Here’s a subject I hate to talk about, which is why I want to talk about it : innocence.
It’s a loaded word if there ever was one and my history with it has not been good. I’ve spent a lot of my life in silent opposition to the very idea of it, on a purely personal level, and I know now what a sick response that was and how if I am to become well, I will have to make peace with innocence.
So let’s start with my bad beginning : for most of my life, starting from when I was a kid, I have told myself that innocence is just another name for ignorance and ignorance was never something to be proud of so innocence was something I did not want or need.
What a load of horse crap.
Sour grapes, all of it. Convincing myself that something I didn’t have and didn’t feel I coild get was something I didn’t want in the first place.
The truth was that I longed for the innocence I saw in other kids. Not consciously, but deeply. On a deep level, I knew they had something I didn’t. Something that made they feel safe and calm and proud and happy.
And good. As in, feeling like they were something good. Something pure, something wholesome, something worthy, something cherished and valued and loved.
Something radically different from my own filthy and toxic soul, that’s for sure.
My innocence was shattered by being raped at the age of 4. Along with said innocence went any sense of safety in the world. I lost the protective layer of ignorance of the darkness of world that protects us from that which we can’t handle when we are young.
That’s what innocence is, at its heart. And like baby fat, it’s something that is supposed to go away slowly over time. It’s not meant to be ripped away all at once, leaving the child cold and exposed and all too aware of the harshness and cruelty of the world and not nearly ready to deal with it.
Like a premature baby. But one forced to make it on its own anyhow.
So a lot of my childhood was spent simply trying to keep myself safe despite the vulnerable state the rape had left me in. Pretty much all my problems have this weakness – this emotional “failure to thrive’ – as the biggest component.
Other factors did not help. Like the emotional neglect at home and the bullying at school that both reinforced the idea that I was a horrible disgusting unworthy thing. Or the hours and hours of boredom at school that made me feel like being brighter than the rest of the kids was a bad thing and I was being punished for it. Or the not unrelated fact that I didn’t get to go to kindergarten because I was so bright I didn’t “need” it.
But at the heart of it all was soul rending trauma of losing my innocence.
More on that later.
Innocence 2 : The Innocenting
So I have spent my life feeling like I was a sick repulsive thing The rape started it when I was four, and the rest of my childhood confirmed it.
After all, if everyone treated me so badly, it must be because there is something fundamentally wrong with me, right?
A lot of victms of long term abuse come to that conclusion, sadly enough. It’s easier to think that than to face the fact that the people who are supposed to love you and care about you and look out for you are, in fact, the ones doing the very things they are supposed to be protecting you against.
For a child, that’s simply an unthinkable thought. Because if it’s true, that means you are alone in the world without any safety or anyone to turn to.
And there is nothing a child fears more than abandonment.
So even if it’s true that their parent(s) are horrible, they won’t see it. They can’t see it. They will cling to their parents no matter how unworthy said parents are.
Anyhow. Enough of that. That’s theorizing, and that’s not what this is about.
Back to innocence. I never felt like I had any.
So I didn’t take care of myself. Still don’t, really. But when I lived with Angela in her poop-filled pet hoarding environment and barely ever showered, things got super bad re : my hygiene and odor problems.
So people in the Core program at Richmond Hospital complained and asked me why I didn’t wash more, and I said “Because there’s no such thing as a clean turd!”.
Stark, no? That’s honestly how I felt at the time. That there was no point in cleaning myself because I was a living turd and no matter how much I cleaned myself, I would still be a piece of shit.
And I still struggle with that feeling sometimes. There are times when it’s pretty hard to get myself into the shower and it all seems so pointless.
But the good news is that I am getting over that now. And it starts with the belief that I am not an inherently filthy thing. So here’s tonight’s self-proclamation.
“I am good. I am clean. I am wholesome. I am a good, clean, wholesome boy with nothing to be ashamed of. I am not dirty. I am not disgusting. I am not repulsive. And I am certainly not toxic. And no shift of brain chemicals can change that. No matter how I feel or how sick I get, I will still be the same good, clean, wonderful boy inside and nobody can ever change that. What was done to me by a stranger in a public shower did not makes me dirty. They’re the dirty ones. They are the ones who raped a four year old boy and wounded him for life. I was just an innocent victim who did nothing wrong. So all the badness belongs to him, not me. I am innocent. I am clean.I am pure. “
I feel better now. My water pours clear and clean now, and will wash away my sin.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.