Geez, sounds like an AA meeting doesn’t it? But I am not sure how else to start this. Where do you begin telling a story of something it has taken your whole life just to accept, let alone understand? How do you give details of things that you aren’t sure about, that you can barely remember? How do you describe to someone how your childhood has affected you, when you can’t remember very large chunks of your childhood? How do you tell people what it means to be molested, when you have spent years teaching yourself how to not be “present” when things are painful? And finally, how do you make people understand what it’s like to still not be “present” at times and have to live with the fact that you don’t remember where you’ve been, or what you’ve been doing?
This is the dilemma I face. I long to be heard, to share my story, my pain. But how, where do I begin? The simple truth is, I can hear the questions that go along with my story, and I don’t have answers. No, I do not know when it started or why I never said anything to anyone about it, or how often it happened. I just don’t remember, and these facts aren’t that important to me. I know that I was molested, and beaten as a child, that matters! I know what this has done to the rest of my life, I understand what has happened to me since then, but the story has no beginning!
Come to think of it, I don’t have a beginning either.. Oh sure I know when I was born and all, but I don’t know what my first memory is, I don’t really remember what it was like being a kid, or how I felt at the time. It’s really amazing how I can look at pictures of myself from years ago, and feel as though I am looking at someone else. There’s no connection to the person in the picture, just an abstract feeling that I know them. But then that describes me now as well, funny how I’ve lost time...makes me feel alot younger than 29. Afterall, I have no memory of my 27th birthday, or the month before it.
That was really the worst, losing a month, finding myself living on the streets in Los Angeles, with no concept of how or why I was there. Still don’t really know what I did for a month, hope nothing illegal. It is so hard to communicate to people how troubling it is to lose time. You lay awake at night and wonder if you maybe murdered someone, or contracted AIDS or something. You get nervous everytime you are on the street and someone waves or says your name, scared that it’s someone you befriended or whatever during that time. Wanting to know what you did, and afraid to know at the same time. Worst of all, not being able to tell my wife at the time whether I had cheated on her or not! God, the guilt I felt over that probably ruined what was left of my marriage. I couldn’t face her or anyone for that matter.
I couldn’t stand having people ask me if I REALLY couldn’t remember, as if I just took a little vacation and then made up the whole fugue state diagnosis so I wouldn’t have to explain what happened. I guess if people wanted to believe that, I can’t stop them. That’s their perogative.
This is why I can’t tell my story the way I want, I’ve simply lost an awful lot of it to my own mind. Perhaps, one day, I’ll recover it and be able to compare it to others stories of abuse, perhaps not. Until then , my name is Mike and I was abused as a child, and I try to survive everyday.
By Mike McBride 11/30/97