Telling Others

Blog post 3

Once I realized what my father had done to me, and that I couldn’t be around him anymore, I was going to have to tell some people, and I dreaded that.  I was so used to not being believed, to not being taken seriously, and to being blamed, that I thought nobody would believe me.  I thought they would think I was crazy.  I thought they would think I was mean.

My daughter was one of the first people that I told.  She was home for Christmas and so she’d certainly notice that I was upset and also that Grandpa wasn’t coming over for Christmas.

The first thing I told her was that I had decided that Grandpa wasn’t coming over for Christmas.  Her reaction:  “Thank God.  Seeing him is never pleasant.”

Over the years, she’d grown to just see him out of obligation.  I’d never left her alone with him, and he creeped her out with his comments about her being “pretty” and always asking her if she had a boyfriend.  She was worth more than that and she knew it.

Then I told her that it was because he’d molested me when I was a child and I just couldn’t see him anymore.

“Well now it all makes sense,” she said.

I asked her to explain.

“Remember that time you came home and found me in the bathtub and Grandpa was there and I had knocked my tooth out and you weren’t upset that I had knocked my tooth out but you were very upset.  I could never figure out why.  Now it all makes sense.”

Oh my God, yes.

When my daughter was about four years old, she had jumped down the stairs and knocked one tooth loose and the other out.  The dentist had said that the other one would probably not last.  About a week later, I had left my daughter with both of my parents, not thinking that anything like this could happen, as she didn’t need a bath and my father always left that to my mom anyway.  I came home to find my naked daughter crying in the tub, and my father with her, having knocked her other tooth out the rest of the way.  It was true, I was very upset, but not about the tooth.  I was upset at finding my naked daughter with my father.  Even I was surprised at my reaction.  I don’t think I really understood why I was reacting like that.  I hid things even from myself.

I was surprised at how vividly my daughter remembered this, and accurately.

Next, I needed to tell my son.

This caused me a great deal of anxiety.  My father had spoiled my son and they had been close through the years.  My son, obviously, is a boy, and my father showered him with attention and encouragement.  In other words, he treated him completely differently from my daughter, and from me.  I didn’t want to break his heart.  He’d looked up to his grandfather over the years and had had a special relationship with him.

Due to some complicated scheduling circumstances, I ended up telling him over the phone.  I had wanted to talk to him in person but it wasn’t going to happen.

So, I told him that I understood that he and his grandfather were close, and I didn’t want to interfere with that relationship.  I wasn’t going to ask him to not see him or to change anything, but I wasn’t going to see him anymore, and I told him why.  His reply was that he was surprised that he wasn’t more surprised.  That as he had gotten older, he said, he’d come to realize that his grandfather was a horrible person who also does good things.  And he told me that he was surprised that I’d put up with my father for as long as I had.

I’d say that was an accurate description.  That’s one of the things that makes this so confusing.  He’s done good things.  It would be easy if he were obviously evil all the time.  But then he’d never get what he wanted.  It was very confusing to me.

I had so little confidence, I’d been manipulated so thoroughly, that I’d expected no one to believe me.  Instead they believed me without question.  They knew me, and they knew my father, and my story made sense.  I told a couple other family members and they also believed me right away.  This was a revelation.

I made it through the initial admission to myself that I had been molested, something that I had buried for years.  (I didn’t have any new memories, I just realized that the things that my father had done to me were wrong.  His assurances that he wasn’t doing anything wrong and his denial had shaken my confidence in my gut feeling.)  I’d told some people and found assurance and support.  And I’d cut off contact with my father, at least on my end.  I felt better and more peaceful than I had in years.  It was a start.