Defined by Pain

When both my sister and my cousin hung themselves, the words offered to me by my family were… ‘troubled souls’. As if that explained everything.

Those words defined these two individuals, wrote off their whole lives because they were perceived to have been born into the world as ‘troubled souls’.  I am also described in this way.

Frankly, it’s Bullshit.

No one is born a troubled soul; no one comes into the world shattered and full of pain. It is given to us on our journey and mostly, predominately, from our childhood.

When I was a young teen, a mother at my school told me (indirectly via my mother) that I reminded her of Jodie Foster, in the film ‘The Accused’ (Jodie Foster’s character is gang raped in the back room of a bar, witnessed and ignored by on lookers, and treated like the criminal rather than the victim.) Quite an offensive and powerful statement to make about a young girl. At the time I was indignant and outraged that someone could speak about me in such a way, still a child, still a virgin, still innocent.  It has taken me another 20+ years to fully understand her statement.

When my father molested me as a small child, he took away my innocence. He created a premature sexuality in my expression and personality and, more than that, it was birthed through me without my understanding. What that meant was that my dynamics with men were utterly confusing. I attracted unwanted attention from all quarters, not least my mother’s boyfriends, men in the street, the caretaker at school, my driving instructor, all to a lesser or greater degree treated me as an object of desire, a Lolita.

I had only ever learned, from my role model, my father, that this is who I was supposed to be in the world, a desired feminine; and with that there would be complications. With that men would believe that I had led them on, teased them, courted them. And I had, but I didn’t know it, I didn’t understand how, because I was just being ‘me’.

The thing was nobody else understood either. So my family members saw me as flirtatious, inappropriate, testing, asking for it… friends could feel threatened by my presence and, again, rightly so. I lost count of how many of their boyfriends tried to ‘cop a feel’ under the table or in the back of the car when they thought no one was watching. All of this I thought was normal, this is men, this is life, this is how it is to be a woman. But I also felt judged and alienated and lonely and I didn’t know why, because I was just being ‘me’.

When I uncovered my father’s actions to me, which had been hidden in my early childhood memories, I first told them to a friend of mine who is a therapist. He said to me, ‘Didn’t you know? You showed all the signs of an abused child’. Slowly my memories unravelled and I was able to see how my unconscious sexuality had permeated my life, my attractions, my complications. I was able to see that I had been defined by my pain, my wound that had been inflicted upon me, but only the rare few could see through the pain, the rest just saw me as a ‘troubled soul’.

So I want to speak up for my sister, for my cousin, for me and all of those who have had great wounds inflicted upon them. None of us are troubled souls, just the opposite; we are innocent ones, born like the rest in perfection and purity. We have been defined by our wounds, some of us get the opportunity to change that, some of us don’t, but behind every uncomfortable, inappropriate, damaging behaviour is just another innocent that has been badly hurt.