This is being written mainly to help women who have gone through similar experiences and may trigger or be upsetting to some.
I was an innocent nine or ten or eleven year old the summer Jimmy from down the street decided I was interesting. He was seventeen. He told me I was pretty and gave me candy and liked to talk to me. I was the one who decided he was my boyfriend. He was seventeen and he probably knew the answer to my Big Question, which was that Mother was always telling us girls that men were only interested in one thing, but she refused to explain it until we were older. So one day I asked Jimmy what the one thing was.
He smiled and told me he would show me. It was in the woods and he would take me there. So I followed him, not hearing the door slam behind me as my sister Tina ran into the house. I thought she was jealous that I had a boyfriend.
...
My memories of this are confused. I have read the police report, and the hospital report, but what happened did not happen to me, it happened to someone else. I have about three different stories of what happened in conflicting memories.
Another memory is that Jimmy is still out there, that nothing was done, that no one ever came to help me, that everyone knew about it but shrugged it off. ...
"Jimmy's dead," I will say, suddenly, out of nowhere.
"Yes, Jimmy's dead," my husband will affirm. Sometimes I want to see the obituary. He shows it to me, and I read it, as if for the first time. We have a litany.
"My family came for me," I say, and he agrees, and walks me through the ritual. It is soothing but unreal. I am remote from it often.
I think memory is not static. I think we work with it all our lives. That encounter has come back to me time and time again, and I have had to work on it, as if I were there, at different ages and maturities. Somehow, some part of me is still there, going through it. At the time I was only unhappy that Jimmy got beat up. That is what I remember. I have had later, deeper reactions as older me's have found themselves there in a living memory. There have been lightning-quick flashbacks, I have had counseling, prayer and just about everything we can throw at these things, but I think it will always be an issue with me on earth. I will always remember, but I will never remember it. Someday, in heaven, I will be whole again.
I don't dwell on this. I don't define myself by this, or other failures or disappointments in my life. My life is hid in Christ, and this 'stuff' is stuff. It is part of my past, and mostly I leave it there. But talking to people in the Recovery Forum brought it back. I'm hoping writing this out can help someone.
I was an innocent nine or ten or eleven year old the summer Jimmy from down the street decided I was interesting. He was seventeen. He told me I was pretty and gave me candy and liked to talk to me. I was the one who decided he was my boyfriend. He was seventeen and he probably knew the answer to my Big Question, which was that Mother was always telling us girls that men were only interested in one thing, but she refused to explain it until we were older. So one day I asked Jimmy what the one thing was.
He smiled and told me he would show me. It was in the woods and he would take me there. So I followed him, not hearing the door slam behind me as my sister Tina ran into the house. I thought she was jealous that I had a boyfriend.
...
My memories of this are confused. I have read the police report, and the hospital report, but what happened did not happen to me, it happened to someone else. I have about three different stories of what happened in conflicting memories.
Another memory is that Jimmy is still out there, that nothing was done, that no one ever came to help me, that everyone knew about it but shrugged it off. ...
"Jimmy's dead," I will say, suddenly, out of nowhere.
"Yes, Jimmy's dead," my husband will affirm. Sometimes I want to see the obituary. He shows it to me, and I read it, as if for the first time. We have a litany.
"My family came for me," I say, and he agrees, and walks me through the ritual. It is soothing but unreal. I am remote from it often.
I think memory is not static. I think we work with it all our lives. That encounter has come back to me time and time again, and I have had to work on it, as if I were there, at different ages and maturities. Somehow, some part of me is still there, going through it. At the time I was only unhappy that Jimmy got beat up. That is what I remember. I have had later, deeper reactions as older me's have found themselves there in a living memory. There have been lightning-quick flashbacks, I have had counseling, prayer and just about everything we can throw at these things, but I think it will always be an issue with me on earth. I will always remember, but I will never remember it. Someday, in heaven, I will be whole again.
I don't dwell on this. I don't define myself by this, or other failures or disappointments in my life. My life is hid in Christ, and this 'stuff' is stuff. It is part of my past, and mostly I leave it there. But talking to people in the Recovery Forum brought it back. I'm hoping writing this out can help someone.