Suddenly all the pain dissolved, if just for a few minutes. But those few minutes were some of the happiest I'd been in recent memory. The stuffed animal below, a maned wolf whose name is Paprika, was inside the box. I couldn't stop hugging her. I laid her over top of me. I felt like a happy little kid again. I felt like my little inner child, my little Silas, got a taste of peace and compassion in those few minutes. I can't pull myself away from her sweet face and soft fur. I love my aunt. Sometimes angels have halos, sometimes they have long legs, perky ears, fluffy fur and a sweet face for kisses and cuddles. 

I remembered being absolutely terrified, but I can't remember why. There was a baby gate. I was carrying a blanket around, an at the time anxious habit of mine. My mom was talking to someone with her in the living room, though I don't remember who. It was known that I had some sort of developmental problem that had yet to be diagnosed at the time, so the baby gates were kept a bit longer (this disability was later diagnosed as autism). I think someone had hurt me. I can't say for certain. At the very least scared me. But I remembered desperately trying to push the baby gate down. The entire time my mom ignored me. I vividly remember her talking to the other person telling them that I'd get over it. She yelled at me a few times to.go away and I kept persisting. Eventually she got tired of my presence and cries for help and pretended not to notice me. I stayed at the gate for another good half hour begging her to help me. I eventually started crying and wandering into another room having given up on my mom's comfort.

It's strange. I felt so strongly attached to the people in my life for so long. They'd been tired of dealing with me for literally as long as I can remember. Every time I asked for help, people made sure that I knew I was alone. It's no wonder she didn't care I got orally assaulted almost just out of view of her front door. She even talked about how disrespectful I was to the person who assaulted me, how I must have annoyed him or something. It's no wonder my mom responded to my brother's inappropriate touches with laughter. It makes total sense now why she responded with physically beating me into silence on my own birthday just for saying that I had trauma. I deserved a voice. I deserved to have a mother who wasn't also a judge, and I didn't deserve my brother who'd come up to take her side against me in every single dispute we had, no matter how innocent I was. I deserved hugs and kisses and cuddles and to be asked how I was hurting and if someone was making me unsafe. Not defenses for them.

In my friendships now I always seem to wear out my welcome. I always seem to be the nuisance, the buzzing mosquito nobody can quite smack to the floor. I keep retreating back into my shell because I just worry I'm going to piss away any good will I have with anyone. Why make friends? Why talk? My trauma, my disability, my mental illnesses, they all put a burden on everyone else. I want friends I can be honest with for once. I want family where I can talk about my sexual trauma and it not have to be this constant risky secret that puts me in danger of pissing people off to the point of hitting me just for saying I'm in pain. So far, it's been demonstrated to me I'll never have that connection. I'm always here to blend in. My problems always painful for someone else. Why talk about my sexual trauma. It constantly carries the risk of having people abandon me for it. Why try to build friendships and connections. They all reveal to me they don't want me and that it's easier to tuck me into a corner where we don't have to think about this weird person and his problems he never seems to be quiet about. Nobody ever thinks about the fact that I have no choice but to carry that with me my entire life. It's all been a lie. All of that love I felt for them. It meant nothing. I just want to curl up in here and die. There's no point. I keep trying to come out of my shell and getting rejected. My birthday has already been full of people telling me my interests are fucking stupid and that we don't give a shit and we're not going to give you a single thing you ask for. Remember, it's about what other people want to buy you, it's about US and what WE want to buy you. Fuck your useless interests, fuck you as a person, this is all stupid and childish. We just don't fucking like you. I want it to end. I don't want to go back out there again. Stop pretending I matter. Just stop. It's an act. I know you hate me for the fact that I was assaulted and that I just keep insisting that I'm hurting. You want me in hiding and that's where I am. Why do you keep dragging me out here to to torture me and remind me you resent me? I still don't understand what I did to you to make you loathe the way you do. I can't even hide myself from you without you hating me for it. I just want a sign that someone out there actually cares.

