I Walk Around Like Everything Is Fine... But Deep Down, Inside My Shoe, My Sock is Sliding Off

My relationship with my dad has always been... questionable. 

I use the term questionable because, when I think of my father, I literally picture a giant question mark in my mind.

If I allow myself to speak freely, and without fear, I can say that I have no idea who the fuck that man was.

There's a movie by Tim Burton called Big Fish, and any time I think of my dad and the things he would tell me about his past, I think of that movie. If you haven't watched that movie, then go watch it. Now. Seriously. Especially because I'm not going to take the time to explain how the basis of that movie is similar to the entire backstory of the relationship between me and my father.

Anyway... some of the stories my dad told me about his past were literally impossible by all standards of reality, gravity, and sanity. Some stories were believable, and then I found out later in life that they were a lie. My favorite story of all was the one about how, when he was in the service, he was always VERY upset that his last name was Berman. Because they would jump out of planes in alphabetical order, and he was almost always first or second to go. Recently, I told that story around my friend's husband, who is a lifelong military person, and he asked a question (though, honestly, I asked him, Drea, AND myself, and none of us can remember the question) and it really discounted the idea that my dad was telling the truth in that moment. I remember that I wasn't even upset - because I'm so used to that happening. I'm so used to finding out that my dad was telling me a tall tale. Or even a short one, that I'd have to be insane to believe; but he expected me to believe all of them. I even remember once, he sat me down at the kitchen table and said "how old is your grandmother?" And I responded "86." And he said "wrong, she's actually much older than that." And he proceeded to inform me that both he and my grandmother were vampires, and that I came from a long line of vampires that lived for ages and ages - and then, of course, 14 years later at the healthy and realistically old age of 100, she fucking dropped dead. NOT a vampire, dad. Not at all.

The premise of this blog post is to describe a time that you felt shame or guilt, and how you overcame it - but the more I write, the more I realize that a huge part of my relationship in general with my father is built around shame and guilt. I always felt guilty not believing him. I always felt shame that I felt slightly... off... around my dad. I couldn't explain what it was. I loved him, for sure. But it felt like I just couldn't bring myself to fully trust him. I wasn't the type of daughter who immediately reached out to her father for advice. He gave GREAT advice, actually - he was highly intelligent, quiet, introspective, and very logical (except when he was lying through his teeth). But, when I was 17 and was sexually assaulted, not only was he not the first or even the last person I reached out to. He was a person I didn't reach out to at all - not because I thought he would be mad or upset - but because I literally didn't even think to tell him. He just... wasn't active in my life in the way that fathers stereotypically are active in their daughter's lives. He wouldn't sit outside with a shotgun when I went on dates - or even wait up. He'd just ask me how it went and then go on his merry way. If I had boys over with the door closed he gave me my privacy instead of trying to get me to keep the door open. And when I was 14 and my 29 year old married boyfriend was sneaking through my window, and my dad caught us, he invited him in for a beer and they sat and talked for hours while I seethed alone in my bedroom.

And now that my dad is in the ground (literally), I STILL feel guilt and shame. Except that guilt and shame has centered largely around his funeral and the PTSD that I got when he was lowered into the ground.

I had a moment of turmoil just now - when I wrote that last sentence - where I briefly considered writing about my dad's funeral, and the parts about it that fucked me up so hard that I get flashbacks at night that will literally throw me into such a panic that I can't breathe. Flashbacks so bad that I have to have someone sit with me and talk me through the process of breathing. But I think the thing I want to write about - the piece of guilt and shame that I've carried with me so heavily that I purposefully shove the blurry memories deep down somewhere in some cave in my body that I don't even know the coordinates of -  is the time where I'm relatively certain that my dad molested (and possibly drugged) me.

I don't know how old I was, but I can estimate based on the fact that my parents were already divorced, that I was over the age of 8... and I can further narrow it down to the time my dad lived in Fox Run in Plantation, FL when he moved in with my grandmother - so I can say I was older than 8 and younger than 14. My brother lived with my dad at the time, and my grandmother owned the place - so my grandmother had the master bedroom, my dad had the bedroom upstairs, and my brother had the bedroom downstairs. That left me with the couch.

I don't remember much about that day or the day after it. For some reason, I feel like it was still light outside - like in my memory, I see light coming through the slats of the ugly peachish pink window blinds in my dad's bedroom. I think it might have been daytime. Was a taking a nap? I have no idea. I have no idea why I would be going to sleep during the day like that. 

I do remember being in my dad's bed, but I don't remember how I got there. Maybe I had a nightmare. I remember my dad being in his gross, old man, tighty whitey underwear. I remember him spooning me and saying "ssssshhh, deep sleep. Deep sleep" in a weird whisper. And then I remember nothing after that. And I remember nothing from the day after. I have no recollection of waking up, no recollection of getting out of his bed, no recollection of eating or drinking or anything the next day. It's like that day and the time from moment I stopped hearing "deep sleep" until the day after the day after that, everything is completely gone - shoved down into some weird space I can't access, one I don't really know if I even want to access.

