Things We Haven't Said by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Published: 2019-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Second pearl of wisdom: Forgive yourself. Sometimes there are no good choices.

What my father did was terrible, but being with my mother was not any better. She was the kind of mother who deliberately would buy cookies that none of us kids liked because they lasted longer. Of course, they were ones she liked, and in the evening she would have two or three, while we watched, and the horrid package lasted weeks. “You wanted cookies, I bought cookies. You can eat them or not.”

Often, after my parents had a nasty, loud argument, she would load me and my siblings in the Chevrolet wagon and take us house hunting because she was going to leave him once and for all! We would fight among ourselves for the spot in the back seat behind her, since it was the only seat where she could not bend her arm back enough to hit us. The shotgun seat was the worst spot! She was “driving angry,” and I feared she would crash the car into a tree. I feared for my life.

Almost every adult in your life, and most survivors of molestation, will tell you that if you are being abused, you need to report it and get it to stop. But this is extremely hard to do. It takes courage. The risk is very real that your life as you know it will change, and you can’t anticipate or control how. For me, the fear was having to live with just my mom and her anger. Plus, I was afraid that if Dad left, it might hurt my chances of going to college. In the end I never did report him. Perhaps it was making a choice passively, but it seemed the right choice for me at the time.

The one regret I have in not reporting my father: I failed to protect my sister, who was five years younger than me—and for all I know, other little girls he came in contact with later—from the same fate. When I was around eight or nine, my father and I struck a deal that if I cooperated and kept silent, then he would leave her alone. He broke that promise, but I didn’t know this until many, many years later. I’ve learned that pedophiles only make rules that suit themselves, and they only hold promises when it serves them. We believe them because we’re kids, and it’s a hard spot to be in, where you don’t have a parent to turn to or trust. My sister and I are friends still, and I’ve had to forgive myself for not being a better big sister. Because I was just a kid then, too.

You are still young and have a lot of life ahead of you. To get on with your wonderful full life, you have to forgive yourself for the past. You don’t have to forgive whoever has molested you! You have to forgive yourself for the choices you made, and the decisions you did or didn’t make, and move on.

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