Be Aware

Is there a certain smell that takes you back to a place and time in your childhood? Does the scent of honeysuckle remind you of carefree summer days playing outdoors with your friends? Or when you walk into a Cracker Barrel restaurant and smell pancakes cooking on the griddle, do you instantly find yourself sitting sleepy-eyed in your mom’s kitchen waiting for her to place a stack of buttery hot cakes on the table in front of you?

For me, some of the smells that trigger childhood memories are sour milk, Jungle Gardenia perfume, and Southern Comfort liqueur. When I sniff a carton of milk before I put it in my morning cereal, if by chance it has gone bad, I am suddenly forcing down clabbered chunks while my mother stands over me with a threatening fist. If I pass an elderly lady who’s wearing the same perfume Mama used to wear, or sit beside someone in a bar who’s drinking her favorite liqueur, out of nowhere I can see her face above me—all flush and gnarled in anger—as she’s forcing my head under scalding bathwater.

As much as I would love to post something funny on my blog this week, I just can’t, because  it’s Child Abuse Prevention Month. So since it’s my last post for April, and I’m an abuse survivor and the author of a book based on my story, I figured it’s as good a time as any to take off my mask of humor and do my part, however small, to bring about awareness of this armpit of all crimes.

Mind you, I’m no authority on child abuse. I only know someone personally who was abused as a child. But I am an authority on her. Her abuse was severe. Not the worst—victims of the worst abuse probably are not around to tell about it—but it was bad. On a scale of one to ten maybe a seven or an eight. I believe that gives me an insight that others may not have, and puts me in the unique position to try to help a few people. So here goes.

Once, after reading my book, someone said to me, “That’s horrible, but it was a long time ago. Stuff like that doesn’t happen anymore.”

Oh yes it does. Every ten seconds a case of child abuse is reported, which adds up to approximately three million a year. And that’s only the cases that are reported. Wonder how many go unreported, like mine.

We are doing a good job of reporting suspected abuse—better than ever before—but we have to try harder, look closer. You can forget about the abused kids telling on their abusers. It’s not going to happen. I can remember my mother and father saying that I should never tell anyone what goes on in the privacy of our home; they said it would rip our family apart. As  horrible as my life was I was still afraid to tell, afraid of what might happen to my brothers and me if I did, of what might happen to our family. You see, what an adult says translates differently in a child’s mind. For instance when my mother told me I was disgusting, ugly or dirty, what I thought was, “I am a bad seed. I deserve to be punished. I don’t deserve anything good to happen to me.”

So, it’s up to us adults to report suspected abuse. I know it’s difficult. I know you don’t want to be all up in somebody’s family business. But I’m telling you it’s the only way.

Maybe I can help. Because I was once abused I know some behavioral signs to watch for when you suspect something is not right. Some signs beyond the obvious.

In a child:

*Flinching at sudden movements

*Always looking around as if waiting for something bad to happen

*Overly compliant, passive or withdrawn

*He or she does not want to go home

*He or she rarely looks at or touches a parent

What to watch for in an adult:

*A parent shows little concern for their child’s welfare

*Blames the child for problems in school or at home

*Makes comments that the child is bad, worthless or burdensome

*Rarely looks at or touches the child

I know this is Child Abuse Prevention Month, but I feel it’s important, since there’s not a month set aside for adults who were once abused, to point out a couple of things that might help those of you who are in a relationship with an abuse survivor to better understand his or her behavior.

Our biggest struggle is with TRUST, and  that’s understandable for obvious reasons. Most of us don’t feel entirely safe in any relationship with another human being. We are always waiting for the big bad to happen. We enter into even the most casual of friendships on our own terms. We may keep you at arm’s length. Many of us prefer to be alone because it’s safer, less complicated. Some of us have numbed our feelings as a way of protecting ourselves. All of us are terrified of being hurt or betrayed.

We are not freaks, but we are damaged goods. We struggle daily with confidence. Speaking for myself, I often have mini panic attacks, usually when I’m attempting to prove myself worthy, like interviewing for a job. And even when I’m doing something as insignificant as rolling a bowling ball down the lane on league night, I sometimes hear a voice in my head telling me how worthless I am, and that I’m going to mess this up. Then I usually do. Mess it up. Gutter ball.

Some of us don’t talk about what happened when we were children because that’s what we’ve been taught to do, what’s been drilled into our heads. And because we are ashamed of it. From my own experience, I’ve found that functioning in society is more difficult once people know. Now that my book is out and my co-workers have read it, I’m ashamed to face them day after day, because I know that they know about all the degrading things I was made to do as a child, all the humiliation I suffered. Now they look at me differently. I get a lot of sympathetic stares. I hear whispers. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I sense that some of them are a bit afraid of me, that they wonder about my mental well-being.

But my biggest challenge and deepest fear concerning my abusive past is that I have yet to remember the worst of it. And I have valid reason to be afraid. Before my father was killed in a car accident, he told my best friend there were horrible parts of my childhood that I have blocked out, and he prayed I would never remember. The idea that something unthinkable is lurking in my subconscious, something my mind is afraid to acknowledge, something even worse than the hell I went through, terrifies me  to the bone.

In honor of Child Abuse Prevention Month, for a limited time the price of the e-book edition of “Call Me Tuesday” will be 99 cents.