Dissecting Demons

Three out of four women could tell a tale with a similar starting point.  Unfortunately, not all of them can claim a similar ending.  I am a survivor of childhood sexual assault.  After the crime was committed, I was immediately haunted by the psychological demons that took residence within my soul.  Witness as I slice through layers of tangled ghost chains that spread beneath the skin of my story.   Throughout my 10,950 day odyssey, I labored to reclaim my freedom from the man who pillaged it.  Dissecting the details required both a painfully steady hand to reopen the jagged scars and a willful determination to rattle the demon’s shackling chains.  My epic journey evolved with a slow metamorphosis of healing as my heart’s heroine finally freed herself from the demons within.

The perpetrating wolf wore raggedy sheep’s clothing and spit amber tobacco juice into a sloshy Mason jar.  He had the patience of a saint but the warped greed of a vile ghoul.  Unknown to my family, I had become the coveted target of his attention as he slowly groomed my parents and gained their complete trust.  My parents, new to town, must have been flattered as he showered offerings and coaxed them to allow him to baby sit.  Overwhelmed by the whirling firefly that I was, they were probably grateful for the offer and thus I was lead through the clinking gate of his chain link fence.  I would come to hate the sound of that horseshoed gate latch.  Each time it opened I knew I was to be again reminded of the chains to which I was tethered.  The clink meant another link would be callously squeezed around my neck.

After my parents left, he scooped me up and I sat on his lap. His wife was taking a bath and left the door open a crack, lest we need anything.  Benny Hill played on the television.  Big bosomed women flirted and cooed on the screen.  While the bath water sloshed and the women heaved the breasts he fondled, possibly manually penetrated me and tried to initiate oral sex on my tiny thirty pound five year old body.  Time went slowly after his crimes, yet before his wife re-entered the room.  He quickly offered me my favorite treat in exchange for my silence.  Eve tempted Adam with an apple, but since he knew that my baby sweet tooth reigned, a full box of Twinkies appeared from the creaking cupboard.  The box shook in his hand as he urgently pushed me to take one.  I refused and wished that my parents would come save me.  I could never again eat the golden prick like sponge with the creamy white center.  That never stopped him from presenting me with a new box of Twinkies every year for each childhood birthday. 

He was an adored family friend and neighbor and remained both despite my bringing his actions to my parent’s attention.  To their credit, they did what they thought was best for me, even if it was horribly misguided.  My pediatrician sat me down on a tall table with crinkly white paper and examined me on for signs of sexual trauma.  Unfortunately, the signs were cunningly written in invisible ink and only I could see them.  The doctor offered me a cookie after the exam.  I secretly wondered why I was being offered sweets after someone had sole access to my girl parts.  Our priest was consulted and advised them to forgive and allow me to have a “normal” childhood.  I was to be “spared” from giving police statements, being singled out and possibly ostracized by the neighborhood.  My folks did as they were guided, plus they had no physical proof to defend my young mind’s claim.  They adored his wife and didn’t want to ruin the friendship.  She was also spared from the awareness of her husband’s appetite for young flesh.  Surely it was a solitary situation.  In a tone of anger and confusion, Mom and Dad confronted him privately. He was told that his every move was being watched and that he would never be allowed to be alone with me again.  With the uncomfortable conversation behind them, the broom fronds of embarrassment, betrayal and shame were neatly secured by the three knowing adults and the incident was swiftly swept under the rug of my youth.  My days went on as usual, which included visiting with my dastardly neighbor on a frequent basis.  Despite the thick rag rug covering the trio had fashioned, he continued to burrow through the barriers.  The parasitic demon multiplied, feeding off the host of my shackled soul and tortured mind. 

