A friend of mine - or more accurately, an aquaintance, but someone I can see being a close friend one day - lost his grandfather the day before yesterday.
He didn't even know his grandpa was sick. Apparently his family found out only about a week ago, and none of them told him because they didn't want to distract him during an important time at work. When he phoned, they told him grandpa was in the shower. When he caught his mother picking up medication for him, she told him it was for her. I guess they never thought he'd die, or at least not this quickly. But now my friend has the grief, which is compounded by the fact that he didn't get to say goodbye, and on top of that a whole heap of guilt for not being there, even though rationally I'm sure he knows there was nothing he could have done.
Isn't that just the crummiest thing?
What makes me feel so bad, other than my feeling sad for him, is that it's something that I might do. Not if someone was dying, I wouldn't go that far, but I have been known to withold information about bad stuff because I didn't want to upset people. I didn't want to distract them while they were taking exams or had an important project at work, I didn't want to ruin their birthday, I didn't want to cause them extra worry when they were already having problems at home. Several times I've put off telling someone something, justifying it to myself by saying it wasn't a good time and I'd tell them when the time was better, only to find that there's never a good time for bad news. There's always something going on - either something good that you don't want to spoil, or something difficult that you don't want to take their attention away from. And sometimes you just don't want to tell them, full stop.
When I was raped, I didn't tell my father. Actually, two and a half years later, I still haven't told my father. I don't know why telling him was so much harder than telling anyone else...perhaps because I know that like me, he doesn't deal with emotion well. Or perhaps I was scared that he'd give me hell for not being more careful, or try to restrict my freedom in the future. I don't know, perhaps I just didn't want him to feel bad, although that wouldn't explain why I didn't have so much trouble telling my mom or friends. (Not that I told my friends at first - my mother took care of Curt and Ellie, and Becki found out through Ian (who, being a cop, was the first person I called) and everyone else got it through word of mouth.)
After a month, I knew I had to tell him something, in order to explain the court case, so I told him I'd been attacked by a guy I vaguely knew. I specifically used that word - 'attacked' - rather than the more accurate 'raped'. I pointed out my bruises from where I'd been hit and the cuts on my face, and he drew the conclusion that it was just a mugging or an episode of domestic violence. And I never corrected him. I figured the truth would come out at the trial. But then the case never went to trial, and it was easy to just put it off again and again.
I don't know why it's still so hard to tell him, because I haven't kept it a secret from anyone else. I don't feel any shame about it. I don't feel degraded or dirty - never did, actually. The people my mother works with know, because she took personal leave for the week afterwards. The people from biology class know, because when we were studying forensics I stood up and told them about the DNA tests and other evidence gathering that the SOCO did on me. Everyone who ever read my blogs on the Oaklands website or Facebook know, because I've referred to it several times. And most likely all my friends from City & Islington know, because Curt was never great at keeping secrets - although possibly I'm being unfair; he was pretty cut-up about the whole thing, and may have shoved it into the back of his mind and actually forgotten about it the way he does with some things that are too painful for him to face.
So I don't know why I will probably never tell my father.
The rape was in that October, and a couple of days after Christmas that year I had a miscarriage. I didn't even know I was pregnant until I started bleeding. And the details of this time are a bit fuzzy for me, because on January 1st I hit my head and suffered from absolute personal retrograde amnesia for a little over a year. I had no personal memories of my life before the accident, and it wasn't until the following January that I started getting them back. (Most of them came back that second year, although some things I still don't have, and possibly never will.) But I do know that I didn't tell anyone about the miscarriage, either because I felt guilty, or because I couldn't bear to cause anyone more pain.
I certainly didn't tell C, and he was the one person I should have told, because he was the likely father. It was either him or my rapist. They were the only two possibilities. I don't know if they could have found out the paternity after a first trimester miscarriage, because I didn't ask - neither answer would have made me feel better. But I didn't tell C, I felt like I couldn't, because only a couple months before that he'd been through a similar thing with a different girl, and I just couldn't do it to him again. And I didn't tell any of my family members either, because after the rape they all basically fell apart. My brother, the world's biggest pacifist, swore vengeance. The guy I was dating cried for days and then started stalking me, totally refusing to give me any personal space. My mother fell to pieces, refusing to sleep at night and then sleeping and chain-smoking and biting her nails all day. And it was pretty much up to me to hold everyone together.
