An incident from my past coming back to haunt me

Women don’t know how strong they are until they’re put in hot water.”

Fran Drescher - actress, comedian and rape survivor.

A life without challenges is a life standing still.

Hill Harper - actor, lawyer, author and motivational speaker.

There are two reasons for quoting Fran Drescher; firstly because in 1985 she was raped at gunpoint and as traumatic as that particular incident was it made her realise how much of a strong person she really is. And secondly I truly believe in the saying: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” because believe me, as much as I wouldn’t wish cerebral palsy or CP on anybody, it can’t be stopped from happening and it’s up to medical scientists to find a cure for this permanent disability - something that I’ve prayed for everyday throughout my life. 

The bottom line is that because I have the moderate type of CP that’s why I’m able to physically walk using mobility equipment to help physically support me because I have issues with my balance and I use a wheelchair for long distances because I get tired if I walk for long periods of time.

I guess my type of CP could’ve been a lot worse but I also was and am really lucky to have been given the gift of life as a result of surviving my premature birth.

When we think of the word “haunt”; we often associate it with ghosts, scary stuff and/or scary life occurrences but the word itself actually has 2 meanings: “1. to keep coming back to mind.” and “2. To spend much time at.”

What if certain incidents that have happened in your life have life-changing, devastating or regretful effects on you and as a result you find yourself making comments yourself such as:

• “I often feel like I can only put on a brave face for a certain amount of time”.
•  “I sometimes feel that the pressures of life with my difficult challenges get too much for me to handle”.
•  “How do I deal with the rough patches that come with having the challenges?”
• “I sometimes feel that I have to be in ‘survival mode’”.
•  I sometimes feel like every rough patch that I go through is attempting to emotionally, psychologically and spiritually tear me apart”.

For people who think these things, I’d advise them to get help from a medical professional, or counsellor because sometimes these incidents can be or are there to serve as life lessons to learn from that can be an opportunity to help you or help make you a better person.

I’m sure you are familiar with the saying: “You can’t change the past but you change the future”. Well, I know it may seem like a cliché but it’s true because I have tried to allow my experiences to serve as opportunities that help me to make me a better person.

Sometimes incidents can serve as “wake up” calls for us and they may not always be pleasant to face but please note that making changes to your life sometimes doesn’t happen overnight so I’d advise you to follow the first 2 most important and likely-to-be-followed rules which are: “Take it one day at a time” and “take it emotively (the post-incidental reaction and/or reactive process) one step at a time”. 

In my opinion, the second rule would apply to you depending on if you were involved in scenarios like:

• If you’re being or were being blindsided by another person and/or their attitude.
•  If you unexpectedly find out something about a person that makes you no longer able to trust them for some valid and/or unforeseen reasons (by that I mean trust your own instincts - the ones that your mind creates).
•  If you’re at a party enjoying yourself then suddenly someone spikes your drink, you develop a strong and/or allergic reaction to it (the drink-spiking drug) and before you know it you’re raped.

There’s a specific reason for the title of this piece. Now fortunately for me I haven’t had as many things that have happened to me throughout my life that have come back to haunt me but I have been through the normal/regular challenges that life threw at me like: within-reason: bouts of sibling rivalry, verbal abuse, verbal criticism, bullying, name-calling, discrimination and prejudice which I believe that I survived and dealt with reasonably well.

However, I also went through something that HAS come back to haunt me; and  continues to haunt me whenever I go to visit a doctor and I believe sharing my story may be helpful to others.

Before I disclose the details of the incident, I believe I have some well-known warnings to give you:

• ·      Please talk to your kids about stranger danger.
•   Warn them about cyber-bullying.
•   Allocate “safe” zones in which they can ask for help from strangers like: shopping centres, post offices, police and/or fire stations and/or hospitals.

As a parent, give your child(ren) legitimately definitive answers to the word “abuse” depending on which form it comes in.

•   Learn how to physically treat your body with respect.
•   Learn what “inappropriate physical touching” is. For girls, it’s wrong for them to let boys touch their vaginas or breasts. For boys it’s also wrong for them to willingly touch girls’ vaginas and breasts and it’s just as equally wrong for them (boys) to let girls willingly touch their penises or pecks. [(Please note that this incident may also occur solely between girls - a girl might touch another girl inappropriately) and solely between boys - a boy might touch another boy inappropriately). If it does happen in that way then it is therefore classified as a form of misbehaviour, bullying and/or abuse].
•         Note that if sex is forced upon one without one’s consent then it is hereby considered rape. The word “rape” actually means “the crime of forcing another person to submit to sex acts, especially sexual intercourse”.
•    As a parent, don’t “second-guess” your kids: [(For instance, if your daughter comes to you reporting that she has or is having problems with other girls, please believe her; same goes for your son, if he comes to you reporting that he has or is having problems with other boys then please believe him) and please keep those communication lines open with your kids at all times].

In December 1997, we went to Lebanon because my family understood there was an operation on my legs that would help me walk better so we enquired about it and headed over there to get it done thinking that we’d back in Australia in six months. We ended up living over there for four-and-a-half years.

