ABUSE : : My Stolen Childhood by Jacqueline Woodson

Five years ago, I sat on the edge of the toilet in my apartment holding a half-filled bottle of Percodan - a morphine derivative I had been prescribed to alleviate the pain of a major operation I had undergone three weeks previously. I was 23 and had decided I didn't want to live anymore. I had determined that my live was a mess because I had bounced the rent check. Sitting there half-naked on the cold porcelain, a part of me knew this was not the real reason I wanted to die. I took three pills, went to my room and lay down, deciding I would take the rest later - that I just wanted one more Percodan high before I died.
I fell asleep dreaming of men coming toward me, their penises protruding ahead of them in the darkness. When I woke up, it was a new day. I had slept 15 hours straight. I surveyed the room. It was a mess. Clothes were strewn everywhere, and empty take-out food cartons littered the floor. I had been in a massive depression for ten days and had gone in and out of my high only long enough to eat a little and occasionally change my clothes. In the week and a half since returning from the hospital, I had not left the house once.
About an hour later, the phone rang. It was my agent inquiring about my health and informing me that she had just sold my second novel. In that netherworld between sleep and waking, I thanked her, took three more Percodans and went back to sleep. This time I dreamed of men pressing against little girls. The girls, their faces contorted with fear, were screaming. But the men, whose faces were blacked out, threw their heads back and laughed, asking over and over, "You love this, don't you?" I woke up hugging myself and crying.
A few years later I read a newspaper account about a 12-year-old girl charged with attempted murder for throwing her newborn baby down a garbage chute. The baby survived, and everybody else began pointing fingers. The girl had been sexually abused by her 20-year-old cousin. Transfixed, I read the article repeatedly, my head aching with the details the newspaper gave of her history of sexual abuse. There was no picture of the girl, but when I imagined her, I saw my own face where hers should have been. Reading that article, I saw myself at age 12, 9, even at 6, and finally began remembering what I had pushed to the very edge of my memory: I, too, had been sexually abused.
Remembering
A part of me has long known that I am a survivor. But there is a difference between knowing and actively remembering. After that operation several years ago, I felt as if my body had been violated. That violation made me momentarily recall an earlier violation of my body - one carried out by the boyfriend my mother had as I was growing up. During a seven-year period - from the time I was 6 until I turned 13 and this boyfriend moved out - I endured his constant fondling of my breasts, and his penis and fingers rubbing against me.
However, this was a memory I was not ready to deal with. The good news of my book being sold and a month's supply of Percodan allowed me once again to push that memory back into oblivion. But later on, as I sat at the kitchen table that morning reading about a desperate 12-year-old girl, there were no Percodan pills and there was no agent at the other end of my phone offering news that would, for a while, alleviate the pain. Only then did I realize it was time for me to begin dealing with my history. It was time to stop forgetting and start living the fullest life I could - as a whole person without massive chunks of memory locked away. It was time to begin the long, painful process of healing. Remembering was the first step I would take.
tripping
I was 6 the first time my mother's boyfriend stopped me as I tried to push past him. I remember his hands pressing into my shoulder bones, forcing me back against the wall. I didn't cry out. Instead I stared past him and imagined I was a million miles away. This would be my first "trip." From then on, until I was 13, there would be many more trips. When I felt his hands pressing against me, I would leave my body. I would imagine myself exiting the cramped space we were in and going somewhere far away until the moments with him were over and I could really escape. Once outside, able to breathe again and shamefully move among my friends, I silently prayed they couldn't see the signs of what was going on behind closed doors - secret acts I was certain went on only in my home.
Years later, I would leave my body for other reasons. In bed with lovers I had no interest in apart from my hunger for physical intimacy, I would take these "trips" and return feeling empty and ashamed. Today, as I work at understanding the damage of my childhood abuse, I am learning ways my intimacy has been affected and how easy it is for me to occasionally leave my body when I am uncomfortable or upset. Sometimes I can be sitting around a table with my closest friends and not have any idea what conversation is going on around me. Just as quickly, I can return and my friends will not even notice I've left. In college, as a runner, I would often disassociate myself from any physical pain I was feeling. Later on I found an escape in alcohol and drank until I couldn't remember anything - including what day of the week it we talk around issues, like strangers. One Sunday I came close to asking her if she knew what had happened to me.
"Do you ever hear from him?" I asked about her ex-boyfriend.
She looked at me and frowned. "No. That was all such a long time ago."
"I was just wondering."
Another time, talking to my mother about a white friend of mine who is an incest survivor, she said, "That kind of nastiness happens in white people's homes."
"Not only," I said softly.
"I never heard of it happening anywhere else."
There are many stages in the healing process. I have finally admitted to my lover of four years that I am a survivor and have made a decision to heal. I am letting myself remember. I am learning that I can trust people enough to be intimate with them. Because I need to feel I can defend myself, I have begun training in karate. I am learning to love my body, to not abuse it with sex the way I did as a teenager. For the first time in 24 years, I feel safe.
I have finally allowed myself to get angry at the fact that my childhood was stolen from me. I have grieved over that stolen childhood and have resolved to move on. And in writing this, I am breaking a lifelong silence. But confronting my mother remains my biggest hurdle.
Some mornings I wake up and find the memory so overwhelming, I don't want to leave my bed. Lying there, I let myself cry until the tears no longer come. Some mornings I wake up, and the day is so full of sun and warmth that I have to smile because a long time ago I could have killed myself but didn't. By my will, my strength and the grace of God, I survived.