“You don’t know how vile and horrible and disgusting and worthless I am. If you knew that you wouldn’t be advocating for me”, that’s what I want to shout out. This angry defence rises up from what I see as the hidden but real me. The one that I’ve been hiding all my life. The one everyone will hate and who is responsible.

Is it acceptance, or lack of, that is stopping me from progressing? That the me that was responsible and influenced it and caused it because of who I am is the same me as the one that was a small child that had no say and no matter how right or wrong I was, was not responsible?

Does this create “mental inefficiency”? Not being able to work through issues, not addressing what I think or need to address? Feeling like I don’t know what path I’m taking. Starting work on something and not resolving it.

I want to be different. Not the usual “I’m to fat, I’m ugly, I’m not good enough” different, but a different in how I view the world, how I fit in the world, how I live with myself and who I am.

How can I change how I see myself? Change the vileness of me. I’m not sure I’m making any progress, I can’t even articulate the vileness that I feel. Or where that has come from. Or the seeds of that.

The simple acts from him to me have created such chaos.

Whatever I have done or achieved, it has always been a veneer to where I have come from, to what happened, to the things he did, to the ugliness, to the disgusting of me, to be no one. How can I get to that core and replace it when that is the centre and foundation of its surrounding layers.

When I think about the things he did and what he said and where, I think and feel so many things. Panic. Anger. Nausea. Nothing. Disgusting. Frustrated. Invisible.

It is so isolating. Not being able to explain. I feel angry that I can’t explain, that I can’t make someone understand what happened.

The way out? The way forward? I don’t know but I need to find a way to be different.

Responsibility. Control. Power. How much does it matter who had it and who didn’t. It happened. Too late.

And why did it stop? Why didn’t it stop. Why did he start! Why did it progress! How did circumstance support it? So he didn’t fuck me anymore, I was getting too fat, that’s what I thought. Too fat and ugly. I didn’t tell him I was menstruating, I guess my mother did or he just knew.

The more I knew it was wrong, the more I hated him and he was gross and disgusting, and couldn’t stand to be near him or touched by him,  but the more I was responsible and I wanted him to like me. I wanted him to care for me. The more distance from what he did, the more wrong I was as a person. Maybe that was because I was a teenager and would have felt that anyway, or because I was no longer loveable or worthy.

Are you choosing not to talk about the things he did? If that is the case I need to know why. If it is deemed unnecessary, or too hard, or too unpleasant, or that I will be seen in a particular way. Or because I won’t be strong enough to manage?

I’m not sure why it is difficult for me to not accept responsibility in some way for what he did and what my mother did/didn’t do.

I feel without power and control yet if I wasn’t responsible then I am powerless. Why is that so hard to accept?  I can’t let that control go but I also see that perhaps I didn’t have it to begin with. But I don’t think I fully believe that. It’s so conflicting, I look at a photo of me as a 7, 8, 9-year-old and see this small skinny person that surely was vulnerable and with little real control over happenings, yet remembering what I as that small person felt, and what I feel now, is both powerless and responsible.

I think as I got older and the more aware I became, it felt like the secret was growing all the time, and my actions contributed to that secret and I became more responsible over time. I have always wondered why I didn’t say anything, why I didn’t just say the words, even a few simple words to someone. I could have done that, kids do speak out. He didn’t threaten to kill me or anything extreme like that. I know he said things to  keep the secret but surely there would have been someone/a number of people over the years that would have heard me?

Ok, so when I offered to suck my teacher’s penis when I was 11, was I not taking control, being the opposite of powerless. I was in trouble and that’s how I chose to manage the situation? That seems like a level of control, so why is that same control not applicable with my father? At least from some point.

One time he made me bleed after he had done what he had to do. It was summer, I remember being so hot and he was so hot and smelt and i wanted to stay under the bed covers even though it was hot because I didn’t want anyone to see. There was blood on the sheet from where I sat when he had gone. Thinking how to get rid of it. I shouldn’t have sat there. I picked at a scab on my arm and rubbed my arm over the blood to make it like I had done that from my arm. I knew I would be in trouble for that. I dont think anything ever happened. I don’t remember getting in trouble.

By explaining what happened and saying it out loud to a person means it will explain thing, explain why I’m so fucked up and hopeless and ugly. But maybe I don’t think, or I doubt, that whoever hears it will agree, or believe it, or think that it does explain me. And maybe that’s what I’m concerned about, that people will reflect what I actually really think which is that it doesn’t explain me and that I am just like this and that perhaps it caused what happened to happen.

I thought I was special. That I was special to him. That he cared for me like he didnt for anyone else. Even my mother and sister. But I always sensed that he really loved my sister. Perhaps that’s standard sibling jealousy. But others spoke of it also, his love and adoration for her. I don’t think I was really actually jealous, not sure why. Perhaps because I had his secret attention that no one else did. I don’t think I understood his love of her and his love of me.

When did I see it differently? When did I see that what we did was not ok? I knew it was a secret, I wasn’t sure from who. Actually, yes, I knew at some point it was a secret not for my mother. I thought my brother knew, just because he was my brother I guess and that he knew what my father could be like in a rage, so I guess I thought he knew other things. He probably did, but not how I thought about it then.

I think I thought that people did kind of know, but I’m not sure how or why, just by being me. By being there, by talking, by getting in trouble, by not trying hard enough. But that no one said anything because it was a secret because no one knew – so doesn’t make sense.

Please help me get this out. I need/want to get these words out. But maybe I don’t, maybe I just think that because I know I can’t and therefore know I will fail which will prove I am hopeless and doomed and not worth it?