Doctor

I had no idea, at the time, that what he was doing was incredibly inappropriate. I just knew that it made no sense. 

I was five or six years old. He was a teenager. We were playing Doctor on his bed.

He told me to lie down and proceeded to lie on top of me, crushing me under his weight. I didn’t try to push him off or wiggle my way out. He said we were just playing, but I’d never played Doctor like that before.

He didn’t take my temperature. He didn’t check my pulse. He didn’t even bother to check the reflexes in my knees. But I played along with his version of Doctor because he was older than me, and time and time again I’d been told to listen to my elders.

So I laid there like a good little patient. No fighting back. No screaming for help.

Thirty-eight years later, I have no memory of what he did beyond lying on top of me. I don’t know if he was aroused or rubbed up against me. I don’t know if there was any fondling of some sort. I just know that what he did was sexual, entirely inappropriate and I should’ve told someone.

It was the first time I’d experienced childhood sexual abuse and kept it to myself. Sadly, it wouldn’t be my last.

I often wonder if more details of the abuse will unfold as I continue to work through it in therapy. In all honesty, I don’t want to remember yet another painful part of my past and I don’t ever want to play Doctor again.