Grief, for me, has always been late to arrive. I understand in my dad's case, that I didn't attend the funeral and didn't really grieve him when he died because there was a lot of emotional toxicity and pressure from those around me. For example, when I was trying to talk about how just because I knew it would happen soon and expected it, this was seen as callous even though it was just how I felt, and it turned out to be true. Because of my lack of affectation due to autism combined with this, I was perceived as not caring even though I was agonized inside and even had to keep reminding myself he had in fact died. This is why I couldn't bring myself to go to his funeral. Everyone wanted a specific reaction that just was not mine. I was policed and ridiculed constantly for having an unexpected reaction as if I felt nothing. I also realized that when I finally spoke back a few times and insisted my pain was real, I said "I don't think you comprehend that I lost my dad who's been here since I was born". I was one upped. My mom started telling me stories to "prove" she had a more special connection with him, like she lost the only man who protected her from her rapists and the father of her children. Which infuriates me now knowing what she allowed to happen to me, but that's probably its own entry. It was this constant pressure, ironically, that caused me to shove everything further down and hide. The only shelter I had was retreating further into my shell. I can now sit with the fact that I am not just grieving my dad, but his safety, too. Those big bear hugs and warm naps I took against his chest when I was tiny. Because he wasn't just a special protector for one person only to grieve that way. I miss his arm around me and sitting with me for almost an hour some nights because I didn't feel safe, and he wouldn't sleep until he knew I felt secure and loved. He truly was my rock and I deserve space to grieve that fact. 

To try and make the connection here, I have to come to terms with grieving the innocent childhood my abusers stole from me. 16 years later and I can finally grieve, when just a few months ago I didn't even understand I had lost that safety that I deserved. I could've had happy memories of playing with my neighbors and siblings and growing up with people who mattered to me. Now I know that these same people put their own pleasure and sick thoughts above a previously happy-go-lucky and curious little kid. They did not value my autonomy and my comfort in my own body when they actively chose to assault, grope and touch me. You had a malleable child who wanted friends and to be loved and your response was to exploit that. Now, with your actions as contributing factors, I'll be 25 in a little over two weeks with not much idea of what it's like to have friends that love you. Having to learn that it's not normal to be scared of your family that everyone says loves you. I don't understand why you decided I deserved to be used as a toy and not be treated as your equal. I don't understand what it's like to have a mother who didn't threaten you with beating you in public only to tell you it was good parenting. One who doesn't scream when she doesn't get her way and threaten her own child over talking about their trauma as real pain. I didn't understand why it was wrong for my mom to black my eye at 14 when I mentally broke and expressed suicidal tendencies. Now I am in the present with the fact that you allowed and approved my sexual abuse, and it leaves me with grief over the love of my body that I lost, over the mother who could've listened and to the time the wounds spent getting deeper instead of anyone offering me any opportunity to heal.

I sit now with new grief over the healthy sex life I was deprived of. I mourn my playful little child self. I miss the love and play and support that you deprived me of. Most of all, it hurts knowing you thought you had the right to treat me this way, and that I must accept that you just don't love me despite the love I once held for you, that I thought you reciprocated. It's not going to help to defang all the pain currently sinking its teeth as far as they'll go into me. Just because it's painful doesn't mean that these emotional beasts are parts of me that deserve less love and acknowledgement. The forgiveness I look for as a Christian is not to say you didn't hurt me and that the assaults and abuse are just forgotten and okay. I seek the forgiveness of myself and the mercy to let go of resentment. Because I cannot allow you to dig your claws in deeper. You are still vile but I will let go of the wrath I feel towards you, because you don't deserve to hurt me without consequences ever again. I will personally place my time towards honoring the healing God has given me and with grace, remove you as the thorns in my side you are. No amount of fighting you will heal me. I can still sit with my pain and nurse it without letting you worm your way into my psyche again. I'm not pretending pain is gone. I am here, I am still alive and I choose to let my pain guide me to finding healing and people who actually love me, and to keep you from stealing from me any more of my self love and safety. I choose to nurture and acknowledge the grief you have caused me and to allow it its time to hurt. I will remove you from my life with time and faith, and I will be joyful in my recovery.

While we had some privacy he showed me some concerning things. He hid his private area and refused to open his mouth, sometimes covering it... He's scared. I wonder if he has something to say about my oral assault.

