What next?

Kate stayed in the hospital for the next 3 weeks and was eventually diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. I saw her parents frequently when they came into town to visit her and spoke with her on occasion when she would call to yell at me for ruining her life. I returned her cats to her ex-boyfriend and attempted to regain some normalcy in my life. My apartment still smelled of the perfume that Kate anointed me with when she thought I was dying no matter what kind of cleaners, deoodorizers, and scented candles I used to cover it up. And, regardless of how much chocolate I ate, bad television I watched, or hours that I spent overtime at work, I couldn't make it go away...I couldn't forget that I finally spoke out loud about my sexual abuse, that I saw somebody lose hold of themselves possibly forever, and that my depression was becoming so intense it was affecting my ability to function. I decided to ask another work colleague if she could recommend a counselor as her family was good friends with a local psychotherapist and I thought she wouldn't judge me too harshly for seeking that kind of help. I told her that the stress of my health issues over the past year and the episode with Kate were catching up with me. The next day she gave me a referral to a private practice just a few miles from work. It took me a year to realize that this practice specialized in trauma recovery and sexual abuse.


I was skeptical, though not resistant, to the whole therapy thing. It is a strange paradigm to enter into and I wasn't exactly sure how it was supposed to work. I spent the next several months discussing the episode with Kate and beginning to string together a narrative about being sexually molested by a neighbor, the son of my mom's best friend, who also happened to be my same age. I wasn't calling it sexual abuse at the time, but my therapist was helping me to get there. The more we talked, the more I shared, the more I realized that I had been abused and living a life half-awake...subverting my sexuality, dissociated for most of the time, emotionally numbing with food, and having extreme difficulty managing intimacy with family and friends. I began to understand that I wasn't just some sexually perverse person filled with secrecy and shame over being sexualized so early and often in my life. I realized that I was never a willing participant in any of it and there was an explanation for so many of my experiences, my lapses in memory, my tendency to be revictimized, and relationship to myself and others, that all related to these events. I was a sexual abuse survivor. Holy shit, I am a sexual abuse survivor. I began being flooded with memories of the abuse. I became extremely emotional and moody as I embraced the reality of my history. One day it might feel liberating to have an explanation for so many things, the next horribly overwhelming and inescapable that I was nothing more than a traumatized person stumbling through life as an amalgamation of defenses. I began to feel not so different from Kate and afraid that I might be more emotionally unstable than I ever recognized.