I look at personality as something that's malleable. I look at my childhood hospitalization and operation and wonder how it changed me. I've been told about it, but cannot remember it. My mother claims I was a shy child before that. I was three or four when I had the operation to reconstruct the back of the roof of my mouth. I guess it's not really "reconstruction" to put in a piece that was never there. I wonder if my inablity to tell adults who were, admitedly helping me, but at the same time, scary and no doubt full of painful procedures, to leave me alone changed the way I handled being made uncomfortable.
From the time I was six to the age of ten or eleven my sister and I would kiss a cousin of ours. He was between our ages. We took turns kissing him. We didn't know what sex was. We all got undressed because I must have been interested in what he looked like naked (or maybe he was interested in what we looked like naked). We played games that usually revolved around him kissing both of us. At some point, I realized the whole thing was wrong. I found myself going over and over in my head how it had to stop. Wondering how I could stop it. I'd sit in my classroom rehearsing how I would say no. I walked down my driveway trying to come up with how I could get the whole thing to end. Stared into my morning breakfast cereal coming up with the correct words, the right scenario to make the situation right itself.
It got to the point where I just avoided being alone in a room with him. Or with her. They kept on for a year or two after I stopped. He kissed me one more time when I was twelve in the back of a van our families had rented. I couldn't say no then either. It was like the word got stuck in my throat.
I gave up control when I was a kid. I gave it up to the doctors and I gave up control to my cousin and the adults who I just wished so hard would notice what was happening and would put a stop to it. After that I didn't give up control again.
I think a large part of the reason why I am so aggressive when it comes to sex, I am the dominant one even when I'm being submissive, is so that I won't lose control. So that I won't forget how to say, "no." So I am never in danger like that again.
I still remember the feelings of guilt and anxiety and how sick to my stomach I got every time I knew my cousin would be coming to visit. Most of all though, I remember how hopeless I felt. How powerless. If you could see my cousin, you'd know it had nothing to do with him. He was a year younger. Smaller. Harmless. But I had handed myself to him. Given up control. And had no idea how to get it back. I don't think I ever figured it out. I just learned how to keep myself from being vulnerable instead.
6:51 p.m. - 2007-01-30
Recent entries:
A Small Mountain of Perishables - 2010-10-04
Update - 2010-08-04
I moved closer to town. - 2007-07-26
Higher Education Got me Laid - 2007-06-29
If it's this hard to pick a dress, I'd hate to think about buying a house. - 2007-06-28
My profile
Archives
Notes
Diaryland
Random
RSS
others:
mcclain
chickpea981
dutchwink
kate-san
smartypants
gripewater
junius
ghostofgor