Читать книгу I Am Nobody. Confronting the Sexually Abusive Coach Who Stole My Life онлайн

84 страница из 89

It is harder to deal with the lingering uncertainty and confusion created by the disconnect between who you once thought you were and who you now see yourself being. A single incident of abuse by Graham left me with deep questions about myself, questions I answered in ways that left me less than whole.

Who am I? I must not be who I thought I was.

Why did my body respond to his advances and actions? I must have liked it.

Why didn’t I stop it? I must have wanted it and I deserve what I’m feeling now.

But there would be more than just a single incident. Much more.

I was, on the outside, still succeeding at everything. But sexually confused, isolated from my parents, and without close friends at school or a support network within my own hockey team, on the inside I was now alone with a secret, which, if revealed, he had told me, would shatter all of my dreams.

But was I gay? I didn’t have any girlfriends during high school. Oh, I had crushes on girls and I had dates with girls, but I had little free time outside of my extracurricular activities for dating. As much as I thought that I was heterosexual, I couldn’t honestly and unequivocally confirm to myself that I wasn’t gay, especially now that I had had this physical response to a man. There was no Internet to consult about sexual abuse. There was nobody I could speak with, nobody to counsel me. My physical responses to him were all I had to form a judgment against myself.