I keep thinking about the things we’re taught that we don’t even know we were taught. That we didn’t even realized we learned.
I mean, it was just today that I came to see the extent to which I put up with sexual abuse. Only, it didn’t look like sexual abuse. It wasn’t the typical “abuse” people talk refer to. No one held me down and forced me to do anything. It was subtler than that. I was always told I could say no, except in the moment…when you don’t really want to? But feel you have to? Feel you’re obligated to. It’s not easy to say no. There are less immediate ramifications if you just say yes.
So I said yes time and time again. I gave consent. But I didn’t want to.
And herein lies the issue.
He knew. And it didn’t matter. He knew and eventually got frustrated because I wasn’t more “connected”.
Today was the first time I realized that I shouldn’t have felt compelled to turn against myself. That I should never have felt this inherent need to backburner myself for someone else.
And I know where it comes from. It comes from that place in time when I told my mother of a violation and she told me it couldn’t be true. Assured me love existed there and only love could be there.
She violated me just as much as he did. They all normalized it. For years. Decades. A lifetime.
And so now here I sit. Fucking clueless. Ashamed for not standing my ground earlier. Guilt-ridden for standing my ground now.
I feel like I can’t win.
But I can’t stop thinking. All those moments in the past that I said yes when I wanted to say no. When he’d force himself on me when I was sleeping. And I’d pretend to keep sleeping, hoping he’d give up. All the excuses of “I was so drunk” or “I was just really tired and didn’t know what I was doing.”
What do I do with all of those? How do I exist without compartmentalizing them? How do I function with them all in my head?