Feeling stupid cause I was the victim of a crime is not right.  But I do.

Why should I as a child, living with adults who are supposed to be responsible for teaching me to be an adult,  feel stupid cause they did wrong by me? No really good reason, I just do. What I would possibly feel is betrayed, angry, hurt, lonely, neglected, but not stupid. And yet, there it is still embedded in my psyche.

As I grew up so the feeling grew too.

Later on I added to the feeling of being stupid, the feeling of being humiliated because for years, I didn’t even know what he did was wrong.  When I recognized something was wrong, it wasn’t with any kind of certainty.  Just a vague feeling, that it really wasn’t supposed to be like that for me or for other children when they were growing up.  Part of  thorough healing involves tracing the path of a feeling back to it’s core experience. Once I know where it originated I can decide if the  thoughts, decisions or feelings I have now, are what I want to continue with into the future..  I have experienced great healing and relief from retracing the path to it’s origins.  Persisting to the core despite the pain has brought me clarity.

But I don’t always know it still holds me prisoner. I am trying to come to grips with the knowledge that what happened to me is a crime. It’s criminal action perpetrated on a child. I didn’t label it such but that’s no surprise when you realize I didn’t label it as rape until I was in my 20′s . I quit pretending he hadn’t harmed me in my 30′s. Now I can see it was criminal what happened to me,  that it harmed me and in turn the people who are around me.

Being a child who is the victim of crimes hurts us all. Children don’t know it’s dangerous cause there is nothing to compare  it to and they have no experience of any other family.  When they grow up the healing is complicated. But it can be done. I really don’t know how long it will be until I have a fully healed scar. Until then, I keep working with my wrong ideas of  feeling stupid.