I'm a post whore today...
Apr. 15th, 2008 04:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azdesertroseHaving stayed up past my bedtime, I've now reached the time when it's pointless to go to bed because I've got to pick Cliff up from work at 7 and it's now 4:25. If I sleep now I'll just be grouchy and groggy when I have to drive to get him from work.
I've been cruising around LJ and the net in general getting righteously angry over the people who believe in "false memory syndrome". I've been in therapy off and on since I was 12, and I have yet to have a therapist or psychiatrist who tried to make me believe I remembered something I didn't remember.
I still don't remember all of my abuse. There are large chunks of my childhood and early adolescence that just aren't there in my head. (The abuse stopped when I was 11 and told my mom, who mercifully believed me and cut off my father's contact with me.)
I don't tell the whole world I was abused either. Some people just do not get it, and I refuse to compromise my admittedly fragile mental health by trying to deal with people who think there was something I could have done differently to prevent being abused. I rejected a psychiatrist who asked me if "it was just statutory rape". As if it makes a difference for one thing, I was 11 years old. And no, as a matter of fact, I didn't fight back. I was half his size and scared of his temper. I was already well-indoctrinated into survival mode; just hold still and he'll finish and pass out and it will be over and you can pretend it didn't happen.
But my aforementioned fragile mental health is at least partly due to the abuse. (I think there's a genetic tendency toward depression in my family. I know of at least two blood relatives who committed suicide, and that's just the information that's made it to me.) I would not be so fractured mentally if I hadn't been abused as a child.
But this is the deal. I was a kid. I wanted my daddy to love me. During the daylight that meant normal dad-things like teaching me to ride a bicycle and trying to teach me to bat a softball (which I never did figure out how to do). But at night that meant letting him do what he wanted with my body.
I am not a small person now. I am 5'9" and I'm severely overweight (I'm working on that but I want to get smoke-free before I start doing the really serious weight work). But when I was 11, I was 5'3" and weighed maybe 110 lbs. He was in his 40s or early 50s and 6' tall and weighed about 200 lbs. There wasn't a damn thing I could do.
It happened. And it was NOT. MY. FAULT. I didn't ask for it.
And I'm not the only one.
And the people who think that our therapists have "made" us remember things that never happened are on bad crack. Period. Full stop.
I've been cruising around LJ and the net in general getting righteously angry over the people who believe in "false memory syndrome". I've been in therapy off and on since I was 12, and I have yet to have a therapist or psychiatrist who tried to make me believe I remembered something I didn't remember.
I still don't remember all of my abuse. There are large chunks of my childhood and early adolescence that just aren't there in my head. (The abuse stopped when I was 11 and told my mom, who mercifully believed me and cut off my father's contact with me.)
I don't tell the whole world I was abused either. Some people just do not get it, and I refuse to compromise my admittedly fragile mental health by trying to deal with people who think there was something I could have done differently to prevent being abused. I rejected a psychiatrist who asked me if "it was just statutory rape". As if it makes a difference for one thing, I was 11 years old. And no, as a matter of fact, I didn't fight back. I was half his size and scared of his temper. I was already well-indoctrinated into survival mode; just hold still and he'll finish and pass out and it will be over and you can pretend it didn't happen.
But my aforementioned fragile mental health is at least partly due to the abuse. (I think there's a genetic tendency toward depression in my family. I know of at least two blood relatives who committed suicide, and that's just the information that's made it to me.) I would not be so fractured mentally if I hadn't been abused as a child.
But this is the deal. I was a kid. I wanted my daddy to love me. During the daylight that meant normal dad-things like teaching me to ride a bicycle and trying to teach me to bat a softball (which I never did figure out how to do). But at night that meant letting him do what he wanted with my body.
I am not a small person now. I am 5'9" and I'm severely overweight (I'm working on that but I want to get smoke-free before I start doing the really serious weight work). But when I was 11, I was 5'3" and weighed maybe 110 lbs. He was in his 40s or early 50s and 6' tall and weighed about 200 lbs. There wasn't a damn thing I could do.
It happened. And it was NOT. MY. FAULT. I didn't ask for it.
And I'm not the only one.
And the people who think that our therapists have "made" us remember things that never happened are on bad crack. Period. Full stop.
