Stealing the Safety Blanket
Oct 23rd, 2009 by heidi
**Entry is potentially triggering re: childhood molestation**
When I was fourteen, my parents were doing some church planting work in a fairly small city about 45 minutes away from where we lived in Southern California. Somehow, and I don’t know how, as part of this work they began to invite a homeless, unmedicated schizophrenic man into our home for showers and meals every few months. His name was C.
From the very beginning, C creeped me out. My parents told me that I just wasn’t used to mentally ill people (true) and that he was entirely harmless (not true) but I found him disturbing and not a little frightening. It wasn’t that he smelled, although I do tend to be hyper-sensitive to that, or just that he would ramble on, but something undefinable and wrong about him scared me. I tried to express my discomfort to my parents but they said that it was our job to help someone in need.
I think I was fifteen or so and was lying on my parents’ bed (my room was an alcove up in the attic I shared with my brother and sister, and it got noisy up there sometimes, so I suspect I was in my parents’ room for the quiet) and reading a book during one of C’s visits. He came into the bedroom. I must have tried to politely acknowledge him but went back to my book.
He lay down behind me on the bed and asked me if I wanted a backrub. I did not but was too scared to say so. He began to rub my shoulders and I felt more and more anxious, finally finding it too much when he started to rub the sides of my breasts. I stood up, quickly, made an excuse about hearing my mother calling me, and fled.
I did not tell my parents. I am not entirely sure why, although I think I felt as if I should somehow not have felt threatened by his actions. I told myself that I had been overreacting, that he hadn’t been inappropriate, that it was somehow my fault and that I shouldn’t blame him, because his mental illness made him do it.
I stayed away from him then, making sure that he was never alone with me, barely speaking to him if he called and wanted to leave a message for my parents, and doing my best to minimize our contact. A few months after the experience in my parents’ bedroom, I heard my father talking to my mother. He told her that C had been talking to him about getting married and that he had a girl in mind. It made me so disgusted, so terrified, that still without telling my parents what had happened, I simply refused to interact with him at all.
Eventually my parents got fed up with him and his constant demands for help and money that he stopped being allowed to visit us. I didn’t tell them what had happened until a few years ago and even then I don’t think that my mom, to whom I told the story, understood how awful an experience it had been for me. I told my husband about it but have rarely told anyone else because I haven’t known quite how to describe it. We were both fully clothed. He never touched my genital area and I fled before he could really touch my breasts. Was it technically molestation? No…describing it to anyone who has a history of molestation or abuse seems like it is somehow disrespectful to the fact that their experiences were worse. After all, I was not physically damaged. How can I possibly count my experience among theirs? I have felt guilty for allowing the memory to leave its lingering stain on me, believing that I should not feel any sense of violation when comparing what happened to me to the much, much worse things that have happened, and do happen, to others.
My therapist was appalled when I mentioned the story this weekend. Whatever their spiritual motivation, she said, it had been an extremely unwise decision on my parents’ part to invite an unmedicated schizophrenic into our home. She felt that I had known, instinctively, that he was a threat and that whatever his mental health issues, what he had done had been way over the line of acceptable behavior and was absolutely inappropriate sexual boundary-crossing. I have always felt guilty about this incident, as if I somehow provoked it and was being ungenerous and uncharitable in my dislike of C, but my therapist (I’ll call her J), very strongly emphasized that what he had done was wrong and that I did not need to feel shame, that I had not behaved inappropriately in any way. The onus was on C for having crossed those boundaries, and on my parents for allowing an unsafe person into what should have been a safe place for me.
Still, thinking about that encounter and remembering his visits fills me with sensations of shame, filth, and a lingering discomfort around those who demonstrate mental health issues reminiscent of C (i.e., unmedicated, severely mentally ill people), although I remind myself that, as an adult, I can cope differently with inappropriate behavior. The shape of my guilt curls inside me, a black, sticky cloud of smoke that sits deep in my abdomen and swirls around my belly, my thighs, and extends tendrils to cup my breasts. It seems like such a minor experience in comparison with that of so many, including some of my friends, but the self-loathing and fear linger deep within, dirtying my innermost being with lingering smudges of shame and disgust.