Finally, I tried to give him some room for comfort today. He picked a stuffed animal of mine to guard him. I visualized him laying it across my chest, and then his, as a sort of protector, guiding my hands to place it. Here is the one he chose:

Silas, when you feel comfortable, you can tell me why you decided to spend time with me tonight. I know you're not ready to ask the tough questions. Neither am I frankly. But you deserve a name, and you deserve a say in it. The fact that you didn't even know who you are and were scared to present to me, that's heartbreaking. I know you were made to do things you never wanted and were scared nobody would believe you. I know you just thought that you could make the pain stop, and I want you to know that being traumatized and hurt and seeking comfort is never something you have to apologize for. I know the ramifications of talking about it and how scared of coming to me at all must have been. You will not lose me no matter what you have to say. I'm not here to take sides, I'm here because you deserve a voice and if it's through my lips, my tongue and my mind, you can use them to say the things that are too scary to tell anyone else. You are here. Your name proves it. I know you want to be loved, and I know how scary it is to ask. None of this is your fault. In time, you'll heal. We both will. For now, you can be as hurt as you need to, you can cry as you need to, you can rest against me safely and get warm with me. I don't just love you for what information you provide to me, but because I know you are a part of me, that you are in agony from the way your family, the people you thought were your friends and even bystanders thought the pain you were trying to warn me about isn't real. You deserve a place to hurt in peace and private, as well as to have that space to know you're loved.

Speak to me again when you're ready, show yourself to me if you need it, and please know that I trust you are here because just like me, you want to finally find a space where you can come out of your shell.

You didn't know. I don't blame you for it. You couldn't have known. You weren't there when my innocence was taken. That was not in your control. But I wish you were here so I could tell you. You'd threaten to beat up people who so much as talked about touching me. I feel like I could have gotten through so much pain if my mom didn't get to me quicker to tell me that nothing bad was being done. I could've heard you call me Mason while you were still here. Maybe I could've gotten counseling with you by my side. But now... I can't trust anyone. I pray nobody finds out. I feel so bad for you that your son was touching his sibling inappropriately while he knew you weren't around. I feel like I could've told you what my neighbor did. But I'll never get to hear you. I'm keeping you in my memory. I got a plushie to make sure I remember you, because you would've been so excited to have it. I'll always keep in my mind your words, because I know despite our differences, you actually did everything in your ability to keep me safe. I need to think of what you'd say to me from time to time to keep going. There's a lot I didn't tell you too. I'll keep you with me though. I'm going to need you through this.

I hate how detached I've become. I don't feel like a victim, and I mean that in a bad sense. I know there's pain present, it's just that I don't feel it. I've never shed one tear over my assaults themselves. I cried for 2 straight hours Thursday after seeing my mom helpless from surgery and medicine. Again, it's because I hate her. Once my family left me alone the flood gates just opened in the waiting room. But I felt more pain that she didn't help me when I was being assaulted or harassed or inappropriately touched. The major trigger came from knowing I had to help someone who was consistently absent, cold and frankly fucking cruel when I needed her. I took her to physical therapy today and she still called me mean and a bit*h. But during all that, as much as they reminded me of my assaults, as long as I sat there ruminating at visualizing them, they didn't cause me much pain. I don't get it. It makes me feel fake and vindictive. Even if it really is a completely unfair assessment of myself. I know there's hurt there, but I'm realizing I don't know how to feel it. Maybe my body and/or brain is still blocking it. Either way. I just want to be able to let myself feel everything so I can just have the space to know what that agony is like. It's my own. Just because it hurts doesn't mean that part of me doesn't need someone to nurture and hold and kiss and cuddle them and assure them that they're not alone anymore, and that it's ok to know what it's like to just hurt. I need it. "They" need it. It just hurts how much this makes me feel like I don't belong around other victims, how much visible signs of damage are expected that my body and mind won't let out. I need so badly to get through the hell that this is going to take me through and to just do the grueling, terrifying work. I pray that one day I can feel whatever it is little me needs. I guess it's not going to be soon though.

TW for suicidal ideation in the spoiler portion as well as graphic language regarding it. Not necessary to understand the rest of the post but just be warned.

I just wish I could learn to slowly start pulling apart the mess that my brain is in. I have to be gentle with myself, I know. I have tried telling my trauma to my plushies when I'm alone to start with as a sort of practice. I just feel lost and confused with little memories of being violated and betrayed bubbling back to the surface of my conscience and wonder when I can finally be at peace, if ever.