   While I was there, I got to know my relatives better and went to school and learnt how to speak, read and write Arabic and French fluently which scored me a trip to France on a school camp in May 2000 and a chance to spend a day on the boat with the French boat captain and the French army that was visiting Lebanon in that same year. 

   

   While I was there I also became a mini-linguist and picked up 2 other languages, Russian and Greek. Firstly, I picked up my Greek language streak from an unlikely source, when I was at school; I met a Lebanese physiotherapist who got to do her physiotherapy degree in Greece courtesy of free university scholarships that were being offered to people of the Lebanese Orthodox religion at the time, she was the one that first taught me how to speak Greek. 

   Secondly, I picked up my Russian streak when my cousin married a Ukrainian girl in 1999 who speaks Russian and she was the one that first taught me how to speak Russian, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning both languages because even since I’ve returned to Australia in July 2002, I feel and have been really lucky to have both found and befriended some really nice people of both nationalities with whom I get to practise speaking both of these uniquely and individually beautiful languages with.

  I went on a wild goose-chase trying to find an assistant writer to help me edit this book manuscript poignantly ended up two receive positive feedback letters about the book itself but couldn’t get help by one, I never gave up and keep looking for one (an assistant writer) until one day I watched an internet video of a writing website interviewing a Russian-born American writer who sounded like a wholeheartedly nice, passionate and enthusiastic person about her job as a writer and she was so open to learning about my life challenge which is that I have a disability which I’m really happy about for I believe that my story needs to be told and besides I could also practise speaking my Russian with her.

My purpose for writing this story is because I feel that it has now become my mission to share my experience with people because I found a way not to become self-destructive and not give up on myself learnt to believe that dream(s) can actually come true.                                                                                                                             

You know sometimes life actually does happen in mysterious ways because the reality is bad things do happen to good people, I’m pretty sure that when life throws challenges at us that we might categorise as being be bad then we’re often faced with making split-second and conscious decisions of the following nature:

•  We can either let it control us badly and wallow in our self-pity about it.
• We can either use it, take what we’ve learnt from it and use it to make a difference to others.
• Get our priorities right and decide whether to worry about it or not.

Hill Harper is an American actor who is best known for his work on the TV show CSI: NY and he is also great friends with American president Barack Obama because they were classmates at Harvard Law School where Hill did his law degree.

Hill is also an author and motivational speaker; I got that quote from his book Letters to a young sister: DeFINE your destiny because I am personally and 100% wholeheartedly in agreeance with him on that point because I unfortunately know this saying all too well and can really relate to it myself, and besides let’s face it I’m pretty sure we’ve all felt that way at a given time in our lives.

The reason why I quoted Fran Drescher again is because I felt and believe that she could be a guide for readers throughout this chapter given that she personally went through a similar situation herself, she was raped at gunpoint, in her 1996 book Enter Whining, she chronicles how that traumatic and life-changing experience came back to haunt her when American radio announcer Howard Stern asked her about it 10 years after it happened, of course as you imagine she was shocked at the fact that the media knew about it but agreed to open up to Howard about it in the hope that her experience could save others from going through what she went through.

Moving on. American TV talk show host and sexual abuse survivor Oprah Winfrey always says: “Once you’re abused and/or treated with abuse; it changes who you are, the way in which you choose to life and kills your inner-spirit” and I personally couldn’t agree more with her as the actual meaning of that particular word is, “to use in a wrong or improper way; to hurt or insult”.

I started believing in the truth of that saying after my Greek-speaking Lebanese female, yes, female physiotherapist betrayed my personal trust and violated her duty of care towards me as a physiotherapist when she did something to me that was completely unforgivable and that changed my life forever.

The incident took place in the following way:

1.    I was lying down on the therapy bed on my back wearing top-to-bottom legs’ splints while nude from the waist down during a physiotherapy session.

2.    The physiotherapist then conducts the session and moves it right along when I suddenly feel excruciating pain in my legs that literally brings me tears, I then proceed to tell her (the physiotherapist) and don’t get believed; she then threatens her saying: “Moron, if you don’t shut up then I will strangle you” which then left me petrifyingly scared for my life.

3.    The physiotherapist then angrily comes over, stands opposite me and abruptly shoves my tracksuit pants into my mouth, when then makes me think I’m about to be killed; which then prompts me to gag to get the pants out of my mouth and scream for help to be set free. I never was the same since.

Initially, I tried to “block” that life-changing incident out of my mind because I was 12 at the time and was still in a position where my parents had full responsibility over me and still had to make decisions for me themselves so all that I could do at the time was tell my parents about it and pray that everything was going to be ok and get better, thank God my parents believed me but I presume that they second-guessed me when I told them out of shock because they knew that I was having an extremely difficult time throughout that particular journey that came after I had my operation. But they didn’t expect anything to go wrong with me as she assured and reassurance both my parents that she was going look after me properly and safely.

To this day, I still can’t believe how she managed to “groom” my parents into thinking that the excruciating physical pain that I was expected to go through which would sometimes get so intense that it would bring me to tears, as just a phase.