***
Note: I by no means intend to say that schizophrenics are more likely to cause harm than other people – my discomfort is the residual effect of that experience, rather than indicative of actual, statistical danger!
I’m so sorry this happened to you! I doubt there’s anyone out there who’s survived molestation or rape who would deny the legitimacy of your experience.
That said, there’s no real connection between schizophrenia and being a rapist or child molester. Nothing. Although it’s common that, in films, people with mental illness are made the villains so often that it’s hard to remember that’s not the case in real life (and you’d be just as reasonable to have anxiety about people his height, or hair coloring, or wearing the same type of shirt he wore).
People with schizophrenia are actually more likely to be survivors of rape than perpetrators, as well as being victimized in other ways.
Your parents definitely shouldn’t have brought a strange man in the house, period, and I wish–really wish–that women were taught, from a much younger age, to trust their instincts, as you did!
You did everything right in getting out, and nothing at all to draw this upon yourself. You survived, and the shame is–or should be–his.
You’re absolutely correct regarding the fact that my anxiety around unmedicated schizophrenics isn’t logical – I hope that I didn’t imply that they are more likely to rape/molest, as that wasn’t my intention (or my therapist’s, for that matter – her concern, as yours, was that the particular individual in question was obviously not a safe person for my parents to bring into their home around their children and they ignored my objections).
Thank you for your kind comment!
You know what I think. And you know my story, and that even when it’s something that seems “minor,” this sort of experience marks a person and causes ripples that keep traveling out through one’s life.
I’m glad you talked to your therapist. And I’m glad you’re speaking out here. Maybe I’ll be able to do that too, someday.
I’ve also had something happen that has left me feeling like I was molested but without the right to say I was. There’s guilt, because I could have an should have stopped it, and also because people go through worse. When I managed to tell my boyfriend about it he said I wasn’t molested and said instead it was creepy and gross and that I was weirded out. I hope you don’t mind me mentioning it…
What it was is that my grandfather used to bribe me and my friend with trips to the store and gifts so that we would let him kiss our feet. It was disgusting and slimy and he would hump the floor while doing it. He later made hints of wanting access to more private areas of my body like “Where could I kiss you if I bought you (item)?”, but by then I didn’t have to go to his house and started avoiding him.
I found out years later that my grandfather molested my mom’s friends when she was a kid (oral sex). She knew that and let him watch me when she was at work. She seemed to think that because we were related he wouldn’t do anything…
This was hard to read, because I had a similar experience. I was 14, my mother let a friend of the family live with us because he was going to college nearby. Like you, I hesitate to call what happened molestation, because it was relatively minor (backrubs, touching my breasts, kissing the back of my neck). But also like you, it made me feel unclean and it still makes me cringe to think about.
Heidi – I am so sorry that happened an echo what the others have said. I will add that it makes me very sad that you felt you could not tell your parents. I think kids should feel safe enough to tell a parent anything. I try to be a completely safe person for my daughter so that I can always protect her and that she knows I will protect her, help her and never blame her. Every kid deserves that.
Heidi, I am so sorry as well about what happened to you and how it’s hurt you for so long. I suspect the views of your parents added to its long term impact, feeling like you might not be believed or protected. I’m glad you can open up about it now.
The thing about schizophrenia I see here is that your parents were probably not all that educated about it, and were determined to assume anything odd about the guy was related to his mental illness or at least to assume that anything you found odd was simply your young ignorance of mentally ill people. It sure would be good if kids were taught about mental illness in school. We try so hard to teach them to trust their instincts, but when they meet someone with a mental illness it just sets off all sorts of “this person is off” triggers, and it can be hard to really assess whether there is danger.
I really cannot improve upon what Trabb’s Boy said here.
Still, I want to add another voice of support. The fact is what happened to you was abusive. Luckily you were able to get away and avoid further mistreatment at this man’s hands, but that does not in any way change the fact that what he intended to do to you was every bit as bad as what many other women have gone through. The fact that your parents couldn’t or wouldn’t hear you about the situation is ghastly.
