How I remembered
Monday, February 22, 2010 at 5:54PM Yesterday, two of my girlfriends, one here in Seattle and one back in Moscow, told me that it was really hard for them to believe my story and asked me how I remembered everything, so here is the compressed version of how I started remembering - over the course of many many years:
At 13 (I think this is when my father stopped sexually abusing me because I got my period and started looking more like a developing woman - and I think this is when I blocked it out from my memory - I say "I think" because I'm not sure yet), I was drawn to magazines (in Germany) for girls, talking about sex and how to develop your own body. Such magazines didn't exist in Russia. I was particularly drawn to the section where teenagers shared their first experiences. One girl explained how she experimented with the shower. I remember from then on, I locked myself in the bathroom (the only place in our apartment where you could lock yourself) to experiment like her. I didn't remember that it happened between me and my father in the bathroom, and I would become fixated on it - it will be the only way for me to climax.
At 16, when I ran away from home, I felt I had something within me, something odd, something untold, and I wanted to find out what that was. I started doing yoga and meditations, then proceeded to figuring out how to read people's thoughts, thinking I wanted to read everyone's thoughts, everyone in my family. Nothing came of it, of course, and when I got pregnant at 17 and gave birth to my daughter at 18, my life started revolving around her, and I pushed my unrest deep down, as well as any desire for sex.
At 21, when I realized my marriage with my high-school sweetheart was not working out (he needed to have sex several times a day, I complied most of the time, he complained that I couldn't have an orgasm, that it was important to him, that I was cold, and so it went on in circles). I started looking at men in the subway with interest, then blamed myself for doing that, thinking I have inherited my mother's bad genes - which I was repeatedly told by my father. I felt the unrest about something inside of me then again, and one day just decided that I had enough of this marriage, packed up, took my daughter, and left my husband. I had no idea that I've been projecting the image of my father onto my husband, and I simply ran away again, like when I was 16, only 5 years later. I lived on my own, without any support, working and studying, and the unrest was pushed down even deeper.
At 23, I came to US with my second husband, the one whom I met 1 year before, and with whom I fell in love right away - I thought it was just meant to be different (I was right:). In US, after realizing that his allowed for health insurance that covered therapy, I immediately wanted to go, to figure out this whole orgasm issue. Gradually, once we settled in this new country, our sex life started being either present many days in the row, or absent for as long as a month (he was always patient with my wishes, contrary to my first husband). He wanted it in the dark, in the bedroom - I was terrified of the dark, of the bedroom. I was obsessed with this idea that if I could't figure out a way to reach an orgasm with him, he will blame me like my first husband did and leave me. We both thought of going to a sex therapist. I would have body sensations when I was naked in the bathroom - a horrible feeling that my body was so ugly, so very ugly, that I wanted to cut it off, cut the breasts and the whole stomach and everything off from my front side. We finally found a sex therapist, and I told her I'm sure something happened to me at the daycare where I was left for a week (I was 5 years old) - I had a vague memory of it and a family story that after that daycare I stopped talking, started peeing and pooping myself, and danced around with a crazy look in my eyes. The therapist told me not to go there, not to remember, so I pushed it all down again. We did some exercises with my husband, trying to wean me out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. It worked, sometimes. Sometimes, it didn't.
At 27, I had our son, and the unrest grew within me again, very strong this time. I shied away from sex and started thinking of going to therapist again, found one, and dove into therapy with fervor, trying to understand myself, reading books on every subject I could find, and learning as much as I could about various sexual disorders. My main reasoning was - there must be something wrong with my genes, I will go crazy like my mom did - there is this promiscuous gene, and I for sure have it. I will go to therapy, and I won't go crazy then.
In the next 6 years, I saw 5 therapists.
Therapist number 1 was a very sweet lady, she suggested I might have ADD, so I got tested and got on meds. It helped with concentration, but didn't help with sex. I grew restless again and went looking for another therapist.
Therapist number 2 was an older gay man, very sweet, but we never connected - I talked about my kids, he talked about his dogs. He helped me to move forward, but I felt an unease, and decided to move on.
