"The Burden of Secrecy."

The flashbacks returned three nights ago. It’s been nearly a year since I received a healing that stopped the worst flashback from replaying in my mind every night before sleep and yet there I was, exhausted, when the flashback returned on Sunday. The first night it happened, I told my husband I was scared. I turned to his sleepy self and said “I don’t feel safe in my body right now. I’m having a PTSD attack.” He attempted to comfort in his own exhausted state; “you are home, you are safe. Your son is safe. Your husband is safe. You are safe. You are home. You are safe.” I am home. I’m in my bedroom, far from the people who hurt me. I am safe. I am safe. I am safe… I drifted to sleep and had so many nightmares. I woke up screaming, desperately checking that my husband and son were indeed still home, still safe and so was I.

Monday night though, when the flashbacks returned as I drifted to sleep again. I prayed. For the last few months, I’ve been feeling the intuitive nudge to publicly share what I’ve remembered. I stopped myself for a long list of reasons but the two most important were that what happened to me was out of my control and what I do with that information is what’s within my control now. The second was to honor the baby version of myself by protecting her from anyone knowing what happened. Yet, Monday night when the memory replayed over and over again on a loop and I couldn’t get it out of my brain, I prayed and asked God if the reason was because I needed to let it out. I felt, “Yes.” I asked how. I felt, “Write.” I asked where and was shown my own website. I just want to feel free. I don’t want to be shackled to what happened to me. It happened when I was a baby and yet it’s felt like a life sentence since the first day that I remembered the trauma.

What I write may not be eloquent and poetic but everything will be true to my own recollection. So here goes… TW:

Monday night, as I was crippled with the flashbacks of what my father did to me, I had an epiphany. My entire life I have held onto the narrative that he abandoned us. That he was an addict who met his mistress in rehab and left us for her and their unborn baby. “I was abandoned” or “I was not worthy of a fathers love” were two ways I identified myself for far too long in my life. Yet, amidst the flashbacks and panic, I finally realized that I was not abandoned, I was protected. I was always worthy of love but he is a monster and I (nor any other child in his care) deserved the type of “affection” he gave.

One of the first memories I had resurface within the last couple of years was myself as a newborn receiving a diaper change. There’s an older child changing my diaper. She’s doing… unspeakable things to me under the guise that it’s a diaper change. The first time I remembered this, I felt sick and scared in my body. I cried in therapy knowing this person remained in my life for too long and yet I had no memory that she did this to me because when it happened, I was in the age that babies aren’t “supposed to” remember things. I could use context clues to figure out my own age. I was too small to roll over. I had to just “take it” and accept what was happening to me because I couldn’t do anything to protect myself. I couldn’t move my head around to see anything in the room. My vision was blurry. As a mother now, I know that means that this baby Megan was under one to two months old.

Time passed as I healed from this resurfaced memory. I had lots of therapy sessions and lots of time to process what I was remembering. The memory eventually expanded. It wasn’t just this older child in the room. She was being directed by a man standing just out of view. My father. It became clear that in this particular memory, I wasn’t the only child being sexually assaulted. He was hurting both of us.

From then on, multiple memories returned while I was in therapy, sometimes while doing EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy) and sometimes just from talking and processing trauma verbally. He didn’t always use other children. As a matter of fact, that was the only memory I can remember where he did. Eventually, he would just use me. This is where it becomes especially traumatic. These are the memories that keep me up at night.

When I first gave birth to my son, a powerful sense of rage and purpose overtook me. The mama bear within me wanted to keep him as safe as possible and, more often than not, this was highlighted around diaper changes. I did not trust anyone to change his diaper unless it was myself or my husband. If anyone lingered in the room for too long or glanced toward the diaper area while changing him, I instantly clocked it and noted that they were not a safe person around my child. Of course, that doesn’t make much sense now in hindsight. Eyes roam unintentionally, people don’t “read the room” and realize they can leave during diaper changes for privacy, etc. There are plenty of different innocent reasons why people may have been around at that time. That said, I did not see it that way and the mama bear within me was ready to attack anyone who seemingly threatened her cub’s safety.

