#MeToo in Phoenix

I haven’t really participated in this whole #metoo thing. I mean, I’ve… well, I read a lot… but I never told my story. I couldn’t. No way could I Tweet it or Facebook it or… I mean, I talked about it with my best friend. I tried to talk about it with #2… But I also kind of swept myself under the rug over the whole thing. Like, oh, this is a thing (or several things) that happened to me, oh well, no big deal, can’t do anything about it now.

Lately, I’ve been… well. I’m like a new, different person in a hell of a lot of ways, and one of those ways is sexually. I have these blocks, you know? My inner prude. And I’ve been really picking at her, digging deep, trying to understand where my prudish thoughts and behaviors come from. I found it. I found what I think is the root.

My sister was 13 when I was born, or almost 13. I was born in November, her birthday is December. So, 12, I guess. She got married and moved out when she was 17. I remember the night after her wedding, going to sleep in my room, alone for the first time. I remember crying myself to sleep, angry at her, hating her for not being there. Knowing what was coming from my mother now that she was gone… The man she married was older than her. I don’t know, 5 years, 10 years. Doesn’t matter. I never liked him. I remember that now, random tiny little memories of not liking him, not liking being around him.

I was probably 11. Maybe 12. Barely 12, if so. The first time I can remember, anyway. By then, my sister had 3 kids. They were like 5, 3, and 2, and it was decided that I was old enough and mature enough to babysit and I was going to get paid for it! On Saturday nights, my sister and her husband would go out moonlight bowling. You know, where the lights are off and there’s black lights and a disco ball and a DJ and they start at like midnight? So my sister would be at work Saturday nights and her husband would be home until it was time to leave, like 11 or so. I would go there to babysit until 3 or 4am and they just lived up the road so I could walk home whenever they were done. Basically all I did was play Nintendo (up, up, down, down, B, A… nevermind) or talk on the phone or sleep.

I remember not many weeks after I started babysitting, I walked up the road, knocked on the door, and heard her husband tell me to come on in. I walked in and he was sitting in a chair in front of the TV. He was shirtless and wearing only like… loose gym shorts? Vague memory is vague. There was porn on the TV and his penis was hanging out one side of the shorts and he was touching it. I froze in place, just inside the door. I didn’t understand what was happening or why, I just knew that it was not right and I should not be there. I stared at the floor until he eventually got up and walked out of the room, leaving the porn playing on the TV. I… don’t remember anything after that. Not that night, anyway.

That was the only time I remember there being porn on the TV, but it was not the only time I walked in to him in the same chair, in the same shorts, exposed in the same way. And he would look at me as I walked in, look me in the eye, with this smirk on his face.

I stopped babysitting for them when I was 15. So. Yeah. That went on for years. Always the same, that I can remember. Me, frozen in front of the closed door, staring at the floor until he’d get up and leave the room. I do remember after awhile that I stopped walking in. I’d knock and wait, force him to answer the door. Once I started doing that, I don’t remember him ever doing what he did again.

I never told anyone, not even my best friend. No one. I didn’t know what to say! I didn’t know why it was happening to me and I didn’t even have the vocabulary to describe what was happening. I didn’t understand what his goal was or even if he was actually doing anything wrong. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong, which was why I started waiting for him to answer the door. I thought, obviously, I shouldn’t walk in on someone when they’re doing that, whatever that is, even though he’d call out for me to come in…

I think that’s the root of my problem, or goddamn close to it, anyway. I mean, my problem with porn. I’ve had this horrible, instinctive aversion to it for as long as I can remember. You know, I’ve been identifying and overcoming triggers for years. And yet, I missed this one. Completely overlooked it. Probably subconsciously. It was a thing I couldn’t deal with. It was locked away in a little box, to be thought about as little as possible. As I said, I did eventually talk about it, but it was honestly in a very dismissive way. And that wasn’t fair to 12-year-old me. It also wasn’t fair to present me. Leaving an open wound like that? Just trying to shut it away as if it has no significance? No healing lies down that path, no sir.

Whenever I force myself into this state of mind, force myself to remember things that I always thought were better left in the background, it creates a cascade of memories and emotions. It’s hard to focus on the topic at hand, you know? It’s like I have to grab fragments from the waterfall of memory and put them together into a complete picture, but other fragments of other memories are rushing by at the same time. So, while I think this particular chapter of my life is at least near the root of my issues, I have to acknowledge that there were other, earlier… traumas? I mean, that’s what these types of memories are, right? This feels like trauma. This feels like bleeding to death very slowly, honestly. This might be the hardest entry I’ve ever written, my most difficult self-therapy session ever.

I suppose I should also acknowledge at this point that I’m not certain there are things I actually don’t remember. Memories that I’ve packed away into their boxes so tightly that I have completely blocked out. That’s a little frightening.

The babysitting wasn’t the end of it. When I stopped babysitting for them at 15, it was so another girl, the 13-year-old daughter of a family friend, could babysit and I could join them in the moonlight bowling. I remember my sister’s husband and his best friend leering at me, making inappropriate comments at me. Other small flashes of uncomfortable moments in their presence.

When I was 17, I had a girlfriend. My first girlfriend. It was secret until it wasn’t anymore and my family treated me like a leper for the entire year I was with her. My sister punched me, my dad wouldn’t look me in the eye or speak to me, my mother belittled and degraded me. My grandmother was so loving and supportive and kind. “Do you love her? Does she make you happy? Then what does it matter if she’s a girl?”

My sister’s husband called me at my parent’s one night. Of course he’d heard the news. You know, that I was a lesbian. (oh the shame, the shame) He asked me outright if my girlfriend and I would be willing to have sex in front of him.

I told no one. Again. Because what the actual fuck?! I mean, I told my best friend and my girlfriend. And I told my grandmother, at least 5 or 6 years later, before she died. And still, I have brushed this off my entire life. Swept it away into the box of things in my mind that I don’t want to look too closely at and made out like it was no big deal.

I’m so sorry if he did it to other girls. I’m so sorry if… My niece has a daughter. I mean, that’s his granddaughter, he wouldn’t, right? I was okay because…

Oh, I can’t. I just can’t. How could I ever tell anyone in my family about this? My niece loves her dad. Her kids love their grandpa. It was between 25 and 30 years ago. What purpose would it serve now for me to tell?

I don’t think I can write any more about this right now.

Last updated May 30, 2019