Scars

So I recently fractured my thumb.  It was a ridiculous accident.  I was playing air hockey and, intent on winning, accidentally smacked my thumb on the edge of the table.  That was it.  But as you can see in the xray that little thing caused a small section of bone to fracture off the base of my top thumb bone.  It's a small thing but has been quite debilitating.  Eight weeks on, I still have some pain, some weird nerve stuff, decreased movement.  I'm still in fortnightly physio.  I still can't use it to turn the keys in the ignition.

And although I was somewhat surprised that I'd managed to break it so easily, that wasn't the biggest surprise for me in this xray.  I have circled the interesting thing.  Another fracture.  A fracture that has healed very well over time and causes me no problems.  But I never had an xray when that fracture happened.  I know it didn't happen in my adulthood as I've been damned good at having things xrayed when I've suspected injury.  And being someone who isn't super coordinated there have been a few.  But this is the first one I've taken the time to look at myself.

I remember how this fracture happened.  At least I'm pretty sure this is how it happened.  Unless it happened when I was very small where my memories are patchy.  I'm pretty sure it happened the only time I can remember thinking I'd broken my finger.

It was after school.  A girl a few years younger than me asked me to help her regarding someone who was bullying her (her brother).  So I had a chat with him in the classroom.  The chairs had been put up on the tables ready for the cleaner.  He threw one at me*.  I put my hands up to protect my face and it hit my right hand.  My finger hurt and had a lump sticking out the side.  Not wanting him to see that it hurt, I didn't cry.  Instead, I pointed my weird looking finger at him and chased him.  He ran away.

Now I know this happened.  I remember this happening.  But I never told my parents that this happened.  I may have taped them together myself - it seems like something a 12 year old me might have done - but maybe I didn't.  Maybe I didn't want to draw attention to my injury.  Whatever I did I didn't tell a single adult about what had happened.  I didn't seek medical help.  I just kept on trucking.

Here's me dressed up for Halloween aged 9ish
in our kitchen in South Head              

This probably seems crazy to most people so I'm going to break it down into two parts.  This is the first part.  It's the easy and logical part - the believable part.  And that part is that we were poor.  We mostly lived in very isolated places - at times more than an hour from even a dairy or petrol station.  We hardly ever sought medical support because we simply could not go.  We could not afford the petrol to get there let alone the medical fees.  Since he was little my brother has been prone to skin infections**.  At one point he had some awful ones on his back.  Dad lanced them with a hot poker in our dining room.  I once got a 2cmish piece of bark stuck in my foot from running the inter-school cross-country barefoot.  I had seen the medic at the event and they had diagnosed a cut filled with dirt and put a sticking plaster on it.  Back home, Dad cut open my foot to extract the bark.  It hurt like hell.  While home surgery was generally as sterile as home surgery can get, it was never accompanied by pain relief.

Now this is the second part.  This is the hard part, the part I've always struggled to talk about in a way it can be made sense of because we're discouraged to talk about these things.  This part is that I was afraid.  I was afraid that if I told my parents what had happened I would get in trouble for 'fighting'.  As a girl in an at times*** extremist Christian household, this kind of behaviour was certainly not deemed to be ladylike.  And I was afraid of creating another problem in a home that already had enough problems.  And I felt this way because I lived with someone who gave me good reason to be afraid.

This is hard to write.  Even harder to publish hence the revisit since the first draft about five months ago.  It's hard because I have always tried to protect the people that were part of my childhood, that are still living and still part of my life.  But I know this silence is exactly what perpetuates family violence issues.  And in Aotearoa, family violence is a big problem and big reality for many of us.  Here, in about half of all homicides the offender is a family member.  And one in three women will experience physical or sexual violence perpetrated by an intimate partner.  There's plenty more awful stats which you can read for yourself here.  And while some people are not safely positioned to talk about what's happened, I am hoping I am not one of those people.  As such, I feel it's important I try and articulate aspects of my experience so that those not living with family violence can gain some kind of understanding.  And so that those living with it feel less alone.

The second part is that I was afraid of my Dad.  Growing up, my home was not a safe space to be injured in, not a safe place to be sick in and definitely not a safe space to speak up or disagree.

When I was about eleven he beat our puppy so badly he broke its leg.  He beat it because it was howling at night.  Because it had been put outside alone in the kennel.  Because it was not used to sleeping alone because it was just a baby not long weaned from its mother.  And in the morning when he realised how badly he'd injured it, he shot it.  He put it out of it's misery.  He never said this, but I'm sure it was because he was ashamed of what he'd done.  He told us it was because we couldn't afford to take it to the vet.  This was equally true.

I was afraid of my father because his behaviour was erratic.  Because sometimes he could be patient.  Because sometimes he answered my questions about the world as honestly as he could.  But other times I was expected to maintain complete silence - to be seen and not heard.  Because he taught me that a woman's place was in the home, but I was still expected to go and work on the farm.  And once, when I questioned this imbalance regarding washing dishes, he threw his cutlery at me.

