The Pearl

Dear Little Crystal,
I really had no idea when I was going to be able to publicly talk about this, but today just seems like the day.
You have these memories, flashbacks, thoughts. Since you are so little, you don't know what they mean. They are weird. They make you feel funny. You aren't really sure if you have made them up or if they are real.
The first is the memory in the bathroom.
As a child that memory is weird to you. It takes age and maturity for you to even begin to understand what happened. You will be a grown woman before you will be able to talk openly about this event.
The second memory at your age is even more confusing. I will tell you as you see it and then, I will explain it.
You are in your mom and dad's bed. You are 2 or younger. Your father and mother are laying on each side of you. They seem wobbly. Your dad does something to your mom. He shows some sign of affection. Your mom does not like it. She pushes him away or he pushes her. That part is fuzzy. She falls off the bed. Your dad then turns his attention to you. He touches you in your diaper area. Outside or inside the diaper is not clear, but mom gets up. She does not like it. She picks you up and places you in your crib in their room.
You're a baby. I am a grown woman. Those 2 small memories will play over in your mind so many times for the rest of your life that it permanently mars you. You don't understand them because you are a child with no knowledge of sex or sexual boundaries. That is why you always wonder what these thoughts really are.
One day you will grow up. You will be a teenager and you will travel back east for a family wedding. Everyone gets drunk and you have an opportunity to ask an aunt and a sister about your memory.
The wine and booze loosens their lips. "Wow! You remember that?" one says. "Yeah, it is exactly what you think. Your crib was in their room. I can't believe you remember that. Your father was sick. He was eventually arrested for molesting one of your sisters." More stories are told and life is never the same after that night. The pain in your gut is like a knife. You hide in the dark and cry in a corner.
You start to understand. At this age, while at the wedding, you are already aware that your parents were alcoholics. Now you know that on that night as a baby, you were on the bed. They were drunk. Your father made a pass at your mom. In her drunken state she fell off the bed. He then went to fondle you. Mom put you in your crib.
It wasn't a thought, or a figment of your imagination. Your father fondled you. Isn't it weird that you remember that your crib was in their room even though you were just a baby? Not really. The fact is we remember traumatic experiences even when we are infantile.
As you grow up you will continue to learn more and more disturbing facts about your father. But that night with your drunken family serves only to solidify your worst nightmares. I am so sorry. It should not have happened to you. I am also sorry because that is not how you should have been told.
Today I watched an author tell the world that pedophiliac acts aren't all bad and can actually be good for a child. He thinks we look at it all wrong.
Let me assure you that what happens to you as a BABY, is NOT good and affects you in ways people can never imagine.
Life goes on. You grow up and have your own children. You begin to wonder if there is some horrible, evil, monster gene that makes people molesters. Can you inherit the gene? Did you inherit the gene? Could you one day wake up and hurt a child? At about the time you start to ponder these absurd questions, you begin to read the book Making Love Last Forever. In the book the author says you must take every negative thing in your life and find the pearl, the positive that cane from the negative. He says that an oyster makes a pearl by getting a tiny grain of sand stuck inside it's shell. It's painful and takes a long time of hard labor but eventually that grain of sand becomes a pearl. This just makes you so mad! What is Smalley thinking? Not every bad thing becomes good! Is he naive? You yell out to God, "How can I find a pearl in this? Really? What good comes from a man molesting his own children? He was my father. He was supposed to protect me from the monsters not be the monster!"
That night you cry yourself to sleep. But then, suddenly you are awaken! "Your love for your children!" a voice says loud and clear. You know the voice. God has answered you. If you actually had a perfect childhood, you would love your children but not the way you do right now. You see, it is because this horrible earthly father did this, that you love, protect, educate, and care for your children with such an unwavering passion. That is your pearl.
I am sorry that your parents didn't do the same for you. Every child should have a protector. I want to be there for children who have no voice. I wish I could go back and be there for you. I am here for you now.
Why does pain caused by someone else make the victim feel such shame? I don't know but it does.?
I love you princess!
Love, Crystal


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone