I Am Jane Doe.: A Nameless Victim of the Trauma of Childhood Sexual Abuse

By Jane Doe

When I slept upstairs I would wake up and hear noises during the night. Thats when I got really scared of the dark. I was too scared to go downstairs to the bathroom so I wet the bed.

I never used to wet the bed. Now I was wetting the bed all the time. What made me start doing that? I dont remember wetting the bed before this. Did Thomas and I get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night? Did our mom get us up and take us to the bathroom? All I knew was that I was wetting the bed every night and Thomas was making fun of me for it. I was really scared of the dark now. I dont know why I started being so afraid of the dark. What happened to make me be so afraid?

This is a raw and powerful story of a woman who has suffered from multiple kinds of abuse and how it has affected every aspect of her life. She has gone through incest, childhood sexual abuse, and mental and verbal abuse. She begins by introducing you to her family and her story starts from there. She goes through her childhood, adult life, and up to the present. She is candid in the way she writes the story of her life. She tells you when and how the sexual abuse happened, how she felt about it at the time, and how it is still affecting her today.

She was fifty five when she faced the abuse and started healing from the devastating effects it had on her life. She felt a need to tell her story and it took a lot of courage for her to disclose her life in such an open and honest way. Her story will give you hope and inspiration that you can heal at any age of your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Apr 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781466969674

Jane Doe

Jane Doe returned from a trip to Egypt when The Surgeon poured out of her imagination. After typing it in five days, the manuscript was tucked away until she found it fifteen years later. Doe is educated in biochemistry and married to a surgeon. This is her debut novel.

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© Copyright 2013 Jane Doe.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4669-6966-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-6968-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-6967-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012922120

Trafford rev. 04/10/2013

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Contents

Author’s Notes

Foreword

Preface

Introduction to our Family

My Mom

My Dad

Section 1

My Story—The Beginning

The Incest and Lost Innocence

Thomas’ Death and Feeling Abandoned

Sexual Abuse and Secrets

Section 2

High School, Sex, and Abuse

Pregnancy and Adoption

Date Rape and Starting Over

Section 3

Why Talk about My Adult Life?

Getting Married

Bad Mother

Divorce, and Married Again

A Bad Mistake and Another Divorce

Section 4

Finding My Son

The Next Twelve Years

Changing and Healing

Hindsight

A New Journey

This book is about incest and childhood sexual abuse. I don’t think it can get any more personal than that. I chose Jane Doe for my pen name because it is the most impersonal name I could choose. How can you make up a name and put it on the most personal thing you have in your life?

AUTHOR’S NOTES

All of the names in this book have been changed in respect of their privacy and to maintain their dignity. The names of the towns were picked randomly from a map. I wanted to tell this story as authentically as possible while still keeping and respecting my privacy as well. This book is based on the memories I have of my childhood and from my perspective as an adult.

I chose this name for the book because it is about the millions of people who have been sexually abused and have never told anyone. It is for the people who have told someone and were told to Just Forget About It or It’s Not That Bad or Forget the Past or I Don’t Believe You. It is for every person who feels all alone, who feels unidentified pain, and doesn’t feel like there is anyone else who knows what they are feeling and going through. Childhood sexual abuse is not an impersonal crime. It is the most personal thing that can happen to you.

Childhood sexual abuse is a nameless crime because it is rarely ever reported. Because it is not reported there is not an accurate statistic of how many people have been sexually abused. If you have gone through childhood sexual abuse you are a victim. More than likely, you are still suffering from the trauma of it. Your pain is unknown to everyone else. There are millions of Jane and John Doe’s who are still suffering from the childhood sexual abuse.

FOREWORD

I am a person who has lived their whole life as a victim of childhood sexual abuse and didn’t know it. I am healing and my life is getting better every day. I am on a journey that had a beginning but has no ending. My life has completely changed. This book started with me writing about the sexual abuse and is now the story of my life. I never thought writing a book would be something I would do. I know writing this book was a huge part of my healing. Healing has made me realize that anything and everything is possible.

It took months to write and rewrite. A lot of people asked me if I had the book edited. I didn’t. This is all me. I didn’t want the book edited because I wanted this to be my story written my way. I didn’t want it changed in any way. With that being said, don’t look too hard for grammatical errors. Just read the story. I hope it is easy to read and understand.