While boldly in the audience of my parents, he would jab his bony finger back and forth between the floor and my pigtailed self.  My stomach dropped as I realized that as he pointed straight down with stabbing gestures, he was wordlessly announcing that I was going to Hell.  Sometimes, he would whisper, “You…you’re going down there” as he pointed.  Shuddering, I thought of the flaming inferno called Hell that I had heard about in church.  I knew enough that I did not want to end up there.  Surely he’d be there too and would hold me hostage, proving that his clutch had to be more powerful than death itself. The weight of telling my parents what he had done to me was crushing since it had also somehow unknowingly sealed my immortal fate. 

My parents, not wanting to makes waves, would chide him only once he had the pleasure of pointing out Hell’s undeniable roll call of my name.  My tiny streams of tears marked his successful mind screw.  Wiping my tears on the back of my freckled hand, I looked down at the lines of dripping tears.  It was another sign of his victory.  In scheming attempts to win me over again, the tears were countered with strategic temptations. Oreo cookies magically appeared in little bundled baggies tied to the pine tree outside his front window.  The wonky tree marked the spot where I waited for the Kindergarten bus to arrive.  He baited my desire for sweets, but seeing him staring at me through the checkered curtains always repulsed me.  For days, I watched as the cookies hung like sacks of crumbling ghosts and weathered.  I knew that the Oreo cream would rot on my tongue.  Though I would not take the bait, I worried about all of the things that he was capable of destroying. 

The reminders were ever present and fresh as he had invaded every cell’s memory and childhood moment.  Nothing was sacred or off limits.  I quickly realized that he had a strange power over both magic and calendars.  No momentous occasion was beyond his calculated ruin.  Dread filled my heart as December’s heavy snowflakes fell.  I was sickened as he revealed that he would capture my beloved Santa Claus.  He snickered as he cruelly unfurled his Christmas Eve plan.  Santa would be captured and chained up with the thick tow chains which sat piled outside his garage.  The rusty chains were longer than a boa constrictor and so heavy that I knew not even Saint Nicholas could escape them without a calculated rescue plan on my part.  I was horrified to realize that if Santa was captured, the fate of Christmas laid squarely on my shoulders.  I knew that even though Santa’s magic allowed him to fly around the world, he was no match for this evil plot.  My fifth year marked the first time I would ask for help to break through his incessant chains.  On Christmas Eve, I anxiously waited and secretly telephoned his wife.  I begged her to let Santa go when he was inevitably captured and fettered.  She piteously agreed to my plea and my small lungs deflated in a sigh of relief.  The following morning, I ran desperately to see if there were presents under the tree.  Piles of colorful presents spilled from under the spruce tree’s boughs.  I had somehow managed to outwit him at last.  I silently thanked Jesus and offered him my favorite Barbie doll if the world would just suspend itself in that moment forever. 

Sadly, that didn’t happen.  My middle school years were spent praying for boobs and a period.  I avoided the leering neighbor as much as possible.  My mom had recently explained that I would become a woman when the crimson blood flowed.  I cringed!  I wondered if I could shake the demons during this impending right of passage.  I hoped that once I morphed from a girl to a young lady, I might no longer be coveted by my neighbor.  Surely a changed body would signal relief from his grip.  Sadly, I became aware that my training bra was no shield from the x-ray vision of his stares.  I pretended they didn’t bother me and hoped that although he seemed to undress me with his eyes, he couldn’t see through my thin pretense. 

At the end of my junior year in high school, I began to apply a sexual litmus test to some ill chosen boys.  I wanted to see if my “B” cups could arouse a person who would fantasize about me throughout study hall, as opposed to obsessing while limping to the mailbox for social security checks.  I was pleased to find that given the awkward chance, my body could indeed incite arousal.  I dreamed I would meet my high school sweetheart and we’d leave town in the dead of night, leaving the past trailing in the rearview mirror of Romeo’s Durango.  Instead, my only hindsight was the revelation of the pathetic nature of losing my virginity in the cramped back seat of a Geo Metro.  The farthest that I ever went with a “townie” boy was parking behind the seeping garbage dump at the edge of town.  I was too naïve to comprehend that eager hormones trumped true love every time.  My spare time was spent sneaking beers, learning dance routines and shaking out hand cramps from practicing writing my “new last name” of my future husband of the month.  The neighbor had little contact and I shot down any looks he threw my way.  I was gaining power!  I still prayed that he would drop dead and rid me of his pervish presence. 