I posted about this in a different thread, but I very recently resurfaced two new memories of being sexually harassed as a young child, and as a young teen. I'm going to focus on one here. The assault that happened when I was 8-9 I had mostly repressed until around a month ago, and one part of that memory was my teenage neighbor came to me to try and get help for me and to get the story out of me, which terrified me at the time. Initially, when I had remembered him doing that, I felt grateful that even though I couldn't do anything, someone was at least making an attempt to help me. Then these new memories came. This was not my peer; I would have been somewhere around 7-9, and he would've been close to 15-16, and a large teenager at that. He was so big he could pick me up and hold and carry me, and often did. He understood perfectly that I was vulnerable. I remember him talking about how smooth and soft my butt was, and how he wanted to grab and touch it. He knew me since I was an infant, he literally was introduced to me when I was born. And he felt comfortable making comments about wanting to grope my butt while I'm sitting innocently in my underwear, in front of my brother. Who sat there and allowed him to do all this, despite them being the same age, and never informing our parents. I can't remember if I was being groped or touched by him or not because this is not the only time he's done this; just the one I can remember any details of. I feel so confused and let down. To get into the relevance to the title; this has affected me so deeply because the people who I thought loved me, wanted to care for me, are once again the ones who took advantage of me as a minor, or were complacent with my assaulter and sexual harassers doing these things to me. It's hard to know how to love yourself after you've been treated like a toy by the people who supposedly care about you.

This is why I have to recognize that I am my only advocate, as much as hurts to know that. I have been learning over the years to work on my esteem and to be honest this has set me back. I have resolved to try to remember though, that I can love myself and it matters as much as the love of anyone else. I have been taking time to reflect on my body and showing it the love it deserves as a part of me, loving myself sexually and trusting myself. It's a long way away but I am learning to open myself up to caring for myself and having physical reminders that I need to have my own back, because nobody else is going to. Mentally I have been trying to be kinder to myself and giving myself a few little gifts and trying to remember that I deserve to respect myself. I just want to be able to share that love with someone I can trust someday. For now I'm intending to write down what I need to allow myself to feel cared about and lower the apprehension towards self-care. Finally I'm just trying to remember my abuse doesn't define the way I need to feel about myself, as hard as it will be to deprogram myself out of the mindset that tells me it does. Finally, if you have any advice for self-care and love, I'd be open to it. Thanks if you read all that.

One of the biggest things I've struggled with is realizing how much I was betrayed after I started remembering my assault. Not only that, but how deeply it colored my willingness to trust others without me even realizing it. For the majority of my life that I can remember, I've worried about getting close to people for fear that they will immediately pick up on my ineptitudes and use them for their own ends. I've told my mom that this is why I'm scared of romantic relationships and why I hadn't ever and still hadn't been in one, and somehow she saw this view of trust as completely normal. She found it perfectly okay that I didn't even trust her as far as I could throw her. I wonder why she never thought to even question that? But maybe I know. She barely trusted me, even when I was barely 8 and still vulnerable. 

I don't know what triggered that feeling in her and I probably never will. But I always had vivid memories of her blaming me for things I didn't even do, and when she found out that I had no part in them, she'd never apologize.  Then memories came flooding back of me telling her about my assaulter, telling her how he made me uncomfortable and not knowing how to describe the comments he made about wanting to things to my body. Immediately I was blamed as being a rude brat. I was going to spend time with him whether I liked it or not. No comment he made was that bad, and if it was he probably didn't mean it anyway. Why do you not trust your own child when they're telling you that something very clearly wrong is happening and wanting to get away from it? Why do you trust the person they're telling you is scaring them and making them more uncomfortable every time they come around more than them? I wished so badly for a mother I could actually turn to and have hear me out. Someone who was actually an advocate for me. But now I'm here, processing the aftermath of an assault she could have prevented had she had any faith in her own child. And the great irony of it is that now, I can't trust her with the details of my assault. I can't risk her not believing me again. I can't risk her blaming me the way she always has.