What I thought about myself when I started the book is completely different than the way I feel about myself today. My feelings have changed over time but the facts haven’t changed. This book is about my life and everything that happened to me. It is about how I lived my life and the choices I made. It is not my intent for you to judge me. My intent is for you to get to know me on a personal level and relate to me through our similar experiences.

At the end of the book I wrote about my feelings of being sexually abused. I also told you more about my healing. I hope you don’t feel alone after you read my story. We all did what we needed to do to survive. You have to be strong to survive and that strength stays with you in healing. I hope my book helps you in healing.

My wish is to help everyone that is still suffering in silence.

PREFACE

This book is my autobiography. It contains a compilation of stories about my life from birth to the present. I have gone through incest and childhood sexual abuse. My life was very difficult to write about. It was very painful to relive those experiences. In doing so I learned a lot about myself. I know my emotional issues started when I was sexually abused. I carried them with me my entire life and never knew I was a victim. I am 55 and it is only now that I know the choices I made throughout my life were the result of the damage the incest and sexual abuse had on me.

I always blamed myself for not having the kind of life I wanted. I didn’t really know what my life should be but I knew this wasn’t it. I was depressed. I had health issues and thought about suicide. I didn’t want to feel this way the rest of my life. I wanted all of the bad feelings I had about myself and my life to go away. I wanted to feel normal. I wanted to be happy. I knew if my life stayed the same it would eventually kill me yet I felt like I was in a hopeless situation. I knew I had to change my life but didn’t think I would ever have the courage to do it.

I talked to my friends about how horrible my life was. I wasn’t happy in my marriage. I hated my home life. I hated my job and the people I worked with. One friend always listened patiently when I talked about my life. Every time I told him about my problems he told me to get help. He had gone to a therapist for marital problems and told me he helped them save their marriage. He told me if there was anyone who could help me it would be him. Every time I talked to my friend he asked me why I hadn’t called and made an appointment. Finally I realized I didn’t have any excuse valid enough not to call.

I started seeing the same therapist. The first time I saw him I was so depressed he thought I was suicidal. I didn’t have a plan to take my life but I didn’t care if I lived or died. I was on a stress leave of absence from work and didn’t have to get out of bed. I slept most of the day and had to force myself to get up in the afternoon. I didn’t care if I ever went to work again. He started having me come in twice a week. I had to get up to go to therapy. That in itself really helped me. He kept me from committing suicide. I started to trust him and I knew he was helping me.

The first thing we did was address why I was so depressed. There were multiple things going on in my life to cause it. I was going through a horrible situation at work. I wasn’t happy in my relationship with my husband. My husband and I had health and financial issues. I was overwhelmed with the things that were happening with our families. I kept trying to take care of everyone in our families even in situations that were out of my control. I never stopped long enough to take care of myself. I didn’t even consider myself important.

Even though my life sucked I still tried to fix the problems in everyone else’ lives. I tried to take care of everyone else. Every time I did my life got worse. It seemed like it just reinforced all the shit in my life. I never realized how much it affected me. I was depressed and unhappy. I felt angry most of the time and didn’t know why. I was always worried, anxious, and stressed out. I was having health issues. I had high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome, and headaches. As I got closer to menopause my health continued to decline.

I knew my health would not improve unless my life drastically changed. And that meant the relationship I had with my husband had to change. My husband and I started going to counseling together and we both went separately as well. My husband knew how unhappy I was. I loved my husband but I felt like I compromised a lot of my needs and wants to take care of his. I realized my husband was not giving me what I needed emotionally.

We continued to go to counseling together. As time went by I knew my husband was not willing to change. It took me three months to decide whether I should stay or leave. I finally realized there were more reasons to leave than there was to stay. My heart was broken. I loved my husband with all my heart and soul and it was devastating to me that he wouldn’t try to save our marriage. My son and I moved out. I didn’t take hardly anything from the house when I moved because I knew it would’ve been a reminder of the hurt and pain I felt knowing my marriage couldn’t be saved. It was a relief to move. It was stressful but I felt good about it once we were done moving. I knew I made the right decision.

I felt so much better not being in a relationship I was so unhappy in. I was calmer and my health improved. My son and I settled into our new apartment. It was a new start for us. We furnished our apartment with garage sale furniture. We had to buy almost everything so we made lists and bought whatever was a priority first. We bought spices and staples each time we went to the grocery store. It took about 3 months to get everything we needed. It became our home and was a good place for us.

