The crime I committed seems too great to put into words.
It was after my sisters had made their choice. They simply excepted the context of R___'s sexual abuse as if it was correct. They accepted Mom's gender-based hate, and they accepted their roles of protecting him and destroying me.
They had always been like that, but for some reason I thought they could change. Then they began watching me. A sick, perverse attraction, and I understood they were goners. When I got older I'd refer to this as the darkness. That's when it really began.
The game of the Abuse had always been: let this boy try to be a boy, let him try to grow into a man, let him try to be Real, and we will stop him every step of the way. We will ruin him. In order to keep our secrets.
The original story, the one where I am the innocent boy who is being abused changes when i am eleven.
It had been a defense I had always played with, here and there: whenever Mom would act proud of me, I would feel like I had made some sort of mistake, and want to go the other way, but it wasn't often I had the chance to feel that way.
I already knew not to be the son R___ wanted. It was my main mission in life to not come out like R____. These two dynamics weren't all that difficult, or all that abnormal, I guess.
Things change when my sisters, A__ and H___ enter the mix more officially. It wasn't like I had any other way of fighting back.
Once, when in the yard I was needed to help lift something, I pretended it was too heavy. A___ was so pleased to be stronger than me. Once, when H___ was doing some algebra problems, I pretended I couldn't do them. H___ was so pleased to be smarter than me.
It felt good, making sure they believed their own lies.
I didn't plan this defence. I just felt it strongly at the time, felt it had some power. It made me feel better, this new game, this new way of playing, so I did it, even changing my behavior, my mannerisms, whatever I could do to get that sick smile to cross their lips.
At the same time I kept the Real me hidden, because that's what they're always watching for, making me feel ashamed whenever they get a glimpse of it.
Meanwhile, for some reason I don't understand, I couldn't be one person in the House and another in the outside world. One reason was that I was never really in the outside world, because they were always there. It wasn't until I felt totally free of them that I began to feel the ability to change back into my Real self.
I wonder what my life would've been like if I had stayed Real, instead of going in the other direction. I wonder if maybe if I had held on a little longer ..
A___ would date guys who were suspiciously like me -- except not really -- because I had given her a false idea of who I was. It was unfortunate. She preferred ones that reiterated her false ideas about the male gender. By my actions I helped convince her such a man existed, that that was Reality. She had a string of bad, weak men, and it made me sad.
Years down the road and she is thoroughly convinced that I was genuine, that the House and its rules were correct, that there was no abuse. I'm sure she will believe this her whole life. She whole-heartedly helped steal almost twenty years of my life from me. I made sure to facilitate her paying with all the years of her life. I did the same to H___, who, by evidence of her recent emails to me, still has that sick smile on her face. They will be old women, long dried up, by the time they ever feel the truth.
Even if I hadn't insisted this outcome, it still probably would have been this way, maybe. But if I hadn't gone on the offense, if I had stayed solid, Real, (Abused), if I had not fought back, maybe a social worker would've come along, maybe a decent human being whom I could've told the truth to. Things might have been different.
When I was a teenager in the House I knew I knew. I knew that all I had to do was get away and I would be okay. I knew the chances of ever being rescued were slim to none. I did what I could to ensure my sisters, my family, would never be rescued, I did what I could to ensure they'd always be Insane.
Of all the years of my life, the events, the choices, of this period, this choice is what accosts me the most with being Dishonorable.
For the past week or so, it's been on my mind, this dishonorableness I'm afraid I might own.
Now that I've written it out, the story seems small, simple, unimportant. It causes me sadness, but I understand that even if I hadn't made that choice, things most likely would've worked out the same, and all of us would have lost the same amount of years.
No comments:
Post a Comment