At least I am not remembering every night and day like I was when I was a child and adolescent.
I remember being in the middle of an inane activity (school, test, playground, home, friend's house, outside, playing with other kids in the neighbourhood, trying to sleep at night, walking home from school, whatever) and just seemingly random images or thoughts or senses of times where my cousin was with me under a blanket or in a closet. Made me almost freeze in what I was doing, I think, sometimes. It was like you'd be walking along an a branch whips you in the face or you step wrong in a hole in the ground or you're minding your own business and a horsefly takes off with a little chunk of your skin... Abrupt and not pleasant. Jarring. Most times I would try to shake it off, try to do something else to distract myself. Some of the things that seemed to free me of these thoughts were drawing or reading or watching movies or television. Occupying my mind in some other world away from this one. I hated it when these images popped into my brain. I didn't ask for them to come up. They just did. I never thought about them long. They would just be stuffed down, under a carpet somewhere in my brain. Move on to something else quickly. Please make it go away. It made me angry and frustrated if I did think about it, which was why I desperately tried not to. At some point I think it got easier to override these thoughts. Pretend they weren't there. Cover them up. Listen to music and read the lyrics.
So... Next memory please. Let's make this fast so I can move on to the next indigestible course. I would so much rather be doing anything else right now. Drinking my own body fluids for one thing.
Scene cuts back to the closet at gramma's house. Mom's mom's house. Winter? Summer? It was usually Easter, Christmas, Summer Break, Thanksgiving, some kind of long weekend. Me, my two brothers, mom and dad would go to Edmonton to visit. Who was there as long as I can remember? My two cousins, Ward and Shelley. Shelley seemed nice. Artsy and crafty like me. A teacher now. Ward... I don't know what he was the warden of. He was no protector, that's certain.
Trying to remember how I felt. It's hard to figure. It was pitch black in that closet. We were playing hide and seek (of course). At some point my cousin had figured out that the closet was so dark that if you didn't move when someone opened the door or tried to bluff and say you were in there (even if they couldn't tell) then they'd likely move on to look for you elsewhere. It was so dark, I think my younger brothers were probably a bit scared to poke around in there. Full of black garbage bags filled with clothes on the floor, and a great amount of clothing hanging like a semi-solid cloth wall that was hard to move out of the way.
It so happened that I went to hide in the closet and so did my cousin while my brothers or other cousins played hide and seek. I can't remember if he would come in after I would, or if would follow him in. I don't remember if he said something like, "Come hide with me in the closet." I just know, somehow, some way, more than once (I don't know how many times, but it was a lot of times), that he and I would be together in this closet. He would put his hands down my shorts/pants. He would stimulate me. He would either ask me (tell me?) to grasp his penis. I don't remember if I did anything else to it. I remember feeling the physical pleasure of his fingers on my genital area, or maybe it was just stimulation. I don't know how to describe it, that I felt some physical pleasure, but I didn't know what to make of it. I don't remember feeling guilty about it. I don't remember feeling dirty about it. That all came later on as I grew up.
I remember feeling terrible much later, especially during high school. Horrid. Disgusting. What the hell was I thinking? I don't remember asking myself, "Why did he do this to me?" but more like, "Why did I let him do that to me?" But mostly I remember trying not to think about it. Reading reading reading. Block it out. Go away. I sure as hell didn't struggle to get away. Now I feel bad that I didn't. I don't think I knew what to feel when I was a child when it was being done to me. Now, as an adult, I feel some guilt that I didn't kick and scream and tell him not to touch me. I wish I hadn't been afraid of what would happened to me if I had told. I thought I would get into trouble again. I thought I would be punished. I thought I would not be believed. I do remember crying a lot, in general, when people didn't believe me about other things. I felt greatly offended and wounded when I would tell the truth but I was thought to be lying or not knowing what I was talking about. Sometimes I would even be upset when I did lie and people wouldn't believe me. Why can my cousin pretend things are fine and get away with it and I can't? What's so special about him? Why do people love him but not me? What about me?
Sometime along the way as I was growing up, I realized that what he was doing was wrong. My mom said some things to my tentative questioning about things. I can't remember exactly what I asked. I don't remember exactly what she replied. However when she replied it was like she was disgusted or angry and my interpretation of her emotional reaction made me fearful. I seem to remember she tried to get more information out of me, but I avoided it. She didn't pursue questioning later, either, so I doubt she really wanted to know. All I knew from what she said was that I was doing something bad. I wasn't allowed to do that. I didn't know how to stop it.
He would do things to manipulate me. Pissed me off. My mom made me nap in his room once, and he snuck in with something crinkly. I was pretending to sleep. I think he probably knew that. Why would he make all that crinkly racket if he knew I was put in there to sleep and he was trying to hide his gumballs from me? I went and chewed a couple of them after he had left. I thought, he will let me get away with this because of what he's doing to me. Isn't he afraid that if he tells on me, I will tell on him? But then I thought, uh-oh, it's going to be obvious that I did this. I don't know why I had a change of heart (guilty conscience, or second thoughts, maybe I would get into trouble?). I didn't know what to do, so I took out the half-chewed gum and put it back in the drawer. Silly. Several hours later my mom called me and asked me why I had done this. I said I didn't know. Because I couldn't tell her the real reason. I was surprised that he had tattled on me. ME! After what he did to ME! I thought he owed me at least a couple of measly gumballs. Apparently he had some great satisfaction about this. His face told me that he was victorious. He had told me no one would believe me if I told on him. But here he was saying that I had done something wrong. HIM getting ME into trouble. I think it enraged me. How dare he? And I think on some level it was a bit frightening. It reinforced to me that he had power over me. He could make the other adults believe him. He could get them to punish me. I felt powerless. Oh was I so mad. He was so clever. I felt so stupid.
Then he would do strange things like take me to the store and buy me candy. What the hell? So confusing to me. Was he giving me this as a gift to make up for what he did? I can't even remember if it stopped. Was he trying to bribe me? Keep my mouth shut? I don't know. I didn't have the courage to ask him. My parents and my grandparents thought he was being so sweet. I knew he wasn't really sweet. He was like the candy he left in his room for me to find. He was a trap. I could fall in.
Right now I feel angry. I feel that sort of burning feeling behind the eyes, but not enough to start tears. Just a sort of gentle pressure. It all feels subdued. It's all in the past, and that's where it seems to want to stay.
Feel feel feel. Ugh. I woke up a couple of times last night with my heart palpitating. Not sure if it was thyroid-related, or because of my purging on my blog last night. The pain in my chest woke me up twice, but then dissipated and I fell back to sleep.
I don't remember how many times he touched me or all the locations or events. But I hated that closet.
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