Never go to the bathroom alone, Part 4

I've put off writing about this because it causes all sorts of unwelcome and overwhelming emotions. Therapist assigned me to write down all emotions as they came. I didn't do it. I think it's because I'm still startled when the emotions come. And they're exhausting. I don't know. I just didn't want a written reminder, I think, of what's happening to me right now-- at least, not one like that.

I think I have a better picture of what happened to me. I've written much of this already, but here it is, pieced together, with my extrapolation of what probably happened in the spaces I don't remember clearly.

I was followed to the bathroom by a mentally disabled man. I didn't know why he was behind me. I tried to explain to him that the bathroom I was going to was not the one he needed. He grabbed me and began whispering, "I just want to see. I want to touch you. I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to see..." As he repeatedly whispered the phrases, he began taking off my clothing. I was shocked, angry, and terrified. I yelled at him to stop and tried to get my clothes back from him. He held me in place. I fought back and screamed. I hit and kicked whatever I could. I scratched and twisted, trying to get away. I saw his hand in front of me and bit it hard. I remember the taste of his skin and blood in my mouth. I heard him yell and he hit me, then threw me against the cinder block wall. 

My next memory is of him bending over me repeating the same words over and over. They don't make sense. I can't move for a few moments. Then I see my clothes nearby. At some point I become dressed and he is no longer restraining me. I run to the door and open it. I hear him behind me saying, "Don't tell your dad. Don't tell your dad." My brain grabs that phrase. I turn to look at him with all the defiance and anger that fills my small body, loudly and clearly saying, "I WILL tell my dad. I'm telling him right now!" And then I run. He doesn't follow me.

I believe I lost consciousness when I hit the wall. I think that's why I couldn't move, why the memory at that point is muddled and confusing, why I stopped fighting for a moment. I've run from the words he said because, in the context of what I had allowed myself to remember for most of my life, they didn't make sense. And they were very upsetting. While sitting with Tolkien Boy, I was able to hear them and place them where they belonged.

After hitting the wall, my next memory is of him bending over me. He's saying, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to hurt you. Please be okay." The repetition continues while my clothing is replaced. I don't know for sure, but I believe he helped me dress.

Here is what I believe about this:
1. I believe I may have been the first in a string of children he molested to fight back. Or perhaps I fought the hardest. I think I was the first to really hurt him. I think he was surprised.
2. I believe that when he hit me in the head, it was neither planned nor malicious. I think he realized that I wasn't going to stop biting, scratching, and screaming, and he was desperate to make me stop resisting.
3. I believe the same is true when he threw me against the wall. At that point, I think he was done trying to "see" and "touch" and just wanted out. I don't believe he meant to throw me as hard as he did. I'm guessing I blacked out and lay very still, which, given his mental maturity of about 14 years old, let him know he was going to be in big trouble if he had hurt me badly.
4. I believe he was a little bit shocked at how the events unfolded, which was why he allowed me to leave. I also think his hand was hurting him and he didn't want to get bitten again.
5. His hand was bleeding still when I left the bathroom. I think that's probably the last thing I saw, which is why it kept popping up in my nightmares and flashbacks.

So now I'm in the yucky part.

I was assaulted. I was molested. I was eight. It was too much for me to think about, let alone talk about or process. My parents didn't know what to do. I didn't get the help I needed. So I blocked it and put it away so that I could live.

But that can't happen forever.

Yesterday I was at the ER with my father-in-law. On the waiting room television there was a show about an eight-year-old who was assaulted by a man who is still at large. She is currently in her late 30s. Her attack was much more savage than the one I experienced. The man had no problem beating her up and, given the severity of her injuries, it's likely he expected she would die. That is not the case with my experience.

In 2012 a woman was gang raped on a bus in Delhi. She died of her injuries. One of her attackers described what was done to her, then said, "A girl is far more responsible for a rape than a boy," then said she should not have fought back. He's wrong. And he's a murderer. I don't believe my attacker wanted to murder me. I don't think he wanted to punish me. I think, in his sick, twisted mind, he believed it was okay to experiment with me. I think he expected me to be frightened and compliant, not angry and relentlessly resistant.

I'm not excusing the actions of my attacker. I'm simply saying, the intent was different from the above examples.

That doesn't help me right now, though. I don't now how to make sense of all the emotions. The intensity exhausts me. I feel the rage and the fear and the determination to hurt the person who was hurting me. I feel the confusion and the loneliness and the overwhelming impulse to shut it all down and forget it. Because it's too much for an eight-year-old to understand.

I'm not eight anymore.