Could it have been my own mother? TW
TW- child sexual abuse
When I was 7 years old, I know that I was molested/raped by *someone*. I don’t remember who, exactly when, but I have a memory of where, and the events that proceeded it. I vividly remember going into my mom and dad’s bathroom and pouring rubbing alcohol over my genitals to try to clean myself. For a long time, I thought it maybe some random man. I was on a swim team and was changing in the bathrooms (that were very isolated and outside) at a swim meet, and that’s where it happened.
So… in therapy, we’ve been under covering a lot more child memories. A lot of the more negative ones involve my mom, who I am very close with now and talk to every day! But, some of these memories have me really distraught. They involve her holding me down naked in the bathtub after I had foot surgery and washing me, and I remember being so terrified I was going to be molested again. I was screaming but she kept holding me down and pouring water over my head and scrubbing me with a washcloth. Then I have other memories of her asking questions while I laid in bed, she asked if had hair “down there” yet, and asked if I felt I needed to start wearing a bra. It made me uncomfortable enough to remember it. Then she used to stare at my sister and I every morning before school and comment on our bodies. She’d usually compliment my sister and say how skinny she was and how perky her butt was. To me she would say I needed to stop eating so many chips. She would never do our hair or get us anything “nice” clothes wise/shoes, we often looked very raggedy and got bullied for it and she would say “it’s my money and I’ll choose how to spend it. You’re fed and have beds and toys.” But as we got older she would hide snacks so we didn’t “get fat”. I just now remember feeling uncomfortable around her like I was afraid of her in some way, but these feelings gradually went away as we became adults. She told us to never have kids, just never do it. We’re in our 30s now and both have kids but they’re all boys. Every time my mom would say “damn, another boy! I want a girl so bad.”
Now my therapist brought up… could it have possibly been my mother who molested me? All these memories I have of her staring at my body and commenting on it make me so uncomfortable. She was at the swim meet, of course, and I can imagine she would accompany her 7 year old daughter to the bathroom right?
But how do I move on from this? We are close now and talk about everything. Do I talk to her about it? Try to heal from it on my own? Am I maybe just looking for an answer and my mother never touched me in that way and I was traumatized from someone else?
Let's Glow!
Achieve your health goals from period to parenting.