I knew this would come, eventually. I had prepared myself for it, because the last time I had to go through it on my previous study it completly took me by surprise, and I was not prepared for it. This time, I would be.
Our theme since I started school again is children and teenagers; Welfare and abuse. Last Thursday, I had to sit through an entire class of our psychology teacher giving exambles of how a kid could react to sexual abuse and other indecent incestual relations such as covert incest. My arena, sadly. How the reactions of their caregivers could worsen the trauma, how the guilt, shame and emotional conflicts could possibly affect a child. Yeah. It got to a point where I barely heard a word she was saying: All I could picture was his breath on my neck, his tongue in my mouth as I froze and forgot how to move. My mothers anger, wrongly directed at me, as I resisted turning him in because I truly believed that it had taken two to tango. Him. And me.
I went home, and all I could think about was my life from twelve to seventeen; Looking him in the eye April 17th, for the very last time: A grown woman, wearing a blazer and no makeup that day, knowing I was gonna cry. Not the scared little kid thinking: He chose to be my father, when he really had no obligations to. So he loves me, and so I should love him just the same, regardless.
I've thought this through over and over for so many times, and I've eventually reached the conslusion that sometimes wht hurt me the most is her reactions. How she refused to let me move on, because she never did. How she sometimes still does that; trapped in limbo forced to remember, because she will never forget.
Tomorrow's class is about children removed from home; I remember sitting in my room at Rantzausgade, looking at my file which I'd never seen before, and reading the words ''compulsory placement for Helene, age 16''...Before then I had never really realised that I had actually been placed outside my home, seeing as I went of my own free will. It leaves so many thoughts, like ''did the government really think my homelife was that bad?'', or ''what would have happened, if I had never been removed?.. Who would I be today, had I stayed?''. Worse off, I'm sure.
Every class brings memories to life, situations I haven't even thought of in years, all of a sudden clear as day in my memory. As if everything had happened yesterday, or is still happening around me. It leaves me vulnerable and childlike, empty and fragile. I just wanna be alone, and I have no chance in hell of actually focusing on my school work.
A sentence like ''When a child experiences a traumer like sexual abuse or other strong emotional conflicts, it is in high risk of developing depression, anxiety, OCD and other emotional disorders later in life...'' - And there I sit, a victor, a spectator of the whole show, and I know just too well how a child reacts. Not like I grew up around happy families either.
It's weird, sometimes, being reduced to a theoretical topic of this years' bestseller on childrens' welfare litterature. Like it didn't happen to me, and I can see everything from the outside, studying it in my books. There was nothing unique or special about my life, it's all written down in case by case in topics of children in poverty, children of divorce, children of covert incest, children of broken homes and so on. Like I'm really just a casestudy my psychology teacher once wrote about in her bachelor project years back.
Like I'm not even real. And no one will ever notice.
It's weird, that's all. Being reminded every time I check to see what's homework for tomorrow. Like I'm going through it all over again, whenever I show up in school.
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