"Sexual abuse is like a bullet that's never been removed."

This is the quote for this week's posting.

I have known people all my life, some of them are relatives and they don't have a clue that I was "shot and wounded" almost 57 years ago. Those that I have shared my truth with reacted with total disbelief. "You, but you're one of the funniest, happiest people I know????". So, if I had been morose and maudlin would that have made it more true?

And after all of these years, of course the bullet hole has closed over the wound and I am healed....or has it and am I?

Most of the time the little door that holds the secret back where the bullet lives is closed and matches it's surrounding tissue. Which makes it invisible to all. Most of the time the wound is deep enough that I can actually just go about my daily activities and not be aware of the ache. But then something, someone, some object, some way the sun shines, some way the boards creak in the hallway, some mood swing and I am aware that I still have the pain inside of me. Hearing people talk about my parents, seeing my siblings, are all very painful and reactive times.

Most of what I feel now is not remembered pain, it is reflected pain. I have worked out enough of the ugly and foul and discolored that the pain is not the putrid color it was but is softer, the edges are more rounded, the heat is less intense, the revulsion is less gripping and the color has faded but it is still there and very real. I know it will never just go away, I can still hold out hope that it will continue to diminish and become less painful. After all, I have only had this wound for almost 6 decades.

My abuse was twofold. My father's sexual assaults and my mother's putting on her blinders and ignoring it. That's the first way. The second is how they then raised me, with the elephant in the middle of the room and then their "deep concern" for my well being and over reaction which was just another control issue. I was bad, I was the guilty one, I was the imperfect one, I was the one with the bullet hole that not one other human being acknowledged was real or even existed.

I repressed the memories for decades. Even as an adult when I finally had the flashes of what had really happened, I felt I was wrong...how could this have been real? But all along there had been this pain, this thing that was causing me pain. This thing I had no idea how to get to or for that matter get rid of. The pain became so intense that I could not longer deal with it, when after my mother's death, I was asked to care for my father. Not only had I been shot, I began to bleed my life out in front of my own eyes, my husband, my grown daughter and my granddaughter.

I did the dutiful daughter thing again (even in the face of what I was beginning to realize) and my husband and I moved in with the man who helped shoot me. It was four of the most hellacious months of my life. Every thing brought glaring flashbacks, terrible memories, horrible visions and hellacious gut wrenching dreams. At that time I did what was the only thing I knew to do, I found him a managed care facility and moved him out. A couple of days before he was to go, he tried to molest my granddaughter. 

I am glad that we had no handgun here. I would be in prison and he would have also had a bullet in him. But that was the day I began to heal. The day I let myself seek help and solice and peace. The day I washed my hands of being my parent's child and became my own child. 

You all know how much I love my grands, I had to learn to love me along with them and became a grandmother in love. But.............the bullet stills exists.

These are the other bloggers on this subject today:

http://scarred-seeker.blogspot.com/when-the-bullet-hits-the-bone.html
http://kseniaoustiougova.squarespace.com/blog/2010/8/11/taking-back-my-body.html
http://www.sugarpatch.com/index.php/2010/08/12/sexual-abuse-is-like-a-bullet-that-s-nev