Maybe it's time

I have been thinking about my reaction to the words, counseling. I knew if I marked that box while filling out paperwork for my video EEG, everything, would have new meaning, especially if there was no evidence of seizure, but, I had to check the box. I had to tell the truth. I was letting my freak flag fly. I pressed the lead onto the paper forming a black X, forever affirming the question of physical or sexual abuse. I knew. I could not lie, not anymore.


I was eleven that summer and lonely, no neighborhood friends, no vacations on the beach, just the heat, the care of younger siblings and prickly cucumbers. I was so desperate for attention and when it came in the form of a sixteen year old male, I did not run. I felt special, smart, older. He wooed me with games, and compliments. It was a secret played out in the corn crib where my sisters and I would write all the cats name in crayon and then write RIP when we lost them, one by one, in the road, from disease, when they froze.

Slowly the game changed and now it would be played with my peddle pushers around my ankles. It hurt and I didn't feel special just scared, dirty. I didn't know how to leave this game. That is when I learned how proficient I was at disappearing. No sound of farm machines, no tiger lilies snaking there way through the slatted walls, no smell of nervous sweat. I was gone and it was best that way.

The game progressed to a more secure location. I was locked in a room and I kept trying to disappear, but I couldn't. I could feel vomit coming to the surface. I had never seen a penis. I had no knowledge of how they worked, but apparently I was not a very attractive eleven year old because this one was not working. After my many years of Law and Order SVU I now know this was it, the definition of first degree criminal sexual assault.
But in my memory, this is what happened. There was yelling on the other side of the door and then the door was kicked open not by Superman, or heavenly intervention, but my skinny, be-speckled brother who shoved me out and fought with my would be rapist.

We never talked about it, but I hope he knows he saved me. I hope he knows that he was courageous. I hope he knows that I will always remember. Sometimes I worry that in saving me he had to learn how to disappear too.

I forgave the sixteen year old long ago, Things that happen can change the person you might have been and survival is the instinct you are left with. It is the eleven year old that I have not been able to absolve, maybe someday.