I said I was going to unload some baggage so I might as well get started. I think I�m going to start with my sexuality. For this entry, I�ll just stick to the early years. It�s a good place to start, don�t you think? For the longest time, the earliest sexual memory that I had took place when I was about 6. I was having my two best friends, Jenny and Jody, over for a play date after school. We met in kindergarten and this memory takes place either in kindergarten or in 1st grade. What�s funny about our friendship is that we all had the same initials, J.S. How odd is that. Our parents became friends through our friendship and they are still friends today. But back to the story. We were walking home from school (this was back in the day when children could walk home from school by themselves with another girl named Allison. We weren�t even a block away from the school when we noticed something strange in the window of a house. Now this was a pretty close knit neighborhood. We knew most of the people on this particular block, and we even knew the people in this house. What we saw was a man standing in the window. He had the curtains shut so only his naked pelvis was revealed. With his penis hanging out for all to see, he was beckoning us with his finger. We couldn�t see his face, but we knew that this was not the owner of the home. I remember we stood there for a long while, not sure what to do. We even debated going up to the house. But our fear kept us on the sidewalk. We then continued on our journey to my house. When we got to my house, we told my mom what we had seen. She immediately called all the other mothers as well as the police. The police interviewed us each separately. I remember being embarrassed about what we had seen and embarrassed to explain it to the male officer. But I do remember he was very kind. What I remember the most, is that my play date was ruined. We didn�t get to play that day. And that is what bothered me more than anything. Silly, isn�t it?
When I was 8 years old, I had been playing over at a friend�s house and I left my doll there. When my mom got home from work, it was probably about 4:30 PM and somehow it came out that I had left my doll at a friends. I told her I�d call my friend and have her bring the doll to school tomorrow. But my mom felt that I was irresponsible in leaving it there, and I guess as my punishment, I had to walk to her house to get the doll. My friend lived about 5 blocks away. As I was walking towards her house, I was about a block away by this time, I noticed someone walking behind me. I turned around to see who it was and noticed a young man walking behind me, he was probably in his late teens. He said hi to me as I turned around and then kind of jogged to catch up with me. He said, �You seem pretty fast, want to race to the alley?� I replied back, �No, you�re bigger than me, you would win.� He then said �I know where you can get some new roller skates� and I thought that was pretty cool and started walking back to the alley with him. As we got in the alley, he started slowing down and I figured we must be at his garage where he had the skates. The neighborhood I grew up in is fairly old (well, old for California) and all of the blocks had alleys and most houses had garages that opened into the alley way. I turned to look in a yard that we had stopped at and as my back was turned, he began trying to pull down my shorts. I was very confused and wasn�t sure what was going on. I turned around and he had his pants down. His penis was erect. I was still confused and he was still trying to pull my pants down. I didn�t really understand what was going on but in the back of my mind had some idea. I just remember that at that moment, I was very confused and frightened. And knew that I needed to get away. He continued trying to get my pants down as I squirmed within his arms. I eventually was able to shake his arms off of me and started to run. I ran the rest of the way to my friend�s house. When I got there, it was just her and her older sister at home. I told them what happened and they walked me home. I never told my parents about this. There were a lot of reasons why I never told them. First, I was embarrassed and felt that I was to blame because I had gone in the alley with him. I was ashamed that I went with a stranger based on the promise of roller skates and felt that I had been stupid and should have known better. The second reason I didn�t tell, is that I still had the memory of the first event and I was afraid my mom was going to make a big deal out of it and that I�d have to talk to the police. It was easier just to forget about it and pretend it never happened. I brushed it off and pretended it was no big deal. But when I think back now, I actually still get scared. I was 8 years old and someone was trying to rape me. At 8! Not just molest me, but rape me. I feel so fortunate that I got away.
So I just carried this stuff around for a long time. I do remember telling a friend, but that�s it. I�ll talk later about my sexuality in later years, right now I�m just focused on my childhood. As I went away to college, I started remembering more.
