public fruit

This week has been another one that has brought up things from my past and once again forced me to examine it. Sigh. I suppose this will never end. That is probably a good thing, but it doesn’t necessarily feel that way.

The first and most important thing, and perhaps the only one that truly matters, is that my behaviour was not abnormal or wrong. It did not mean I secretly liked what happened to me. It did not mean I lead those boys from the basketball team to believe I wanted what they did to me.

It did mean I was horribly uneducated and underprepared to deal with boys. My home sex education consisted of my mother buying me a “starter” kit from Kotex letting me figure it out on my own and of her telling me that when two people loved each other, they embraced. And that that is where babies came from.

I was afraid of the repercussions from my step father. He was very volatile and hit and kicked my brothers.

When I got a bit braver and a bit older and had gained a bit of perspective, the person I chose to tell did not believe me.

And so the burying began. The feeling that I had imagined the severity of what’d happened. The numbness when I had sex with other boys who were rough and made me think sex was supposed to feel that way.

It happened again on a high school trip my junior year. The band and choir were in Florida, performing. The last night, I attended a party and woke up in a bandmate’s shower, naked from the waist down. No one talked about what had happened, even me. Especially me. But I remember the two boys, both very popular and one a star cross-country runner. I never reported them because I’d been drinking and I didn’t want my parents to find out. But the school called all the parents and told them about the party and the drinking. Nothing else. I was grounded for the entire summer. I still didn’t mention those boys as at this time my stepfather was regularly abusing me and I just didn’t want to make it worse.

I never realised I’d been raped when I was thirteen, gang raped, until a therapist said it out loud, many, many years later, when I was seeing her to try to come to terms with my son’s suicide and to try to gain tools on how to continue to live and be productive.  I could not continue to compartmentalise my life and thrive; it just was not working with Jason's death.

I still remember those boys and their names. But I don’t know where their lives have led them. I don’t know what careers they chose, I don’t know how many children they have, if any. I don’t know if they did what they did to me to others. I just don’t think about them. It’s how I’ve survived.

I hadn’t thought about the high school trip in decades, until this past week. And now it makes me sad that I didn’t feel I could come forward. Never underestimate the power of shame.

But mostly it makes me tired. Tired to think it’s fifty years later. Tired because it’s fifty years later and nothing much has changed even though everything has changed. I am tired of the seeming inherent privilege of men. I am tired of hearing the same stories, decades later. I am tired of the fact that they just don’t get it.

I am tired of women still, still, being made to feel their stories, their lives, aren’t as interesting or important as men’s. I am very tired of women having to jump through hoops, hoops placed very high off the ground, to be taken seriously.

I am very tired of boys being boys. We need a few good men.

train ride to a memory
©Trish Korous | 2011