Before the therapist I have now, I would meet with another therapist once a week after my son went to sleep. One night, the topic of diaper changes came up and he asked if I have any history of trauma around them because my reaction was so intense that he suspected it may be something to consider. I explained I had a “great childhood” and that all the memories I could remember were filled with so much laughter and joy and silliness that there’s no way I was ever assaulted. I told him I understood why he’d think that but the implication that this was based in my childhood was bogus and that other people were in the wrong and needed to give privacy during diaper changes.

This, among many other things, were like breadcrumbs that my brain was leaving me to find my way back to the truth. The way my body reacted in defense and fear was a sign that something occurred and while many people will say they avoid therapy because they don’t want to remember; I want to make it abundantly clear that your body remembers even if your brain is shielding you for your safety. I only began actively remembering when I got away from my abusers and felt truly safe.

I was under 6-months old when my father raped me. I know this because, as the memories flooded in, I was able to place myself back in those moments and see the different stages of growth where my baby-self had been during the assaults. I went from blurry vision and barely any mobility to being able to look up at the door while screaming in pain. I could remember the screaming and crying. I can remember being in that tiny body and wishing someone would save me. I can remember the sound of the television blasting in the next room as my sisters were kept away from me. I can remember the smell of cigarette smoke surrounding me as I was coughing and screaming. I can remember struggling to breathe. I can remember seeing my father at the stove doing something with a spoon. I can see his fresh and old track marks on his left arm. There are too many moments and details that I can remember now.

The last memory I have of my father raping me did result in my being saved. I was in a room with white walls and I’m looking at the ceiling screaming and crying watching him over me. He looked high or drunk or under the influence of something. Suddenly the door burst open and I see my Grampa Jack. The look of absolute horror on his face has been a trauma to heal from in itself. He looked as though he was going to murder my father, his son. In the memory, I hear screaming. I hear “how could you!” I see my father shaking his head no with his palms outward, seemingly saying “it’s not what it looks like” though I can’t hear anything past the screaming rage of Grampa Jack. His face was that of a man who felt disgusted with his own son and agony knowing what his son was doing to his granddaughter. The memory cuts out. I don’t know what happens next.

When this memory resurfaced, I was heartbroken. I was grateful Grampa Jack saved me but also suddenly overwhelmed with the questions I could never have answered. He died when I was 5. We moved into his mother’s home to live with him and Nanna after my father went to rehab. Who knew what happened? Did he tell anyone? Did my mother know? How could she not? Who else knew? Did he tell anyone? Is anyone that he told still alive? Is there anyone to answer my questions? Is this the reason he sent his son to rehab? I still have to come to terms with the fact I won’t ever get the answers I need.

One question I was stuck on was – how come nobody said what my father was doing to me? How come nobody knew? The silence protected him. The silence made it so that I spent my youth praying for my mother and father to get back together when really, in hindsight, that prayer was about my rapist. Was the silence protecting us too? So that our family wouldn’t be known as victims in that way? Especially growing up in a small town in Queens where everyone seemed to know each other’s business and especially growing up in the 1990s. By Grampa Jack keeping this private, he spared the narrative of “Megan was raped” or “her father is a rapist/pedophile” being the first thought when anyone spoke of me. Instead, I was the little girl with a deadbeat dad and the little girl to a single mother of four daughters. I guess I can sort of understand the lesser of two evils. He thought he did the right thing by sending his son to rehab. He must have convinced himself that the only reason my father was a pedophile was because he was on drugs or drunk and that getting him professional help would solve his crimes. Perhaps he was hopeful that I’d never remember any of it because I was so young. Grampa Jack filled my next few years of life with so much laughter and love that maybe he tried to replace the horrors with what I deserved all along; protection, peace, comfort and care.

