Sexual Abuse Support Group
Sexual abuse is a relative cultural term used to describe sexual relations and behavior between two or more parties which are considered criminally and/or morally offensive. Different types of sexual abuse involve: Non-consensual, forced physical sexual behavior such as rape, incest or sexual assault, or psychological forms of abuse, such as verbal sexual behavior or...
Today at counselling I asked my therapist how he would classify what happened to me. His answer was that it was abuse. When I heard this it was like being hit with something. This was the first time someone had actually said it was abuse. I have had people say that 'it was kids playing' or 'see it as a previous relationship', to 'just get over it'. I have quite a few counsellors, and this was the first time someone had said this to me.
I'd always known, mostly, what had happened. There's never been any doubt that my stepmom did certain things although there's still at least one incident when I was 8 years old where I'm fairly certin somethinh happend but I can't quite remember it. I was also the poster child for nearly every behavioural and personality issues that results from abuse. I wasn't willing to see it that way, though.
My brother and I used to laugh about it in a "yeah, mom was wierd back then" sort of way. We'd make light of it and use every euphemism in the book except "abuse" or "molestation".
It just COULDN'T be abuse. To call it abuse would would mean I was somehow "broken" and less than whole; it would reduce me to being no better than every other f'ed up person on the planet and I just wasn't going to have any of that.
It was much easier to just let others think of me as a 'problem child' as a kid and a 'bad person' as an adult and let it go at that. If the rest of the world didn't like who I was, well, f--- them, I don't need them anyway so if somebody else didn't like who I was then that was THEIR problem not mine.