Justice, Sort of. [TW: child molestation, incest]

About a week ago, maybe a little bit longer than that my sister told me something important. We were talking on the phone like we do every so often and she tells me- she says that our dad has told her that our uncle is in jail for child molestation.
I didn't feel anything, at first. Or so I thought. It was like suddenly there was this great big nothing pursuing me. It was a strange feeling but I intellectually I knew it was a good one. See, my uncle molested me when a was young. It made me feel so betrayed by my family and so hurt that I couldn't really ever trust them because not only did they let it happen to me but they were the ones who did it. For so long I have been so angry and so scared and so hurt and and so untrusting of everyone I love that it was impossible, really, for me to feel and be close to someone in a healthy way that didn't lead to me running away or ruining it. Because I was so angry, because I was so hurt, because I couldn't trust in people, because I was always afraid. Because I never got justice.
I never wanted revenge. I just wanted justice. I wanted him to know that what he did was wrong and that society wouldn't stand for it. I wanted him to pay for his crimes justly. I wanted it so that it would ever be that much harder to hurt another child again. I wanted there to be people who watched him and knew him for what he was. I wanted him to be punished for his crimes in accordance with the laws of our society.
And now he has.
After about five minutes googling his name and various phrases I found him. He's on the Megan's Law website of California. His address is known and he is known for the evil that he has done. It's a terrible thing that he had to hurt another child to be caught but caught he has been and he is being watched.
But since I've found out I've noticed some strange changes in myself.
I remember feeling this piecing sensation like a knife was being removed when I found his image on the MLoC site. It felt as if an old and cankerous wound had finally had the barb that had been festering in it removed. I didn't feel free. I didn't feel elated. I was momentarily terrified like a patient before an operation but once I looked at it and confirmed it was him and read all of the information they had I felt so much better. It felt like I had just woken up from anesthesia and the doctor was telling me my prognosis was good, that they'd removed most of the black cancerous tumors of hatred, anger, and fear that had been filling my body.
I felt lighter and it was like suddenly those things I feared when I turned off the light or walked up the stairs at night or sat alone at home were mere whispering vapors.
It wasn't so much that I was suddenly free and glad of it because I still feel angry and scared and don't trust easily and I'm still hurt by what my family did to me but it's lessened now. It's like I know I can defeat it now instead of just faking like I can.
It's as if all of those things I feared are no longer these undead things that grip the back of my skull and whisper terrible fears into my ears. They're intangible now. They can't touch me anymore. I can see them and I can laugh at them and walk away and they fall farther and farther behind me, rotting and dropping to the ground like the remnants they are.
Because justice is no longer an abstract thing but a reality, firm in my life as these demons that plagued me were.

I'm not saying they're entirely gone because they're not. I'm still angry. I'm still hurt. I'm still afraid. I'm still untrusting. But it's easier now to deal with it. It's like they've gotten weaker and I've gotten stronger simply because out there was someone who cared enough about a child to say 'hey, this is wrong. This man shouldn't be able to get away with what he's done.' And yeah, it wasn't for me that this was done, and more children had to get hurt for it to happen but it did happen. It's possible for there to be justice where there is evil.
And that is the most comforting and therapeutic thing that could have happened for me.
The man who hurt me is being dealt with. He has been told that what he did was wrong and that he won't get away with it anymore. I am not irrational. I am not alone. I am not unjustified in being angry or hurt or afraid. What happened to me was wrong and the monster who did it is being watched.

Like Grown Ups Do (Unsettling Content)

Today I was watching Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and the two elderly people I live with were sitting there next to me and neither of them seemed as interested in the program as I.
I was sitting there durring a commercial and it got me thinking. Why do I like this program? It's unpleasant and never happy and it's uncomfortable to the other people in the room as I since I only ever watch it on the T.V.

But I don't really know why I asked this because I know why I watch these kind of shows.




I'm obsessed with them.


I'm obsessed with sexual assault. But it's not a kink or any sort of physical thing for me. It's sort of cathartic to watch police officers run about and try to solve these crimes because it never happened for me or those I know that these sort of things have happened to.
I watch these types of shows because it helps me live with what happened to me.

There is a lot of things I've heard about my childhood but I've blocked so much of it out that I don't feel comfortable relying on other's heresy. I know what is said is at least partially true because I'll have dreams or moments where I remember something from when I was little that I don't actively know. I have memories of seeing my mother get fucked by strangers. I have memories of strange people coming in to my room at night when I lived with her and doing things. Most of my memories are very vague and convoluted because I've spent so long trying to forget them that they're not quite reliable anymore but...

I remember one instance when I was older that I've never been able to forget.
There had been some emergency that called away both my father and my mum and they hadn't been able to find anyone to watch us so they left us with the only option available: my uncle Dale. He was nice, if a bit strange at times but he wasn't so odd for a member of our family. He lived with my other uncle, Steven, who I loved intensely.  Steven collected Star Trek memorabilia and those little plaster houses from the Dollar Store, just to give you an idea of what 'normal' constituted in the family.