So I kept the miscarriage to myself. Partly because I didn't want to hold everyone together again, didn't think I could hold everyone together this time. But also partly because I felt like it was my fault. Because after the rape, I'd had a number of x-rays on my back (having a 260-270 lb man on top of me for the best part of 8 hours caused a displacement of my lumbar vertebrae, which caused a lot of back and leg pain), and when the technician had asked me if I could be pregnant, I told her no. I shouldn't have been. C and I used condoms, even the rapist used condoms, *and* I was on the pill. The rational part of my brain knew even back then that there was no possible reason I should have thought I was pregnant. That rational part also told me that it was by no means a certainty that the x-rays had caused the miscarriage; that 1 in 8 pregnancies ends in a miscarriage during the first trimester. But I still felt guilty. And possibly an even more important reason why I kept quiet was that I couldn't face what people would say - or worse, the things that they'd be too polite to say, but I'd hear them thinking. Things like, "well, it's probably for the best, considering who the father might have been". Because I didn't care. If I'd had the choice, I don't honestly think I would have cared whether the genetic material came from the love of my life, or the closest human thing to the devil. This was my child.
But anyway, for whatever reasons, I didn't tell anybody. And it wasn't until summer, after my memory was gone, that I was re-told about the miscarriage by my doctor, who told me there was a large chance that the amnesia was at least in part caused by post-traumatic stress disorder, and that after the traumas of the rape and then the case being dropped (in addition to all the Curt-related heartbreak in the summer), the pregnancy / miscarriage had pushed me over the edge.
That was when I told C. And my mother. Very casually, very lacking in emotion - because at that point, I didn't have any emotions about it. I had very little emotional feeling at all about my former life. Even now I don't feel much about it. I feel sad, but the type of sad that you feel when something bad happens to a person you vaguely know and sort of like.
What I do feel, though, is pretty rotten about the thought that perhaps my witholding information from my loved ones about my tragedies actually, in the long run, caused them as much pain as Eric's family's deceptions, however well-intended, caused him this week.
I thought I was protecting them...but maybe, just maybe, that isn't my job.
Now there's a thought I've never entertained before. :)
He didn't even know his grandpa was sick. Apparently his family found out only about a week ago, and none of them told him because they didn't want to distract him during an important time at work. When he phoned, they told him grandpa was in the shower. When he caught his mother picking up medication for him, she told him it was for her. I guess they never thought he'd die, or at least not this quickly. But now my friend has the grief, which is compounded by the fact that he didn't get to say goodbye, and on top of that a whole heap of guilt for not being there, even though rationally I'm sure he knows there was nothing he could have done.
Isn't that just the crummiest thing?
What makes me feel so bad, other than my feeling sad for him, is that it's something that I might do. Not if someone was dying, I wouldn't go that far, but I have been known to withold information about bad stuff because I didn't want to upset people. I didn't want to distract them while they were taking exams or had an important project at work, I didn't want to ruin their birthday, I didn't want to cause them extra worry when they were already having problems at home. Several times I've put off telling someone something, justifying it to myself by saying it wasn't a good time and I'd tell them when the time was better, only to find that there's never a good time for bad news. There's always something going on - either something good that you don't want to spoil, or something difficult that you don't want to take their attention away from. And sometimes you just don't want to tell them, full stop.
When I was raped, I didn't tell my father. Actually, two and a half years later, I still haven't told my father. I don't know why telling him was so much harder than telling anyone else...perhaps because I know that like me, he doesn't deal with emotion well. Or perhaps I was scared that he'd give me hell for not being more careful, or try to restrict my freedom in the future. I don't know, perhaps I just didn't want him to feel bad, although that wouldn't explain why I didn't have so much trouble telling my mom or friends. (Not that I told my friends at first - my mother took care of Curt and Ellie, and Becki found out through Ian (who, being a cop, was the first person I called) and everyone else got it through word of mouth.)
After a month, I knew I had to tell him something, in order to explain the court case, so I told him I'd been attacked by a guy I vaguely knew. I specifically used that word - 'attacked' - rather than the more accurate 'raped'. I pointed out my bruises from where I'd been hit and the cuts on my face, and he drew the conclusion that it was just a mugging or an episode of domestic violence. And I never corrected him. I figured the truth would come out at the trial. But then the case never went to trial, and it was easy to just put it off again and again.
