Flashback Friday: Why I Didn't Tell (Trigger Warning)

A word of explanation and warning. Since I first disclosed my status as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the end of March of this year, I have spent many sleepless nights and many waking hours consumed by a tsunami of flashbacks to specific incidents of the abuse that have left me feeling like I was drowning. With each successive flashback they feel as if they have been piling up in my mind, heart, and soul in a way that is threatening to consume me. When the flashbacks hit it is not me remembering the abuse, it is me reliving the abuse. All of my senses are transported back to that time. I am not a thirty-six year old man; I am a three year old toddler, a six year old little boy, or whatever age I was from the ages of three to twelve during which the abuse occurred. I need to get these flashbacks out in order to be able to detach and see these events through my adult eyes so that I can begin to heal. The only way I know how to do that is to tell the stories. If you are a fellow survivor, these Flashback Friday posts are likely to be triggers. If you are a supporter, please know that what you read on Fridays will likely be extremely disturbing. If for either reason you choose not to continue reading, I understand. If you choose to continue reading beyond the image below, thank you for validating my experience by listening to my truth.

When I was about five years old there was an assembly at my school all about stranger danger and bad touching and what to do if someone tried to touch you in bad ways. They told us it was wrong and that we should tell someone. I came home from school with my mind racing. I knew that I hated the things my stepfather and others had been doing to me for the last couple of years, but until that assembly I didn't know it was bad. I didn't know that I could tell and it might stop.

Later that night, my stepfather came into my room. My little brother and my mom were in my parents' bedroom and my stepfather said she went to sleep because her head hurt. He told me to follow him into the bathroom because it was bath time. I knew what he really wanted and, empowered by the assembly at school, told him no. I told him what he does to me is bad and that if he doesn't stop then I am going to tell.

The next thing I knew his hand was on my chest lifting me into the air and slamming me down hard on my bed. His face was red and his eyes were bugging out of his head. He leaned down until his face was touching mine and told me that what he does to me is his business and no one else's and that if I tell anyone that I'll be dead in the ground next to my father. With that he ripped my pants off and thrust himself into me in one painful shove. As I opened my mouth to scream he grabbed one of my pillows and pressed it hard over my face. I was in agony. Everything hurt. My body was sore from being slammed on the bed. My butt hurt from the assault he was doing to me. My lungs burned from not getting any air. I was thrashing around on the bed trying desperately to breathe.

I woke up the next morning in my bed in my pajamas with my entire body hurting and my voice raspy. My mom thought I had a sore throat. For years that night served to keep me quiet. I had no doubt that my stepfather meant every word and would kill me if I told anyone what he was doing to me almost every night. His reign of terror and sodomy and hate lived on to fight another day.