I hadn’t even been living on my own for a full week, and already, disaster had struck. About five days earlier I had been discharged from the nursing home that I not-so-lovingly referred to as Hell-Crest Commons where I had been held prisoner for six months, I had then moved into the Independent Living section of Side By Side Assisted Living in Pittsfield. While I had been loving, living at Side By Side, earlier that morning I’d been molested by a man that I thought I could trust. I’d been molested by a man that I thought was my friend.
Not knowing what to do, I had called the main building, and Marina, the overnight staff had picked up and was on her way over from the main building to my apartment to help me out.
I just sat there in my chair waiting for her.
My heart was still racing, I could hear it pulsating rapidly in my ears it was going so hard and fast. My foot was dry now and planted back on the footrest, but to me, it still felt slimy and dirty and gross. It was sore too. John had grabbed and wrenched it hard when I had been struggling to pull it back away from him to get him to stop with the lotion and massage and “Sex is a beautiful gift that I want to give to you, let me give you that gift,” talk.
My stomach felt slimy and gross too. My hands were shaking badly. My whole body was trembling.
There was a knock on the door. My stomach lurched. My heart skipped a few beats. Part of me was terrified, what if it was John coming back to finish the job. I was suddenly acutely aware of how weak and defenseless and vulnerable I was.
“It’s Marina, I’m opening the door with my master key,” Marina called into the apartment.
It’s just Marina, I told myself, trying to calm myself down, but my body was on high alert mode, and every little noise was making me twitch. I had taken enough psychology classes and gone to enough individual and group therapy sessions to know that this was my PTSD and that it was flaring up super terrible because I had just gone through an acute trauma, and that sounds all nice and simple written down on paper but in real life its all a big mess of feeling terrified, dirty, alone, angry, sad and a whole mess of everything else.
“What’s going on Becca?” Marina asked me, once she had let herself in.
I opened my mouth to speak but started sobbing instead.
Marina came over to me and began rubbing my back.
“What happened sweetie?” she asked. “what happened? You can tell me anything and I’ll figure out a way to help you with it. You don’t need to suffer alone. Oh, you poor baby, you poor sweetheart.” She rubbed my back while I cried out all my tears for a few minutes before I spoke. I needed to cry those tears. I needed to purge myself of them. It was so reassuring to have a stable adult in here helping me, telling me I could tell her anything and that she would help me. She would know what to do, and I wouldn’t have to carry this alone.
“That man, John Halipern, he came over to my apartment this morning and he said he wanted to fix the internet, so I let him in, and he started massaging my feet with my lotion and I tried to get him to stop and pull my foot away and he wouldn’t stop and he just kept holding my foot, massaging it in an overtly sexual manner, talking about how he could give me the gift of sex, and it would be beautiful, and then he picked up my shirt and kissed me on my stomach, and the whole time I was screaming at him to stop and yelling for help. Finally, he heard Jim moving around upstairs, stopped, and just ran out.” I explained.
“He sexually molested you?” Marina asked me.
“Yes,” I started sobbing again.
“Did you tell anyone?” Marina asked me.
“Just you,” I said.
“Well I think you should tell your parents,” she told me.
“I just feel so helpless, and scared, and dirty, and I’m terrified to see him again,” I explained.
“Yeah, what an asshole!” Marina agreed with me. “The man is old enough to be your grandfather, that’s just awful.”
“That’s what I told him,” I told her.
“Do you need help washing up?” she asked me
“I think I’ll just wait for my aide to come in, I just needed someone to know what happened because I just felt so scared and overwhelmed,” I explained.
“Well, I think you should lock your door and not let anyone in except your aide and just wait for your aide to get here, but I also really think you need to reach out to your parents. They need to know what happened so that they can help you cope. Getting molested is traumatizing, you’re going to need help coping.” Marina said.
“Oh, believe me, I know that,” I agreed with her.
“I have to go back to the main building,” Marina told me. “They will chew me out if they find out I came over here and left the main building unattended but you sounded so distraught.”
“Thank you so much for coming over,” I thanked her. Then before I could stop myself I was sobbing again as I wheeled down the hall to be polite and let her out.
I was planning on calling my mom to tell her what had happened to me, but just then one of my friends from Hell-crest Commons messaged me on Facebook. She was the daughter of an elderly couple. I used to sit with her in the coffee area and we’d discuss writing and blogging and all sorts of books and things like that. She video messaged me and saw what a mess I was and could tell that I’d been crying.
“What’s wrong?” she’d asked me.
“Do you swear not to tell anyone?” I’d asked her.
“I swear,” she’d told me.
So I had told her about John molesting me and my history of abuse and how I was about to call my mom and felt so dirty and gross and like I just wanted to disappear and just stop existing and because I felt that contaminated and ruined and violated.
My friend was really sweet and reassuring and after we talked for a little bit I did feel a little better and then I called my mom.
“How are you coping now?” My mom asked me when I told her I’d been molested.
I told her I was pretty upset She said she’d call Lesley and give her a heads up about what happened so that she didn’t walk into a crisis blindsided.
My mom wasn’t sure who to report the molestation to, she was afraid to go to the police without permission from Side By Side because having a resident get molested by another resident at a facility doesn’t look good for Side By Side. I had just moved in, she didn’t want me to get kicked out of there a week after I had moved in simply because John decided to molest me and we reported it. She thought maybe we should report it directly to either Chrissy or Eve. I agreed with this despite fantasizing about calling the cops and watching them drag John off in handcuffs for what he had done to me.