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Isis

Soul mates? Fatherly love? A Beautiful Myth

Copyright Isis

How do you deal with it when the person who sexually abused you was your own dad; your next of kin.

He started when I was four years old. I tried telling my mum in the only simple words my infant mouth could utter: ‘Daddy puts his wee into my wee’. I remember her disbelief, then her anger and clearly telling my dad she wanted it to stop. So it stopped for a year. She must have forgot it ever happened because when I told her about it again much later she could not recall it. She said she felt like a failure as a mother. She failed to protect me. I have the power to break this family up. To reveal ‘daddy’s dirty little secret’ to the family or just turn around and ask mum to break up with him. But I couldn’t.

It’s been eight years since the last time he did it. I’m eighteen now. The person who abused me ironically had to pay for my therapy bills. I hate him hugging me. I usually pretend it never happened and just get on with life, waiting till next year when I’ll have money to move out and go to uni. I’m sure people think it’s absurd that I didn’t just tell someone and go on the ‘emergency housing’ list. But that would be telling. That would be admitting that I still hold this grudge against him and it would break everyone up. He said he’s sorry and he’d take it back if he could. He thought it was ‘innocent and pure’. He never actually hurt me, and how was I to know any better? It sickens me to think about it now.

I live in confusion, should I just accept that he’s my dad and love him for that? Bear in mind all he’s given me as a parent: money, place to live etc.

Or should I break his heart and decide to hate him?

So, you can imagine I was a pretty alienated kid at primary school. Very different from the rest, very quiet. I got picked on endlessly for being the geeky quiet one, and I hated people for it. However when I got to high school I met the most wonderful person. Her name was Kim. She’d been through the same kind of shit as me, we thought we were the only ones in the world in that time and place. Her abuse had been worse, and through the five years of knowing her I acted like mine had never really happened. Even though it was her that asked him why he did for me. (I have a letter in my journal from my dad, kind of an ‘explanation’.)

We became best friends, then by the later years much closer than that. We’d have sex, pretend it was a ‘mess-around’ and that would be that. Of course I fucked up. I couldn’t take it as something superficial I loved her more than anything in the world and I wanted her only for me. I don’t even know if I ever told her this, at least not until it was too late. She wanted some other guy in the year, not me. Yet when I met my boyfriend (current one), it all went wrong. She got jealous, told me she was ‘second best’ to me. But how could I go back to her when I knew I’d get hurt again. I fucked up, bad style. There was so many things I could have done different. She could still have been my best friend, I could still have had F (my boyfriend), but at the same time of loving F, I still loved her. That was my sin. Loving two people at once. I hurt her so much. There’s nothing I can do or say to ever make it better.

We finally left at the end of the GCSE year on neutral terms. However in a bag of stuff that my dad took back to her, I wrote on a reminder ‘take these back to Kim, it’s not like I’m going to see her again’. I didn’t want to at the time, but I didn’t mean not see her again forever. I still hurt, needed time to get my head together. Being with her wasn’t the same as before now, I missed being soul mates. Oh, how weak.

She sent me a letter a few weeks later, having read my little ‘note’ that got unintentionally left in the bag. It began ‘well fuck you too’. How she’d carved all this shit into herself because of me, how F would possibly have ‘wandering eyes’, one last final dig. I’m still with him though, and I love him more than ever, because he loves me just as much in return. I also have friends now, who I’m close to.

But there’s still not one day goes by that I don’t think about Kim. It’s not like a torture so much anymore, just memories, wondering how she is now. What she’s like. I have dreams where I try to tell her all the shit that happened in the past two years. The people I’ve met, things that happened, my bouts of bulimia etc.

I tried contacting her a few months ago and she made it very clear I was worthless to her. Fair enough. I know I’m a stranger now, but just because of that one note and one last heart breaking letter, we just let two years of our lives slip by anonymously to each other? Or maybe this was inevitable, in spite of the note.

I should accept that that’s it. When I leave sixth form this year I can carry on with my life. Go more places with my band, go to uni. I haven’t cut properly for three months now. I also found that tattoos and piercings are a good alternative but I have very little money. So far I’ve only been able to afford a scorpio on my right wrist recently.

It still hurts though. I feel like a failure for what I did, I feel like nothing I do work-wise is good enough, I feel like I shouldn’t eat, then F gets scared that I’ll get like I was last year: one bastard eating disorder and sticking out collar-bones was all I had to show for it.

There is still so much more I could write. If anyone has taken the time to read all this, thank you, and if you want to talk, e-mail me.

 

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