I was afraid of my father because he threatened us.  He threatened to take my brother and I away from our mother to Australia.  Sometimes he threatened to kill my mother.  He threatened to kill us all and himself afterward.  I was small when he first said these things - but he was still saying them when I was fourteen years old, and I still believed him.  I was afraid of my father because he was so charismatic that many, many people in our local community sang his praises.  Because my mother voluntarily went back to him after fighting so hard to get away.  Because I didn't understand what this magical power he had was, and why it seemed to work on everyone but me.  Because I knew if I told, no-one would believe me.  Growing up, I felt afraid and very, very alone.
          

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My thumb is completely healed now.  Sometimes it hurts a bit, but by 12 weeks my flexibility and strength were basically as good as new.  The finger that I broke also healed completely fine.  On the xray I can see it has healed in place with the slight calcification on the outside you'd expect from a simple fracture.

I'm not missing that giant thumb splint!

I have told the story of how I broke my thumb to countless people - customers at work, friends, whanau, people on the street.  I had never told anyone how I broke my finger until I checked in with Mum before writing this post.  Bones can knit.  And muscles can regain their lost capacity.  Through physio.  Through witnessing progress in movement, through gaining strength as time passes.

When we don't talk about our other scars, we don't allow them to heal cleanly.

We all have scars.  Whether physical or emotional we all have them.  Our lives, and the lives of those who shape us, are imperfect and we cannot change our past.  For those of us who have scars like mine, scars that impact how our synapses form as toddlers, scars that change us markedly from our unscathed peers, it is so important that we talk about them.  That we acknowledge that pain and loss.  That we treat them more like we would a fracture, we diagnose, triage and physio them.

And hopefully by talking about our scars, we can prevent future injuries.

* This incident doesn't even rank in the worst bullying/physically violent things that happened to me whilst at school.

** He still is.  He can literally scrape his knuckles on something and it'll be red and infected with lines going up his arm the next day.

*** I am very certain that Dad had undiagnosed bipolar.  While he had grown up in a Christian household, we were not a church going, Bible thumping family.  He would go off on religious benders.  At those times, simple things like me cutting my hair into a short bob were considered major breaches.  I was 'unfeminine' and short hair on a woman 'went against God'.  He wasn't like this all the time.  Religious mania or Messiah complex are commonly experienced during bipolar episodes.

Why I will not listen to Michael Jackson any more

So this morning while driving to Pak n Save I was startled by the opening throngs of Thriller on full blast.  And I wanted to cry.

Thriller, reinterpreted by Taika Waititi in Boy.

But I wasn't surprised.

Because this is the world I've grown up in.  A world of rape culture.  A world where people will fight for their right to keep the status quo at any cost.

Jimmy Safechuck with MJ                    

While I was gladdened by Mediaworks and NZME's response to the Leaving Neverland documentary I knew that by pulling Michael Jackson from their playlists there would be backlash.  That many, many people would say James Safechuck and Wade Robson had made it all up for a little bit of fame and money.  That people from Jackson's past would come forward to protect his image, his legacy.  I knew the likelihood of hearing more classic Michael Jackson tracks pumping out from sound systems around the world.

I know this because this is how society responds to rape accusations.  This is how society responds to any kind of abuse accusations against anyone who is not a random scary guy in the bushes.  Especially when that person is deemed exceptional, as if talent translates directly to moral fortitude.  I have lived with the consequences of standing up for myself against abuse*.  My abuser was not exceptional, just a regular charismatic and likeable person.  But no matter what my abuser had actually done, speaking out would put me on the stand to have my personhood questioned.

I know what it is like to struggle to find the language to articulate what was wrong in my life because I was a child.  I know how it feels to grow into an adult and find a voice and words to express what happened.  How I've had to do this tactfully, with minimal detail.  Because I still love the person who impacted my life in this way.  And because I am still fearful of the consequences of speaking out**.

Because even though I was only a child, and never possibly to blame for what happened, I would be blamed for speaking out.  When the truth is difficult for others to hear or comprehend, the fate of the speaker is to be silenced.

Me and a cousin as kids in the early 90's

I have experienced this silencing in many forms.  Firstly, I have had my personhood discredited.  It was my fault I could not process my abuse.  The abusers place in this was never mentioned.  The abuser was never a concern.  And this silencing began when I was just 14 years old***. 

I was told as a child I was 'too sensitive', 'over-dramatic', 'too contrary.'  When I did find words to wrap around my experience it was minimised.  I was told by people who never asked what happened to me that what happened was not that bad.  I was told the actions I was taking for self preservation were unfair and cruel to my abuser.  Sometimes I am still told these things now.

