At around twelve years old, my cousin sodomized me.  I’m adding now, however, that I don’t believe that’s true.  He didn’t sodomize me because he didn’t cum.*  He was only in there for about a minute.  Since we didn’t use lubrication, it hurt too much.  I was protesting increasingly loud as he went in and out, so he finally stopped.  I put my pants back on, and he told me I should shower because I smelled.  What I can now see was a ploy to demean me further was, back then, a huge blow to my already cracked self-esteem.  I couldn’t sit comfortably for days, but all I could think about was my shameful failure to make him cum.  Maybe that’s why I continue sex long after I’ve become overwhelmingly raw.  I have to make him cum.

*You know what’s sick is, I know better than that.  Of course I know mere penetration of that region qualifies as sodomy, but I just—I just need to minimize it, sometimes.  I told myself for so many years that what he did to me was no big deal, that now, I have a hard time believing it has any significance at all.  Can you see how convoluted my thinking is?!  How am I ever going to undo this Gordian knot?!  I’m not good enough.

God.  This is all because I didn’t want to break my mother’s heart.  I didn’t want her to know I had done this disgusting thing with a cousin.  Parentification reared its ugly head once more.  This time, it cost me my self-esteem.

My mother is the reason parents should be licensed.  I recently realized she should have never been allowed to raise children.  The ignorance made her endearing and dangerous all at once.  Even now, her explanations of reality to this little girl have constructed for me a crumbling foundation.  I’m only now beginning to realize just how fucked up my mother is.

I have to say, I’m frightened by what I’m finding.  Her cuts were subtle yet effective.  Speaking from experience, it’s been far easier to deal with the sexual assault I’ve endured than it has been to even broach the potential damage my mother has caused.  What do you get when you combine mother’s guilt trips with “all men are rapists” and “you must be a good daughter and wife”?  How do I begin to process the horror of what I’m suggesting?  My mother taught me to be a victim.

Oh, god, I feel disgusting.  I don’t want to get out of bed.  I feel so wrong.  I’m all wrong.  Who made me this way?  Who did this to me?  I’m trying to track it all back, but it just doesn’t end.  I am a culmination of every moment past and present.  Where do I trace it back to, when it’s tied to everything?  Everything that’s wrong led to me being like this: broken and disgusting.  I just happened to experience these exact turn of events, and each turn contributed to the mindset and environment that led me into the path of four rapists—four fucked up little boys.  God, I could die.  How do I get everybody to do the right thing?  I can’t.  So I just have to keep living knowing that there’s an enormous amount of suffering outside of me that is affecting me in ways of which I’m not even fully conscious.

When I think of it like that, I still don’t feel better.  In fact, I feel worse.  It means, nothing will ever be better, and I will never feel better, until something is done to make the suffering in this world a little less.  I can’t do that by myself.  Although, I suppose, I could still help.

I have to pause to laugh at myself.  Is there such a thing as a superwoman complex?  If there is—and I’m sure there must be something like it—I’ve got it.  The very idea that I could help save the world!  Jeez, I have to figure out whether that’s a good thing!  Sam says it isn’t, but I beg to differ.  Am I not seeing this clearly?  It’s so easy to argue that I want to save people because I wish I had been saved.