I was sexually assaulted by my father, paternal uncles and paternal grandfather as a child. My mother was aware of the abuse by my father and participated on one occasion. It started when I was a toddler, before the core of who I was had fully coalesced. I grew up in pieces, segmented and regimented into the Girl Who Goes to School and the One at Night and such. The level of dissociation I experienced was total and sustained. I spent my formative years attending a Lancaster Mennonite Conference church (now known as LMC: A Fellowship of Anabaptist Churches). All I knew consciously, based on the church’s teachings, was that I was bad and that there was something broken at my core. Nothing I did, including choosing to be baptized, took away the shame which had been transmuted to me through the sadistic acts to which I’d been subjected. My relationship with my body was that of hatred and derision. The self-abuse and starvation in which I engaged were insufficient in ridding me of the soiling. The way I treated myself, coupled with my social awkwardness and the unattractive quality of “smarts” I possessed, alienated me from my peers. I did […]
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