-I wrote this the day after therapy last week and worked on it a couple times that week, but wasn't able to finish it until now. Forewarned is forearmed; this is not a Christmasy post.-
I have been crying on and off for the last twenty four hours, since my last therapy session. It was a rough one.
It has recently surprised me to realize that I have not actually grieved for the little girl that I was. It must have felt too overwhelming. The work of putting oneself back together again after the kind of abuse I suffered is a very long work, with many stages. I have finally reached this one.
My therapist had me do dominate hand writing. She had me write with my "wise self" in the right hand and then allow the inner voice of my child self to write with the left hand. I had to do it this way because I couldn't connect with my inner child any other way. It was too frightening, I didn't want to see what she had seen or know what she had had to know.
After I wrote with my right hand that it was all over now, that it was finished and I would never have to suffer that again, I switched the pencil to my left hand. Immediately I was sobbing, like a switch had been thrown. I was sobbing so hard I could barely write. I felt this great cry come up from inside me, this great grief and horror and fear and bewilderment.
In my shaky left hand I scratched out the words "I don't feel safe." Seeing those words in hand writing so like my childish handwriting, the same as those scrawled in a moldy "Precious Memories" diary, nearly overcame me. I felt so much grief for the little girl I had been. She didn't deserve what happened to her. She got caught up in a vile force beyond her power to escape.
I didn't know how to comfort myself. I can't go back in time and save myself, an innocent, voiceless hostage to fate. I can't make it so it didn't happen. I watched the new version of "The Secret Garden" last night and in it, Sarah Crew dreams that she is a very little girl, lost in the garden. She starts to cry, but nobody comes for her. She is alone in the choking weeds.
But it was no dream for me.
Also, I have this growing realization of some thought patterns originating from the abuse. My therapist mentioned that little children tend to believe it was their own fault that these things happen to them. I looked at her in horror, but it didn't connect with me emotionally. I've had these walls up internally, maybe part of the structure that allowed me to repress the memories.
But over the past few days, the emotion is seeping through. I know that as a child I did believe it was my fault. Not only that, but if only I changed something about myself, if only I was a better little girl, a good girl, a very quiet girl, if I dressed a different way, acted a different way, it wouldn't happen to me any more.
Doesn't that just break your heart? Here I am, just little girl, ravaged, and I felt guilty, like people were going to blame me. I carried not just the burden of the abuse, but the burden of guilt for it. That is horrific. That is unthinkable. It makes me so angry.
And just the realization that it happened to me over and over again. How does a person survive that? How does the same little girl survive, year after year, time after time? It's unthinkable.
December 16th
I dug out my old stuffed unicorn from the storage box in the cellar, and I won't lie, I walked around the house with it for a little while in my arms. It was so comforting. And by the way, I am not crazy. What I was doing is a very well respected and common therapy tool.
In fact, I brought my stuffed animal with me to therapy this week (yesterday) and my therapist was delighted to see her.
"Oh, you found a way to nurture your inner child," she cried, clapping her hands together.
I had, and I had found other ways as well. I found it helped a lot to remind myself that my great uncle had died. He was dead. This is very comforting because the part of me that still thinks like a wounded little girl believed him to be an unstoppable force. If he's dead, then there's really no question about whether or not the abuse might happen again; it really won't. Because he died.
Also, I've been telling myself over and over again that the abuse was not personal. It had nothing to do with me, my personality, my looks or my behavior. Instead, I now describe my abuser as a shark, with a pea sized brain, constantly on the move and eating anything it comes in the way of, trash, inner tubes, fish, people. It doesn't care what it eats, because all it has is appetite and forward movement. I just had the terrible fate of landing in his life path.
This is important because my abuser was seductive and made it appear to be about me. The lies he used were that he loved me, I was a special person to him, etc. But in fact he was heartless, primordial. He was like was one of those fish that live deep down in the dark of the ocean, where humans could not survive, shadowed in the black, but with a little dangling lure of false light above his massive jaw.
Innocent fish will be drawn to the light and then be snapped up, disappear in a cloud of debris. The innocent fish cannot help but be drawn to the false light, they can't tell the difference. Just like little children are drawn by promises of false love or attention. They can't tell the difference. Little children are incredibly vulnerable by nature. They can't process complex issues. They have very poor discrimination. They can't help it, it's the way are made.
Over this past week I remembered many things. I remembered what it felt like to be abused, I remembered it vividly. My mind was literally divided. I felt numb. I was blanking out, actively blanking out what was he was doing while focusing completely on what he was saying and there was no option available but to endure. As an adult, I have the options fight, flight or endure. As a child, the first two options were non existent. I had one option available.
Remembering this really helped me understand the horror and the helplessness I felt as a child. Also during the week I had flashbacks of other abuse. These weren't crystal clear. In fact, I will probably never know exactly what happened to me, when it happened, or how old I was when it happened. I'll never have a time line. This bothers me, though my therapist tells me this is common and will not prevent me from healing.
Instead, frequently I feel again what it felt like to be violated. It's like phantom pain after a leg's been amputated. You know the leg is not there, but you still feel the pain. It's very disturbing. I would rather see than feel. It's like this quote from "The Sexual Healing Journey"-
"Your body may feel like a battleground over which you fight ghosts who have great power, reclaiming territory which is your birthright." -Miriam Smolover, therapist
Each time I would feel these things, I would tell myself, "I am so sorry that happened. That was terribly wrong, but it wasn't your fault and it's finished now. At some point that stopped. I don't know how, because I don't remember, but clearly it did because I'm here, right here in my real life and I'm safe now."
Thankfully, those sensations are fading away now. I'll never have to feel that again. The abuser died, his body rots away. I get to go on living, free of him.