The hardest part about this is that the people silencing me were my family.

My family simultaneously saved me from my situation whilst never really speaking about it.  I never felt I was encouraged to speak, and to be fair I was also very scared of what might happen if I did.  Part of me is still fearful.  So it certainly wasn't easy for them.  In defense of my family, we are not taught how to speak about these things.  But a part of me believes that even had I been specific about the abuses I suffered it would have made no difference to my family's response.

This is Andrew.  He was always the
perfect gentleman.  He helped us get
gigs.  He helped me contact The Labour
Party when they were late taking their

hoardings down.  He is also accused of
abusing young women.

Because no-one likes to believe that people they know are capable of such acts.  Including me.  A few years ago Andrew Tidball was accused of having inappropriate relationships with very young women.  Initially I was shocked.  I was one of the many people who 'liked' his initial statement on Facebook.  He had never been anything but a gentleman to me.  My gut response was that it could not possibly be true.

But after thinking about it, and reading more about the specifics of the accusations I thought about his accusers.  What did they have to gain by making this up?  I was not his target demographic for abuse.  While I was young when I met him I was over 20, white skinned and bolshy.  Like most abusers he will have crafted his friend group and situation so that he was always seen as the good guy.  Like most abusers he hid in plain sight.  Like most abusers, he had most of us suckered even though, retrospectively, there were signs that things were not right.

My gut reaction was because I didn't want it to be true.  I didn't want it to be true because it meant I had, in effect, supported someone who abused young women.  And that was a horrible feeling.  I think this is a common response.  I suspect why now we are seeing all these articles by MJ's staff and friends is precisely due to this same gut reaction.  That if the accusations are true, we are guilty by association.

These days I have heard enough stories of abuse to just believe them without question.  These days I know that only 2% of rape accusations are false.  I know that of 100 sexual violations in NZ only 9 will be reported, and only one of those abusers convicted.  Knowing this, I know how few people will share their story.  How can I not believe that Michael Jackson sexually abused those boys?

I cannot believe they had motive in making this documentary other than to have their voices heard.  I cannot believe that the award winning director, Dan Reed, would stake his reputation in film-making on a flimsy premise.  What I can believe is that enough time has passed since MJ's death - almost 10 years, that they felt safe enough to talk about what happened to them.  That they needed to talk about what happened to them to assuage the pain and guilt they felt about not talking about it.

And I am glad they did.  I know how hard it is to talk about this stuff.  I know the likelihood of having your truth stomped on.  I know that 99 out of 100 times someone is sexually violated in NZ the abuser will walk away with no comeuppance.  And I know this is due to our culture.  This is because we don't want to talk about the fact that our friends, our parents, our siblings, our coaches and teachers are also our abusers.  Because we know what happens to people who talk frankly about their, and our, reality.

Michael Jackson's estate has sued HBO.  His estate will do whatever it takes to silence his victims.  They will discredit their words.  They will minimise their accusations.  They will call them thoughtless and cruel.  They will do what the rest of the world does to any one of us who calls out our abusers.

We have only to look at the changing face of Michael Jackson
to see how unhappy he was with himself.  How broken he was.

We know abuse begets abuse.  It's common knowledge that Michael Jackson was sexually abused as a child, that he was beaten by his father, that he had no normalcy in childhood.  This does not make what he did ok.  Rather than focus on the why, we should be focused on what we can do as a society to break the cycle of abuse.  Why did those boys, and countless others have to live through what they did when instead, their abusers pain could have been addressed?

We have the power to re-educate ourselves so our children do not have to live as we did.  We can teach them how to understand feelings, and that they have a safe space to express them to us.  We can encourage transparency by showing them unconditional love.  We can educate ourselves the impact of childhood trauma so we can recognise and repair it.  We can empower our children so they can live different lives than we have.

I know this is not easy.  We are working against what feels natural, particularly here in Aotearoa with our 'she'll be right' attitude.  Things are not right.  33 - 39% of our wahine will experience physical and/or sexual abuse from their intimate partner.  We have the 5th worst child abuse rate in the OECD.  Things are not right and we cannot change this until we acknowledge what is wrong.  We need to start building safe spaces for people to speak.  We need to start listening.

When I heard Thriller booming out on a strangers stereo this morning all I heard was an attempt to drown out the voices of the abused.  And I know this is not how most people will feel.

But I will not contribute to the drowning out of those voices.  Because mine is one of them and it is one of many.

* In my case the abuse I'm referring to was not sexual.  But it was still abuse.  Of course I have a litany of other sexual trespasses against me that will also inform this feeling.  You can read about them here.

** Like most of us, my abuser was known to me.  And like most of us, they too experienced horrific childhood trauma.  Trauma is cyclical.  Trauma is inherited.

*** Even earlier if you take into account the atmosphere of my childhood.