The pain is like a weed. You’re trying to rip her out, she’s growing up, says actress in intimate sexual abuse confession

In the interview you will learn, among other things:

• How childhood sexual abuse destroys the victim’s adult life.

• In what environment did Iris grow up and how did she break out of it.

• If a relative who abused several children in the family was punished.

• Why Iris decided to turn her confession into a stand-up.

• What has ever helped her the most, and what, on the contrary, dragged her down.

• And when one “savior” turned into another predator.

The trauma of sexual abuse permeates everything, especially when it happened in the family. It destroys lives. It destroys self-esteem. The injured person is hurt by more and more situations and more and more statements that act as a trigger. When the victim is a child, the trauma does not go away with the end of childhood. It can be a lifelong pain.

Someone is beating her with another pain. Or they drink too much. Or he gets drunk in the haze of a drug rush. It overwhelms with instant pleasure experiences. It turns into workaholism. Setting boundaries is a problem.

Someone can’t stand the pain in the end, it reaches a point where they fall into absolute hopelessness…

But fortunately, many victims choose to live. And he tries to heal his injuries. It may take years, decades, but thanks to therapy, they can live a varyingly good or happy life (on the whole scale of what we can imagine under a good and happy life).

Despite how many children and adolescents have been injured in this way or have been injured for a long time by people who were responsible for them – teachers or educators or leaders at camps, but especially people who are relatives, loved ones and those closest to them (and even with tacit consent or just averting their eyes other loved ones), it is still difficult for part of society to understand how deep the consequences of such abuse are.

This wound did not have to bleed. It’s internal bleeding. On the soul.

There are victims who remain silent all their lives. Others are mentioned in whispers in front of someone close to them, sometimes in hints and in public. And someone decides to name everything out loud.

Stand-up Your Pain

And that’s exactly what actress Iris Kristeková did. On the theater stage. In close cooperation with the director Miřenka Čechová, they transformed the darkly grotesque story of her small-town “white-trash” family and the painful story of sexual abuse into a cruel but entertaining stand-up Iris.

The viewer gradually becomes convinced that this is really a very personal story, that the actress is not just its interpreter. But he tries to comfort himself that something is definitely exaggerated…

“But not at all. It’s all true,” says Iris Kristeková and breaks into a contagious laugh, behind which you can still feel great pain. Now she has decided to share her story with readers.

“As much as I wanted to die, I want to live now!” So reads one of the last lines of her performance. Iris believes (and everyone who loves her hopes so) that the worst is out of the way. He heals, he heals. And he perceives stand-up as a borderline experience, a springboard to take a breath.

But the chandelier was retractable

Iris has had darker and lighter periods. “What’s it like to live with it? You don’t value yourself. You are not capable of establishing a normal relationship. You have no anchor. You live with a strong feeling that you don’t belong in this life. You don’t understand him. You are struggling with emotions that attack you unannounced.

Something went horribly wrong in childhood. You long for a relationship, but you fall in love with unattainable ideas because you are inadequate. Or you’re trying to glue another sick person.”

The depression period was sometimes on the edge of survival. “I discovered that I couldn’t even take my own life, which involved some tragicomic embarrassments. Maybe the chandelier was retractable,” he laughs.

“For a while I wished something would fall on me or run over me.”

We sit in silence for a while. We are in the kitchen of her apartment, a cat occasionally rubs against our legs.

Iris narrates. He gestures animatedly. The trauma used to be strongly prescribed to her at work, at rehearsals in the theater, which are often very contact-oriented.

“I realize I’m intense. It wasn’t easy for me at times. I used to be relational, oversensitive. I threw the pain into the piss. It is a mask, but an inappropriate one, unusable in society as well as in the theater.

And we almost didn’t try one thing. One colleague who liked me made inappropriate suggestions. I told him to leave it alone, that I don’t think it’s funny. He still didn’t understand that I wasn’t kidding. He didn’t understand what triggered it in me.

Those people just have no idea what it can open up. I never wanted to hurt other people with my pain. They don’t mean it badly. Damn, you see, I’m defending everyone again. I’m always defending someone. Unfortunately, I still tend to excuse even those who have done far worse things.’

Iris does not wish to identify the person who not only hurt her so much in her childhood. In the interview, he uses strong vulgarity for him, in the text he remains “relative”.

“Part of the family members knew what was going on at home and they pretended not to see anything anyway. After a big argument, one of them said to me: But please, you wanted it before.” A relative sexually assaulted her