50 Shades of Pain

50 Shades of Pain 

Child abuse comes in many forms,
Neglect, emotional, physical, sexual,
And for some, a combo,
You may think this is an anomaly,
Something that only happens to other people,
To folks different from you in some way…

But the perpetrators come from…
All socioeconomic backgrounds,
All racial groups, all types of families,
And to top it off, they are often,
Not some random “stranger,”
But rather the child’s own parents!

Yes, the very same individuals,
Who are entrusted to raise and protect,
Young and innocent children,
From birth through adulthood,
Go ahead and inflict grief,
That may feel like 50 shades of pain…

How so, you ask?
Let’s look at Sandy*,
She was born X years ago,
Through the luck of the draw,
Upon her birth,
She was not greeted with tears of joy…

But rather, with maternal depression.
This was not her fault,
Nor her mother’s,
But this was her reality,
How sad (and angry) Sandy felt,
Trying to reach out…

To coo with her depressed mother,
Who could not respond to her in that way,
For quite some time,
A few slivers of pain, you might say,
Sandy still had hope though,
And looked to her father to play…

However, her father had other plans,
In mind for her…
He felt that she was his object to use as he pleased,
No matter that she was a little baby,
He felt that he had a right to do what he wanted,
Yes, this probably happened to him as a child…

This is the case with the vast majority of child abusers,
But let’s be honest, that’s no excuse!
Sandy’s father could have stopped himself,
He could have sought the help of a professional.
Had he had been willing to admit that he had a problem,
Had he cared more about Sandy than himself.

Instead, he chose to pretend that all was ok,
And he went ahead and proceeded to molest,
Little Sandy during her formative young years,
How did she survive?
Her ego employed the only defense she had,
The armor of dissociation.

Nevertheless, the degrees of torture…
How could her father betray her in this way?
And where was her mother in all of this?
How could she have been so self-involved,
Or obtuse to have been clueless for years?
Sandy doesn’t know, doesn’t understand…

You might think that this was bad enough,
However, Sandy’s father had more wounds to inflict,
As a result of all of his unacknowledged childhood issues,
And having too fragile an ego to seek assistance,
He proceeded to yell, spank or slap her…
Whenever he would get frustrated, which was quite often.

As if this wasn’t demeaning enough,
He also used to hurl at her wounding words,
Like stupid, when she didn’t understand something,
How did Sandy feel?
Not surprisingly, she felt stupid and lived in perpetual fear…
She never knew when her father would erupt.

But on the outside, she acted like all was normal,
Because this is how she was trained to behave,
They lived in a beautiful house in a nice neighborhood,
But it was a facade,
It was not a happy place,
It was a place of danger for little Sandy.

She had to hold in her emotions,
In order to survive her childhood,
Be frozen and do as she was told,
Or else, things could get even worse.
At one point, before she turned thirteen,
The monster finally stopped.

Thanks to the gifts of dissociation and repression,
Sandy is an adult survivor of child sexual abuse,
Who managed to make it to adulthood,
Without engaging in substance abuse or
Other self-sabotaging, risky behaviors,
She is one resilient woman.

Now Sandy is becoming aware…
The sexual abuse is no longer repressed.
At first, she couldn’t believe it.
It was too shocking, too horrifying,
Although, she has to admit,
That now certain memories make sense…

She felt shattering pain,
Overwhelming emotion,
The awareness of what she survived,
Was almost too much to bear,
In between her therapy appointments,
She clings to guided meditations for support…

Aside from the suffering, she felt,
Terrible shame and embarrassment,
Like she was dirty, no longer good,
As if she were to blame,
As if she were responsible,
For what her father did to her.

This type of reaction,
For the person who has been abused,
To take on the shame for the abuser,
Is quite normal and typical,
This is especially true for when the villain,
Is a trusted figure like a parent.

And the ill-treatment started at infancy.
All human beings must form,
Attachments to their primary caregivers,
It’s the way things work,
In order for us to survive,
Attachment is more critical to us than food.

Furthermore, we need to believe,
In the goodness of our parents,
This is so vital and important to us,
That when our caregivers hurt us,
We will justify the maltreatment,
By taking on the badness ourselves.

In other words, we see ourselves as bad,
To enable our caregivers to have a good image,
This allows us to form our necessary,
Attachments for survival,
There is a cost to this, however,
We feel bad at our inner core.

It takes a lot of work,
For adult survivors of sexual abuse to let go,
Of the shame that was never theirs to hold,
That belongs to the perpetrators of the abuse.
Sandy is slowly getting there, starting to
Recognize this, feel anger towards her father.

Sandy’s story is but one case,
It is [conservatively] estimated that one in four girls,
And one in six boys will be sexually molested,
Parental figures are in the position of authority,
Abuse of any kind is about the misuse of power,
This must cease and desist!

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*Sandy is a fictional name and a composite of a number of different cases. Any resemblance to an actual person is entirely coincidental.

Photo credit: Sherrie Thai of Shaire Productions
References:
Grand, S., & Alpert, J. (1993). The core trauma of incest: an object relations view. Professional psychology, research and practice, 24(3), 330-334.
Who Are the Perpetrators of Child Abuse?
Statistics of Child Abuse

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