‘Victim’ is not my identity

A friend of mine was recently in my arms in tears of distress. This wonderful woman whom I adore and respect in equal and significant measure, took a deep breath from her sobbing and said this: “How can I be saying all of this to you when you have had like the worst life anyone could live?”

Now I love her to pieces and she knows me better than most, but suggesting that I have had a bad life, let alone the worst, is a complete fallacy. I have lived an exceptionally good life. But she, like many, is firmly entrenched in the idea that I am a victim of the cardinal sin. I have been raped. Not the violent attack perpetrated by a stranger in a dark alley that you are envisaging. Rather, my father used to creep into my bed and use my infantile body for his sexual pleasure.

I was too young to know that it was morally wrong - what are morals to a four-year-old? But I knew that it felt wrong, and for the sociologists who argue that there is no inherent right or wrong, I assure you that such an act is indeed inherently wrong on so many levels. So eventually I disclosed my secret to escape the pain. I am not so sure that speaking up was a choice as such, more so a fundamental necessity, but my life changed the day that I did.

As a society we like to think that we are fair and equal. We strive not to pass judgment and to be understanding of individual differences. We are breaking down barriers as we attempt to be critical of stereotypes. Social taboos are decreasing as we become more and more open to thought and discourse on a wide variety of previously undiscussed issues.

In Western culture, conversation about sex is rampant and there is much published on child abuse. But for the most part its focus is on the “survivors”, the “victims”, of this detestable act. Manifested in assumption already, we are faced with the stereotypical “victim” of rape.

Victimhood is a role; however, it doesn’t interest me. Speaking of my life events in such a nonchalant way rattles most. The rape victim should be in tears when she speaks of her shameful past. When discussed en masse it would be in group therapy not a university tutorial. In this wave of political correctness, we have learnt that survivors of childhood abuse need to feel included and not made to feel different. The problem is that by consciously doing this, society has already segregated them.

I was incestuously molested and this changed my life: for better or worse I do not know. All that I know is that I have seen things that I may not have seen otherwise in some other life.

Am I over it? Well how long is a piece of string? Rape has more than one victim. I am over the act, but will, for the rest of my life be faced with the repercussions. The social stigma of childhood molestation is immediate in its effects. I had to relive my story over and over to each police officer and detective. To the social worker successfully fighting for my father to have supervised access so as “not to break up the family unit”, and to his lawyer who then explained that if I testified I would be sending my dad to jail. “Did I really want that?” “How would that make my brother feel?”

Offering an explanation at my new school for why I didn’t have a dad in a time when everyone had a nuclear family was always a challenge. I could only be at school for half a day on Thursday’s to make sure I got to my psychiatrist in time. Not your average extra-curricular activity by any stretch.

After several years my excuses for leaving early were waning in creativity. I don’t know how, but I knew all too well that I shouldn’t be talking about my shrink like we do about the “normal” doctors. I learnt young - too young - that sadness must be hidden; that society is more adept at dealing with blood than tears; with anger than sorrow.

More than a decade later I started dating. My boyfriend thought that I was a virgin and I was scared to tell him the truth. Inevitably, I was so anxious that I wouldn’t bleed the first time I told him. He cried and I held him. He never discussed it again.

Slightly over a year later, we broke up - most relationships do. What I didn’t expect was that my abuse would provide his reasoning to avoid injuring his own ego. His possessive insecurity was what made me call it a day, but I am sure that he probably still attributes it to the “unhealed wounds” of my childhood. Whoever would have thought that a DJ would be applying Freudian theory to high school heartbreak?

My abuse as a convenient scapegoat was utilised again not so long ago by another serious partner. Weeks after I said I wanted space, I received a letter from him. He kindly explained that he understood that I wasn’t over “what happened”. He compassionately offered to continue as we were, without sex. I thought to myself “Why on earth would I want that?” He then went on to recommend that I get back into therapy.

Unfortunately for him, I didn’t realise that not wanting to be with him was so strongly indicative of severe mental abnormality. So I also didn’t realise that I was in desperate need of treatment. I was over my childhood as I was over the relationship. But he too had been indoctrinated with the idea that all problems stem from upbringing and that consequently childhood trauma explains away any other problems later in life.

I love that my abuse was not an issue that achieved even a minute of conversation time in the three years of regular sex but was the fundamental cause of my relationship endings. Quite oxymoronic really.

Enduring an abusive childhood does not play fate with one’s future. Influences it? Yes, enormously; but determining it? No.

Each person’s choices are as limited or as vast as their circumstances allow. However, I do not contend that any life event determines one’s future. You cannot find cause and effect relationships between particular experiences and life outcomes. While it may be easy to explain away my bad moods, sad days, or seemingly disinterest in sex; it can be just as easy to blame PMS, sleep deprivation, the frustrations of everyday life or the possibility that I’m “just not that into you”.

Filtering me through the lens of “victim” applies to my good moods too. Many of my friends tell me that I am “amazing” and that I am their “inspiration”. I can’t help but wonder if I was just as impressive before I told them that I was abused. Or is their admiration perhaps because they would expect me to be full of self- pity and with needle in arm? I contemplate that perhaps my friends shower me with so much praise not because it is warranted, but for each day that I do not fulfil the role of victim, I am fulfilling another - that of the person working against adversity.

You know the one - their bio normally reads like this:

Overcame traumatic childhood, depression in adolescence, dissociative symptoms and self destructive behaviour patterns. Ridiculously high level of school truancy and thus, subsequent failure. Shifted schools several times and strung from one unlikely boyfriend to another with a peculiarly large number of men twice her age proposing marriage. Overcame unstable working class upbringing and self-sabotaging tendencies to study at university and turn her life around.

In reality I am neither of these characters. I am me, Kathryn. My life is not intriguing and I am in no need of pity. I do not want to be any identity that society presumes me to be because of something that I experienced 20 years ago. I am trying to pave my own path - not walk one that has been laid out for me.

Rape is a tough issue for anyone to discuss, but not discussing it doesn’t take away its existence. If I am able to speak to you about my life I am leaving the door open for questioning. You don’t ask because in all of this new age counselling rubbish, we, as a society, have at some point become too polite to ask questions.

But this is illogical. What can you say that could hurt me more than I have already been hurt? Nothing. But logic rarely prevails. If I made this disclosure verbally, you would look at me hoping that your face gave off no expression. You would continue as though it weren’t mentioned and you will act as though you only heard it in passing. But you remember. Because never again will you speak of rape in front of me and should you, it will be phrased in a way to sympathise and will epitomise political correctness. I am no longer another girl; I am that girl - the one who was molested by her father.

I do not take away that sex crimes, incest and child abuse are abhorrent, but merely suggesting that childhood trauma doesn’t determine personality. My mother endured my maladjustment. She tolerated my violent outbursts and held me through my tears. I mention this as I do not want to be seen to be trivialising these events. I do not want anyone to think that any sort of reaction is over the top or that I can sit here and write that victimhood is a “choice” and it is that simple.

I am writing this almost 20 years after the event, and after many years of therapy. But at no point have I felt that my life has been terrible by any stretch of the imagination, so I therefore refuse to be prescribed to the cult that is victimhood.