The first manifesto of childhood sexual assault victims
Wake-up from your death, my beloved. You're not alone any more. Shake the dirt clods out of your clothes and get out from your grave. Here, take the proffered hand.
No! , you do not need to tell us how you got there; we can see you through the silence. As you we had been murdered too, countless times we had been on the edge of the cliff, looking longingly into the promised peaceful below.
And you, who is gingerly standing today, transparent and silent at the foot of the ladder, again considering whether to let go and to drop down or dare to climb back from the abyss of hell on earth, to you are our words - we wanted to tell you from the top of our age, what one can see from here.
Assigns a stunning view from the top of the ladder, the sky is clear, the air is pure, the quiet hugs and the permission (to choose) is given. Yes, climbing the ladder cut cuts bleeding of the feet, no one helped us to climb, no safety net had been spread up beneath our feet, and nobody had promised to be there to help if we fall.. Conversely, every time we managed to climb up, holding precipice with our fingernails, there were those who pushed us with the edge of their shoes, quietly, back down, down the ladder, so we will not be, so that we disappear. So we will not tell, will not talk, will not spoil the happy ending of their "movie".
Climbing up from the Underworld was exhausting and tedious, and often during the climbing we stopped again debating why bothering? Why not do RESET and restart? We have been murdered people, so why not try a new avatar, isn't it better to go to the recycle trash than to the excess market of damaged goods class?.
Many years ago, when we, the girls of the seventies, got up from the dead, there were no adult victims to tell us what can be seen from the top end of the ladder, whether it is worth even trying to climb? Today we are here to tell you that the road to recovery though is really not easy but definitely is worth it. It has a re-creation of us; it has a cure, quality and satisfaction. It even has love, a new safe home, full of happy laughing children. Your children.
Today we are here to point you to a rickety step of the ladder, pitfalls along the way, the snake dens hidden traps.
Through the journey of your life, there is always that tortured question- what the hell do I have? What is this "thing" that is broken in me? Well, there is a seventh sense which has not been yet researched. This is the instinct to create life, which makes one wants to live and to fight against the danger of death. This sense has been destroyed in us.
And so we live the life of indifference to danger, emotion and a sense of numbness. We feel life is scary, and death is rather a promise of peace and quiet.
Despite everything, we wanted to tell you about a way to fix the world .If you allow us; we can support you and help the lonely kid who had been left away deep in ourselves.
We, the victims of sexual assault in childhood, who went through decades of feminist empowerment and psychological treatments, we learned and researched and touched our harm, and by these we have gathered many insights which we would like to share with you, so you'd have it a little easier than we had.
We learned that everything starts with the quality of the care you give to yourself. On the way you'll meet dozens of therapists 'nod' - psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists and counselors who do not have a clue about sexual trauma, and certainly not professionally qualified to treat victims like us, but they never tell you this. You intrigue them, they last the pathology of the shocking story you are bringing into the room. By learning about you, they are doing their internship it's not interesting to them that you do not have time to teach them, that you need someone to save you urgently.
For years you'd be sitting in front of nodding therapists on the couch, they nodding the head with sympathy for 45 minutes, they will take your money and will not help you a thing. And you?? You stay confused and naked on the brink of another clinic. Again! Only when you get into the arms of one analyst, the right one, who studied the specific field of childhood trauma treatment, who knows the "it" - only then you'd start to breathe again, to live, to love and to laugh. Yes, laugh. Once we learned the monster has a name, suddenly is not so scary.
It has borders and finally we can put it in a drawer and lock it. Sometimes you can even open the drawer and drop it a little something to eat and let it breathe fresh air. When it relaxed and you can even talk to it and when it's convenient for you- you put it back in the drawer again. That's what a good treatment does for us. It teaches us to tame the monster and test its qualities.
Another important insight we had is that our functional difficulties in the present do not justify the unbearable lightness of the psychiatric tagging they rush to give us, like engraved number on our arm. Right, we were saved from the inferno but we do not blame it happened. The abusers are to blame, and then label them and not us.
We learned that the medical school ensures that the burn is only on your arm, but it is really quickly becomes a visible Sign of Cain on your forehead. Superficial definitions are irrelevant and are not true and are only stem from a primitive medical ignorance of medieval and patriarchal days - which insists to diagnose "behavior" as "mental disorder" and is fed by the wrong fundamental concept of the consequences of traumatic injury in children, the results - and the appropriate treatment methods That is an idol men medicine ,and has nothing with us women.
We realized that the source of "non-normal" is not our mind but the soul of a sick society who suffers of split personality - on one hand it calls to eliminate the monster, but on the other hand, in the dark, it strokes the monster and adores it.
We learned that the government was afraid to look at the pedophilia-monster in the eyes and to chase it with sword drawn. Do not be surprised, little child, if a pedophilia-monster has been nesting among the government members themselves - otherwise it is unclear why there is hesitation to eliminate it?
Government, court, police and media had to sacrifice for pedophilia every week, more and more bodies of infants to supply the insatiable appetite. We learned not to expect them to destroy the monster -which is supports them. My dear, we are on our own in this campaign. The sooner you understand this so redeem yourself faster, get yourself waving this heavy sword to defend yourself.
Wake up girl, lift up your head! There is no defect in you, or impurity! All these are out of you. You can be healed and cleaned.