I don't know why it's still so hard to tell him, because I haven't kept it a secret from anyone else. I don't feel any shame about it. I don't feel degraded or dirty - never did, actually. The people my mother works with know, because she took personal leave for the week afterwards. The people from biology class know, because when we were studying forensics I stood up and told them about the DNA tests and other evidence gathering that the SOCO did on me. Everyone who ever read my blogs on the Oaklands website or Facebook know, because I've referred to it several times. And most likely all my friends from City & Islington know, because Curt was never great at keeping secrets - although possibly I'm being unfair; he was pretty cut-up about the whole thing, and may have shoved it into the back of his mind and actually forgotten about it the way he does with some things that are too painful for him to face.
So I don't know why I will probably never tell my father.
The rape was in that October, and a couple of days after Christmas that year I had a miscarriage. I didn't even know I was pregnant until I started bleeding. And the details of this time are a bit fuzzy for me, because on January 1st I hit my head and suffered from absolute personal retrograde amnesia for a little over a year. I had no personal memories of my life before the accident, and it wasn't until the following January that I started getting them back. (Most of them came back that second year, although some things I still don't have, and possibly never will.) But I do know that I didn't tell anyone about the miscarriage, either because I felt guilty, or because I couldn't bear to cause anyone more pain.
I certainly didn't tell C, and he was the one person I should have told, because he was the likely father. It was either him or my rapist. They were the only two possibilities. I don't know if they could have found out the paternity after a first trimester miscarriage, because I didn't ask - neither answer would have made me feel better. But I didn't tell C, I felt like I couldn't, because only a couple months before that he'd been through a similar thing with a different girl, and I just couldn't do it to him again. And I didn't tell any of my family members either, because after the rape they all basically fell apart. My brother, the world's biggest pacifist, swore vengeance. The guy I was dating cried for days and then started stalking me, totally refusing to give me any personal space. My mother fell to pieces, refusing to sleep at night and then sleeping and chain-smoking and biting her nails all day. And it was pretty much up to me to hold everyone together.
So I kept the miscarriage to myself. Partly because I didn't want to hold everyone together again, didn't think I could hold everyone together this time. But also partly because I felt like it was my fault. Because after the rape, I'd had a number of x-rays on my back (having a 260-270 lb man on top of me for the best part of 8 hours caused a displacement of my lumbar vertebrae, which caused a lot of back and leg pain), and when the technician had asked me if I could be pregnant, I told her no. I shouldn't have been. C and I used condoms, even the rapist used condoms, *and* I was on the pill. The rational part of my brain knew even back then that there was no possible reason I should have thought I was pregnant. That rational part also told me that it was by no means a certainty that the x-rays had caused the miscarriage; that 1 in 8 pregnancies ends in a miscarriage during the first trimester. But I still felt guilty. And possibly an even more important reason why I kept quiet was that I couldn't face what people would say - or worse, the things that they'd be too polite to say, but I'd hear them thinking. Things like, "well, it's probably for the best, considering who the father might have been". Because I didn't care. If I'd had the choice, I don't honestly think I would have cared whether the genetic material came from the love of my life, or the closest human thing to the devil. This was my child.
But anyway, for whatever reasons, I didn't tell anybody. And it wasn't until summer, after my memory was gone, that I was re-told about the miscarriage by my doctor, who told me there was a large chance that the amnesia was at least in part caused by post-traumatic stress disorder, and that after the traumas of the rape and then the case being dropped (in addition to all the Curt-related heartbreak in the summer), the pregnancy / miscarriage had pushed me over the edge.
That was when I told C. And my mother. Very casually, very lacking in emotion - because at that point, I didn't have any emotions about it. I had very little emotional feeling at all about my former life. Even now I don't feel much about it. I feel sad, but the type of sad that you feel when something bad happens to a person you vaguely know and sort of like.
What I do feel, though, is pretty rotten about the thought that perhaps my witholding information from my loved ones about my tragedies actually, in the long run, caused them as much pain as Eric's family's deceptions, however well-intended, caused him this week.
I thought I was protecting them...but maybe, just maybe, that isn't my job.
Now there's a thought I've never entertained before. :)
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