Faye FV

I don’t have a complete recall of my VCUG, and whether that is due to repression or my usual amount of memory blank spots, I don’t know. But I remember enough. I don’t remember the procedure being explained, but I remember standing in the doorway of our house, telling my neighbor friend goodbye for the evening, while mom asked her to wish me luck on my procedure the following day. I didn’t fully understand what it was, but I did know it involved my genitals and bladder, and I cannot forget the helpless dread and inability to understand it all that I felt. I looked at my neighbor, and she looked back at me. I looked at her, knowing there was nothing she could do for me. Nothing anyone could do. It was just something that had to be done, something I couldn’t get out of, and I didn’t know why. I felt like I was waiting to be sent off to slaughter. I remember sitting with my mom and dad outside the lab, waiting. Then the nurses came to collect me. I laid on a bed or gurney – not sure which, and as soon as the wheels began turning, I started crying. Still dressed, not yet violated, but knowing it was coming. As we vanished into the darkness, the nurse to my left was all huge smiles. Such a happy, un-concerned face. She said to me, “Usually only boys cry during this!” so cheerfully. And that broke my heart. Not only did she make me feel like “less than” other girls for not being tougher, but she made me realize immediately that boys who passed through these doors – and doors all over the world, must’ve felt a lot of pain. I don’t know how old I was, but I was too young to have more goddamn empathy than these adults. That level of understanding was so beyond my age, but I didn’t say anything. I only kept crying. I didn’t fight. They didn’t have to restrain me. I laid there and took it, because I was an overly obedient child. Crying was my only option, I figured. I don’t recall having a gown or being changed. As far as I remember, my pants and underwear were either pulled down or removed. I don’t know if I was in the frog or butterfly position – it doesn’t matter. I still struggle to lay on my back with my legs open for any reason. I still remember the freezing cold wipe used to prepare me, and how it felt being dragged swiftly over my exposed flesh. The practitioner was a tad rough. I didn’t like it. I cannot forget the squeaks of fear that came out of me on the last, heavy wipe. They (male or female, I don’t know), masked, looked at me with cold, calculating eyes. Surely just to make sure I was all right… By what definition would that even be, exactly? After a certain amount of crying, as far as I recall, everyone pretty much gave up trying to console me. There hadn’t been much, if any real effort, to begin with. I don’t remember the catheter hurting, but I was beside myself with distress and terror. The catheter is, in my memory, a metallic rod. This may have been a skewed perception of the object, but either way, it felt solid and stiff inside me, and I hated it. It was wrong. Things were not supposed to go inside me – especially not there. The doctor and my mother were finally allowed in. Her being at my side did not provide any sense of reassurance, to be quite honest. The doctor, too, was all smiles, just like everyone else. He pointed out the image of my bladder on the x-ray screen to me, tried to distract me with how “cool” it was to see the inside of my body that way. I just said “yeah,” but I did not give a flying fuck about anything “cool.” There was nothing “cool” about what was happening to me. When my bladder was being filled, the doctor told me to let them know when I “couldn’t take it anymore.” I tried to be good and not dramatic or end it too soon, but the feeling of filling up was so frightening and alarming. Prematurely, I parroted them. “Okay, I can’t take it anymore!” They stopped. I suppose my body could’ve handled more, but my mind couldn’t. After a bit, it was time for the voiding process. Was the catheter removed yet? Not removed? No idea. I vividly remember them pushing the thick wad of grey towels up under my rear and genitals. I was told I would have to urinate on the table, in front of everyone. Not yet, though; a little more waiting. Then, I could do it. I remember how wrong it felt to do that. On a table on my back was not a place for this act. I don’t remember going home, or what happened after. There are tremendously long blank spots in my life, in my memory, that I struggle to understand. Was it trauma? Was it a simple lack of awareness? Do most people just forget the majority of their lives? One thing I do know is that I repressed that event almost immediately. I remember how different my fixations and interests suddenly erupted into around that time, and how heavily I craved comfort during any inconvenience. Not from my family, though – those days were over. I had lost all capacity to trust them. Ever since the VCUG, starting immediately after it happened, I have been hypersexual. My brain took the “get pleasure back from pain” route. I started masturbating anywhere from once to three times a day, daily, for several years. Again, I don’t know how old I was, but I was quite young. I have high sexual and genital fixation, uncommon sexual interests, and a dominance kink (myself as dominant with a desire to overpower others). My sexual gratification can only come through thoughts of sharing some sensational role between helpless victim and cold, merciless dominator. I constantly roleplay rape-based or other intimate hurt/comfort scenarios in my head repeatedly with fictional characters. I did this in my head in school during stressful times, like math class, or to simply fill in the silence. This became my go-to self soothing technique, and persists to this day. But when I was younger and didn’t know about any sort of sexual trauma, I coped by thinking of pregnant women being helped giving birth, and latched onto them. I did this because their experiences clearly mirrored elements of my trauma; intimate, vaginal/genital-fixated, scary. Life, death, birth, sex, my menstruation – I had to learn about these things on my own. It just so happened that I was a good little girl who was too terrified of physical pain or consequences to go out into the