Anyway, we stayed over and during the day it was fine. We played at a creek and I was mostly left alone, as most people do with me. I was very into myself from a young age. By that I don't mean that I loved myself and only paid attention to myself but that I spent most of my time in the imaginary world in my head. So my two brothers played with each other and I joined in sort of. My uncle always seemed to like my brothers better so I didn't really mind. I didn't know him too well and he was no Uncle Steven so I didn't really pay any mind to him.

But come that evening is when the strange started. I didn't think it at the time, probably because I was young and because I didn't know any better. But when he took each of us alone into his room to pat down with powder (I assume it was baby powder or something similar) it was strange and it should have sounded an alarm but it didn't. It sounded so reasonable when he took me in there after one of my brothers to "check for ticks" and apply this powder for some reason. He was an adult and as such I trusted him, as most children trust adults of their family.

I remember being confused because I could check myself in the mirror for ticks but I trusted him because I didn't know what a tick was or what they looked like. I know he convinced me to kiss him under some line about doing things like "grown ups". Applying the powder and checking for ticks constituted an all-body search.
An all over the body search.
But he treated me like a "grown up"
I was happy. I was fucking happy because adults never treated me like a grown up. I was small, blond, and had one of those little girl voices and no one took me seriously. Usually they just ignored me or pandered to me.
It ended quickly because one of my brothers was waiting for his tick-check but it didn't stop there.

Later, when we were watching a movie, he sat me in his lap and asked me again if I wanted to learn to kiss like the grown ups do. I was eager because I was small and young and he's my uncle and family means safe, right?
So he showed me what a grown up kiss was and he touched me and made me touch him.

And I think this is about the last time I ever really trusted my family or adults in general.
Because in the back of my head I knew he did something wrong. That he wasn't supposed to do that with little girls like me and the older I got the more revolted I was at what he had done.
The more it made me hate my family and it even got me to start to distrust my brothers and pull away from them. Before this it had always been big brother, me, then little brother against everyone else but I couldn't trust them anymore.

They were there for the second come around of this. They were sitting right there in the room and they did nothing. Not even my older brother who I know has gone through enough bad-touch moments to know better.

I couldn't trust them. I couldn't like them. They had betrayed me. My whole family. I know this sounds a bit melodramatic but that's just the sentiment I have. I can't trust them because they made me damaged.

They have damaged me so much and I doubt there is recovery from this ever. There only seems to be coping. But I don't know if I want to cope with the things that happened to me while I was growing up. Sometimes I just want to drown myself in recklessness so that I can at least pretend not to care about myself. I hate my family and I hate myself and I hate the world because we all let this happen to me and it just makes me so angry all the time.

All this anger and hurt and rage and pain and guilt just makes me feel like I don't quite belong to the human race because there's no way the rest of them burn in their center with this massive craving to destroy everything because it all just makes it hurt and the destruction will make them feel alive and whole. It seems perverted to want to set everything on fire just to be able to appreciate how alive it was.

I love life and I love existence and I love the passion and energy that is humanity but I spend so much of my life inside this contradiction.

I hate everyone and everything but in the same breath I love them all and I feel so much. I don't understand how I don't feel at ends. I suppose, though, that it's simply my nature. I hate and I love in the same breath because I feel as if with every breath I live that I die. I revel in this contradiction. It feels so human and I need that sometimes because there are moments where I'd rather see the world burn than continue on with this mass of sickening and depraved individuals that make up the glorious race I am apart of.

I don't like the term "nightmare"

I was walking home from school with a friend; someone I've known for a while and who I always walk with. The road was long and sometimes there was no real sidewalk, only a dirt path cut through the fields at the side of the road by other children who has come this way. The air was moist the way it gets before a really terrible and cold rain.

We were talking about something silly like a kid I saw in the locker room, how this one teacher needs to be put in an asylum, and other topics that school kids get at after school. But it was late. The sun wasn't up and it was that time after twilight has left where the sky can't really believe the sun isn't there anymore and still holds traces of goldy light. When we came to my house we stood outside the gate, and I rested my hand on top of the old wooden post that held the latch for the yard.

This wasn't the house I grew up in, no, but it was the house I grew up in at the same time. It was wooden and tall and covered in splinters. All of the wood had the look to it that old wood gets if you leave it in the sun for days and days and days and it's not the treated and polished wood of furniture. The grass hadn't been mowed but that was quite usual. The tall weeds of almost wheat looking plants sprouted nearly as tall as the fence.

"Go in, come one. It can't be that bad," my friend said. I shook my head and bit my lip, suddenly aware of how I looked and where I was standing. I looked down at my sneakers, right at the edge of the dirt path that leads to my front door. They were dirty and well used and looked like they had trot the Earth. Sometimes I feel as if I have walked around the world and found nothing, nothing at all besides more paths of old cement and sections where it's just a dirt trail cut in by everyone else who has come this way.