Therapist number 3 was a very mature lady, a motherly figure, who helped me a lot, until I realized that I'm venting to her like to a mother that I never had, and she is teaching me how to live, like a proper mother should, but not a therapist. She ended up graduating me after 1 year, and I felt cured. But the sex problem remained, I more than ever had an itch to divorce my husband, pack up, grab my kids and go. Sounds familiar? I was ready to repeat the pattern - run away again. I started looking for yet another therapist.
Therapist number 4 was an older man, and we went to see him both, after I nearly left my husband, he nearly agreed that we needed to divorce, and we both decided to give it one more chance. A couple sessions into the therapy, we started talking about our sex problem, and I told him about this feeling of something happening to me at that daycare, or that week when I was at that daycare. Once I blurted out - I think I was sexually abused. The therapist confirmed it, he said he has seen all the typical signs. We decided to investigate it together. I went to see him alone one week, one week I would come with my husband. I wanted to remember very badly, and yet I was terrified of false memories, having read about it online. So we proceeded with Eye Movement technique - when the therapist moves two fingers from left to write in front of my face, as I talk, and look at them. That way, my brain constantly switched from left to right, letting me access my repressed memories, catching my brain "unaware" - like, for example, I would have an image bugging me, something completely random, like an acorn. The therapist would ask me - tell me about the acorn, where is it? I would suddenly see where it is - without it being blocked out.
- In the park.
- What are you doing with it?
- Picking it up from the ground.
- And then?
- Then there is this hole in my abdomen, at the left. But it couldn't be, could it? Why in my abdomen?
Therapist number 5 (specializes in sexual abuse survivors, suggested by therapist number 4) asked me to draw this hole. When I drew it, my body went into its first panic attack. It was horrible, my body reenacted the rape - it convulsed, the legs twisted, then slammed into my forehead with a horrifying rhythm, faster, faster; images would flash in front of my face, long forgotten details, like the color of my dress, the dirt on the ground, the pattern of wood on the bench, everything - but the person who did it. And so it went on for several more months, with me still not remembering who it was, but now knowing for sure I was sexually abused.
December 27th 2009 - this was my dark day, the day when I finally remembered that it was my father. I had recurring images in my dreams and in art therapy of someone black - black dog eating me, black ape chasing me, black man touching me. Gradually, with every session, I started seeing a man with white skin, but painted black, the one day with horror realizing he looked like my father, naked, painted black. I didn't want to believe it for weeks. Then I remembered how I learned to see things 3D (I could make any pattern into 3D). I remembered the pattern of the tiny holes in the fake leather seat of a car, my dad's car. I saw my vomit on it. Then I remembered how I used to go to the bathroom and look down at the little squares of the tiles, another pattern, and how I learned to make them 3D too. I connected the two. I realized I have been staring at my surroundings, to distract myself from what was happening to my body. I remembered his car - the color white, the make, the year, and I called my step-mom, with hands and feet ice cold, asking her what color his car was. White. With fake beige leather seats? Yes. And then I knew, I knew it was him. It all fell into place. I started writing it all down into my journal and crying over it, when my husband heard me and came upstairs to comfort me. I was lying down with my knees up to my chin, he leaned over me, I looked up, and that was the final trigger. I went into the most horrible panic attack I ever had. I told him - stop! Please stop! I didn't see him, I was a little girl again, and I was re-experiencing my first rape. I thought I was going to die. The fear of death was so real, like you see on the faces of victims of horror movies. I NEVER ever want to go there again, yet I have to, every week, to get rid of those memories (to reprocess them as an adult). I now know that the hole in my stomach came from me thinking that he will pierce me, pierce me all the way through, and his thing will come out on the other side, and that I will die.
My father was the one who took me to that cursed 5-day daycare, and he did it the first time on the way - either in his car, or on the train that he took me in (I later learned that repressed memory works like an accordion - multiple events are compressed into one - I'm learning to separate them now and constructing an exact timeline to put it all into place).
This is how I remembered. Believing it is a whole another topic. For weeks, I refused to believe it. I do believe it now - the evidence is overwhelming.
Reader Comments (2)
i imagine this is very hard for some people to read. i also imagine the agony you must have gone through to make the decision to do this work in a public format. i also truly believe the healing it will promote in yourself and in others was worth the risk. i love you, and i'm very proud of you.
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