I enjoyed my sexual abuse

Weird title for a blog post, right? Weird thing for anyone to say. Let me explain it.

It’s taken me years to write that one line. So many years, you have no idea. Why am I writing it now? Well because maybe someone else can’t say it.

Do you know how many times I have googled that phrase? So many. Like this compulsive need in me to know that I am not sick, that I am not perverted, that there is not something wrong with me. I just needed to find one thing that validated that statement and let me ease the burden I feel inside every time I think that.

I tried searching it even yesterday and I can find reports about childhood victims having their bodies react, or they become aroused. Places like the NSPCC use phrases like, forced pleasure.

I remember when I was eleven years old, there was this child helpline that opened. I believe it still exists. ChildLine? Maybe. I went to the call box two blocks from my house and I dialled the number. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe no one would answer me, after all they hadn’t in the past, so why now. But this woman did answer me and I put the phone down. I stared at it for ages, unable to breathe, feeling overwhelmed. Feeling like a liar.

What was I supposed to say? My father was sexually abusing me? It was lies. He wasn’t.

There was an incestuous relationship there, but to me it was like stealing sweets with your mate and then running to tell the shop keeper your mate did it, while hiding a bar of chocolate in my pocket. That was how it felt with my dad. How could I tell anyone when I was part of it?

Everything they teach children is that they won’t like it. That it hurts … yeah, it did hurt when I was younger. But not like they say.

Sometimes I think to myself that that was the most dominant relationship I had. I would write the word best, but that’s not the right word and I can’t think what else to use, but then when I think about it, maybe it was. From the age of 4 to at least 19 it was happening. That’s probably the longest sexual relationship I’ve ever had in my life. It’s natural we measure future things with past things, so why wouldn’t I use that one?

I sit here now, wondering why I am writing this. I don’t really know. Aside from to tell someone else looking like I do that they aren’t alone. I don’t have any piece of wondrous advice about it.

It plagues me a lot. Makes my head spin when I try to think about it and think it logically. I still can’t say I was sexually abused because it still feels like lies. I know people will say I was innocent because I was a child, but nah. I wasn’t. I remember my head. I remember being the one to start things sometimes. It was like some craving inside myself that needed it, wanted it even. I don’t even know why.

Maybe I craved the arousal and the release.

It was always like a bad cycle when I was a kid. I’d try not to go to him. If I didn’t go, he’d leave me alone. But I’d give in. Climb in bed and then afterwards, I’d cut my arms in my room, cut my legs, carve words into my skin like freak and fuck. I’d cry myself to sleep most of the time. That seemed to get worse the older I was. I don’t even know why.

Sometimes now, those thoughts still keep me awake and I feel them in my chest like a wound-up ball that stops me breathing. It makes me want to cut. It makes me want to hurt him inside.

It was my fault.

I liked it.

I wanted it.