Wait Quietly: Triggered by Trust

*I, Yevette, use god language to reflect on my lived experience as a child victim of sexual and domestic abuse who grew up in the church - unseen and unprotected by the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent god. I deliberately use masculine pronouns, he/him, in my writings so that I can stay in the tension of interrogating this man-god and those who created him.

Survivor Reflection:

Lately, at 00, as the glorious and grievous process of time unapologetically extracts its youthful virtue from my flesh, my physical strength shifts, and my beautiful skin folds in new ways that no amount of collagen can reverse. My overthinking mind and tender heart have become aware of new fears, new layers of insecurity for my bruised brain to excavate – over and over again (to heal). This is a familiar process to keep at bay the perverse sexual desires, violence, domination, and rejection that have shaped my identity.

At 00, I have this new awareness within myself that I could never know, within my mind, body, or spirit, the innocence of an unmolested sense of intimacy, an unmolested sense of physical touch. Today, at 00, I am actively grieving that I am a victim of childhood sexual and domestic violence. I am grieving that my pursuit of freedom, of healing, may never remove their hands from my sexual psyche.

My insecurities are not my own. The world gave them to me, fed them to me, and then the world demanded that I hold those insecurities with shame. We shame the victim, and so I labored alone across the wilderness of meaning, of faith, to make it to the troubled waters, to clean the gowns I did not soil, but it was not enough. My perpetrators were gone, time had passed, I had cleaned and outgrown many soiled gowns, but by 00, I had become an unclean woman. Since the age of 6, SIX, six I had been standing before the world, as the most innocent of victims, and yet in the court of public opinion I would be tried as an adult. My pain became the sins on which I would be indicted time and time again, but where had my perpetrators gone? Where had my perpetrators gone?

You cannot see the indictment. Can you?

Single.  

Never married.  

Three children. Three separate fathers.

Felon.

An EX-prostitute.

I am also grieving that god was indicted and chose not to take the stand on his own behalf, and so now I indict god again. I want to know why he didn't show up. I want to know why he did not fulfill his promises to a child who was being sexually assaulted. I want to know why there are promises of safety and presence that are never upheld - even for a child. I felt mocked by god. Unwanted. Unworthy of the manifestation of his promises.

I am a victim of familial (religious) childhood sexual and domestic violence, and I may never know the innocence of trust. At SIX, 6, six, in a just world with a just god, I would have been safe. My feminine virtue declared, celebrated, known – my intrinsic worth defined, declared as sacred, my door secure – impassable to those whose hands were sweating, intent on vice, resigned to harm for the sake of power, of sexual pleasure… 

Excerpt from Wait Quietly

…My pillow, as present, pink, and precious as she was, had no answers. Her comfort, albeit consistent, was fleeting. She could offer me no hope or divine resolutions by morning. I remember weeping into her folds, asking this god why he did not, could not see me or protect me? Why did he leave me alone to wait quietly in the corners of darkened rooms, holding the clammy, soiled hand of my abusers who shushed me while my night gown, saturated, clung to me? Why wasn’t he there in the dark as I waited quietly? This god who could part seas, destroy nations, impregnate virgin wombs, and raise the dead could not or did not open my bedroom door. He did not rescue me.  

He was still. 

I guess He was waiting quietly - with me.   

Why had my basic petitions for safety failed to reach the heart of god? Last week I asked my therapist how can I learn to unbend my six-year-old body, spiritually, physically, and psychologically, in patterns of intimate connection, sexual, sensual, and otherwise? I have been doing this hard, complex work for years, crying and bleeding along the way, but how do I, at 00, learn to embody trust so that I can know an intimate love that supports me in silencing, and maybe surpassing the disruptive residual impact of the sexual abuse and violence I’ve endured? 

Where does a healthy sense of sensuality or sexual trust begin after a child endures sexual abuse? Is it even possible? No excuse,  misunderstanding, behind familial sexual violence can be transmuted in therapy, forgotten in testimony, removed, or lifted like fingerprint impressions from the physicality, or the “sexual psyche” of their victims. I am 00, and I am still processing because the impact of sexual abuse is obviously deeply embodied. They assaulted me in every way I knew to know myself as a six-year-old little girl; every time my bedroom door opened, the simple joy and innocence of my reality was thrown into crisis.

