Not Real

I used to be really close with my grandfather. As a preschooler, I would call him routinely. When I was in elementary school, he started to babysit me occasionally, especially when my mother worked part-time.

My mother still likes to talk about my great relationship with him. Out of 5 cousins (all girls), I was the only one who would lend him a hand or want to spend time with him.

At the time, I didn't see anything wrong with it. I was the one who gave him the word to describe the activity, when he was struggling to explain what was going on. To be helpful, I suggested it was just like a reverse bicycle move that we did in gym class. So we would call it excercising.

I wasn't supposed to tell anyone because they wouldn't understand. I didn't see a problem with this. Secret excercising that no one else in the world would understand? What's sketchy or weird about that?

I mean, it wasn't THAT bad. Considering there was almost no nudity and I never said no. It could have been worst.

This would happen pretty much anytime we were alone. Until one day my father walked in. He was angry but my grandfather explained it was nothing while guiding my father into the other room. My father apparently went to my grandmother and got angry with her about it too.

But my mother eventually sat me down at our kitchen table. She made it weird and told me I wasn't in trouble no matter what I said. I didn't understand what she was fussing about at the time. She eventually asked what was happening and why we were in his bedroom. I insisted we were just talking in his bedroom until she let me leave the table.

The next time I was with my grandfather, I asked him if we were going to get to excerise that day. He said we can't do that anymore. I asked why not. He said because other people know now. I said but I didn't tell. I didn't tell. He said I'm getting too old for that anyway and changed the subject. I was heartbroken. Heartbroken. Which is super messed up. And stupid.

It may not have been as bad as other people's situations but it still has affected me. I don't like it when anyone is in my personal space. Except my siblings. It took me a really long time to get over getting annoyed at the mention of the word "excerise", to me it was a gross sexual word. But my teenaged friends couldn't understand how I could get the word "sex" from the word "excerise".

Other people feel gross or dirty. But I just feel stupid. I was the stupid one. He picked me out of my 4 similarly aged female cousins. Why? Because I was the stupid one. I was a gullible people pleaser. I was stupidly eager to be obedient. I was the stupid one who didn't tell my mother or anyone else when I had the chance. I was too stupid and gullible and wrapped up in this secret of supposedly not sketchy excerise. I started to get depressed as a teenager and anytime someone would say I had nothing to get sad about, that my life was fine, I would stupidly agree or fumble for a reply. I mean, it didn't matter anyway, right?

In high school, I crashed into my depression like a ton of bricks. I started to self harm. I wanted to be able to see outside proof that the self harm was real. I was real. Because I struggled and still struggle with the idea that my story isn't real. That I'm not real. That I somehow misremembered all of the memories and all of the details. (But it's not just one memory.) That I made it up because I can't be trusted. My brain can't be trusted. Because I'm not real. The memories aren't real. Because life just continues on without any external acknowledgements of the dark tangles inside of me. And even if they are and they did really happen, then it still doesn't matter, because it's just a memory. The past not the present. The present is real. The past isn't real.