I also learned very quickly not to trust friends from my assault. The child who assaulted me, before he took advantage of me, I genuinely thought he wanted to be my friend. I wondered who I could tell after he did it, and at only 8 I knew my mom would punish me for being "stupid" enough to fall for his coercion. But then I had to realize what few friends I had would bully me and spread my assault around as funny. I would have been relentlessly mocked. They already made fun of each others' personal lives, but I couldn't even process that I was assaulted and yet I knew my life would be hell by people I once thought were my friends, and I blamed myself for it. Hell I still blame myself for letting it happen. I couldn't turn to my family and now my friends felt like one step away from turning their backs on me. I am still piecing together memories of standing with friends wondering what they'd do if they knew what happened. I wondered too if they'd figure it out and then try to hurt me themselves. If I was so malleable and quick to fold to my assaulter's pressuring, what would other people who I also thought were my friends do with that knowledge? Suddenly I felt a single slip of the tongue away from being unsafe, only at eight years old.

I don't even trust myself anymore. How could I let this happen to me? How did I allow myself to be violated at such a young age? How do I come clean? How do I know I won't have someone who can physically or mentally overpower me, considering I am autistic and physically fairly weak? I don't know that I can have faith in myself not to give in again if someone finds my weaknesses. I want to be able to love someone again, have friends again, to trust someone with my body for the first time. I just don't have the strength for it. I wish there was a happier note to end this on but I don't have one. It's just one excruciating step at a time.

Today, I went to church and prayed for myself privately. It's actually the start of my "weekend" because my days off are Sunday and Monday; figured I'd try to make this week one where I'd try to focus on healing, and this is where I started. Yet I sat in the church, alone in my pew, singing hymns, reading out of the Nicene Creed, and I felt shame underneath it all. Who was I to sit in a holy place so contaminated at my core? Who was I daring to come into a house of God so profoundly and permanently defiled and filthy? I'll never wash myself clean, no matter how hard I try. You can sit here and tell me God loves us for showing up, for loving you just the same no matter how hurt or "dirty" you are. I understand that about my own faith; you can lay it out to me all day. Yet I still feel so vile for showing my face to God like...this. It is so hard to explain that no matter what you tell me, I feel like I allowed myself to be assaulted, and that's a type of filth I cannot rid myself of. I haven't even been baptized because I've kept my assault to myself there, and I don't take Communion because I don't feel right to take it the way I am.

This is part of slowly pulling apart the results of the trauma I put away for so long. It took 15 years to come back to me. I always had a problem of self-isolating and generally distrusting people, because I was afraid of giving in if they pressured me. Just the same way as I, as a young child, caved to being pressured after being sexually harassed for some time. Now a large part of the reason why has coming rushing back to me. It hurts more than I can describe to you here knowing I just cracked into being violated. I still have memories of him standing over top of me, my head underneath the hole in the floor of the camper, with his partially erect penis over top of me. I remember him humiliating me as he urinated down my throat and making loud sounds of pleasure doing it to me. The first time I told this story to my therapist I kept blurting out in between parts of it, "why did I let him do it?" It eats me alive at night. I feel so alone all the time, worthless around other people. I'm so scared of people wanting to be my friends or caring about me. What if I let someone hurt me again? Slowly little details come back to me. The more they find their way in again, the more I feel distrustful, gross and slimy, weak and malleable to anyone who wants me, and scared to feel loved.

The more I pull things apart, the more I realized I was never trusted or taken seriously. I was wrong to trust my mom, and I don't think she has ever trusted me. I keep finding the common thread in all these memories of my COCSA is that she never once checked on me when I was with my abuser. He openly exposed himself to me and physically sexually harassed me and no adult or anyone I ever trusted noticed. She ignored me asking for help and to get me away from him, and then never noticed the sexual assault happening outside her house to her own child. I want so badly to be able to trust someone, anyone again. I want to be able to ask for help and be noticed for once. I want to have someone not pick me apart but just listen once. I want a partner who I can trust not to insult my body and who I can feel safe opening myself up sexually to, and be able to touch them and allow them to touch me because I consent to it and love them. I want to be confident in my identity as transmasculine person and feel like I can love every part of my body as my own again.

But I did say that I want to start healing this week. All of this stuff has eaten away at me since finding it out. It never leaves. But for right now I'm focusing on myself. I'm reminding myself that my body is worthy of love and respect as I view it as creation of God; that I should be treating it with kindness. I have been giving myself time to sit with everything and find peace with the fact that right now, I feel bad, and that it's ok. I also am trying to spend what time I can affirming myself that I am worthy of being loved sexually and a partner who cherishes my body. This entry is trusting myself to put these things down and let others see them. I'm trying to just recognize what I can and put it down so I can eventually start making peace with it all.