Can you imagine what it’s like to be bed-ridden for 6 weeks and what it can physically do to your muscles as a result? Well, unfortunately that’s what happened to me on the day that I took my plasters off and it physically felt really weird when I stood up on my feet again after such a long period of time.

I felt really scared for my overall safety when I was in her care after what she’d done to me and deceived, because growing up I was told that girls are good and boys are bad and I was also taught that boys were untrustworthy and violent troublemakers; but having gone through that particular incident at such a young age changed my perception on certain things because it went against everything I was taught to believe in and about people which sent emotional shockwaves around my moral mind, made me feel both scared and reactively emotional sickened with disbelief every time I’d think of it after it happened; and most of all, it made me question whether or not I could ever trust or do what any female medical authority figure asks of me.

But after it happened, I told my parents right away and despite my parents’ shock reaction at first, they did everything they could to make sure I was safe and protected at all times during my physiotherapy sessions after the incident occurred, by transferring me to another therapy unit away for her. This made a huge difference to me in the sense that I could personally trust the other female physiotherapist a lot more and I also felt a lot safer under her care, which did wonders for my attitude because I was able to remain emotionally calm throughout the remainder of recovery.

I did my very best to try and move on and move forward from the assault with the help and support of my incredibly loving family, I guess that one of the harsh lessons that I then found myself having to learn the hard way was that there’s good and bad characteristic traits in each gender and to not trust either one.

As the years went by and despite the fact that my life was running smoothly since the day of the assault, I still have dark days about it, which was normal and okay for me, knowing that I literally cheated death as a result of surviving this incident. Even though I was quite young when it happened to me I knew that I wasn’t alone in this, meaning that I wasn’t the only person that she hurt.

I guess the main lesson that I would highly recommend that parents teach their kids at the earliest possible age is that they shouldn’t have an invincible and complacent “this will never happen to me” attitude towards life because let’s face it, as we can relate comfortably to the same-gendered person that we seek help from, and I guess our personality plays a big role in helping us make that particular decision, which is ok but it’s also equally important that we don’t become “trustingly complacent” because, as I’ve learnt the hard way throughout my life, that sometimes “what you see isn’t what always you get” and “not everything that one gets taught to believe ends up serving them well and/or in the way that it’s supposed to.”

I also wanted to address the subject of violence, which is sometimes defined from the one-dimensional element of “It’s wrong for a ‘man’ to physically put his hands on a woman in anger.” While I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, I also beg to differ with it because I see it as a “double-standard” in that it suggests that “it’s ok for men to ‘misbehave’ as they’ll  ‘be punished’ for what they do wrong” while on the other hand suggesting that “it’s ok for women to ‘misbehave’ and ‘get away’ with behaving badly” which is absolutely unfair.

The reason why I say this, is because, I now know first-hand what it feels like to be deceived and confused after going through a physical assault, particularly if the culprit is a medical authority of the same gender as you that you “trusted” to help you feel better and that you (as a patient) comfortably got along with and trusted, then went on to “love” them.

I suppose this is hard for anyone to bear (especially if you’re the sort of person, who, like me always sees the best in everyone).

As you can imagine this incident shook me to my core and left me with a sense of betrayal because I was taken advantage of.

I don’t know but I guess the common “don’t ask, don’t tell, stiff upper-lip” policy that most immigrant parents instil in their kids has a lot to answer for because it can have a tendency to be perceived in two ways: it can either make you feel trapped, confused, sad and alone which, in turn, can make you suppress your emotions about any given adversity you face; or it can guide the strong sense of resilience which is often needed to cope with life’s adversities.

I guess I can say that my own resilience derives from the fact that it’s always been in my nature to prioritise things.

So although the effects of the assault were devastating at the time on me, I knew I was going to be ok because in my mind and for my then age, I knew that I was in a place of love, safety and respect.

Although I knew that being assaulted was wrong, I still had a lot of growing up to do and couldn’t find a voice to let it out with candour, which did lead me to constantly seek parental reassurance, and frequently feel confused.

I think my feelings of bitterness and anger about what she did to me can be understood because I’ve always hated violence since childhood – I even cringe when I watch violent movies. 

Living in a third-world country where the human rights laws for people with disabilities were pretty poor served as a big hindrance for me in speaking up about it so I ended up secretly suffering in silence for the next 6 years afterwards over it.

Life upon returning to Australia in July 2002 was challenging, as I entered my teens but before I knew it, the year in which I was began adulthood – 2007 approached which made me feel further haunted knowing that it was now hazardous to keep and suppress my assault story. I opened up to one of my psychologists purely because, while it’s always going to be a part of my life, I no longer wanted it to play a negative role in my life at that point. I also didn’t want to affect my growth into adulthood and independence without my family.

People often take my kindness for weakness, which is why forgiveness doesn’t really work for me, because it’s often the cue for people to take advantage of me quite badly. Instead, I often make conscious pledges to redirect my choices to help me move forward in becoming a better person from any adversity I face.

Before the assault, I had a really good rapport with her, and got to know her whole family quite well, so in my mind; the rest of family members don’t need to suffer for what she did to me, which often makes me wonder what version of the story they were told as well as which version of the truth they’re going with and what message my assailant will give her 3 young sons in years to come about what she did to me.