Trigger Warning: The following blog may contain sensitive imagery.

I “forgot” about my abuse. I didn’t remember anything about my childhood before I was 11 or 12 years old. Forgetting, a form of denial, is a common coping mechanism. Looking back, the clues were there, but I didn’t know. Several times a month a dream recurred. In it, I walked through our home where I had lived until we moved when I was 15 years old. When someone unexpectedly touched me from behind, I jumped. In a movie, a sinister figure chased a boy in the dark and I cringed in fear.

One day, as a middle-aged adult finishing a 12-mile run, a memory flashed through my brain. Tears flowed and the first painful linking of my past forced itself on me. Then I knew: I had been sexually molested. Over the next months, other incidents seeped into my consciousness.

I kept trying to convince myself that the abuse hadn’t happened. About that time, the false-memory syndrome became national news. Apparently, a few therapists had inadvertently planted false memories in their clients. I hadn’t gone to a therapist, but I wanted mine to be false memories.

But they were real.

I’m an imaginative person and, despite the inner turmoil, I tried to banish those experiences as self-inventions. “They’re not true,” I cried. “I’ve made them up.”

But they were real.

Once I faced the truth about my tormented childhood—and for months it was a struggle—the healing process began.

“They were real,” I said to myself repeatedly. “They happened.”

Those two simple, oft-repeated sentences opened the door into my long-hidden pathway of denial. Later, my three sisters corroborated my memories, even though they weren’t aware of the abuse.

Now I know. They were real.

Yes, I was molested. Those things happened. Because I accept that fact, I am overcoming the pain.

- By Cecil Murphey

Cecil Murphey has written two books on sexual abuse. The first was When a Man You Love Was Abused and Not Quite Healed. He is the author or co-author of several best-selling books including 90 Minutes in Heaven, which was on The New York Times’ best-seller list for five years and Gifted Hands: the Ben Carson Story.www.menshatteringthesilence.blogspot.com

The mission of 1in6 is to help men who have had unwanted or abusive sexual experiences in childhood live healthier, happier lives.

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