True, you will feel like us the memories of the injury ,forever, and win daily memos to the end of the ages, the appearance of body of the child that we had been , lying murdered on the courthouse steps, and to the rest of your life you'd wonder why our leaders, our Legislators, judges, police officers pass daily over the Contemptible girl's body who is flowing seed, they pass it, jump off, walk upon, their shoes dirt her parts, not seeing her. Her transparency is crying but her voice is not sound.
Well, my child, the monster has a name. Our "illness" is called PTSD - post-traumatic stress disorder. Her sign is very clear: chronic fatigue, sleep disorders, nightmares, fear of anything approaching us physically, long days of depression, loss of joy of life, despair and loss of hope, headache, inability to get out of bed in the morning, our physical body cruelty - starvation, over-feeding, injury, and constant attempts to cause the body to cease to live, indifference and danger of death, attraction to death and danger, drug addiction which makes us forget the pain, bouts of amnesia and memory problems in the short term and the long run, deleting all our childhood memories, we suffer from lack of ability to build relationships based on trust, and we do not trust any person and we do not count even on ourselves.
We find it difficult to work with men, we live with continuous tension as to how to interpret any physical contact or their statement, waiting the attack to arrive.. Knowing it will come. We have difficulty in creating healthy social relationships, tend to extreme reactions to those around us, a loving person might become an enemy in a second, we are affected easily and find it difficult to trust the other.
We have serious problems in creating relationships; have problems with pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding and parenthood. Our whole life - from morning to night -is in fear of everything almost, is a continuous standby for impending disaster. The worst thing are the memories of the injury itself, all our senses are attacked on a daily basis by visuals - flashes of images of the rape, smells, touch, sight, sound, and so we are busy trying to fend off our head out of the rape attack who lived among us as if it's happening right now, here, right now.
When we see a scene of violence or advertising a film reminiscent of the rape - we do not function for days afterwards.
Those of us who have been injured as children and even wore - within the family unit, are suffering from a more severe form of PTSD, called CPTSD. Any sexual assault is a trauma, but sexual assault of a child whose personality has not yet designed, and whose damage is done on a regular daily basis and by someone close and loved it his is the "mother of all traumas". A soldier who injured shell shock after predicted the bodies of his good friends torn apart right next to him, has about the same as shock as a woman who has been raped. But it is clear that a soldier who captured and tortured physical and sexual on a daily basis over many years - the injury / fatal of his is mortal. Now, imagine a little girl who is captured through such torture – is it not clear that she is the most affected creature in the universe????
Indeed, we walk among the living, but we are dead inside. Murdered-souls. Many of us see death as the only option to relieve the never-ending pain. Some run away to drugs and prostitution, some injure their bodies in places hidden under clothing. A stranger will not understand this, cannot understand that only a physical pain can reduce the enormous pain in the heart.
We are starving the body who failed in its mission to protect the soul, or we over-feed him, being cruel to him, or just neglect him, or find it difficult to communicate with your body, let alone love him. To control of the body had been avoided from us by hitting us and we made ourselves the importance of controlling the body in every possible way. Forcibly occupy the place of the offender and take the reins into our hands - now I am. I'm the one who hurt, I'm the one who is bruising, I am the one who is rewarding for punishing.. Me.
Harm within the family also has different economic aspects and other traumas. It excludes us outside the circle of life - if keep quiet and not tell, then the abuser will continue to hurt us. When we children - if we dare counted, family denounce us say we are "liars" or simply "crazy". We are being deleted out the offender legacy, of sharing assets and goods of the family or a chance compensation for the misdeeds of the offender, compensation to be taken necessarily from the pockets of our mother, our brothers and our family -those difficult dilemmas' exhausting - so usually we prefer the quiet renunciation to the noisy struggle. And most preferably is the silence of death. No doubt.
Generations pass, chain of childhood continues to be born - get hurt - forget - remember - and dielike a scratched that no one bothered to stop.
Todealwith the problem, our brains havecreated a great tool - just repressionmechanism helps us to forget theincident. Like huge steel gate that felland blocked up the images of horror, smell, touch, memories. But the priceof steel to build a huge power dam hasa high price - the loss of all memoriesof childhood. How a person can livewithout the memories of innocence andbeauty?
Every person comes into the worldequipped with a battery that contains vitalenergy which should be enough for ahundred years. We have to burn so muchenergy intensity tremendous effort tofilter the memories, until the batterylife is running out for us at a veryyoung age. Not only our battery runsout at age 20, we need absolutesilence, stasis, without that nothing willmove around, Quiet. Quiet. Only in thisway we fill batteries.
We find it difficult to forgive thegirl who trusted her offender; she gave himto do it in silence, without tellinganyone. Stupid girl. A littlestupid. You deserve all the punishmentsin the world for what you did tome. Look what you did to me! Is thathow a good girl behaves??.
We are victims ofincest and childhood sexualassault, alone onour shoulders there is a heavy burden, we are on alongjourney, wedecided today to get up and demand you to see us, we'renottransparent. Wedeserve the state will help us build a healthy future tofundour treatments, wedeserve not to pay taxes, we deserve they see us anymomentwe live, we deserve not to be accusedof what happened and that there will be noStatute of Limitations for themurder of the soul of achild. Murder is murder and the Mark ofCain should deleted from ourforehead -but to tattoo it on theforeheads of offenders and to notethat on their tombstone, for all tosee for all generations until the endof days.
