It Wasn’t My Fault: Breaking the Chains of My Childhood Trauma

I had a vivid dream a few years ago that stayed with me, dancing on the outskirts of my memory - waiting to be remembered again when I was ready. It recently bubbled back to the forefront of my consciousness and asked me to give it an audience. I was amazed at what it revealed.

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In the dream, I was at a house party of some sort. There were many people there I've known over the years, all laughing and having a great time. However, instead of being with the group of people, I found myself alone and flying over a collection of hot tubs that were all pushed together.

As I flew over all of them, I was searching for something although I wasn't sure what. But then I spotted her - a young child barely visible and huddled down under the bubbling jets and water holding her breath as if she was trying to hide. Or drown.

I immediately dove down and pulled her up to the surface. "No, no, no, no, no," I said gently as I pulled her out of the water. She stood in front of me crying as I wrapped a blanket around her. I felt so much love for her.

She was beautiful - with golden blonde hair and big blue eyes but as I stood with her, her appearance began to change. Her face started to look sunken in and her hair fell out.

Someone from the party walked by and snarled, "Is that a boy or a girl?" I pulled her close to my body to shield her from the words and whispered into her ear - "don't listen to them. You're perfect just as you are."

Then she looked up at me with the saddest blue eyes and asked, "Is it my fault?"

I awoke with a jolt. I knew something about it was important, but it would take me several more years and the gut-punch of intense emotional trauma at the hands of a covert narcissist before I finally understood what this dream was trying to reveal to me.

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When I was seven years old, I had to sit on a witness stand and testify against a man who'd sexually molested me. The chair I sat in was light brown leather, and it was cold against my legs where the red dress my mom had put me in didn't quite cover.

I didn't like the color red but I didn't have a choice in the matter because I was not my own. I was whatever my mother told me I was.

As I sat feeling incredibly small, someone pulled the microphone down to my face and asked me to state my name. I jumped at the sound of my small voice being projected loudly into the giant room.

I looked out of the corner of my eye to see him sneering at me. It was the first time I'd seen his face since the day the police came to my door. I felt guilty as if by being there I was doing something wrong.

I wanted to explain to him that I didn't tell anyone! It wasn't me. Please don't hurt me or my sister. He'd threatened to hurt us both if I ever told anyone and now, he'd think I had.

I was so terrified I could barely move. When the lawyers asked me questions, I could only manage to shake my head yes or no and cry when they told me I had to speak the words. At one point, I remember the judge looking at me with tears running down his face as I answered questions.

I didn't understand his tears. My mother said having me always made her sad. I wondered if I'd done something to make him sad, too. I mumbled a quiet "I'm sorry" to him as they helped me down from the witness stand.

I believed that whatever was happening was my fault because nobody ever told me it wasn't.

Years later I learned that my mom had been warned that this man was a convicted pedophile and did nothing to shield me from him. I remember her prancing in front of the window of the trailer we lived in as he stood outside the chain-link fence, waiting for me.

"He just can't get enough of me, can he" she gloated before sending me outside. Maybe in her mind, it was perfectly normal for a grown man to want to play with a young girl.

And I guess as long as I wasn't under her feet as a living, breathing reminder of how unhappy she was, she didn't really care where I was, or who I was with.

On Easter Sunday, a neighbor noticed him leading a traumatized me out of the bathroom near the park and called the police. He had lured me in there under the ruse of looking for Easter eggs and then locked the door.

I don't talk about what happened next. I've only verbalized the details once in my life - and it wasn't on the witness stand.

That evening, the police came knocking on our front door. After I answered their questions as best as I could having little understanding of what had happened to me, after they left my mom sneered, "these things only happen to dirty little girls."

It was as though she'd just chained a fifty-pound weight to my ankles and dropped me in the water. I felt ashamed.

My Mom had called me "dirty" once before when I was sent home from school with head lice. So when she hissed the word at me again, my seven-year-old logic assumed I must have lice again, which made me dirty - and being dirty was why that man had hurt me.

I began pulling out my hair in an attempt to find the lice and get them off of me.

I'd pulled out most of my hair by the time I sat on that witness stand.

I was seven years old with only small clumps of hair left on my head, and crying because a grown man had hurt me.

I understand now why the judge was crying.

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My appearance and personality changed drastically between first and second grade. "Are you a boy or a girl?" became a running joke among the kids at school and all the kids who used to be my friends now treated me like I was a leper.

I tried to tell my mom how much their words hurt, but she'd simply point out that I pulled out my own hair. "You only have yourself to blame" she reminded me.

Just another nail in my self-blame coffin. It was my fault.

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It took me most of my adult life to realize I'd been drowning under the weight of the childhood trauma that had been willfully strapped to me by my own mother. Ironically, it was through the emotional beatdown and destruction of a relationship I eventually learned was narcissistic abuse that I came to understand that my mom is a narcissist, too.

Through months and months of therapy, I found my way back to these memories, and that very vivid dream, with the knowledge to finally understand what my psyche was trying to tell me all along.

That little seven-year-old girl was still weighted down and holding her breath inside of me.

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Childhood trauma acts like bricks chained to our limbs that will continue to drown us our whole lives if we never get brave enough to name it. Mine is named abuse, and neglect and I let it be chained to me by self-blame and shame for too long.

I'm cutting the chains now and I'm kicking my way back to the surface.

And I'm holding the little girl inside of me tight, loving her unconditionally, and assuring her that no, child, none of it was ever your fault.