By Louise M. Wisechild
childhood sexual abuse survivour
Craziness was a fortress that kept my mother from seeing me. It was an understanding that did not implicate the rest of the family...with them, it's a matter of designing muzzles...Respect meant never disagreeing. She did call the parents of my friends and tell them I was seriously disturbed. She arranged clandestine meetings with my teachers to discuss my "emotional nature." The school counsellor even called me to her office and told me that I shouldn't treat my mother badly....I've never heard them talk about how they feel, only about what they do...Silence covers the abuse. The room is devoid of intimacy, shellacked in gossip...I was seen as crazy, in isolation, not a part of the whole...If people think they have seen you before, then odds are they will never really see you.
For a large part of the population, sexually abusing children is part of a silent routine. Children growing into lessons of abuse, becoming victims and abusers again, forgetting how to love... In order to call incest crazy, I would have to believe that the world is only a wondeful, just, loving place where people know how to respect each other. I know that isn't true...
The crazy feeling is the denial, the figures pretending that nothing has happened. Denial is a carpet bulging into a hill, while the housekeeper says that dirt has not been swept under it...
We are all breaking silence. In naming our captors we free ourselves. In my family my father held power at the expense of everyone else...Speaking uplifts us all. I learn that respect is at the expense of no one. I see beauty in what makes us different as well as what brings us together.
Paranoid Patty's Commentary:
The crazy who are just seeking attention/fame have many healing thoughts don't they? Too bad that most of the time, no one is "allowed" to hear them because they are not "allowed" to speak them openly in case it upsets anyone else.
The above passages seem to apply quite generally to all abusers and boundary violators of all kinds and degrees, from mild to severe abuse. Does the pattern of group behaviour in this feel and sound familiar to you, in ways relating it to other than sexual abuse? Does it seem interchangeable with verbal, emotional, psychological and physical abuse? If so, you are not alone.
Abuse that is not exposed to the light of day is repeated and often escalates, then gets passed along, intact, generation after generation, supported and enabled by the group's co-operative denial of it's existence and the silencing of it's vicitms. The silence is usually maintained with group pressure, invalidation of the complaint and isolation tactics.
If humanity does not soon stop maintaining the grand illusion of the Family Romance, and start dealing with reality, I fear we aren't going to have anything left, illusory or otherwise, to worry about keeping "hidden."
Human beings who aren't "allowed" to talk it out, and resolve it, tend to act it out because of the pressure applied to silence their voices. Though we see this happening, over and over again, we continue to act surprised each and every time we do. Why? Is humanity a race of very slow learners?
We must solve the real problems of real people which cause these "illnesses" instead of using a pill to alter the feelings which are generated in reaction to events and relationships. Let's try getting real about it long before the point of acting it out is ever reached.
Fight the concealment. Break the silence and break the chain reaction for good.
For another example relating to this topic, please go to :
http://www.sidran.org/sub.cfm?contentID=69§ionid=4
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