Storyteller

My dad was a seemingly stand up guy, a military officer with a sense of humor and great smile. But among my earliest memories, alone with him in the car at a red light or crosswalk, he’d catcall women and loudly say very sexist things. As I got a little older, our movie & TV obsessed family would watch R rated movies with bare breasted women, and he’d make the same comments. My siblings and I never said a word, we sat in silence avoiding all eye contact. It was so uncomfortable. Then the touching started: he’d pinch my bottom every time I left a room, and when I’d complain, he said that’s what the guys in Europe do. Or tell me to stop wearing tiny shorts (my pajamas), so I wore pants instead. But the pinching didn’t stop. He ended up slipping his hand down my pants twice before I was in middle school. But he never did it again, so not worth complaining about, right? It all was hurtful, but maybe what hurt the most was as a young teen, he forced me to look at a Plaboy magazine when one of my favorite actresses did a centerfold. None of our relatives called him out on any of this behavior, they just accepted it was just how men are. I didn’t start dating until my late teens, I was very shy and chaste, but he still threw around words like whore. So I stopped caring for a while, and slept with anyone; usually people I didn’t like to keep myself from getting attached. It took me years to start caring about myself and my safety again. As an adult, I never had a relationship with my dad, but oddly, that’s his choice. I feel orphaned, abandoned. I don’t know what’s worse: the shame of how he treated me as a kid, or being fatherless.

— Anonymous

I was sexually molested as a young child over the years. I had low self esteem and a deep sense of shame. As a teenager and adult I fell prey to other sex abusers. I’ve had to work hard to develop a sense of self esteem. Healing is a lifetime journey that I am so glad I’m on.

— Janet C

I was in my early 20s, some 40 yrs ago, when I took a job with the local Chamber of Commerce in my hometown in MA. It was a program to help convicts being released from prison to train them and help them find employment. We were in a small office separate from the Chamber. It was just me and the director of the program. He called me one day and asked if I could pick him up at his house as his car wast in the shop. I was so young and naive I said of course never thinking I was in any danger from a predator. He was probably in his late 40s and I was in my early 20s. I got to the house and he asked me to come in. Within minutes he was on top of me putting his hands up my skirt and pulling down my underwear. Next thing I knew he was Inside me. I yelled and cried and said no about a thousand times. When it was over I grabbed my purse and ran to my car. I was crying and shaking but I drove home to my apartment. This was the early 70s. We didn’t discuss things like this. I NEVER told anyone….. not my mom, my sister or close friends. I somehow felt if I didn’t talk about it didn’t really happen. I went on with my life getting divorced twice, worked for a very verbally abusive man for 20 yrs. In 2014 everything caught up with me. I retired from my job because I had a bleeding ulcer. For the next year I worked on myself. I had no idea how bad all these hidden memories would be to my health and especially my mental health. I began have chronic panic attacks and depression. I was put on medication. But the anxiety was going anywhere. I shut myself out from friends and my only sister. I became completely housebound afraid if I went anywhere alone something bad would happen. In the now #metoo movement, the memories of my rape came flooding back. I started talk therapy with a therapist I love. These days with everything going on in the world I can no longer pretend this didn’t happen. I was sad all the time,and still so anxious. My therapist convinced me to tell my now husband, my son and his wife and my sister. Telling them, as difficult as it was, was very cathartic. The most difficult conversation was with my son. He is a grown man with children of his own but he’s still my baby. He didn’t know what to say but held me and let me cry. This ordeal has haunted me for years. It’s time to let it go and get my life back. I’m so thankful to have my now husband. He supports every aspect of my life since revealing this secret.

