Family Secrets.

My Grandmother almost died last week. She had been constipated for days, and instead of telling anyone, she self-administered 4 enemas before finally taking herself to the ER.

The ER doctor asked her what was wrong, and Grandma answered that she was having “Tummy-issues”.

“Diarrhea?”

“Quite the opposite.” She replied.

Laxatives and iv fluids later, all was right, and Grandma left the hospital a few hours later.

Our family has this weird unwritten list of “bad words”: Constipation, sex, premarital sex, sexual abuse, alcoholism, depression, ADHD, and therapy, top the list.

Grandma asked me once why I changed drastically in my teen years. I, the candid black sheep of the family, bluntly replied that at fourteen, I had remembered the full details of being sexually abused when I was four. I added who my abuser was (her stepfather) and where it happened (her house), and that she caught him and forbade me from being alone with him again. I shared with her that I always felt that his banishment from my young life was a punishment aimed at me. That somehow, at four, I broke a rule that I had never been informed of. Grandma sat back on her flowery couch and squirmed in her cotton separates.

“I knew that he liked to show himself to children, but I didn’t realize that he went that far.”

Her verbal-bandaid turned my shame into anger. Grandma disclosed I wasn’t her stepfather’s first victim, but his last. He broke more children than she could count and said in God’s name she had forgiven him. She asked if we could pray for his soul to find peace, and I mutely shook my head no.

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April 19, 2021

“Family dirt” swept under the rug… the child stepped on… I lived this and was told I was a liar.