I remember the days, months, years, after that though - and the very confused feelings that I had. The "what the fuck just happened?" moments of confusion. The odd feeling that I no longer trusted my dad, even though I couldn't exactly pinpoint why. The moments of "do I tell someone?" and then the following thoughts of "what would I even tell them? I can't remember anything..."

I think the most shameful part of this, for me, has been the fact that I feel like I can't trust my own brain, my own memory, my own feelings or thoughts on the entire issue. The fact that my dad is now dead makes it even worse. The anger I have simmering right underneath the surface - all the lies about who he was and the things he did, all the times he should have been a father but was really just another gross man, and possibly the time that he touched his own minor daughter inappropriately - that simmering fucking fire of pure hatred and disdain just gets flooded with the waters of shame and guilt - guilt because I never have known the truth about him, and if you don't know the truth you can't know what's a lie. Guilt because I'm saying something so disgusting about the man who helped raise me - even if it wasn't a completely active role. And the guilt because he really did make an effort to be closer to me as he got older. And I very much kept him at a distance. My brother and my step mother have asked me so many times why I kept my dad so far away from me (even if i was very good at hiding it - I called him every Sunday but never really let him in), and I would tell them I had no idea. And that was actually the truth - I did have no idea. Writing this out, somewhat processing it as the words go from my brain down into my fingertips and come out in the writing of this page - it makes me wonder if somewhere deep down, this is the reason why I kept him at bay and never let him in.

It also makes me wonder how this has impacted me as an adult. I was sexually assaulted when I was 17, and when it happened I was so deeply terrified of screaming or resisting that I disassociated and decided it was safer for me to lay still and act like I was sleeping. In a way I felt that I was being truthful. That exact state of being is hard for me to pinpoint; it did feel somewhat like being asleep. I was numb, blacked out even though I could feel every disgusting prod of that son of a bitch's fingers going into me. I could feel him fumbling around in my underwear, I could feel myself tightening against my will because, even though my mind told me to relax and just pretend to be asleep, my body wanted to fight back. I felt everything, but I also felt nothing.

I've often thought that this is the reason I have a hard time opening my eyes during sex. Keeping my eyes open, trying to enjoy the experience, trying to watch things and enjoy my partner, can be physically painful for me. I don't know what I think will happen if I actually open my eyes, but in the moment it feels like opening my eyes is something that would be extremely dangerous - that opening my eyes would force me to look at something traumatic and terrifying... and so I keep them closed. And I never open them until it's over. I think it's the reason I have such a hard time trusting any partner that I'm vulnerable enough to be naked around. And I think it's the reason why I have a hard time reaching orgasm during sex. Because it's quite possible that my first experiences with sex WERE dangerous. They WERE a threat. They WERE wrong. And so now, that is all I know.

As much as I'd love to blame the entirety of me not being able to open my eyes, and feeling physically threatened during sex, on the jack ass that assaulted me at 17... I have to wonder if part of it is also the shame and guilt associated with whatever it is that happened with my father. Maybe that disassociated sleep is exactly what my body did when I somehow ended up in my dad's bed at a very young age. Or maybe he fucking drugged me. That would explain the 24 hours of memory loss. Or maybe it was so fucking traumatic that my body and mind refuses to acknowledge it, and I've shoved it down somewhere - in some locked room inside of me - and then thrown away the key or dropped it in some ocean in a place infested with sharks so I'll never go looking for it.

I'm missing an entire piece of this blog, because the prompt asks about guilt and shame, and how I've overcome that guilt and shame... but the truth is that I haven't overcome it, and I don't know if I ever will. I am not a person who would ever blame a victim of sexual assault, or a little girl who was potentially raped by her own father. But we are never as kind to ourselves as we are to other people. And when you spend your life being assaulted sexually, and then you spend the later half of your life with such horrible "daddy-issues" that you surround yourself with pedophiles and THOSE are your partners throughout those important years of development... it's very easy to place blame on yourself. It's easier for me to think that maybe I had a nightmare and crawled into my dad's bed on my own. It's easier for me to think that I should have never trusted the guy who sexually assaulted me... that I told him he had to sleep on the floor, and I even made up a space for him on the floor with pillows and blankets... but that maybe I should have never let him stay... or that maybe I should have worn super ugly pajamas that would turn him off, instead of my usual shorts and tube top, to bed. That I somehow gave him the idea that he had full rights to my body by doing something wrong. I've even gone so far as to get angry with myself for not acting like I enjoyed it - because then, at least, I could pretend that I wasn't a victim.

I think, in order to heal or overcome these things, it will require an intensive amount of therapy. I also think I'll need to get angry. There is that space that I don't tap into... and it's right underneath the surface. It's seething and boiling and it feels volcanic. But it also feels dormant. Like a sleeping volcano that is, at some point, going to become active and erupt - and when it does it's going to bury everyone (including me) in soot and ash and death. But every time I try to tap into that dormant volcano, the little girl in me reminds me that sleeping through things is easier - it's easier for me, and it's easier for the dormant volcano to remain sleeping, too.