The real story behind chocolate porcelain doll
25 May 2025Before You Read: This post contains sensitive content related to childhood trauma and sexual abuse. Please be gentle with yourself as you read. If this topic is difficult for you, know that it's okay to step away. I was about three or four when it happened. To be completely honest, I can’t give you an exact age. All I know is that I was very young - and it happened.
I have an estimate now, after my mother sent me a picture from when I was a little girl. Viewing that image as an adult shocked me to my core. She was so proud, talking about how cute I looked. I stood in disbelief. It was like the world around me disappeared as I came face to face with that little girl in the photo.
All I remember saying was, “I look so scared.” My words were muffled, but my distress was clear. Still, she insisted, “You don’t look scared…you look cute.”
There I was, visibly trying to break away while he had one arm around me and the other around my sister — giving her an ‘innocent’ kiss on the cheek. The memories of that night came flooding in… I was wearing those pajamas. Those white pajamas. It happened just the night before, and nobody noticed my pain or discomfort. The sheer look of panic on my face.
I wasn’t really listening to what my mother was saying. I was in shock. I was in the middle of a real-life flashback — one I wish I’d never had to relive. One of many.
I was about nine or ten when my mother sent me to stay at the house of the man who had harmed me. I didn’t have a father I could visit, so she picked someone else. At that point, I had no conscious memory of what had happened years before. I just knew I always felt uneasy around him. I wet myself several times in his presence — I didn’t understand why.
Our brains have a way of protecting us. When something is too traumatic to process, the mind tucks it away. It doesn’t erase it — it buries it deep. But the body still remembers. It becomes a quiet ache with no obvious cause. A warning signal without words.
That night, I was told to make myself comfortable in his bedroom. He still lived with his parents in a small house, which I remember as having two bedrooms. Maybe there was a third — but definitely not a third bed.
My anxiety was high, but I brushed it off as homesickness. A little voice inside me said, “Don’t get in that bed.” I didn’t listen. I had no choice. I had no place else to go.
I lay there, restless, trying to find sleep. Then he entered the room and got into bed beside me. My heart quickened, and I still didn’t understand why. He put his arm around me and leaned in close. Then he whispered, in Afrikaans — but I’ll translate:
“Do you want to do it like last time?”
For a moment, everything stopped. My body froze. Suddenly, memories came rushing in. His breath. His touch. The pain. The fear. The silence.
When I came back to the present, I realised what was happening — and I fought back. I used every ounce of energy my small frame had. I broke free and ran.
As I stepped into the hallway, I came face to face with his mother. The hallway was narrow. The moment was brief — but it felt eternal. Our eyes locked, and I knew she knew. I told her I would sleep on the couch and that I’d be heading home the next day. She didn’t protest.
I didn’t sleep that night.
And I haven’t been able to ‘forget’ either memory since.
Back home, something shifted. I looked at everyone around me with suspicion. If she knew, maybe they did too? I began to convince myself that keeping it a secret was a way of protecting them from my pain. I didn’t want to cause trouble. That’s what I had been taught.
From a young age, I learned that expressing pain was seen as an inconvenience:
Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
You’re being dramatic.
Oh, Nita. It wasn’t that bad.
You think that’s bad? Well, I (enter whatever trauma they experienced and label it as much worse). Now fix your face and clean the kitchen.
Every emotion, dismissed.
Every feeling, denied. Invalidated.
No wonder I never spoke up after the first time it happened. I must have known, even then, that silence was the only option. “Children must be seen and not heard.”
I spent years watching the people around me with quiet suspicion. Why did they silence me? Were they protecting him? Were they shielding themselves from the truth?
Most of my teenage years were spent alone — guarded, detached, confused.
I carried this secret into adulthood, and the impact of that trauma — especially being unresolved — shaped my life in ways I could never have predicted.
But that’s a story for another day…
Chocolate Porcelain Doll helped me find the strength to speak the unspeakable. It gave a voice to the silence I carried for decades. Through writing and releasing that song, I was finally able to confront my past — and in doing so, I began to reclaim my power.
My circle is small now, but it’s filled with people who truly see me. People I trust. That shift didn’t happen overnight — but it started when I gave my truth a voice.
If something happened to you, and you’ve kept it a secret — maybe even to this day — I want to gently ask:
Why?
Why did you feel you had to stay silent?
Were you truly protecting your loved ones…
Or were you trying to protect yourself from their possible rejection, disbelief, or betrayal?
“I was a little Chocolate Porcelain Doll
Delicately balancing a facade
To protect those who were meant
To cushion my fall
How was I to know—
They were the monsters after all”
It’s taken decades to speak these words, and I don’t do it lightly. I do it because there’s power in truth. Because silence doesn’t protect us — it isolates us.
And I’m done being isolated.
Until next time — keep the music alive, and the honesty flowing.
Carnita Bee