world. I obeyed my emotionally-negligent parents, learned through music, media, television, classmates, and my own conclusions. I was often unintentionally shamed by my family for sharing my revelations, conclusions, and questions about hard topics. When I began learning about sexual assault in middle school, I was highly drawn to the word “rape.” I didn’t know why, as I still had no recollection of my trauma, but I suddenly became transfixed by the concept of forced sexual contact. Not in a way that I enjoyed sexually, but the concept of someone being hurt, and then given comfort and support by others, drew me in. I didn’t realize the person I was trying to heal was myself. This had consequences. In sixth grade, a friend of mine revealed their stepfather was severely sexually abusing them. I was the one who blew the whistle on that. But in seventh grade, my fixation and potential run-off trauma from the event of telling on my friend’s stepfather led me to share about those fixations openly. I talked about my ideas too much. It compromised our friendship, created hurt and strain that another friend had to come to me about so I would stop. No one understood why I kept bringing this shit up, why I had so many inappropriate questions. Neither did I. I didn’t realize I was seeking answers for something that was killing me even as I spoke. My Autism made it hard for me to understand what was socially acceptable at that time. I didn’t realize the damage I was doing to my friend until someone else pointed it out. The VCUG performed on me had collateral damage, and I remain haunted by that. My friend, who still talks to me sometimes, says they forgave me long ago, but I don’t believe them. Because I don’t forgive myself. I don’t think I ever will. I am a 30-year-old female. I have never been to a gynecologist. I suspect that I have pelvic floor dysfunction, but due to not having a support system in person with me, I refuse to seek medical attention. I am terrified of doctors and nurses, because not only did they dismiss me then, but have done so ever since. I am prone to aches, pains, and illness. I am paranoid about sickness and illnesses and become much more irrational at night. I have Vaginismus, and cannot wear tampons or do anything penetrative. The insertion of anything as slender as even my own finger into the vagina causes me to feel nauseated, and I break out into horrible shivers and a deep sense of dread and violation. This does not ease up on its own; I have to sleep it off. Speaking of which, even now, I use thoughts of hurt/comfort to sleep at night. Projection onto fictional characters, as well as sharing with my life partner and people online, is the only therapy I can afford. I feel borderline sick even as I type this, but I know it’s good for me. My realization that I had even had a VCUG came back to me when I was in high school one afternoon, while I laid staring at the ceiling, wondering why my sexual interests did not align with the norm. I didn’t panic, or feel scared. Just a little sad. I hated how different I was, how I needed something specific to gratify me. I still struggle with not hating this aspect of myself. For the record, no one could seem to remember what the procedure was or was called. I just found out by poking around online, three years ago. I don’t know how old I was when I was violated, and my parents either don’t remember or simply refuse to share with me out of shame. My mother, although does her best, is a narcissist who does not respect my boundaries or understand my debilitating need for privacy to be naked or use the toilet, or bathe. She has always made fun of me for it, as if it’s wrong not to want to relieve myself or be nude in front of others. Like I wasn’t laid down and raped right in front of her. She and my sister were always less modest, which is fine, but they’ve never respected or understood my modesty. How hard can it be? I both do and don’t blame my mom for having a hand in this; she was uneducated about the procedure, and alleges it hurt her to hear me scream and cry. But there has always been a disconnect between the ordeal and the outcomes of what it’s done to me, and for that, I hold deep animosity. For as often as she has embarrassed or disrespected me, and for all that she has seen of me, and what has been done to me, I am forever mortified. It is a daily betrayal. Some of my worst nightmares involve being seen or barged in on while relieving myself. This has happened to me a few times with strangers (often children) over the course of my life, and it always rattles me to my core. I carry so many oddities in my interests, fears, and the things that trigger me to become upset. For the things I don’t remember in my mind about the VCUG, I remember in my body. Talking about it makes me feel sick, and I tremble for hours. The Vaginismus, the sense of dread deep inside me. The feelings of being dehumanized, neglected, abused, sidelined, silenced. I felt used and broken, and then thrown away. Emptied, hollowed, robbed of my innocence or security. It’s excruciating at times. Those doctors and nurses made me feel like I was a fool, like I was less-than for being terrified. They humiliated and demeaned me. I have had to emotionally raise myself, on top of the burden of carrying the rape with me for all of my life. Every bad thing that has happened to me, and everything in my life that makes me upset, always circles some sort of giant drain that harbors the trauma of this rape within its darkness. All roads inevitably lead back to this one horrible day. There is a heavy sorrow in my soul for the little girl who had to endure something so vile, and didn’t get the care she needed during or after. And now, two decades or more later, she’s still picking up the pieces, trying to learn how to be a whole human being. I can’t relate to other survivors of typical sexual assault, because my story is unconventional, and I don’t want to encroach on their space. They may not understand, and I don’t blame them. Though it breaks my heart that I’m not alone, it’s also nice to know I’m not the only one. I am determined to get into a community and begin the healing process. Thank you for this opportunity to share my story, and to finally be Unsilenced.