Fast forwarding a scattering of years, my mother called to announce his death while I was busy buying college textbooks.  She seemed to hope that the proclamation would provide a form of closure.  She had silently witnessed my youth’s discomfort, yet held steadfast to her pledge for my “normality”.  Strangely, her call did provide closure, however it came instead in the form of a slow squeeze around my neck.  Death failed to cease his ability to grip my soul and still torment me.  I was shackled to a phantom thief. 

He had stolen me at five and painstakingly added thirty years of invisible chain links around my neck for good measure.  I felt embarrassed to be “damaged goods” and hid my secret during any relationship.  I remained guarded and could not fully commit to trusting any man.  I was hyper alert and assumed that I could be suddenly pulled into a dark alley and raped at almost any moment.  I jumped at loud noises and was blown over with a goose feather when I learned of the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I knew it applied to me but couldn’t maturely figure out how to fix my broken mess of a mind.  I wavered between carelessly throwing myself into unwise situations with men and frightfully looking over my shoulder at every turn.  I developed a dual awareness that I could both insight men with my body and instantaneously be repulsed when they responded in kind.  I silently wondered if I had been born with a neon sign announcing “Fresh Meat”, which only males could see.  I poured through self-help books and wondered if I should explore becoming a lesbian.  Surely being attracted to females would eliminate the teetering heaps of worries regarding men that I had collected throughout the years.  That thought was quickly nixed since I knew that it was the scruff of a beard rather than prickly leg stubble that enticed me.  I entered therapy. 

I spent one hour and years worth of co-pays exhuming the past.  Sifting over my scars with a combination of gentle brushes and sharp scalpels, I discovered many buried truths.  Digging up bones revealed that my promiscuity was a direct way of exercising control over my childhood mistrust of men.  I had previously silently rationalized that I would dominate them before they could own me.  My imminent fear of harm was unhealthy and unnecessary.  As an educated woman, I had more power and control than I guardedly allowed myself to believe.  I was astonished to absorb that I would not have to rely on a man for my life’s satisfaction.  Exhumed treasures included transcribed hieroglyphics imparting that trust could be earned and intimacy could be slowly gifted.  Demons could be unearthed and incinerated with the understanding that they no longer held any more power than I was willing to relinquish. Perhaps the most toiling anthropological dig trudged up the tender vessel of protection that had been shattered so many years before.  I struggled with the angry shards of feeling that my parents had not protected me.  I would spend a decade more in life’s rock tumbler before the jagged edges were worn down and I could forgive my parents for their misguided intentions.  Buffing their actions with a gentle cloth, I concluded that they had done the best they could with the information possessed at the time.  I could only vow to never repeat their mistakes. 

Years of tears, corrosion, painful self dissection and tenacity caused the grievous ghouls’ chains to rust and weaken.  I shadow boxed specters until I found strength and footing among the avalanche of childhood sexual assault.  I finally could use a tiny tin snip of a thought to collapse them all.  My soul twin heroine had been waiting stage left for three decades to enter the scene, deliver a fabulous soliloquy and announce “The End” of the epic journey.  She could bring down the velvet curtains with a dramatic bow and the flair of a swishing skirt.  All I had to do was announce her arrival on the marquee of my heart.   

I’ve painstakingly gathered my demon chains and thrust them into my mind’s fiery furnace.  My mental metal smith tastes the alloy on my tongue as the blend turns crimson.  I continually forge new phoenix creations.  They are goddesses with stretched giraffe necks, laden with small beautiful bands of coppery mineral which glow in the sun of my mind’s eye.