Virginity

 6. VIRGINITY 

Hello and welcome. Come along as we take a short walk through my life as a sexual assault survivor. And don’t forget to stay to enjoy my gem of positivity at the end.

We are taught as we grow up (well, I was anyway), that virginity is something to treasure. It means you are innocent and pure. White like the driven snow, I believe is the old cliche. But what if your virginity was taken from you before you knew you had something to lose? That you were tainted, made dirty, broken, before you even knew you were pure and clean and whole? 

I know that feeling well. My virginity was taken from me at the age of three. It was taken by a man who was trusted. A family friend. But for years I blocked it out. The pain, the fear, the threats I was told. I remember it all clear as a bell. Now.

My moods were unpredictable, to say the least. I would blow up unsuspectingly at the merest thing. I swallowed my feelings until the cork flew out of my emotional bottle. But it never blew up on the things that mattered, just little trifles. But though the cork was blown off, it didn’t take long before I had my emotional bottle sealed again.

I was twenty years old before my mind finally said it was okay to start remembering. Even then, the memories would come to me as nightmares. How do I know the dreams were real and not just made up?

Well I guess to start with, I should tell you that most of my childhood is a complete blank to me. I don’t remember people, places or activities, whether positive or negative. I have patchy recollections, but that’s because they are linked to animals in some way (I absolutely love animals).

But from the nightmares I was having, and continue to have, I could give my family an exact description of the man I didn’t know, describe places and activities that have been verified. 

The man played games with me from the age of two. I didn’t know they were bad games, unhealthy games for a child to play with an adult, and certainly not a man. He had me right where he wanted me, trusting him, believing him. 

And then the night of pain. The night of blood. The night of knowing I’d done something wrong, yet not knowing what. The night I stopped being an innocent child. Yet afterwards, I always had to keep it a secret. If I told, he said, my Mummy would go away and never come back. I would be the one to break up my happy family. What a monster, to put that burden on a three year old child.

And yes, he is a monster. He is the dark man who haunts my sleep, to this very day. I doubt he will ever fully go away. And although I blame myself, he was the adult at the time. He knew what he was doing, what he was taking from me, even though I didn’t.

As you will read, if you decide to follow my story, my virginity was key for me to be a whole person. With every further rape, a little chink of me has be taken too.

And now how do I get through, knowing what I now know? Slowly, oh so slowly. Those chinks have done their damage. I can never be whole. But I can heal into something new. Someone just as precious, as now I have a choice.

Today’s gem is a Japanese phrase. A simple one to remember, but lovely just the same. Just two words: 

wabi sabi. 

Simple, yes? But it’s meaning is helping me to heal. Wabi sabi means (roughly translated) to see beauty in the imperfect. So while I feel that I am tainted and broken by what that man started, I can still heal into something beautiful. And that is a treasure worth keeping.

Thank you for walking this short while with me. What words or phrases help you to get through? Be sure to leave them in the comments. You might just give the gem to get someone else through. Until next time, just breathe and believe.