DeNuded

So, yeah… I thought writing and publishing this book, Leaving My Brother’s House,  would create a magical moment, a moment at which the weight of the secret of childhood sexual abuse diminished and my complicated relationship with adult shame ended.

I had imagined myself running around free and uninhibited like Melissa Gilbert (Laura) in the wheat field during the closing credits of The Little House on the Prairie. However, the unseen director of my motion picture motion yelled, “CUT!” sending me back to the well rehearsed scenes of shame, fear and guilt.  The reality of the potential results of my denuding are slowly and painfully (a persistently nagging kind of pain) settling in.

I woke up the day after the book went public, pulled the covers over my head, wanted to go back to sleep and never venture beyond the door of my house again, or least for the next couple of years – until the whispers and gasps ceased. At the time only three people, all very close to me, had read the book from cover to cover. Still, I felt as if my deepest and most traumatic experiences were national news.

An exaggerated sense of self-importance maybe, but mostly a manifestation of the programming I had received so early in my existence. The secret was never to be told. I had broken that creed in a most profound manner; I had written a book, published and released it on Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions. Now, there was no limit to how far, and often the secret would be shared.

I was venturing into a territory previously unchartered. It was terrifying, and at times still is. Not only was I exposing my secret shame, I was inevitably drawing back the curtain on the my parents, my relatives and my faith community. I knew there would be unasked questions, offerings of sympathy and for some shocked disbelief.

Really, I did not want to talk about any of it – none of it at all, not one sentence or syllable. I realize that sounds silly since I wrote the book, but writing and discussing have always been miles apart for me. Nevertheless, there I was, watching the sun through my window… contemplating how to face a world that now had total access to one of my hidden places.

Yes, I was fully clothed, but completely denuded.