This week, we continue our series with Amy Oestreicher, who shares with us how she broke her silence, healed from the secrets that had made her sick, and created a life that leaves her abuser small and in the shadows.
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At 18 years old, I was prepared to make a lot of
life-changes. After all, I was about to
venture into the world of independence – that April, I had received my college
acceptance letters. When an unforeseen blood clot caused my body to go into
septic shock, my life really did change forever.
It turned into six years before I’d ever be able to put food
into my own body, rather than relying on intravenous fluids. I eagerly waited for the day I could finally
eat again, which came after a 19-hour surgery requiring three shifts of nurses
and doctors. I’d be happy, normal, and
finally feel like me again. Eating food made me feel again, but it also made me
remember, even the things I didn’t want to remember, things that I thought a
coma had permanently repressed.…like the hurt and confusion I had felt burning
in my gut, but was too afraid to tell anyone about. Suddenly I was flooded with
alarming memories of having been sexually abused by my voice teacher, also my
godfather, for months before all this began. This huge role model in my life
shattered my trust in an instant, plaguing me with anxiety that grew worse and
worse until that stomach ache changed my world overnight.
My mother always used to say our secrets made us sick. If I told a little white lie about what the latest cafeteria meal tasted like,
she’d tell me that my body was really the one who’d be sorry if I didn’t eat
the steamed vegetable trio of carrots, peas and cauliflower that kept
Wednesday’s magic meatloaf company. If I told her I had done my chores
when I was really diving head-first into the latest Harry Potter novel, she’d
tell me I’d have to live with that guilt when she ended up having to do
yesterday’s laundry. When I didn’t tell her what my friend had called me
when I came home from school with a sniffly red nose and tears lining my
eyelids, my mother said it’s not good for my soul to bottle up feelings so
tightly.
My family keeps a lot of secrets. In
a household with three older brothers romping around, someone was always
looking to stir up some good-natured sibling rivalry
or pull a harmless prank. Some secrets were more serious, I’m sure,
but as the youngest and only girl, there were probably many things I didn’t
know about, although I was always curious.
I remember feeling
exasperated as a child,
feeling extremely loved, but not very “relatable,” because of the huge age
gap between me and the rest of my family. I learned that some things made
the most sense to keep to myself.
If we didn’t talk about things, they didn’t happen — even
if they had happened already.
While I sensed my family kept their day-to-day “secrets,” I
kept a secret far more burdensome. When I was seventeen, my voice teacher
started molesting me after promising to be my mentor, my godfather, and a man I
could always trust. I didn’t mean to keep it a secret, but I was so naïve
that I didn’t even realize what a pedophile actually was.
I had no idea I
was being molested and couldn’t fathom the idea of such a tremendous betrayal. I was just confused. Our family didn’t talk about things like that.
When I was betrayed by
someone whom I really trusted, I didn’t know what to do. I was hurt,
betrayed, confused, and afraid to tell anyone about these frantic, tumultuous
feelings that were suddenly tormenting me every waking second.
I learned that our secrets do
keep us sick. We lock emotions, memories — any terrible things we might
try to suppress — in our fragile, mortal frames.
For months I kept that secret inside
— the secret of something so horrific, I couldn’t even comprehend it.
My secret made me sick. All that anger, guilt and
confusion. I felt it in my stomach. And two weeks after I turned 18 years
old, my stomach exploded due to a blood clot, which later was hypothesized to
be caused from a stress ulcer. My molestation was
a very stressful secret.
Suddenly, my family could keep no secrets.
When the glowing baby girl of the family suddenly ends up in
a coma for
months and lands on the cover of every local news story, it’s hard to keep
everything quiet. If you don’t share your secrets, people will tell your
secrets for you — even if they’re the wrong secrets.
As my health worsened,
the whispers of others grew louder. In an effort to stomp out concerns,
theories and rumors about everything from anorexia to cancer to getting hit by
a bus, my mother spoke the secret I had told her in confidence just two weeks
before. Amy was molested.
My secret leaked when I was in a coma. In
my sedated, comatose trance, it was too late for my disclosed secret to heal
me. When I awoke months later and my ventilator was finally removed, the
first words I breathlessly shouted were, "It was him!"
This radical realization was overshadowed by the surgeon’s subsequent disclosure. I had no stomach anymore, I couldn’t eat or drink, and he didn’t know when or if I’d ever be able to again.
They had kept this secret from me as long as they could but
decided to tell me when I appeared "healthy enough" to hear it.
But I was too afflicted by my own secrets to
be saved at that point. My secrets had made me sick.
Now it was up to me to start speaking up.
As soon as I was discharged from the hospital, although
weak, worn and still unable to eat or drink, my parents took me to a lawyer in
the effort to bring some kind of closure to the massive traumas that had
happened. When you can’t fix a destroyed digestive system, you try to fix
what you can and blame the nearest person you can persecute.
As we explained my complicated case and asked about the "ins
and outs" of testifying in court against my molester, the lawyer looked at me
compassionately and explained to my parents that I had been through so
much. Testifying would be a terribly emotional,
grueling process. What was important was that I heal physically.
So this secret was put on the back burner until I got "healthy."
Ten years have passed since my stomach exploded, and the
headlines have slowly changed from "surgical
disaster" to "medical
miracle." I’ve changed from a Ms. to a Mrs., from starving for
nutrition to hungry for life. But I still have secrets, and so does my
family.
Every time my father drove us to a doctor’s appointment at
my hospital in New
After a bit of spying, we learned that my father drove right
back to my voice teacher’s street every week, just pacing up and down the
sidewalk, waiting for that one moment where my molester would come out of
hiding and my father would, well — I’m not sure. That’s one secret I’ll
hopefully never have to find out.
My father was
waiting for that final confrontation which I had given up on years ago.
My father could
never hurt a fly, and has never been one to look for a confrontation. But I
know that’s not what he was looking for. He too,was left so emotionally
wounded, and ached for some kind of resolution to the hurt that was caused
to him, his daughter and his family.
I’ve never talked to my father about his trips to New York.
We all know why he kept driving back, but we’re scared to talk about it
with him, mostly for ourselves. Some things are easier to not talk about
at all.
I still get asked why I don’t try to testify in court now or
why I don’t try to confront him or attempt to expose the sociopath that changed
my life forever. I don’t think of it as a secret anymore. I know it
in my heart, and it’s my truth. Just because I haven’t shared his name or
confronted him directly doesn’t mean the universe
can’t hear my secret.
To the man who molested me as soon as I turned seventeen:
I am not going to tell the world who you are. I am not
even going to tell you this directly or look for a way to get my message to
you.
I’ve shared my story.
I’ve written a one-woman
musical about my life.
I’ve painted it, sang it, yelled it, danced it,
known it, felt it, mourned it, accepted it, moved through it.
I’ve gotten married. I’ve gotten divorced. I’ve been
betrayed, and I’ve been hurt, but I will not let that destroy my ability to
have faith in my future, and have my trust put in others. It is our ability to trust that makes a rich
and vivid tapestry of pleasure and pain, struggles and triumphs, trials and
lessons learned.
You are my art, my theatre, my story, my growth, my
lesson learned.
But you are NOT my secret.
As my mother said, our secrets keep us sick.
And your secret will keep you sick.
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