I have chosen.

I have chosen to write my final paper for my other class on the topic of molestation, and the ripple effect it has on the people surrounding the perpetrator as well as the victim. Molestation is such an ugly word, and I hate it. I wish I wasn't associated with it, but I am. I have been since an extremely young age, age 4, even though I didn't put a name to the experience until I was 23. It's an amazing, powerful experience to put a name to the monster who wreaked havoc on me for so long. Amazing because I felt powerful after I named it. I got some of my power back because I began the transition from the small, weak child who hid alone, afraid to tell anyone about my experiences, to the survivor of the abuse. The earth is a little shaky under my survivor's feet, but the ground is there nonetheless.

So anyway, I had to complete an annotated bibliography for this re-search paper (Re-search, as opposed to research is more a re-gathering of the experiences and memories, supplemented by the wisdom of other writers), and I found so many good sources for consultation. In the beginning, after I became a "survivor" of abuse and not just a "victim", I researched everything about abuse. I had to read it before I could feel it, if that makes sense. I knew nothing of what was considered to be a normal reaction, or normal thought process, and after years of being afraid to declare how I felt, I needed to understand that what I felt was within normal limits. So I gobbled up books and studied them as though they were religious doctrine; and in a very distinct way, they were. I have never put much stock in the Bible over the Qu'ran, or the Torah. Really, I have not put much stock in religious writings as law, so I figure I can create my own spirituality.

Healing through reading has almost always been my spirituality, so reading these books and internalizing them was never much of a stretch. Though I had done a lot of reading on the topic of healing from a wound such as mine, I had been centered only on myself, and not the people around me.

What about my family or friends? How have they been affected by my experiences? The destructive path I took for years after high school, when sexuality was such a physical reaction to such a physical experience? I am quite sure that my family and friends suffered much through my "don't care, whatever" attitude. More importantly, what experience is there for the person who committed the crime against me? Unfortunately, that person is now dead, and she died years ago. Her husband died before her, and now I have no one to ask.

But through my family's wall of silence, I have found a few chinks in the armor. I hear that the person who abused me was in fact, abused herself. Interesting. Now there's a ripple effect for you. The abuse she suffered was one tear in a placid lake, but the tear she shed extended itself all the way to me. That started an entirely new ripple, but it will stop with me, and not touch anyone else in the same way it touched me. And it's those ripples that are felt all over the world, in different societies and in different cultures. This problem of incest is not an American problem, and certainly not one committed against the female gender only. This is what my paper is about, and I hope that it's worth the pain.