In 1997, I graduated from Northwestern University with a double major, math and history. My paternal grandparents, my parents and my brother had traveled to Evanston, Illinois full of pride in my accomplishment. I was the first in my family to graduate from college, and not just any college - Northwestern is a very prestigious university. The celebrity invited to administer the commencement speech was Bill Cosby.
Like many people of my generation, I grew up watching The Cosby Show. The show resonated with my life: a father played by an actor named Bill (same as my dad), a father of amiable comic charm (same as my dad). But my particular fascination came from the portrayal of a healthy, happy family. The relationships between Clair and Cliff Huxtable and their children seemed pure, untainted, free of spite or corruption. Conflicts got resolved, bonds were reaffirmed in every episode. I knew it was fiction, fantasy. I knew real life was never like that.
What I didn't know was that while perfect families may not exist, my own family was far from normal. Far from what most people think of as real.
Sexual abuse is an ugly topic. And I have never been able to discuss it cogently. My memories are ephemeral. It's the effects of what happened that eventually led me to realize what had gone wrong. The behaviors, the survival mechanisms. The scars.
I wet the bed until I was almost 11 years old. For punishment, I was made to sleep in blankets reeking of piss. I think I was afraid to leave my room at night. My father once urinated on me while I was in bed. He was drunk.
Alcohol, sex and drugs defined my parents' lives. They met in rehab. She was bipolar, and she used uppers when up and downers when down. He was a drunk. A drunk driver, in fact.
One memory I do have is of my mother lying naked on the floor, with my father pointing a gun at her.
Because it wasn't just drugs and sex, it was violence. It is almost impossible for me to type this. Because for so many years I believed it was my fault. Something wrong with me. An innate predilection for evil. Even now, as I near my fourth decade of life, I cringe in shame at the memory of being a 6-year-old girl fantasizing about being raped and murdered.
I think I must have seen pornography of that type. I know my father's tastes ran that way.
(To this day I cannot really enjoy healthy sex. I take pleasure alone in dark reveries. At least it hurts no one but myself.)
Relationships rotten at the core, that was my childhood. I never learned a basic trust that so many people take for granted. Some people take it so much for granted that they can't even see it. They think they are skeptics. They think they are like me. The words I use aren't so different. It's what's beneath the words that bites.
So much misery lurked beneath the surface of my family. But the surface was bright! That's the worst part, for me. Like Cosby, my father was a charismatic man. He was good at pretense. Not once in my childhood did any teacher or official suspect there was anything wrong with my parents. Things were wrong with me, oh yes, but nobody ever considered that it was anything but my own fault. I remember being paddled by the principal in first grade for crying every day - separation anxiety, because while I couldn't trust my parents, I trusted outsiders even less. In sixth grade my application for advanced curriculum was denied because of my "poor social skills." I developed a deep contempt for authority. I delved into my imagination; very early on, my inner life became more real to me than anything else.
I survived. I adapted. I found ways of getting by involving minimal contact with other human beings. I went to college 500 miles away from home, and when I graduated I ran away to California with a mad prophet I met on the moral wilderness that is the Internet.
Like many people of my generation, I grew up watching The Cosby Show. The show resonated with my life: a father played by an actor named Bill (same as my dad), a father of amiable comic charm (same as my dad). But my particular fascination came from the portrayal of a healthy, happy family. The relationships between Clair and Cliff Huxtable and their children seemed pure, untainted, free of spite or corruption. Conflicts got resolved, bonds were reaffirmed in every episode. I knew it was fiction, fantasy. I knew real life was never like that.
What I didn't know was that while perfect families may not exist, my own family was far from normal. Far from what most people think of as real.
Sexual abuse is an ugly topic. And I have never been able to discuss it cogently. My memories are ephemeral. It's the effects of what happened that eventually led me to realize what had gone wrong. The behaviors, the survival mechanisms. The scars.
I wet the bed until I was almost 11 years old. For punishment, I was made to sleep in blankets reeking of piss. I think I was afraid to leave my room at night. My father once urinated on me while I was in bed. He was drunk.
Alcohol, sex and drugs defined my parents' lives. They met in rehab. She was bipolar, and she used uppers when up and downers when down. He was a drunk. A drunk driver, in fact.
One memory I do have is of my mother lying naked on the floor, with my father pointing a gun at her.
Because it wasn't just drugs and sex, it was violence. It is almost impossible for me to type this. Because for so many years I believed it was my fault. Something wrong with me. An innate predilection for evil. Even now, as I near my fourth decade of life, I cringe in shame at the memory of being a 6-year-old girl fantasizing about being raped and murdered.
I think I must have seen pornography of that type. I know my father's tastes ran that way.
(To this day I cannot really enjoy healthy sex. I take pleasure alone in dark reveries. At least it hurts no one but myself.)
Relationships rotten at the core, that was my childhood. I never learned a basic trust that so many people take for granted. Some people take it so much for granted that they can't even see it. They think they are skeptics. They think they are like me. The words I use aren't so different. It's what's beneath the words that bites.
So much misery lurked beneath the surface of my family. But the surface was bright! That's the worst part, for me. Like Cosby, my father was a charismatic man. He was good at pretense. Not once in my childhood did any teacher or official suspect there was anything wrong with my parents. Things were wrong with me, oh yes, but nobody ever considered that it was anything but my own fault. I remember being paddled by the principal in first grade for crying every day - separation anxiety, because while I couldn't trust my parents, I trusted outsiders even less. In sixth grade my application for advanced curriculum was denied because of my "poor social skills." I developed a deep contempt for authority. I delved into my imagination; very early on, my inner life became more real to me than anything else.
I survived. I adapted. I found ways of getting by involving minimal contact with other human beings. I went to college 500 miles away from home, and when I graduated I ran away to California with a mad prophet I met on the moral wilderness that is the Internet.