In my twenties I googled my father’s name and was met with a terrifying headline about a man who was arrested for preying on children. It was him. There, he stood in court, old and wrinkled and haggard by time, addiction and his vile behavior. I broke down into tears, inconsolable, and struggled to explain to my then-boyfriend (now husband) that my own father was arrested for molesting a child. “It can’t be! I cannot have half the DNA of a monster like this! It cannot be!” I pleaded with God for answers. I texted and called all my immediate family and everyone was convinced that he was “bad but not that bad” and that “he’d never ever do that sort of thing to a child!” and “he probably just finally pissed off his newest girlfriend enough where she wanted to hurt him in a way that he couldn’t recover from.” So, I tried to believe that version of the story instead of dwell in the sickness that I felt all over my body at this news.

After moving but before cutting ties with my abusers, I learned they were talking to him again. “How could you talk to a man that abandoned us? That is accused of such horrendous things?!” I asked angrily. I was told that they don’t forgive him for abandonment but they felt bad for him because he was jailed over a false accusation; a lie.

A lie…

I was raised never to believe myself. I was taught at a young age not to trust my own intuition or gut feelings because if I said someone made me uncomfortable- I was wrong. If I said I suspected someone of wrong doing- I was wrong. If I said someone hurt me- I was wrong, misremembered or I was lying about them. Sometimes I was told I was overreacting. Other times I was told that I was the cause of their bad behavior. When I asked my therapist in 2023, “what’s it called when you are told one thing over and over and over again to the point where you start believing it and questioning your reality- but it’s actually the complete opposite of what was really happening? Like I was told so many times that I had such a “great childhood,” a safe childhood and was always protected but all of these memories are the opposite of that. Those were my real experiences but I feel guilt saying so because I was always told my childhood was safe and great. What’s that called?” My therapist gently said, “well… it’s a form of brainwashing. It’s a type of abuse. It makes it so you question yourself and don’t trust your own perception but trust your abuser’s description of the situation, even if it paints them in a better light. When you’re told something repeatedly to the point of believing it, it’s a form of manipulating you to not trust your own experiences and to continue to fall in line with theirs.”

So, I trusted that someone lied about him. I trusted that the victims were lying and he was actually a good person somehow. I think it comforted a part of me that felt dirty and sick. I thought that part of me was just someone who shares his DNA and felt scared of what that may mean. The truth is, I recognize now that the part of me that needed the comfort was the victim who wasn’t ready to remember things yet.

I’m so tired though. I am tired of struggling to sleep at night because these flashbacks keep me awake and I am tired of protecting him through my silence. He did this to me. He likely did do things to those other children and who knows how many others don’t remember what he did yet, or never will. How many of us have suffered at his abuse? How many children were hurt because of the silence? How many children were hurt because people weren’t believing them?

I genuinely believe that he made my baby self a victim because he knew I couldn’t tell anyone. So many adults rely on the notion that children only start remembering things after the age of 3 and when I began telling family members the memories I had before that age, I became a walking red flag to them. Suddenly family members were talking about me behind my back, skewing the narrative of who Megan is, relying on the idea that I am “too much” and attempting to change my reputation as honest to being a liar so that the attention wouldn’t be on why they didn’t protect me.

The beauty of having gone through therapy is that I know myself better now than I ever thought possible. I do not have to be the loudest person in the room, shouting “but this is who I am!! This is me!!!” to be believed or heard because I do not need anyone to believe me anymore. I know myself. I know my experiences. While I am still healing from abuse and brainwashing, I have come so far from who I used to be. I do not feel compelled to convince anyone of my truth. I just need to free myself of carrying it and protecting them through my silence.

Tonight, I will sleep without the memory replaying in my brain like a traumatic lullaby. Tonight, and all nights going forward, I am safe.

I am safe. I am safe. I am safe. …and I am free! These traumas are not mine to carry anymore. I release them and free myself of the burden. What a blessing that I will never take for granted. What a gift to be alive and to know that I am fully capable of healing the pain that was given to me. What a gift to have the ability to write my experience and not feel fearful of repercussions because I am strong enough, powerful enough and confident enough to know that I’m capable of handling whatever may come of this. I retroactively protect that baby Megan and all the versions of myself that came after her, because I will never let the abusers needs come before ours ever again.