**Mild trigger warning**
“How do you use your CSA (childhood sexual abuse) in your writing, or do you at all?”
I’ve been thinking more and more about how important it is that I, and others like me, feel empowered and enabled to speak out about our experiences. What’s that AA saying; you’re only as sick as your secrets? I believe that to be true in so many ways. I write about my survival because that is what it is: a survival story. I don’t want anyone of any gender or sexual orientation, especially young children, to feel that there is no life after abuse. That it has to determine who you are and who you can become with it as a part of your personality.
Surviving Sexual Abuse
I was sexually abused from very early childhood until I was twelve years old by a family member that was only five years older than me. I was verbally and mentally abused by the adults in my home until I reached adulthood and left the family home. I won’t go into extreme detail, that’s for another time and place, but it was a messy life, and it has left its own scars that I bear to this day. I have crippling anxiety, claustrophobia, manic-depression bouts, and severe PTSD that is wildly unpredictable. I take medication to regulate my activity and live as “normal” a life as possible.
It is my normal though; it’s what I’m used to and I have learned to thrive in it with some tools and outlets. I have struggled with relationships, simple ones like friendship all the way to a broken engagement before I had even turned twenty-four. I had so much need locked up inside of me, so much feeling and anger with no place healthy to send it. Then I remembered before I had tried to use relationships as a glue, I am a writer.
Changing My Sexual Abuse Narrative
My creative outlet has always been writing. When I was hurt physically or mentally, I retreated to my notebooks and journals. There is something about putting down my thoughts on the page. Seeing them there, almost detached from me in a way, makes it so that I can process them and express myself better. I can read what I’ve written and really analyze why I feel that way. Why I wrote that phrase. Why that word was important to me at the time.
Ultimately, writing became a way for me to say what I was too scared to say out loud. If I turned it into a story about someone else, it became easier for me to deal with. And then one day, I was writing and realized: I could change my story. I didn’t need a relationship to validate me as normal or unbroken; I was normal and I could alter my own perceptions of myself.
I had been writing about pain and devastation and torture and such feelings of helplessness because that was my life. That was my reality (Ha- write what you know they say!). Then I realized I could make my stories powerful, I could create heroes and heroines who save themselves. I could give them powers, make them strong and confident in ways I could only hope to be at the time. I made them learn to love their scars, both inside and out. I made them flawed and human, but stronger for their humanity.
I made characters that could be loved and in doing so I realized I could love myself.
In telling my characters stories of triumph and love, I opened myself up to writing one of my own happily ever after’s. To see that I really deserve a life where I call the shots and make my own choices.
How I Write About Sexual Abuse
While my heroes and heroines are flawed and human, my villains became much more than your typical “Disney villain.” The qualities that made my abusers powerful, I made into weaknesses. The things about my reality that shattered me, I made shatter my fictional foes. I made villains that show the reader there are bad people out there, but they do not always win. They don’t always have hidden good qualities that can redeem them at the end of the story; they are who they are and I show them as such. Raw and mean and unbalanced. That’s my villain. Selfish, conniving, and sadistic. That’s my villain.
It’s your next-door neighbor, the guy at the grocery store, that one bus driver who has always given you the creeps. I chose those people because that is REALITY. Abusers are just like everyone else, and that is what really makes them scary. Their ability to hide in plain sight until it suits them.
Sexual Abuse Survivors Are Never Truly Alone
My story isn’t over. I don’t think I have even reached my halfway point yet, but I do know that I am my own heroine in it. I believe that I will continue to write; for myself, for others (hopefully), for fun, and for therapy. My writing has made me stronger, it’s made me realize who I can be, or more accurately the person I want to be in life. I see my life as a story with heroes and villains making their appearances and exits over time.
With time, I watch each chapter pass and I get further and further away from the victim and louder and prouder as a survivor. Writing is for me first, but it’s a bonus if somehow my characters or stories touch another person, hopefully leading them to find their own voices through the trauma or feel less alone in the void.
We are never truly alone and that is the message of every short story, every partially written novel, every blog, and every article I write. I am here for you. There is someone there for me. And some day, the people I’m there for will become that someone to another wayward person.
So, seek out your creative outlet, help yourself find your coping mechanism, whatever you choose won’t be wrong. And if you need a shoulder or an ear, I am always here for any and everyone who needs it.
Find more information on Crimes Against children and statistic information from this article go to: http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/statistics/index.html
If you or someone you know is being abused or neglected, seek someone to talk to. Never suffer in silence. Call one of these numbers or go to a website listed. I promise it gets better and there is someone on the other end who understands and will be there for you.
Nation Children’s Alliance – www.nationalchildrensalliance.org
National Domestic Violence Hotline – 800-779-SAFE(7233)
CyberTipline (to report online victimization of children) www.cybertipline.com
Child Help USA (for victims, offenders and parents) – 800-4-A-CHILD (800-422-4453)
With Light and Hope,
Mariah Kaye
Mariah Kaye is a working writer, hoping to have her first novel published by 2018. She currently lives with her two black cats, planning her next adventure, curled up with a good book, or assisting at a birth. Mariah also does volunteer work with victims of abuse and is a women’s rights and LGBTQQIAAP activist as well as a conservationist.
Follow on Twitter for updates on her writing and other activities. @mariah_k_mullin
Keep an eye out for Mariah’s new blog following her adventures in writing and being a birth worker. Coming Sept. 2017.
For Rachel’s poetry and memoirs, go to Amazon for
Broken Pieces and Broken Places.