The other big thing I wasn’t happy with was my job. I worked at the same company for 22 years and I had been doing the same job for 13 years. There were a lot of job openings and opportunities to transfer into a different job. I took classes so I would be qualified for different jobs and put in several transfers. I got a job offer 2 months after my husband and I started counseling. I accepted the job offer but had to wait a month to start my new job. I started it within a week of my husband and I splitting up. Everything in my life was new and different. It was stressful to go through all of this yet a relief at the same time. I looked at all the changes in my life as new beginnings.

Talking to my therapist about everything that was going on in my life kept me sane. We talked about everything. The ending of my marriage. My new house. My son and I being on our own. My new job. How everything happened so fast. How it all affected me emotionally. He was there as I went through all of it. I began to write questions I wanted to talk about so I wouldn’t forget. We talked about my questions. Some of them got answered right away and some of them took months to answer.

My therapist told me I should get a journal to write in. I got a journal and it was nice to have something I could write all of my private feelings in. All of my emotions went into my journal. Within a short time I was writing in it everyday. It was really beneficial for me. After awhile I realized I needed to write about all the bad things that happened to me.

I decided to write about the sexual abuse. Not how I felt about the abuse but the details of the sexual abuse itself. This was not about the incest. This was about me being 13 and having my virginity taken away from me. Writing it was the hardest thing I have ever done. After writing about it I decided I needed to read it out loud to my therapist. I found out that reading it was as hard as it was to write it. As I read there were times when I was sobbing so hard I couldn’t talk. I started to read when I could talk again. Writing about it and reading it out loud was the most powerful thing I have ever done in my whole life. I realized for the first time in my life I was free. I was free from the secret I kept hidden all those years. I was free from the guilt and shame. I was free from thinking it was all my fault it happened to me.

We talked about my childhood and my image of myself as I grew up. I realized I never had any feelings of positive self worth. My emotions ranged from shame, guilt, unworthiness, anger, sadness, grief, self blame, regret, remorse, loneliness, and every other bad feeling you can have about yourself. I had low self esteem and was self destructive. Throughout my life I self medicated with food, drugs, and alcohol. There were times when I didn’t want to live anymore because it hurt too much. I felt like I was the only one in the world who felt this way. I didn’t think there was anyone who could possibly understand how I felt.

He made me realize all of the feelings I had about myself were the direct result of the abuse I went through. The choices I’ve made throughout my life were because of the incest and childhood sexual abuse. He taught me I have lived my whole life as a victim of abuse. The funny thing is I never saw myself as a victim. Other people were victims. Not me. I never blamed what happened to me on someone else or something else. I didn’t think all the bad things that happened in my life were anyone else’ fault but mine. I just thought my life sucked because I consciously chose to make bad choices. I always thought I could have had a better life if I just chose to. Now I ask myself, How could I have made better choices when I didn’t even know there was anything wrong with me?

I also realized I was broken. I have been broken from the time my brother sexually abused me and I didn’t even know it. I realized I needed to heal or my life would stay the same way it had always been. Realizing how much I needed to heal was heartbreaking. I knew my life was never going to be the way I wanted it to be if I didn’t. I had to heal from the sexual abuse.

My therapist recommended a book for me to read and a workbook that went with the book. I got the book on healing from sexual abuse. I did not get the work book and later wished I had. When I started reading the book I thought they wrote the book just for me. It put my thoughts and feelings into words. I realized I was starting to heal. I was in the middle of facing it and finding out what I had to do to be healed.

When I first started going through the book there were times when the pain was so intense I had to put it away. I waited until I regained control of my feelings and then I picked the book up again. What hurt the most was the grief and sadness I felt for the little girl in me that didn’t get to choose how her life was going to be. I felt anger and sorrow because I was abused when I was a child. I had days when I cried all day. I had days when I felt all alone and lonely. I felt sad that I was not protected.

It was an emotional journey that was extremely difficult. I had days when I thought about it all day. I had days when I felt angry, sad, and depressed. I had days when I thought I was never going to be healed. I realized the sexual abuse didn’t just change my life. It shaped my life. That scared, sad, hurt, lonely little girl has been with me my whole life. She is my inner child. She felt like I abandoned her and in a lot of ways I did. The adult side of me has worked hard to regain her trust. She will always be part of me. She knows I will protect her and never leave her again.

I talked about having peace and happiness in my life. My therapist asked me what I thought it would take to have peace in my life. He asked me what I thought peace and