Sexual abuse in a very young person changes everything.
It changed me. Not in the way a person would grow and change over time, based on experience and choices that you recognize or acknowledge as yours. No, the change I am talking about is the result of trauma. And a child has so little context that the brain starts making choices, pushing the child to develop survival skills for life. Everything could be a matter of life or death, and the brain does what it has to to make sure you are never going to be hurt again.
A kind of unconscious self defense class that you stay in and never graduate from.These are not conscious decisions. Over time you come to believe it's just who you are, this is the person you we destined to be. Just like you believe Amelia Earhart was born to fly the Atlantic. Then you fill yourself up and weigh yourself down with guilt and shame.
To feel safe in the world that let me down and vulnerable to abuse I became, unyielding, vigilant, forceful to protect myself, to stay alive in my world. Anything bad could happen at any moment, and everything that happens is my fault. My childhood sexual abuse happened over a period of 10 years, 10 years living with a big dark dirty secret that conditioned me in ways it would take years to unlock.
If I could appear strong powerful then I would not appear vulnerable, and be safe from harm like that or of any kind.
Being hard on myself is my vigilance trying to keep me safe. Always on the lookout for the predator. The need became great at such a young age that for most of my life I would have said it wasn't true. That was just who I was.
Now I practice being vulnerable. I practice telling myself that everything is going to be okay. That it is a path to a happiness I have yet to experience. But I resist the practice.
