I'm in the corner of my childhood bedroom, lying on my back, and my daddy's impossibly large hands are in front of me. He's changing my diaper. I'm currently sans diaper, and daddy is surely going to put on another one. What a nice daddy, changing my diaper when that's mommy's job. What a nice daddy to take one of those big, long fingers and probe at the vagina of his daughter, who, even as a toddler, knew something was wrong. Grandpa was told "daddy touched me," by the toddler and soon after, daddy no longer lived with us.

I haven't seen my dad since around this time. All I have of him is a fuzzy mental picture of a large white male's hand, set on doing disastrous and perverted things; but mostly set on finding a bit of power through a spot of toddler molestation.

For all that it sounds reprehensible, I don't feel anything. I feel a detached sense of disgust, as if I were telling someone else's story and merely feeling sympathy for them. Perhaps I'm perpetually in the denial stage that follows from traumatic experiences.

I do not talk to my dad now, nor do I really conceive of him as my father. He didn't pay child support, and he's never shown interest in me.

I long thought of my father as a sickened individual, a byproduct of a bad childhood and a perverted will. While those things are certainly related, so is the fact that he's a man in a system of patriarchy, and at the age of three, he saw my vagina and associated me with "girl."

I'm a victim of incest molestation. But I'm also a survivor - however numb I may be.