You better watch out, you better not tell...

“But Santa won’t come,” I said quietly through teary eyes, knowing full well as a 5 year old that whatever this was, it was naughty.

“Yes, he will. Don’t worry,” said the older boy who was lying behind me at my grandparents' house. He was spending the night, and my grandma had put him in the pull-out with me. My grandpa also slept in this room, but he wasn’t in here yet.

I didn’t know what was happening or why, but Adam, I’ll call him, was lying behind me and pulling on my undies. I was asking him what he was doing and he said not to worry about it. Next thing I knew, I felt something poking me. It felt soft and spongey, pokey and intrusive... like a finger but something else. I pulled forward away from him suddenly. Confused about what was happening, I told him to stop it. He said this is what people do with each other and it wouldn’t hurt. It would be fine. He was older than me; maybe he knew something I didn’t. But he was hushing me, and usually you only get hushed when you’re going to be in trouble.

Next thing I knew, my undies were pulled down, and I felt him bumping up against and away from me, back and forth really fast... the pokey thing... his fingers grasping my arm tightly and then my hip... breathing hard. What was he doing, and why was he doing it to me? I’m nervous and anxious and so scared that I’m going to be in trouble, that Santa Claus was watching and that the one day I looked forward to all year would be ruined by this one incident that I didn’t even want to be doing and there would be no presents for me under the tree, and that my grandma or grandpa would walk in and I’d be in trouble for messing around instead of going to sleep.

And then he stopped bumping against me, the pokey thing wasn’t pokey anymore. He told me to be quiet as his breathing slowed, and I laid there with a million questions, realizing for the first time that boys don't have the same parts as girls.

He told me I couldn’t tell anyone or I’d be in trouble.

There it was. Confirmation.

This was the first time, but it became a common occurrence whenever this older boy spent the night. He used a very kind voice with me each time right before he began to tug on my undies and was almost pleading in the way he spoke. This attention he gave me in the dark when we were alone formed some sort of reasoning in my young mind that this is what people do when they care about you - even if you have to be quiet and keep it a secret. During the day when it was business as usual, I found myself missing the attention and wanting to be back on his good side, in his good graces, when he spoke sweetly to me to get his way. The way he treated me during the day around other people was different... antagonistic: my kryptonite.

I had watched my dad behave violently the first years of my life, and to me yelling was scary; angry voices were scary; aggressive energy was scary; criticizing me was scary. A soft voice asking something of me seemed loving and different. I wanted more soft voices, more gentleness. I remember the day I realized my body was being used and that it wasn’t affection or love after all. I didn’t believe in Santa Claus anymore by then. But the repercussions of twisting my psyche at the age of 5 with sex and even before that in witnessing and experiencing the actions of a violent, addicted father affected my sense of self-worth in a way that I believe made me a target for other boys and men throughout my childhood. I had no idea that first time that Adam sexually abused me that there would be other boys and men and that I would spend my adulthood trying to rewire my brain and undo the effects of the indoctrination of child sexual abuse: poor self-esteem, extreme self-consciousness, a feeling of dirtiness and less-than, bad, undeserving, not good enough, ugly. I have wondered a million times what had happened to Adam and if he’d have done this to me even if he’d not experienced abuse himself. It’s a possible reason; it’s not an excuse. Still, I’d very much like to try to understand it.

My healing has been a work in progress and continues even today. It is my life’s mission that my own children - while they will certainly need to overcome challenges in their own lives - will never know these particular challenges. While in my own life people preferred to look the other way, minimize and excuse the abuse they knew about, and tell me to just get over it and not make the perpetrators or the family feel uncomfortable, I personally have no qualms or second-guessing when it comes to my children. I have no hesitation about cutting a person or people out of our lives if the safety or well being of my kids is threatened. I will report someone in a heartbeat if I know they are causing harm to a child. I took one for the team every day of my childhood to avoid more guilt, more criticism. Taking one for the team looks a lot different on me now. It means I have my power back, and I will use it.

My biggest challenge today is trust, and having children aroused in me a deep seated fear that I have to mindfully manage so as to not put that burden on my kids. It is reflected in the extreme difficulty I feel in letting my kids go places where I cannot watch for the bad guys that look like the good guys. The ones that take a child’s sense of beauty and goodness from them and leave ugliness and shame in their place.

The ones that make a child worry that even Santa Claus will turn his back on them.

#isawyournutsmommy #youbetterwatchout #youbetternottell #survivingabuse #santaisntcoming #bloggermom #journaling #healingjourney #breakthecycle #kickatdarkness #childabuseawareness #preventabuse

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