"You don't understand," I said, knowing that my friend was a simple thing and couldn't (or wouldn't) comprehend the types of monsters that didn't live inside story books and movies. I shook my head and we both walked in. We talked in the kitchen, in lowered tones but not whispers. I perceived a disturbance upstairs and my friend vanished, now, this was a dream so I thought nothing of it. I set my bag down and it was night. I began to walk through the house to find out the source of the problem.

For the longest moment I treaded past a cabinet that was not a cabinet but a remnant of another dream. Inside the cabinet opened into a wide and white or gray tunnel, as wide as a subway tunnel and as brightly lit and sterile as a hospital. Inside lurks a monster. It's not alive, however, it is not dead. It is a sort of beast made of up humans. It has bled into the tunnel and has become a part of it. But it is not friendly in the least. If you're in there, it takes parts of you and rightly so for trespassing into its territory. I cannot explain how terrifying this thing is unless I describe the dream it comes from and somehow find the words that I am at a loss for. But to say that it could possibly be one of my deepest fears is to begin.

I walked down a hallway, upstairs and came into a room with a sleeping girl in it. She was young. Six or eight. At the time I thought she was a sibling. A dream-sister but I knew then, in the back of my mind as fact, that she was simply a younger incarnation of myself. She had the perfect little girl's room, though. It was pink and purple and white and filled with fancy and fluff. She as sleeping. I kissed her forehead and pleaded that she stay that way.

Then I was in a little boy's room. My brother's. His room was full of dinosaurs and toys and it felt so ordinary and boyish. He was awake. His little lips pursed into a look of concern and tiredness. I helped him lay back down and tucked him in. I stood, feeling relaxed and refreshed and left the room. Across the hall, I entered a door into my parents bedroom, but expanded, white and large. The small entry way into the open space bathroom was a tunnel, similar to the Monster In White but smaller. I perceived that it could be a child Monster In White (one in the making).

Inside my parents were fighting. My father had his hand raised and his voice was wide and bellowing and without edges, as he is. My mum was all teeth and heaving chest. She leaned towards him, her grim face looked almost like a twisted grin. I got the impression that while she hated the way she felt; while she hated her situation she loved the fight. They were attacking each other with words and postures.

Until my father raised his arm and meant to hit my mum. I stepped in and he struck me instead. He seemed surprised but not concerned. He tried to get me to leave; to believe it not my place to step in. I attacked him with my own words and griefs. All my emotions at being neglected or emotionally abused came out and it was not as crippling as it was when I was awake. In my dream it was possible for me to scream and shout and show him how much I hurt without it becoming too much and beginning to weep.

He began to yell back and behind me my mum was yelling as well. She was attacking him on her behalf and I him on mine and my 'siblings' and he was hurting us both. He raised his arm again and said that I did not belong here and that I had no right to say these things to him. I stood tall, and proud and when his hand came down I kicked him. Hard. Right between his legs and yelled that I had every right to be here and that I had more right to say what I was saying than he had right to breath.

Suddenly on each arm I was holding my younger 'sister' and my little brother. My father was crouched over, tending to his wounds. My mum was cawing in victory behind me. I wasn't afraid and it felt so freeing. I wasn't afraid to speak and when I did speak I didn't choke and when I went to hit my hit didn't go wide, as it normally does in my dreams. I felt elated. Then he stood and his face was white than it should be and he was smaller than he should be and his hair was blonder instead of ginger and he bared his teeth and my familiar gape tooth stood before me and he said "Be careful who you look to" and I was injured. So bad. My heart felt as if a fist that had been inside it out-stretched from inside of me and injured me beyond repair.

I was dying, metaphorically, from the inside. The two children in my arms clung to me but it wasn't easy and they weren't heavy but they suddenly dampened me. I couldn't move, or act and I began to sink to my knees, the weight of my own soul too much to bare.

My father stood and looked down at me with grief for himself. My mum still stood proud and behind her my brother, this one his proper age stood with her. Both of them were glaring down at me as if they had just defeated Goliath and they, David, where now free to live happily ever after.

My insides where turning white and the children on my sides were becoming my appendages. We were a freak of nature and we hated ourselves and everyone else because they made us this way. I was entirely helpless as to who I was and I shrunk back and crouched in the tunnel that stood between my parents room and the doorless way into their bathroom. I hid in the white tunnel and felt myself changing from my heart out. Tearing and and freezing so cold it burned and now I understood the Monster In White because it would be terrible to become just a way towards something. To just be a means to your own end. My hips didn't snap but shifted, like putting weight on a sleeping foot and then I was more like a spider than a human. My limbs arching up above me before going to meet the ground.

I was contortioning along the walls and not screaming because what would be the point? I was a monster and nobody saves monsters.