Frankly, it reminds me of a time when I, too, felt the danger signals coming off a guy. He was matching my steps in the street as I was walking home. Then he started talking. He mused aloud that it would probably cost a couple hundred dollars to sleep with me, and proposed just such an arrangement. Even if he’d looked as though he might have that much money on him (which he really, really didn’t), I still would have felt hugely threatened. I managed to keep my head and firmly say that no, said arrangement was not on any table anywhere, let alone this one. To my everlasting relief and gratitude, he veered off around a corner muttering about what a stupid bitch I was for turning down a couple hundred bucks. As soon as he was out of sight, I ran for the nearest heavily populated place and had a good hyperventilate.
The next day I saw my then boyfriend and told him the tale. He just shrugged and moved on to another topic.
Yeah, that made me feel sooo much better.
When I told Mr. Twistie about that incident a few years later, he hugged me and said he was glad I kept my head. I’ve never quite had the heart to tell him that sometimes keeping your head isn’t enough to prevent an attack, but dammit, he CARES. Knowing someone cares makes it easier to deal. Knowing that my boyfriend at the time didn’t give a crap over a near miss really wasn’t comforting on any level.
What happened to me wasn’t anywhere near as bad as what has happened to a lot of other women, but it was still a horrible experience that could have turned out quite differently. It’s been the better part of thirty years since it happened, and I can still get weak in the knees thinking about what might have been had I responded differently…or if the response I chose had been the wrong one.
Did he abuse me? Not quite, perhaps, but he sure as hell meant to. He could have gone through with an attack (did I mention that when he engaged me we were walking past an empty field with waist-high vegetation all through it where a body might not be found for days despite it being a high-traffic area?) had he decided to do so.
No, a near miss is not the same as the full monty experience, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect us in negative ways. It doesn’t mean that we are not allowed to feel and express what happened to us, too. It just means it’s a slightly different experience. So while I would never put my story up as equally horrific as the women I know who have been raped, who have been beaten, and have been systematically emotionally abused, I will still tell my story. I will still say that what happened to me should not be acceptable, either.
It’s how you felt that matters. Did it feels like an assault, a violation? Then that’s what counts. We’re not in a court of law here…we’re just people trying to figure out who we are and how to be OK with that. And when something like that happens to us as a kid or when we’re just minding our own business walking down the street we’re not thinking about how it could’ve been worse… we just have what we felt then to work with. And that’s the common part in all this — that when trust, a sense of basic safety and our fundamental security in our own skin are messed with, no matter to what degree, it matters.
I agree with your therapist 100%, btw. Your gut knew what was what, and sometimes that’s a terribly hard thing to deal with… When inside you know one thing but the world tells you differently, over and over, even though you know it for sure. I think that’s partly where the guilt comes in.
Shinobu, I hope your boyfriend is a former boyfriend, because his response is not at all comforting.
Your experiences would count as molestation – he was clearly deriving sexual pleasure from the contact and grooming you for further contact.
I find it disturbing that your boyfriend thinks this was okay.
And Heidi, I’m sorry for your experiences as well. I’ve had similar experiences, and I know I’ve actively suppressed them so parts of my past are cloudy in my mind. So when there are discussions about molestation/child sexual abuse, I find myself unable to speak because I don’t know what to say besides, “I don’t know what happened but I know that something did.”
I had the same sort of experience with my grandfather, and he wasn’t a schizophrenic. I know exactly that feeling you’re talking about. And even though I didn’t know anything about sex or molestation or rape, there was something absolutely instinctive that said, “Well, this is wrong. Something is very weird here.” I was able to walk away without anything happening, and my brother was upstairs. I assume that’s why he didn’t come up after me. I avoided him like the plague after that, and then after awhile it completely slipped from memory until sometime last year.
I think it is more noticing a predatory instinct in people, rather than noticing mental illness. I have finally pinpointed what it is about strangers that I sometimes find unnerving. If they do things which mark them as a loose cannon, then it becomes highly likely that they may want to harm me, because that very off behavior has become indelibly associated in my mind with someone who wants something they shouldn’t from me. Sometimes that instinct turns out to be wrong, and the person might only have some form of illness that I wasn’t aware of. I try never to assume, but my guard is up nonetheless until I know what sort of person I am dealing with.
Hi Shinobu, I just wanted to apologise for the above, for weighing in on your relationship. I just meant to show how very supportive I was of you, not tell you how you should live or who you should date.
(Sorry, I obsess.)