The End of the Innocence

 

But I know a place where we can go
And wash away this sin
We'll sit and watch the clouds roll by
And the tall grass wave in the wind
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair spill all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence 

 

(from The End of the Innocence, Don Henley)

 

 

This is going to be very difficult to write. In fact, I wish I were home alone writing and not in this café. Although I do use a busy café to hide and be invisible, as others have used large cities like London and New York City. But this cannot wait to be written.

I just left EMDR, and it was...different. I thought of my daughter, which is disturbing enough. You see, as hard as my work with EMDR is, I try to keep my kids out of it. It's not that I don't talk about my kids in therapy, it's that I try not to bring whatever I'm working on home to them. This requires a lot of energy...I know, but whatever. My kids need their Mom 100%.

So when I started my EMDR session today, and my older daughter came into the picture...yeah, that was disturbing. The fact that I have been trying to ignore for a while now is that she will soon be turning the age that I was when my abuse started. I had thought about the obvious: How would I parent her at this age? Would I be overprotective? Would I mistrust her friends' dads? Would I just mistrust everyone around her? I figured I would cross that bridge when...

What I did not expect was to be sitting in EMDR and thinking about her when I remembered myself at that age. I did not know that I would visualize her child-turning-into-young-lady body and imagine that I must have looked similar to her at the same age. And then I am incensed, because when I ask myself what did he see in me? I see what he saw, and I am incredulous and appalled that he would prey on that. What did he see in my young budding breasts?  Why would he want to disturb that? These are questions that I ask with a child's mind, but that I can answer with a woman's mind...and this is the part that hurts the most. Having grown into a woman who knows the lust and desires of men, I am now aware of what it was that he desired.

Upon realizing this during EMDR, I felt naked and vulnerable. I wanted to double over and cover all my private parts. I wanted to hide...to curl up and somehow crawl inside myself.