Personal Essay
My Emotional Pain and Shame of Sexual Abuse
A small part of my story
TW: Sexual Abuse
I was only sixteen when my brother-in-law, fourteen years my senior, sexually abused me. My older sister, his fiancé, was in hospital with an ectopic pregnancy. Her first or second, I don’t recall. For years after that incident, I blamed myself and just accepted it as I was this wild child who crashed through an unstable life anesthetizing it as much as I humanly could. And along the way never for once saw the reality for what it sadly was.
It was not until becoming a mother myself to my daughter and watching her through her life, growing into a beautiful young woman, and the untangling of trauma I had worked through with my therapist, that I could understand why I lived with chronic self-doubt all of my life. The clarity opened my eyes to see how I had unknowingly permitted people to abuse me in so many different scenarios.
My father, an alcoholic, had at the best of times, a violent and volatile relationship with my neurotic mother. And when he was allowed to stay over, which wasn’t often — my twin and I thought life was good again. The only intimacy I understood was emotional and physical abuse.