Triggered by Trust

Few things bring me to tears anymore, but this sense of loss, coupled with rage, has been leaving me emotionally raw and undone. Childhood sexual violence leaves longing… 

I will never, ever know the innocence of a touch I dreamt of first. A touch I desired, perhaps journaled about with multiple pens, colors, smiling, giggling with my ankles intertwined, swinging a bit as I drew hearts behind the name of a boy I wanted to kiss me. But I had already been kissed.  

As an adolescent, I was forced to dream of an unmolested love on the same mattress on which I had been violated time and time again. The victim, even the child, is told to dream, and construct meaning, divine purpose from the abyss of their victimization, and so, as any little person does, I dreamt with all my might of the magic of fairytales, sacred slippers, pixie dust, the promises of god, and the images of the cross I had colored in Sunday School. I remember holding my pink pillowcase and thinking of a love I imagined, a love that consumed my thoughts with joy and possibility, like “Anne, with an E, of Anne of Green Gables.” 

I will never know an unmolested innocence. I will never know the playful curiosity, the wanderings of an adolescent girl who is questioning the expanding sensations of the power of her cosmic femininity, the creative agency that needs no permission to be. Sophia (feminine wisdom). I will never know the freedom to explore those first hormonal downloads without shame, without questions of worth.  I will never know the beauty of those first tender awakenings. Unmolested. I couldn’t even see, wince, or smile at the firmness of my new breasts without his hand, their hands finding ways to press into their soreness.

Where has this new sense of loss, this new layer of grief and rage, emerged from? I met a man, and his easy manner has me feeling like an unmolested little girl. I was swinging my feet again and wanted to walk with him in the fading light of the day’s sun - laughing. I had to run through and press past memories to imagine what an unmolested touch could feel like. I had no personal reference. His simple touch made my heart muscle rest, or maybe I just allowed my heart to rest because of his unassertive nature. Quick intellect. Funny. General knowledge of random things (I am sapiosexual). He prioritizes order, safety, and service to his family. He pursued a friendship with me, asking a mutual friend for my number, but after listening to my memoir, he intentionally friend-zoned me. 

He told me, “Vette, I listened to your story, you aren’t healed enough for a romantic relationship, and I can’t move forward in any way that may hinder your healing. It wouldn’t be fair to you, and I don’t want to hurt you. At all. Besides, I got some shit I need to focus on right now.” His demeanor has unmoored me.  For a few weeks, I couldn’t be away from him. He awakened a sense of trust I hadn’t known, and I didn’t like it. His nature makes me want to run from him, and back to him so that I can rest with him. He asks for nothing he doesn’t offer with a calm assurance of his intent. His friendship is simple, like two new friends safely unpacking their stories and their lunch on the third day of school. The ease with which we communicate and laugh leaves my tattered feminine body and overthinking brain unraveled, skeptical, and aroused by what could have been if my body, my brain, and my bedroom door had never been breached by elongated shadows and soiled, clammy hands. Therein lies my rage.

How does the sexually assaulted little girl, now a woman and an ex-prostitute, open their hand, unbend their body, and relax their sexual psyche in safe spaces when they don’t even know what that means? Can I grieve this loss, this violent hindrance to organic, unmolested intimacy? I must. I must acknowledge, accept, grieve, and release until I am free.

How can I hold this man’s hand the way I want to? His hands are cool, disciplined, and dry. When he touches me, even casually, I feel a sense of innocence awaken within myself. It makes me giddy and unnerved all at once.  

I fear it.  

I feel seen and safe.  

I fear that too. He provides a sense of rest and comfort I don’t understand, and before him, I feel like the little girl who was never hurt, was never harmed. I want to heal so that I can hold his hand without hesitation, so that I can hear his voice without him speaking. However, it could be potentially too late for me to know and love this man because I was triggered by trust, and my behavior exhibited a lack of healing that he isn’t willing to navigate with me at this juncture in his life. He has a depth of responsibility, family, and community I have never known, and my antics were childlike and unnecessary. I didn’t know what to do with his calm. I didn’t know what to do with safety.  

I have been triggered by trust.