“Ruined”

I was thirty-five before I could tell anyone about the molestation I experienced at the age of ten. The incident, which I described here earlier, involved a stranger who threatened to kill my parents if I told anyone, just seven months before my father died. I kept this incident locked inside me for two and a half decades until I started going to therapy. My therapist suggested I tell my mother about it; she simply shook her head and asked me if I wanted chicken or pork chops for dinner.

This was not much different from the time she learned that my grandfather had been sexual with me. Occasionally, when I was younger, my grandfather would put his hand in my pants and fondle me. It was not a particularly traumatic experience for me; nor was it particularly pleasant. Mother was unhappy when I told her, but that was the last I heard of it- until later. Then, a year afterwards, she learned that my grandfather had also been fondling my youngest brother. The shit hit the fan with that revelation and my little brother has yet to recover from that, even though he insists he has. It was not that I wanted a big deal to be made about my incident, nor that I thought one should be made. I didn’t feel particularly angry with my grandfather for what he did. I understand the circumstances of emotional issues which led him to do such things. But, I never understood why it seemed so much worse to my family when it happened to my brother than it did to me.

The answer came to me after my grandfather’s death when my mother revealed to me that my grandparents had once asked her to let me live with them. Life at home was pretty chaotic and dysfunctional and my grandparents recognized I was pretty sensitive and would probably be happier with them. Mother, of course, refused, explaining to me that she felt my grandfather would have “ruined” me. I didn’t ask what she meant by that, but I knew. She felt he would have made me gay.

In fact, I realize now that she already felt he had “ruined” me. From the time I was eleven, I was teased and mocked at school and at home for being gay, even when I didn’t know what that meant. Mother believed that the reason I was gay was because of my grandfather. Of course, sexual orientation is far too complicated and fundamental an issue to be determined by simple occasional fondling. But, in her mind, because I was gay, I was “ruined.”

She would not say that to me today. I am fifty years-old, but looking back over these decades, I find that her reaction to the sexual abuse, indeed everyone’s reactions to both mine and my brother’s, hurt me far more than the actual abuse. I don’t write this to excuse what happened, merely to pout it into perspective and to suggest that parents and family members who discover this is happening should be very careful not to make the revelation and aftermath more traumatic for the child that the actual abuse.