It was my second and third year of college that I started remembering other things. The first thing that triggered my memory was the movie �Shame�, the Australian version. It is a story of a girl who is raped as a teenager by some of the other teenagers in a small community. The story is of how her family and the community dealt with the whole event. I remember leaving that movie and feeling so disturbed. I stayed upset for several weeks and began having trouble sleeping. I have always been very weird about personal space. If I like you as a person and I�m comfortable with you, then it�s not a problem, invade away. But if there�s something I don�t like about you or I don�t know you or you make me uncomfortable, then I don�t want you in my space at all. I know that in some respects, this is a cultural issue. American�s are much more sensitive about personal space than people in other cultures. So when I�m in a supermarket, and the person in line behind me gets too close, I would totally freak out and basically have a panic or anxiety attack. It would make me so crazy I couldn�t think about anything else. I also used to overreact to being cut off while driving. I mean, I know that it bothers everyone, but my reaction was pure rage. It really sent me over the edge, to the point that, in high school while driving to school, my voice would be totally raw by the time I got to school from my yelling. Crazy. Well, in my third year of college, I was driving down the freeway and someone cut me off. I had my typical over-the-edge reaction and started to get really mad. As I was yelling, I called the other driver a rapist. Speaking this word in that context really stopped my rage and made me wonder why I did that. Why did I think getting cut off was equal to being raped and I realized that it was about having my personal space invaded. The area around my car was my personal space in my mind and when someone invaded it, I felt violated. That was why I was overly sensitive about my personal space, because it had been invaded as a child.
Over the next few days, as I was thinking over this episode, I began to have other memories. They were really faint but I could see flashes. The neighborhood I grew up in was very close knit. You knew all of your neighbors. The neighbors that lived next door had two teenagers, a daughter and a son. The daughter used to babysit us all the time. I remember this one time, she wasn�t available and her brother babysat us. I was somewhere around two years old at the time, and my sister was about 3 and a half. What I remember is that at some point, his pants were down and he asked us to come sit on his lap. I remember what seemed like some kind of trick, he was cutting his penis off with a key and then holding it in his hand, then putting it back on.. like some kind of illusion but at the time it seemed real. I don�t know what else he did, that�s all I remember. I also know that we told my mom what happened when she picked us up and that she spoke with his mom. I don�t know if the police got involved, as they may have chosen to keep it quiet as a personal courtesy. I just know that we were never left alone with the son again.
The event didn�t seem too traumatic, but what was bothering me is that I had forgotten about it for so many years. I didn�t understand why. After remembering that, I called my mom and told her about the attempted rape in the alley. I told her I didn�t know why I never told her about it, but that it seemed to be bothering me still and I thought I would feel better if I told her. It did seem to help.
Several years later, I had moved back in with my parents and was going to school back in Southern California. I began to have a series of flashes of other memories. These memories never became anything concrete or solid, they just remained flashes. What I remember is a hand on my neck. In fact, as I began to remember, I could actually still feel the hand on my neck. This goes back to the idea of personal space too. I have always been very protective of my neck. I can�t stand to sit on the couch with someone who has an arm extended towards my neck. I remember, as a child, not being able to sleep if my neck was uncovered. I had to cover it with the blanket or at least a sheet. Otherwise, I felt so vulnerable. Crazy kids, like a sheet or blanket was really going to protect me! I was never able to recover any full memories of the events, or gauge an age or anything. I do remember that the memories would seem to get stronger and it was as if I was right on the edge of remembering it all but then I would panic and the memories would subside. As the memories were surfacing, I recall that it was a very anxious time for me. I remember one day, I was driving with a friend and I felt a hand sitting on my neck, holding me down. I couldn�t shake the feeling, and had this strong urge to turn away from it. I felt terror and panic. My friend didn�t understand what was going on and I was crying. But the memory never surfaced.
The part that�s hard for me to reconcile is not knowing the who and the what. When I mentioned about being very sensitive about my personal space, this is especially true when it comes to my father. I am just not that comfortable being physically affectionate with my father. And when I talk about having hands near my neck, the one that bothers me the most is his. If I am sitting on the couch with him, or even if he is on one couch and I am on the other, if his hand is extended towards my neck, no matter how much distance is between the hand and my neck, I get very bothered. I don�t know why and I�m not sure I want to know. But there�s also a cousin (actually the husband of a cousin) who has always made me uncomfortable. He has been in our lives since I was a very small child. I remember seeing him several years ago, and after he left, I made a comment to my sister that he has always made me very uncomfortable. She said that she felt the same way. So then I started wondering if it was him. To some extent, I have gotten over the thing with my father, and I don�t know if there�s any reflection on him or I was just repeatedly violated as a child and I�ve transferred those feelings to my father. The thing is, when you don�t know, it could be anyone and you are simultaneously trying to figure out who it is, and prevent yourself from knowing. I don�t know if I�ll ever really know what happened and by whom. They are just glimpses now, shoved way back down deep in to my psyche. All I do know, is that when I was starting to remember, it was terror that I felt.
I know that all of these events have affected me in many ways, weight just being one of the ways I�ve tried to protect myself. As a young adult, my concept of sexuality was equally skewed. But I�ll talk more on that in another entry. What is amazing, to me, is that I do have a normal sex life and can experience intimacy in that way. I have really dealt with a lot of these issues, and for that I am glad. But I am sure there is more work to be done.
