10:57 p.m. - Monday, Aug. 20, 2012
The Story of Humiliation
I was once accused of being a storyteller by a "healer." It wasn't a complement. I overcorrected for my mistake by keeping thoughts in my head, evaluating them before letting them out . . .and then I was called curt and flippant. When I was too stuck in my head to engage in the exercises he prescribed, I was called a 3-year-old. And when I went into fight-or-flight, and decided I needed to get out, I was accused of being skittish and controlling. But the idea of being touched, being vulnerable, being intimately connected is so strong, that sometimes the verbal assault feels worth it. Besides, familiarity feels safe. And debasement is familiar. I dedicate this story to him.
She was only 5-years-old when she experienced humiliation for the first time. She spent her summers at a babysitter's house who ran a daycare from her home. They used to do fun things like pick blueberries to make jam and swim in the cedar water lake until their skin turned brown. There was a girl there exactly her age. They were best friends. She can't remember when the babysitter's son started to torment them. She doesn't remember everything that happened. She doesn't know how long it happened. But there were two memories so burned into her brain she can see them vividly - as if they happened just yesterday.
One day he led them into the woods, the two little girls. He had power over them. Could make them do things. She didn't have the self-awareness to really understand what was happening, but she had the capacity to feel fear. To feel guilt. As long as her friend was with her, experiencing the same thing, she must be OK.
One day, her friend stayed home. She was alone. She was playing in the yard when the boy and his friends came flying down the street on their bikes. Instinctively, she started to run. They chased her. She ran to the back of the house and squeezed between a shed and a sticker bush. She closed her eyes tight and imagined that she was invisible. But when she heard the bikes crash into the grass, she knew she had been found.
He held a sticker from the bush to her throat and told his friends to watch what he could do. He told her to take off her clothes, and she did. She remembers the laughter. She remembers the anger. She remembers the humiliation. She learned that something must be wrong with her body if they were laughing like that.
That night, the phone rang. Her friend had told her mother what had been happening and that's why she didn't show up that day. "Is it true?" Why did she feel wrong? Like it was her fault. Like she had been bad. "Yes." She didn't go back there again.
This was the moment she learned humiliation, body shame, guilt, withholding . . .But something else. Was there an element to the experience that she had enjoyed? What if she did? Is that possible? Or is this an adult reinterpretation of childhood events?
And I claim the right to tell the story until it goes away or stops being important enough to tell. Along with all the other stories.
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