Secrets Your Mind Keeps From You

Do you know what I find terrifying? I find it terrifying that I have gone through something so horrific that my mind and memory won't let me remember what happened. All I have been left with is this deep aching feeling in the pit of my stomach with hazing feelings of discomfort. If I close my eyes it is as if I were swimming in an ocean made up of clouds, unable to see the surface and quickly running out of breath. Wanting so badly to break through the surface. Please! Someone help me! I am drowning... please... No one can hear me. Nobody can see me drowning. It is all in my head, but it was happening.. I felt it, why won't anyone believe me? I am alone to figure out what happened to me.

This is what it feels like for me every time a foggy memory of my past is triggered. Imagine trying to put together a puzzle with half of the pieces missing. You may have a slight idea of what the image may look like, but are unable to see the big picture. This is called, "sensory insensibility," which Psychologist Researcher McFarlane found that "people with PTSD often have trouble putting the picture together... due to distinct sensory experiences [being] transmitted to a different part of the brain." Every breakthrough I have in therapy or on my own is like finding one more puzzle piece. Unfortunately for me, until I find all the pieces and complete the puzzle, it is as if I am frozen in time. This is because, "traumatized people become stuck, stopped in their growth because they can't integrate new experiences into their lives," according to M.D. Bessel Van Der Kolk. Kolk goes on to explain that, "bring traumatized means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were still going on—unchanged and immutable-as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past... after trauma the world is experienced with a different nervous system."

When I read this, everything started to make more sense. It seems as though I've had all of the pieces in front of me, I just didn't know they were the pieces I was looking for—they didn't look like how I would expect them to.

I am about to get in-depth about very personal and sexual content, so please read with caution if you care to continue.

Growing up, I was an only child from a mother and father who divorced when I was almost three. My mom and I moved from Washington down to California when I was four years old. Nearly a year-and-a-half later, I had my first orgasm. Yes, you read that correctly. I was 5 1/2 years old when I first started masturbating. I hope that makes you uncomfortable because that sure as hell still makes me uncomfortable. Where the f**k did I learn how to do that? Did someone teach me? Did someone else show me? Or did someone else expose those senses in my body themselves? These are questions that have been haunting me for nearly 20 years, only to be guided by those foggy and confusing flashes of memories.

It has taken me 24 years to become sexually and intimately comfortable with a partner. We have been together for two years now, and there are still times where we have to stop because my body is beginning to reject the emotions of love and safety and replacing them with feeling trapped and suffocated. Ironically enough, my first love language is physical touch. Awesome.

Time and time again I go back to these violating thoughts and memories to figure out what happened to me all those years ago. Therapy was only getting me so far and I wanted more answers. So perhaps there was someone who could help me out a bit. My mom. I have a close relationship with my mom, but more so on a surface level because she too has so much trauma that she is unable to attend to my emotional needs. Trust me, this was not exactly a conversation I wanted to have with my mom. Nevertheless, I asked her about possible events that could have led to my feelings of uneasiness around sexual arousal and intimacy. So I got on with it.

Me: Mom, is it possible that I could have been molested when I was younger?

Mom: Why do you ask?

Me: I have always had a nagging pit in my stomach that something happened but I can't remember.

Mom: Well, I don't know what you can recall, but when you were about five or six Child Services showed up at our door claiming an anonymous letter was sent to them suggesting that you (me) had been molested.

[something that Child Services explained to my mom, that she, in the end, failed to register, was that almost 100 percent of letters written to Child Services are sent by the perpetrators]

Me: Did they find out who sent the letter?

Mom: Yes, they did. It was sent in by one of our neighbors, Kyle. He is gay though, I don't think he would have done that, which is what I told the CS agents.

[At this point I am getting flooded with memories of all my times spent with Kyle. Alone in his apartment eating crackerjacks. Kyle gifting me two beautiful red reindeer for Christmas. Kyle taking me to Disneyland, followed by him aggressively grabbing my arms whenever I talked back to him in a sassy manner. Did I mention he locked me in a trunk in the back of a car and then went inside the house? Yeah, that happened before my mom let me go with him to Disneyland. At this point, I don't know who to be madder at, Kyle or my mom? First of all, why the hell would my mom let a 5-6 year old spend time ALONE with a grown man gay or not!? Secondly, how did she not take in all the clues that he was literally "grooming" me?]

Me: First of all, I don't think it matters whether someone is heterosexual or homosexual in order to be a child molester. Secondly, I started becoming incredibly sexual when he came into my life. Does that not connect any dots for you?

Mom: Well when the Child Service agents came and asked you questions, you didn't set off any red flags whatsoever.

Me: Makes sense if I didn't, I probably couldn't recall anything. How could I if I am only now recalling certain memories from that year!? I know he did something, I feel in the depths of my core. I just can't remember. I remember being alone in his apartment and then my memory just stops. It is like watching a movie that is interrupted by a black screen, then to suddenly resume but at a different point in the movie. Unlike the film, I am left unable to rewind my tapes. Rather I am left with a million questions as to what happened. All I am left with are the unclear thoughts, PTSD, depression, and severe anxiety.

Long story short, my mom didn't believe me. F**KKKKKKKKKK.

Sometimes there are days where I don't even believe myself. I have moments where I try and pretend like nothing happened at all because it would be easier to just move on, but I can't. To this day I do not have all of the pieces. I think I am coming to the understanding that I don't think I will ever recover all of the missing links to my memory... perhaps too painful. And yet, I am still processing everything and I am still finding healing.

I still find it so incredibly fascinating that our minds protect us from events and traumas that we ourselves have experienced firsthand. The human brain is absolutely remarkable and I am still learning every day how my own brain functions differently from others due to my anxiety and PTSD. Above all, I think there are secrets too damaging that I just might take to my grave without even knowing it.