I can trace the root of my body dysmorphia to one specific event from my childhood. My nine-year-old self sat on my biological father’s (Gary) lap in his trailer home. I remember I was wearing a Tweety Bird quarter zip sweater. I was fidgeting with the stitching on Tweety’s head when Gary said, “You would look so much better if you could lose some weight.” In that moment, I felt for the first time that I was inadequate. If I was inadequate in my own father’s eyes, everyone else must feel the same way about me. That moment was the start of my lifelong battle with negative self-image, never feeling like I was accepted, and the breakdown of the last remnant of my already broken relationship with Gary.
I don’t like to call my biological father by any other name besides his actual name, Gary. Being a “dad” or a “father”, I have come to learn, is a title that is earned. A father is nurturing, physically and emotionally present, and plays an active role in raising and shaping his child. Gary was a drunk, a pornography addict, and an abuser. I wish I could say that it was solely emotional abuse I endured at his hands. But his hands were the defining issue: he was a child molester. I wonder what was going through his head when he decided he wanted to molest his own daughter. Sick, twisted, and vile things that I can never comprehend. He chose to put his hands on his own flesh and blood, he chose to defile his daughter in ways she, I, would never completely recover from. He ruined me before I even had a chance at life. Gary has been dead for eight years now. And here I am today still fighting and running from him.
I actually didn’t know that Gary molested me until I was in my early teens. Doctors say that severe trauma has a way of making us forget the unspeakable things that happen to us. It’s almost as if our brains are protecting us, holding tightly to and hiding those memories that would otherwise destroy us. I don’t remember the times he molested me. I don’t remember cowering in bed one night when my mother was asking me what was wrong. I don’t remember how I told her at almost four years old that “Daddy touched me here. He was hurting me and wouldn’t listen to my words.” Even with not remembering these incidences, I have always felt like I was poisoned. I have carried this weight and fog around with me since being molested that I never understood until I found out about it. That fog has since lifted, but I was still heavy. I was still poisoned. I think the worst part about all this was that I had tried and begged relentlessly for Gary to love me and want a relationship with me when all along he was the source of my poison. I so desperately wanted a relationship with the man who molested me. And I didn’t even know it had happened until after he died.
I spent the majority of my childhood chasing someone who never wanted me. Someone who molested me. Someone who destroyed me. Even now as I write this, I feel the poison seeping back into me past the barriers I have worked so hard to build while seeing a therapist this past year. Writing about this is hard. So hard. I can feel the pain welling up in me almost as if all the trauma took place yesterday. I have come so far in my healing process, but I still have so much more to sort out and make sense of. I think it is time for me to continue my healing through sharing my pain with others. I believe God is calling me to this project, and I hope that I can find healing and peace in my writing.
Emily Smith 
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