Within Silence: The Hidden Realities of Childhood Sexual Abuse

I cried my silent cry;
within my soul it echoed, decibels of 10.
But you did not hear...
I screamed my silent scream;
inside my heart it shattered walls of glass,
the mirror that held my innocent reflection.
And you only saw yourself...
The light crawled back through my dark pupils,
Expression turned within.
My skin without feeling; emotional void.
Within this abyss I seemed to float, helpless.
My spirit was no more. I lived in Hell.
And you never knew I left...
A walking shell, extension of scar tissue,
a massive wound of walking flesh.
But you never knew I bled...

We live in a myopic world. Our eyes are focused so intently upon ourselves, that we often overlook that which exists merely inches beyond our contracting pupils. It's not a condition of blindness, but more likely an illness of perception. We so often choose to see that which our minds can handle as reality, and intentionally blur anything that does not fit into our realm of normalcy. We perceive what we see according to a complex set of rules that have been handed down to us through society and our individual life experiences.

We often walk through life with our blinders pulled down in order to block what we see moving in the field of our peripheral vision. The image is usually a flash at the side, accompanied with the gut feeling that "something just isn't right with this picture". Not sure how to perceive these vague flashes, we focus straight ahead and study the picture before us. We choose to believe what we are focused on as being the truth, and ignore the shadows at the edges that present something vague and unfamiliar. Often the images we choose to see are nothing more than the opposite image of reality. Reality can be ugly. So we hang the clean images in our focus onto the walls of our minds, because they are aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and do not disturb the soul.

Understanding the human need to live a life surrounded by beauty, and natural avoidance of things that are ugly, it is hard for me to question why others didn't see the true picture of my family. Yet, when I think back to all the people who came in and out of our lives while we were living this lie, I can't help but feel that at least one of them knew that something was wrong. Yet at the time, there were no readily available terms gracing the headlines of newspapers, magazines and books to help define those fleeting feelings that might have twisted their guts. Our society had empowered the perpetrators by shoving the reality of their crimes into the closets of our lives; the crime being "incest". At the time, the collective human psyche seemed far from the level of readiness to face the ugly monster head on. It would take decades before the term would make its way into the evening news; finally offering acknowledgement and salvation to the ones who suffered its unspeakable silence.

I often wonder how different my life would have been, had just one person looked beyond his or her own field of vision and taken action to end the ugliness that was my childhood. Would I be more or less than I am today? It is hard to tell. No one dared to lift the edges of that dark veil of secrecy. The torment and scarring of my soul was truly earned. I wear this badge with honor. I do not hang my head in disgrace. Though not one single soul tried to end my vile and living Hell, I still survived. And all that is left within me desires to turn an ugly picture into something good.

The perpetrator, my own father, was not your typical monster. He had no visible horns; when he smiled, there were no fangs. He was a talented, handsome man, hypnotic and dynamic. When he walked into a room, people immediately took notice. I would not describe him as an angel, but many others would. Was this his manipulative attempt to win people over? This was probably true. Though I can't help but believe that somewhere deep inside him there lived something good and that is the side all those people chose to see. But they failed to see the shadows at their periphery. They ignored the dark side of my father that conjured evil.

Where was my mother in all of this? She was buried in the midst of her own soul's demise. Always a weak woman, she folded well under my father's pressure. My mother could not be there for her children. She did not have the strength. Crushed on a daily basis by my father's well-hidden brutality, she lacked the internal resources to even recognize our pain. Survival on the most basic level was my mother's purpose in the hand that she had drawn. I do not blame her for failing to save us from the pain and terror that we endured. One cannot act on something that one fails to perceive.

As a child, my true life was kept hidden in the dark recesses of my mind. I did not dare to whisper the truth to those around me. My father made certain I knew that he would end my life if I told. Not simply veiled threats to a young and impressionable soul; he had shown me that he would do it. He had been a Special Forces Green Beret and I had no doubt that he could kill. He would dress deer that he shot in our garage and force me to watch. He disposed of unwanted litters of puppies and kittens by placing them into a gunny and driving us down to the river. He would roll it off the edge into the water and I would feel myself sink with them to the icy bottom. He would hold a gun to my head and pull back the hammer, laughing when my face would cringe as I waited for the shot that never came. And then there was the day he held me under the pool water over and over and over again. I thought for certain that my time had come. But he did not let me die that day either.

Evil hides well. It has to for its own protection. Surely there is enough good in this world and in people to shine the light on that which is bad and undeserving. But if the good does not recognize the bad, then no action is ever taken. I have spent a lifetime trying to eradicate the memories of his evil acts from my mind. To this day I still see them clearly. They never really go away. Even if one person had come along and recognized the reality of my family and it ended there, I don't really think it would have made a difference. The scarring is the same no matter how often it happens. There are certainly tools to help alleviate the pain over time, but there is no magical cure. There will forever be a shadow lurking at my own peripheral vision. But it is a shadow that I recognize and can see clearly having experienced first-hand the contents of its devastating darkness.