There’s a gospel song that says, “sweep around your own front door before you try to sweep around mine.” I always imagined little old black ladies literally sweeping dirt and leaves off their porches, so they could keep up an appearance of cleanliness by ensuring that the exterior to their homes were blemish free. The problem exists when there was way more dirt inside that needs to be swept away, and I’m not talking dust bunnies. For years, our grandparents, aunts and uncles, swept so many secrets under the rug, underneath the couch, and into the closet that the sounds of the secrets were louder than the Bobby Womack blasting every Saturday morning when it was time to clean the house. Our communities places so much emphasis on outward appearance that when the trauma starts to manifest and secrets start to surface we blame them on other things. I’ve decided that if I’m going to heal, I’m digging deeper and peeling back the layers, so although this one hurts, I’m cleaning house and sweeping out the skeletons. Let’s rip this band-aid off, shall we?

I had my first sexual experience when I was 7. My family was a traveling softball family and there were times that my parents would not allow us to travel with them. We have several older cousins in our family, and they would usually babysit my brother and, making sure we got to school on time, and had breakfast and such, when weekend softball trips carried over into the week. My mom has a huge family and usually one of her sisters who had older children would watch us, as they were responsible enough to make sure we were safe from the perils that await young black men in American, especially in the south. We would have to share beds with them and the older brother would usually come in and sleep in the room with me. He was the first initiator of the molestation I experienced. I remember being in first grade, and sleeping in my tighty whiteys. He reached his hand over my waist and began rubbing my penis, calling it a little torpedo. I was totally clueless, and nothing about it felt right, but he would whisper in my ear, telling me this was ok, and that this is how cousins love each other. He told me I didn’t have to tell anyone about it because it happened all the time. That’s what cousins do. His brother lay across from us giggling and joining in. I remember just laying there still and he pulled down my underwear, rubbing his erection against my butt. He didn’t penetrate, but I felt him doing something to himself. At that time, I didn’t know what it was, but he was masturbating, and he would ejaculate on my butt.

This continued to happen for few years after this and both brothers got involved. There was grinding, rubbing, and attempts a penetration. There were all kinds of “games” and “skits” that I was apart of, and I would eventually begin to welcome the advances and attention because I knew very early that I was attracted to men, and I thought this was how people showed love to each other. I didn’t know that this kind of interaction was not healthy. There’s a level of betrayal that’s very different when someone you were supposed to be able to trust, manipulates in to something they know you should not be doing. There’s a deeper betrayal when you welcome the very thing you shouldn’t. Your own mind has been washed with so much that you welcome the attention that you seek in ways that harmful and unhealthy. The words “sissy” and “faggot” were thrown around a lot where I’m from and I determined early on that my attractions were shameful. I learned that by welcoming them, I was becoming the very thing I hated to hear them say. “You must be a sissy if you like being touched like this. You gone be a faggot when you grow up.”

I addition to this, I was a chubby. Being pudgy as a child had it own set of problems because I always had breasts, and that seemed like an open invitation to have them poked or fondled. I walked with a switch and I was smacked on the ass a lot. All of this warped my sense of self and identity. I became a recluse. I ate more and played less. I read books under my bed and never wanted to go out. All of these things kept me from being a carefree black boy. I was afraid to express emotion because I’d be deemed too feminine. I played sports because I enjoyed them, but also because I knew that boys who played sports would never be called those hurtful names. I wouldn’t get undressed in the locker rooms during gym. I never wanted to be alone with men. I didn’t trust male figureheads and preferred the company of girls and women because they never touched me inappropriately. I wasn’t a threat. I wasn’t an interest. I was safe, and so were they. I ate my feelings and swaddled myself in my solitude. My pain became my comfort.

My childhood trauma and history surfaces more and more as I age because I never really dealt with it. I wasn’t allowed to. I silenced myself as a child and continued to do so well into adulthood because it was easier to be silent than to rock the boat. Now, I see how that impacted my adult relationships. You don’t confess your pain, once you’ve had your pain ignored. You don’t trust people to protect you, if you’ve been left unprotected. For years, I’ve been afraid to go home and face the truth. For years, I’ve laid my heart in to the hands of men who resemble the only man I know has loved me unconditionally, treated them like my abusers at the first sign of distrust, tried to counteract that gut reaction with blind trust, thinking that maybe if I do the opposite of what my instinct tells me, I can experience what real love looks like. I went about love all wrong. I went about life all wrong; reliving one traumatic experience after the other, seeking to find something that I could only find in myself.The only thing I’ve ever need was forgiveness. I needed forgiveness so that I could give myself permission to love every part of me, even the things I’ve locked away. I’ve yet to forgive myself for not speaking up, and stopping what could have been stopped. I haven’t forgiven myself for the pain my silence caused. I haven’t forgiven myself for never allowing anyone to see the pain and love me through it. I don’t love myself because I allowed this thing to happen to me, and my silence allowed it to happen to other people. I feel guilty every single day of my life. I’m supposed to be caring for others, and I look into the eyes of boys and girls everyday hoping that someone protects them because no one protected me. I teach them advocacy and to care for one another because no one taught me that my voice mattered. I teach them to love themselves because there is no one like them and what they contribute to the world matters on so many levels, but, here I am, this broken shell of a man, constantly giving pieces of myself to others to make them whole. I’m a fraud, and for years, I’ve carried the shame of wanting to shield my family from the truth, only to realize that I’m not the only one who had these experiences. We held our tongues and cried silently while our predators lived their lives with little to no consequence. We watch them have children of their own and prayed that they would suffer the same fate. We’ve poured ourselves into meaningless exploits and unhealthy co-parenting relationships. We’ve allowed paranoia to cloud our judgment and lived our lives as adults seeking refuge from our childhood pain, hoping that the cycles don’t repeat in our next generation.

I’ve emptied this closet and laid everything out into the open, so I could get a really good look at who I am and what I’m carrying. I want to be proud of me. I want my family and other people to be proud of me for the things I’ve actually conquered. I’ve accomplished a lot in spite of circumstances, but the really big things, like this one, I left to fester because I wasn’t brave enough to acknowledge its existence, or strong enough to lay these bones bare. I honestly cannot tell you what happens next or where I go from here. I don’t feel better for saying any of this, but I feel ready for whatever road this leads me down. That 7 year old little boy lying in the bed, afraid to speak, just grew up to face his demons and for the first time since I can remember, they don’t seem so gigantic. Once you sweep them out into the open, and call them what they are, skeletons don’t seem so scary. Now, I just have to find the proper way to dispose of them. Still healing, but sometimes you have to slow down to speed up. The journey continues.