A Reflecting Arab Muslim Girl From Around the Corner

Monday, August 23, 2010

Desensitization

He turned on the computer and said he wants to show me something. The internet was slow back then, and we waited as an image slowly loaded, row by row. When I could figure out what it was, I shut my eyes tight, turned my face away, and started coughing from disgust.  "Why would you show me that!!?"

It was an image of a man, dressed in business attire sitting at the edge of a table...but as each row of the image uploaded, I realized that the lady beside him was doing something I had never even fathomed people did. Today kids joke about it all the time...but that was my first exposure. Nothing followed...but what had happened was I was now exposed to an act that I had not known about before. An image never leaves you.

Once he told me to turn on the television to a channel that I knew we didn't have access to at home. And we didn't...the screen was speckled, hazy and the sound was muffled.  I told him I can't see anything. He said, "No, just watch and listen closely". I did...and when I realized what it was I turned it off immediately. It was an adult movie. Again, I was disgusted. To this day I can not bring myself to watch any form of intimacy. It felt animalistic and I hate that feeling.

Another time he asked me whether I wanted to see an ejaculation. I said no. I thought if I said no whatever intimacy that was to follow would just have been the regular hug and hold. But instead, a few minutes later he ejaculated. He did fulfill my wish though...I didn't see it. I just felt it on my stomach. I remember he made a remark about how I can do well in my Health Class now. "You don't have to just rely on what your teacher tells you," he said..."you can see it for yourself".

I was innocent. Before him I knew only of hugging and kissing. I had learned about sex when I was in grade seven but it never ever crossed my mind - to me it was just something adults had to do to have children. What his sporadic and seconds of exposure to different ideas and images did do, however, was desensitize me.  He was slow and smooth...never forced me to do anything...but as days, weeks, months progressed, I was more willing and more free.

I grew to hate the physical however.  I never resisted but neither did I enjoy it. I liked it when he spoiled me and wrote me poems. I liked it when he would glance at me with mesmerizing eyes. I liked it when he told me how special I was and how much he cared. But I hated the physical.  The more explicit it became, the more I lost any pleasurable sensation. There was a time where I would give him the middle finger behind his back each time we were intimate. I even remember spitting at him. I hated him. I hated every moment.

Why did I allow this to progress?

3 comments:

  1. I am so sorry for what you have gone through at the hands of this man.

    Have you considered seeing a therapist in order to talk about all of these conflicting feelings and emotions you have been experiencing?

    You are not alone sweetie, many girls who experience sexual abuse, assault & rape also have the feelings of numbness when intimate with someone, because it was how they learned to cope with the physical abuse they were going through.

    I hope you do see that this man is a pedophile and that you are a strong survivor of significant trauma. He manipulated and abused you, and it is not your fault.

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  2. I completely concur with what US said. This is incredibly traumatic, and what he did was abusive. And I also do think it might help you to see a therapist (if you haven't already).

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  3. I realize I never responded to these comments. Thanks US and Becky for joining the dialogue. While I have considered therapy, I have never spoken to anyone professionally about my experience. I suppose I must wait for life to bring me a set of circumstances - like finally meeting someone I am considering for marriage seriously - before I can truly realize the impact of this experience on my life. Right now I feel strong, and I feel if I loved a man truly, and he loved me, I would not feel numb again. But who knows? I have not lost hope in all men...but for now...I would rather just enjoy my break from them.

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