.

The most terrible part of this is that I don’t trust my husband. I trust him more than I trust anyone else in my life, but only so far. And he knows it.

You know those exercises where they have you turn your back to a group of people then ask you to fall into the crowd, trusting that they will catch you? It would never happen. Not even with the man I’m married to. He is absolutely right to be angry and frustrated.

I don’t know that I will ever trust myself. Even if I go into remission, I will worry and wonder if it was what I was supposed to do. Was I meant to live? What if I wasn’t? What if my living took away someone else’s life?

I know that I have so very much to be thankful for. And I am. In ways that I can’t even begin to find words for, I am so thankful. I don’t take this life for granted.

I just know that I’m living on borrowed time. I want to spend it healing. If and when the end ever comes I want to meet it head on knowing that I have made my peace. I want to know that I have beat the odds that Sperm Donor stacked against me and come through on the other side with my sanity intact.

And I know I will never ever be perfect.

Email this post

I love my husband. From the first night I spoke to him on the phone I knew he would be man who would make it all okay, the one who would help to soothe my battered soul. I knew also that I would have to allow him to get close enough to me to touch me if any sort of healing were to happen. It was hard but somewhere along the way it happened.

For the first time in my life, in so many ways, I feel whole. I feel as if the things that happened to me at the hands of Sperm Donor and his brothers no longer define me. Just as my friend Catalina reminded me that cancer doesn’t define me, nor does childhood abuse.

Still, I’d be lying if I said that I was completely healed, because there are still wounds that exist. There are still nightmares and things that I am unable to fully enjoy sexually because of what happened to me as a child. And in the strangest places in our lives, those wounds break open and begin to bleed profusely.

Today, in the shower, it happened.

He didn’t hurt me; my husband would never physically harm me. All he did was touch me while my face was under the shower spray. One simple act and I became a raving madwoman. I yelled at him for touching me and began to panic. I pulled away from him instead of allowing him to comfort me. Then, doing something that I rarely do, I told him why it bothered me. I told him what had happened that made me feel so terrified.

And he didn’t understand. My confession was met, not with tenderness and understanding, but with anger and a look that told me that I was crazy. I was told, basically, to get over it. To remember that we weren’t in a pool, but in a shower and that I was with him. I told him that I should have known he wouldn’t understand and I got out of the shower.

How can he possibly understand? It didn’t happen to him. It’s never happened to anyone that he loves or cares about. How could he possibly be expected to understand?

It doesn’t mean that I should just get over it. It doesn’t mean that what I feel or how I respond is wrong. It also doesn’t mean that I’m crazy.

It means that it’s been a difficult road to travel. It means that, obviously, I still have work to do. It means that someone I once trusted and adored took advantage of me, of my innocence.

And it reminds me that I am left with wounds that never seem to heal.

Email this post