IF

I found this poem, by Rudyard Kipling, when I was about 13.
It did touch me deeply then, and has been in my mind ever since.
Some days, like today, I feel drawn to it again.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

---------Rudyard Kipling---------------------

About this blog

I wanted to explain what the aim of the blog is. I guess I wasn't all that clear when I started what I wanted it to be about. I thought I wanted to tell about the molestation explicitly, but as I go on I realise that what I really want to comunicate is how I felt about it.
I realise now, that what weights more for me is not the times that he did touch me, but the feeling of fear, uneassines, violation that I lived with all those years.
Those feelings where there everyday, I grew up with them and I think that is why they are such a deep part of me, I hosted them not only the days something would happen, but everyday.
I always felt unsafe, undeserving. I learnt a twisted version of love.
I never felt I could tell my mother, or anyone about it, and I think that has to do with her, and my relationship with her, which obviously also affected my deeply. Then there is also the rest of the family, my brother and other memebers that were very close to me, but that I never confided in. Why? there is a reason to it, and not only has to do with the abuse, but with the family dynamic.

I want to comunicate these feelings more than the details of the molestation. I will keep trying to do it by telling about particular events because I find very hard to explain these things otherwise.
I would like to able to show how and why I felt like a prisioner on my own skin. Why life felt as a sentence more than anything else.

I don't think the posts are going to be cronological.
I have tried, but things come to me as they come, and that is not in cronological order, I now that makes more difficult to graps things, but I don't think I can do otherwise.
For example the one thing that has been on my mind recently, is the time when I have been closet to suicide, and wil probably be my next post (maybe even today).

Inevitably growing up

I did well with my wish.
My breasts didn’t grow. Even today they are very small. Now that I have put a bit of weight on is the first time I do not have problems to find a bra that will fit me. Though of course, I still use the smallest size.
I was very skinny as kid, and I did develop late. So I had a very childish look even as a teenager.
But that didn’t help me as much as I had hoped for.

I guess this was soon after the event of the last entry.

We were going to visit my father’s family for a long weekend; Monday was holiday I can’t remember why.
They lived a 4 or 5 hours drive away. The plan was to pick up my mother from work Saturday afternoon and then just go.

The night before something strange happened to me. I woke up in the middle of the night all wet. I was sure I hadn’t pee on myself, I hadn’t done that much even as a very young kind. There was this weird fluid in my underwear, it was too dense to be pee, but I had no idea what it was. I changed and went back to bed, but in the morning I was wet again. I didn’t want to say anything to my brother or my father. I was very ashamed, and I didn’t want to bring attention to me, even less to my intimate parts.

On the drive, I asked to stop to go to the restroom a few times, I wanted to check and get clean if needed. Eventually once my other came with me, and I told her what was going on. She explained to me that it was normal, it was just discharge, and I hadn’t had it before because it happens when you develop. The conversation was still going when we got back to the car, and she continued talking about it in front of my father and brother. She started explaining how it meant that I was growing into a woman and that probably soon I would get my period and notice a few changes in my body shape in general.
I must have looked very uncomfortable about all that, and I guess that is why she continued going deeper in the topic. I was very uncomfortable because he was getting notification of what I was hoping was not obvious by my appearance. I was growing up.
I sat there in my corner at the back of the car, nodding as my mother talked, in the hope that she would stop, even if only for my brother who was bored of the topic already.
I didn’t even want to look at him, but I saw him moving the mirror of the car. He could see me now, and there was nothing I could do. I could see him looking at me as well; I could see that “smile” in his face. If I were to describe it now, I would call it lust.
Back then I didn’t have a word for it, but I had the images and feelings in my mind. I knew what it meant he was thinking. I pressed my legs together as tight as possible. I curled up in the back of the car and pretended to sleep.
I knew I would be safe at his mothers place. There was always someone with us.
Trouble mainly would be in the summer, when he had holidays and mum had to work.

A day in school

We were about 11 years old.

That day we were going out, we had an excursion. Once we had done the arranged visit, we were to make use of the fact that we were in the countryside and play sports outdoors. There were some public toilets around that we were to be used to get changed into the sport clothes, that we had been advised to carry with us.
I don’t remember the whole day very well. I remember that by the end of the afternoon, some of the girls and I had been talked into playing football with some of the boys. As we were playing the teacher called apart one of my friends and chat with her shortly. She did not come back to the game.

When we were all back to the restrooms to change back, the couple of us that were closer to her asked her happened. She looked upset.
She said the teacher had told her that her breast were starting to develop and she ought to wear a bra to school. She said the teacher seemed to be condemning the fact that her mother hadn’t taken care of that, since we were at a mixed school.
She asked us if we had noticed it, and we both said no at first, then she said to look at her carefully. By this time we were changing clothes and she was only wearing a thin T-shirt. Then we could see that her breasts were slightly developed compared to ours. But we wonder how the teacher could have noticed when she was wearing more clothes.
We had gone to a corner because she felt very self-conscious in front of all the other girls, though we weren’t that many students in the class.

I knew how she felt, she was ashamed. She had been made to feel “dirty” just for being as she was. She had been made to feel she ought to hide herself as if she was an indecency.
We had a little chat in the way to the bus; she was worried about the boys, as the teacher had made that remark about the school being mixed. My other friend soon would be in the same situation, as we realised once we examined our bodies a bit more in detail.
We convinced ourselves that the boys shouldn’t have any problems with it; didn’t all of them have mothers? And wasn’t the world just full of grown up women? But I think none of us felt very reassured.

On the way back, I had to sit in the front of the bus, as I used to get travel sickness; since all the kids liked to sit at the back, I was there by myself.
A thought assaulted me: what was going to happen when my breast started to grow? My body was already getting too much attention from him.
Of course he would know, he would have known all along the changes that were going to happen.
I used to lie in bed wishing I would not grow breast, ever.

When I was seven

I was about seven years old.

My brother and I were playing with my father in the living room. It was Saturday morning, my mother was at work. It was very nice as we he didn’t spend much time with us. He wasn’t home much during the week; in the evenings, but never had a disposition to even have a conversation with us. He was around in the weekends but he would spend most of his time in his studio. We would fix our own breakfast and play or watch TV until my mother was back from work. Then she would cook and we would all sit to have lunch. After that we would just be around the house, or do something with mum, he would be doing something else, reading mostly, is what I remember; or he would just disappear in his studio room.

That day we were playing, probably it wasn’t the only time we played with him; it was just not the usual. He was lifting us and throwing us high and catching us low on the way down. We were always amused by his strength and we enjoyed being lifted, thrown and catch, as if we were light feathers.

At some point I was being lifted by the chest, his hands were my non existent breast were. I was trying to hold my legs up to be horizontal, as if I was flying. He turned to my brother and said something like: “you have to take your chances now, because when they grow up they don’t let you touch their breasts”. Soon after, I said I was tired of the position and he put me down. I wasn’t tired, I was just uncomfortable. I didn´t even know why but I didn’t like the grabbing that was involved in the game anymore. I said I felt dizzy from all the spinning and going up and down, and I went to the room to lay down a bit. After a few minutes I took a toy and went to see what they were doing. I just sat there, in the other side of the living room, and play with my toy. Soon my dad was tired of playing and my brother came to play something with me.