My life is defined by a little 4th grader with long dark hair. She'll always be that age for the rest of my life, because I will never seek her out and I've somehow blocked out her last name from my memory.
I was younger than her then, a 2nd or 3rd grader, and her mother was my babysitter. Her parents were fundamentalist Christians, but she had a strong rebellious streak. I remember once going to a taping of a Christian children's show with them - at one point the host got the whole crowd chanting, "A monkey is not my uncle" over and over.
We were often left to play alone for hours at a time. I'd go into her room and we'd close the door. She would take the clothes off of her Barbies and Kens and push me to role play sexual relationships with them. Neither of us really understood sexuality back then that well, but I remember knowing that what we were doing was kind of dangerous and that talking to other kids or adults about it was out of the question. I was pre-pubescent, so the physiological reactions were limited to butterflies in the stomach. She wasn't pre-pubescent. I remember being interested in her breasts without knowing anything about sex at all. I had something like a crush on her, but I also hated her in a way.
She would make fun of me and play pranks on me a lot. My mother is the most literal woman on Earth, and I simply wasn't used to people joking around with me to see how gullible I was. I was an easy target. Sometimes she'd have her friends over - mostly girls - and we'd have roll playing games. Somehow I was always pressured into the most embarrassing situations. If I was smart, at the time, I could have realized that all of this attention could be a good thing - but I was shy and very socially awkward. I often went home angry and depressed.
One day, it finally happened. We were hanging out alone across the street at the playground. It was all fenced in, and nobody was around to see anything. On the other side of the fence, cows walked around eating grass. She came on very strong and told me that she wanted to see my penis (I can't remember what she called it, if she ever called it anything). I didn't want to because I was pretty sure that it was wrong. She pressured me and I said, "OK" to her request... I hedged by saying that I had to pee. I got down on my knees and urinated against the fence. She complained that she couldn't see anything. Moments later, I was hanging on the monkey bars, swinging back and forth and she kept pushing me - with her words and physically. "If you show me yours I'll show you mine." She said that she'd keep me up there and I couldn't come down if I didn't show her. Finally, and fearfully, I gave way... I tore open my pants with tears streaming down my face, "Fine, you win. There! Are you happy now," I said in defeat. I had a mix of sexual feelings at the time, but mostly the crushing feeling of powerlessness.
Soon after, she pulled down her pants and showed me her vagina. It felt kind of like an afterthought, though I had another swell of confused sexual feelings that I didn't understand. We came back to the house afterwards and I felt too uncomfortable to say anything. When my mom finally picked me up, I crumpled as I entered the car and cried probably the hardest that I ever had in my life. I couldn't explain what happened, so nothing happened. I started sleeping on the floor - I didn't feel comfortable in my bed anymore. I kept on this tradition for the next two years, and on occasion later on in life.
So, how has this shaped me?
1. I was afraid of the women that I liked in middle school and high school. I couldn't ask them out - sometimes I couldn't even talk to them. I felt somewhat out of control and had no idea what I would do with a girlfriend if I actually got one. Once, a girl that I liked to some degree and flirted with gave me a note asking me out on the last day of 7th grade. I turned her down - not because I didn't like her, but because I was afraid to say yes.
2. The desire for independence and the fear of loneliness are two contrasting feelings the have pushed and pulled me throughout my life. Independence has won out as the feeling that is most important to me. In many ways, I've embraced loneliness at different times in my life. I remember in my freshman year in high school, I would spend practically every lunch alone in my corner of the hallway - somewhere between being afraid of going out into the social scene and getting hurt, and despising the meaninglessness of the social scene and the superficiality of it all. I turned completely inward, and contemplated the absurdity of existence in general.
3. As time went on, I inevitably created social connections and connected more with others. I found that to some degree, my experience helped me relate well with women because the powerlessness that I felt is much too often a feeling that girls feel in their lives. I became that guy that had a lot of female friends, but didn't have the courage to ask any of them out. At time I resented this, as I saw other women get in situations with other guys that created the same sort of feelings that I felt... but I didn't really go as far as to say, "girls only like assholes and don't like nice guys". I fundamentally felt it was all my fault and that there was something wrong with me. I had very low self-esteem.
4. I am prone to closing off my emotions and being unable to fully express myself. After the event took place, I still had to go to the babysitter's and spend time with that girl everyday. I had to suppress my feelings to survive. As much as I've tried to fight against this tendency over the years, it is still ingrained and difficult to impossible to control at times. When I feel a loss of control, the pressure can be so intense that my body will physically lock up and I collapse in a sort of panic attack.
5. I loathe the connection between sexuality and power and wish for any way to avoid feeling powerless or that I should assert power in sexual circumstances.
6. The patterns I developed in my life centered around me being in compromised situations and expecting, hoping, or wishing for different outcomes. Often, I'll find ways to avoid my own feelings and focus completely on another person - this eventually leaves me empty, and resentful. I wish now for nothing more than balance, which I have never had in my life.
The list could go on and on... but it is a sort of starting point. When I look back at my memories, it feels as if this were more like the day I was born than anything that came before it. I am a very empathetic person, because it is probably easier to feel other people's pain than my own. I trudge along, carrying all of the compounded baggage of this moment in my life that has found ways to multiply in patterns I find myself wallowing in. I've come a long way since high school, but somehow all of this shit just stays with me.
Right now, I feel empty and nothing sounds better than being alone. I used to fantasize every day while in middle school and early high school about living alone on an island or a simple life as a sheep herder. I fantasized about having no connections to anything - a life where nothing could hurt me. I fantasized about finding ways to commit suicide in such a way that nobody could expect it or see it coming. I knew that suicide attempts are calls for help - and I imagined ways to make sure no one would know anything and it would all be over. I used to write my suicide note in my head - I would write about the ridiculousness of society, of loneliness, of absurdity. I would chastize the world, all the while thinking about this thing that had happened to me or patterns I was in that related to it. But I wouldn't say a word, not even in the suicide note I was writing in my head that would burn down the world and make everyone that ever felt ok or did anything for me feel consumed with guilt. Guilt was all I had for a while. Guilt was all there was.