Patricia St Jean

— Pat S

It seemed like any other work event – travel to another location, go through training until 7, and then go back to the hotel to unwind. However, during this trip it happened differently. I had been scheduled to train with a lady I worked with prior, a lady I trust even to this day. After our day of training, she and I decided to go to the restaurant across the parking lot from our hotel. She and I decided to have a few drinks – to celebrate a successful day of training. So we drank, and ate so that we didn’t get drunk too fast. It was after my third drink that things seemed strange. The drinks were getting stronger, and I decided to stop. For the sake of identity, I’ll call my friend “D”. D had sparked a conversation with someone at the bar/restaurant and he invited her back to his room – no funny business involved. She said sure, and we walked back to the hotel. I told her I’d go with her to play cards if that was what she wanted, she said yes and told me if at any point I wanted to leave – just let her know. So we ventured into this room, D shuffled the cards and dealt them. Before the game began – in walked the bartender from across the parking lot. I was tense, but eased up because things seemed okay. We never finished that game of cards, in fact we never even got started. The guy D had been talking to at the bar distracted her and got her in another room – away from me and left me alone with a monster. I was powerless and scared. In the 8 minutes I was alone with this monster, he ripped my shirt after pushing me onto the couch, tore his pants off and forced himself into my mouth. I tried pushing him away; but that just made his grip on my head tighten. I was crying and moving as much as I could to get him to stop. When he finally realized he wasn’t getting as much pleasure as he wanted, he stopped. Looked at my pants and tore them down. He laughed as if to mock me, and hovered over me as if he were calculating what to do next. He didn’t have a condom on him; it was in his car. So he left to retrieve it. I took that opportunity to pull up my pants, fix myself as much as possible and I ran out of the room as fast as I could. I took three showers when I got back to my hotel room – and I still felt disgusting. How could this happen to me? It was late, too late in my mind to call the cops. I’d do that in the morning after training. So I tried to sleep as best as I could. Sleep didn’t come easy. Every time I closed my eyes – there he was. Laughing at me. When the sun finally came up – I was exhausted. Mentally, physically and emotionally. I thought I had no tears left to cry. Little did I know, the flood gates would open again and I’d be a red-eyed mess. The PC manager pulled me into his office because he knew something wasn’t right. So he called the cops when I told him a brief story. That was when I was told “I’m sorry, you aren’t from here so there isn’t anything we can do for you”. That phrase haunted me for months. Until finally – I had had enough. I wasn’t going to be scared of things anymore, I wouldn’t let things get to me. I’d build a wall if I had to. Keep everyone closed off. I had Enough of feeling sorry for myself. It’s been a few years since this happened, and I’ll admit – I have moments where certain things trigger me. But I tell myself it’s enough. It wasn’t my fault, I can’t blame myself or D for what happened. I blame him. And I blame the police for not doing anything.

— Anonymous

I told. I told truths about my life that made me feel as if I was betraying some understood universal rule that “thou shall not make public the crimes and violations that have been thrust upon you”. Ever.
Did you ever see the movie Alien? Remember the gruesome scene when the alien burst out of someone’s chest, all ugly, scary and gross? That is what it felt like might happen if I told. Not just about my #metoo experiences, but all the traumatic experiences I had, from early days until the ripe old age of 65.
But guess what? The alien morphed into a beauty of a creature once it had time outside of the dark dungeons inside of me. Out in the open, the shame, guilt, and ugliness responded to my voice, my memories and the loving embrace of those with whom I shared. It was a process for sure. I felt crushed and devastated for several days. I broke the rules.
The secrets and their hold over my life all these years have now become a key to my freedom. I survived.
I am rewriting the script to my story.
I told. I will tell again.
Fuck them all.
I love me, not them.

— MaryLynn Hinde

As a young girl growing up in Allentown Pennsylvania, Hess’s Dept store was the place to go. It was ahead of its time with its high fashion models, over the top patio restaurant, fashion shows filmed in Paris and Rome, and the opulent Christmases. It was like small town 5th avenue in NYC created by the visionary Max Hess. The elevators even had an elevator man that guided one to every floor.

I remember playing tag with my friends throughout the stores 5 floors. we would run up and down the escalators trying to not be caught by whoever was “it”. On occasion, I would take the elevator to elude my pursuing playmates; even though it was taking a shortcut and we looked upon it as cheating. I jumped in and moved toward the back. As more people entered and the elevator became full, there was no room to move about. But on this day, there was enough room for a hand to reach between my legs and finger poke me for just a quick moment. I still remember the whole body/mind freeze I felt. I was catapulted into a place/feeling that was overwhelmingly scary. What had just happened to me? What is this terror that is pulsating through my body? I don’t understand this weird confusion that has just stolen the joy of my childhood game. As I poured out of the elevator, I felt a familiar bad feeling, but this time it felt more inside of me. Like it had found a place to land and begin to take up shop. I felt like someone had punched the wind out of me. It was a deeper level of shame. A new shame. A meaner shame. I was familiar with shame from my earliest memories. My dad dished it out with a big scoop, but that shame was verbal and physical. It was more on the outside and I could pretend it wasn’t hurting me. But this was deep inside me as if it was waiting there all along for someone to come along and recognize and give it its initiation. How could such a fleeting action envelop all of me out of the blue like that? What is wrong with me that I am not able to play tag right now? Why do I want to cry and run home and hide? Why do I know with certainty I can’t share this with anyone. I have to stuff it inside and keep it hidden from everyone and even myself if I can. Pretend to play again. Act as if…. pretend nothing has happened. run…smile….keep up the front….pretend. Hide this newer, bigger shame. Pretend it’s not there. Pretend nothing has happened. Pretend nothing has changed……..but everything is now different. Forever changed because I took the shortcut on the elevator. I never went back on it again. And I never got back that innocence of a simple game of tag with my friends.

— Anonymous