Child Abuse Story of Healing and Recovery From Kyrie E

by Kyrie E
(Location Undisclosed)

Although tests said that I was bright, social situations baffled me. It was easy to comprehend books and recognize patterns in numbers, but interactions with other people baffled me. I got in trouble frequently, but my understanding of why was often pretty limited. Interactions with other kids were also confusing. When I was 5, another girl came over to play, and after she left, my mother said that she probably wouldn't be coming back. I figured that this meant I did something wrong. By then, this was starting to seem inevitable. Sometimes I'd get angry and frustrated, though, which would get me in more trouble.

In third grade, the teacher was sometimes nice and sometimes scary. Sometimes, I'd get in trouble for inappropriate laughter. The weird thing was that it wasn't especially fun, but the harder I tried to stop, the worse it could be. Later on, it occurred to me that this might have been a sign of stress.

One afternoon when I got home from school, my mom wasn't there. It turned out that she had been over at the school talking to my teacher. This seemed like it probably wasn't a good thing and the fear started to rise. Did I start laughing inappropriately? I can't remember doing this, but my mother later said I did. But I do remember being up in my room after that and my mother telling me that I could either take off my pants and underwear and get hit with the belt or run away. I took a look at the belt and decided to run. My mom made me stop before I left and hit my hand with a ruler because I'd been biting my nails.

After wandering around the neighborhood for a while, I ended up at a friend's house. My father showed up and quietly said that it was time to go home. He sounded kind of sad but not angry. When we got home, my mother was crying and she hugged me. I was very confused and wondered if it had also been bad of me to not just let her hit me with the belt.

About a year later, my mom gathered the family in the bedroom and asked everyone if it would be OK if she took my sister and left. I figured that meant that she wanted my sister but not my brother and me, and wasn't completely surprised. So I just sort of mumbled that I didn't know and tried to stay out of the situation. Dad persuaded her to stay, and I was not sure how to feel about this. Many years later, Dad told me that my mom had had a few problems of her own and she had been talking about going away to get some kind of help.

In 5th grade, my mom decided that we were going to go to a Catholic school. The transition was not easy - many of the kids had known each other since kindergarten, and the rules were different. I had no idea how to fit in, and remember finding spit that someone had left on my uniform sweater. My mother decreed that I was supposed to have a kid over once a week. But when I tried asking, the nicer ones would usually decline politely, and I overheard some of the others mocking me for asking. So I'd sometimes have to sit in my room all weekend writing sentences as punishment. I remember at the end of one of those weekends, she came into my room and tore up all the sentences right in front of my face.

One weekend in late winter, I went over to the local public school to play and was happy when another kid wanted to play with me. He was older than me, in junior high, but we ran around and played hide-and-go-seek. We ended up in a secluded area, and he came up with a new game. He wanted my to take off my pants and he would just stick it in a little. This sounded like it would hurt, but I didn't want to be rude. So I compromised and unbuttoned my shirt and unzipped my pants a little. This seemed to satisfy him. When I got home, my mother didn't believe that I had been at the school and spanked me and sent me to bed without supper. Later when I told her that a guy had wanted me to have sex with him, she said, "You didn't let him, did you?" I still had to stay in bed and didn't get any dinner. Years later, I brought up the boy, and she said, "You don't forget when something like that happens to your kid." I felt like screaming, but didn't say anything.

When I turned 11, a 15-year-old high school boy came to our family as a foster child. He was nice to me and seemed to like being around me. Also, I didn't usually have to write sentences as punishment for not fitting in at school on the weekends when he was there. Then he got even friendlier. He threw me over his knee and patted me on the butt one day, and he also started giving me long, sloppy kisses. He'd sometimes sneak into my bed at night and climb on top of me. He wanted to have sex, but I lied and said that I was afraid of getting pregnant, despite being too young to have my period. Given what had happened after I'd encountered the junior high boy on the playground the year before, it didn't seem like a good idea to tell my parents what was going on.

When I was 12, the foster kid pushed my parents too far and they ended the relationship. That year was also the year I had to go see a counselor. She was nice and told me that whatever I said was confidential, but I wasn't so sure. After one session, my mother had demanded to know what we talked about and I knew that she sometimes met with my parents. So telling her about stuff like the foster kid or the time my mom had slapped me across the face until my nose bled seemed too dangerous. We ended up working on my social skills and she tried to explain what you were and were not supposed to do. She was nice, and I made some progress and relished the praise and attention.

The transition to high school was a little difficult because most of the kids were unfamiliar and I had to figure out a new set of rules. But once I settled in, it was a lot better than grade school. The next year, my mother got a job as a sexual abuse prevention educator and she went around telling other people's children that the parts of their bodies covered by their swimsuits were private and they had a right to say no to touch that felt wrong. It was impossible to put into words why I sometimes felt so angry.

Cynicism made me feel less vulnerable, and my high school friends and I reduced sarcasm to an art form. If you set your expectations low enough, it seemed, you were less likely to be disappointed. That was the year some Catholic priests were arrested for child sexual abuse, so we had plenty of material. It wasn't until many years later that I recognized that cynicism also had a cost.

That summer, I volunteered with my high school service club at a face-painting booth that was raising money for child abuse prevention. A few weeks later, I got a letter in the mail from the organization thanking me. My mother walked into the room with the letter and demanded that I open it and read it aloud to her. I had no choice, but felt white-hot fury. My father could not understand why that had bothered me so much.

Adulthood ended up being better than childhood. I hit a wall in college, but ended up making it through and getting a graduate degree. Sometimes it seems like I should have accomplished more than I did, but I like my job. Ultimately, a psychiatrist concluded that the difficulties with social skills and some other things were related to a subtle disability, and medication helped me with some things.

Someone said that forgiveness involved giving up hope of a better past, and there's a lot of truth in that. There's been a fair amount of "coulda-woulda-shoulda" - if I'd gotten treated earlier, if the situation had been better, if I'd made different choices. If, if, if.... Would I have been able to achieve more? Maybe. But what's done is done. A wise professor once told me that the principle of optimality involved picking the best path from where you were now, regardless of what had occurred in the past.

In his poem "The Dry Salvages," T.S. Eliot says,

"And right action is freedom
From past and future also.
For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying;"

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