Like the Purge, but for our souls
I recently read an article about the allegations against Marilyn Manson brought by Evan Rachel Wood. The abuse happened when she was 19 and he was 36.
My first reaction was a sort of sad resignation. Like, here we go again. Are all men disgusting assholes? And then I made the mistake of reading the comments section. Never ever read the comments. In any article. I knew better.
I found the usual victim blaming and “maybe she liked it” bullshit. But one comment kept popping up. “Why now?” “Why did she wait so long?”. Good question but not really the point. At all.
I was 4 years old when I was molested by an adolescent male relative. At least, that’s the one time I remember. Maybe it happened more times. I don’t know. I was about 7 years old the next time a relative tried to molest me. This time, the perpetrator was a female teenager. It also happened only one time that I remember. These people were not adults but definitely old enough to know better.
Growing up with these memories, I thought this was normal. Just “kids being kids”, right? That since it “wasn’t that bad”, that it really wasn’t abuse. Maybe I had a hard time wanting to view these people in any horrific light. I thought maybe everyone had these experiences.
Fast forward to being an adult and being a mom. One day when my son was about 4 years old, I suddenly remembered that memory of me at the same age. I briefly imagined him standing in my place in that bathroom and I instantly was horrified. Holy Shit. I was molested! If anyone laid a hand on my son like that, I would kill them.
And that’s when I finally understood that I was abused. As human beings, we automatically go into survival mode when traumatic things happen to us. You know, that whole Fight or Flight thing. But there’s also Fawn and Freeze. What I recognize in myself and in many other survivor stories is the Fawn response. When you’re young, fighting and fleeing isn’t really an option. Staying quiet and appeasing is one of your only your modes of survival. Which comes with our own blame game. Or rationalizing that this happens to everyone. Or that it really wasn’t so bad. So many kids have it worse.
So when you think to yourself, why these victims don’t come out sooner. Remember that it take ridiculous amounts of courage to speak this truth. Your mind has been in survival mode for years. It’s not easy to turn off. That’s why you hear many women coming out together. There’s safety there. There’s strength there. There’s years of therapy represented there.
So, my suggestion is that was have a National Day of Calling Out our abusers. The nation is in deep need of a detox. Let’s just get all this hard nasty business out in the open. The the survivors can tell their stories and hopefully move on to doing the really hard work of healing. Trials can happen if needed. Perpetrators can also get some therapy, and jail time, and figure their shit out.
And then we could have a National Day of Healing. We need it.
