Day 6 of dark and cloudy weather. Yesterday's version: with rain and fog! Today's version: with snow. Tomorrow's version? Me, running into the street, yelling, "Why God, why?"
On a more cheerful note, I have lost one pound! Apparently, I lost so much in just one day that my average rate of loss was projected at four pounds per week, a figure that will no doubt lead to great disappointment when I've reached the point of actually having been on the diet for a week. Still, I'm convinced that my jeans are just a tad bit more loose.
So I went to see my therapist yesterday, wondering what on earth we were going to talk about this time. I don't like that feeling, it's a little like stage fright. Fortunately, I remembered a dream I'd had a few days ago.
In the dream, I'm walking into a party. This part of the dream was the end of a rather longer dream I no longer remember. But the party was filled with people I already knew from the earlier events. I felt warm and confortable at this party, well known and accepted for who I was.
I look down and suddenly notice that I have this gapping, awful wound on my elbow. It's appalling. The outer flesh has been ripped open, exposing the deeper flesh, which has also been ripped open. I can see deep into my flesh, which looks like tightly coiled worms of flesh packed in against the wall of my bone. Disgust and shame and horror come welling over me.
I can't believe that I've come walking into this party with a wound of this nature. I don't know what to do. It's not bleeding, but it's full of some viscious, clear liquid. I try to ignore it and go on talking to a friend of mine, but I keep getting distracted.
I look down again and see, with greater waves of horror, that there are foreign bodies in the wound, something has gotten in there. It's wilted leaves of lettuce, of all things. I'm sick to my stomach. How can I heal with foreign bodies in my wound? How can I get it out? But I'm not reaching all the way in there, no way! I feel no pain now, but if I touched the raw, ragged edges of the wound, I knew the pain would be electrifying.
With a great effort, I put it out of my mind. When I look down again, I see that almost all the leaves are gone, they must have slipped out again. There is just one remaining, plastered wetly against the wall of coiled flesh, in the deepest level. I can't stand leaving it in there any longer.
I take a long, slender pair of tweezers and ever so gingerly reach into the wound, grasp the leaf and begin to pull it out. But the edges of the wound slide and I see that the leaf has somehow gotten tangled up in my very flesh. I know if I try and pull it out, the pain will be excruciating. It's stuck. Waves of nausea and disgust come over me, I can't do any more, I leave it where it is.
Then I woke up. Of course, it's blindingly obvious what the dream is about. The wound is a symbol of the sexual abuse, the foreign matter inside the deep wound are the beliefs and thoughts about myself that I have as a result of the abuse. I have to pull those things out before the wound can close up and heal.
As an aside, I think the fact that in the dream my wound appears on my elbow is speaking to the fact that I make my healing process public with this blog. Both my pain and my healing are right there in the open. Exposing myself as I do in my blog leads eventually to great relief, perspective and insight. Eventually.
In the short term, it engengers shame, second guessing and horror, all of which I'm used to working through in the days after I blog about something intensely personal. I will be going through that process with this very blog I'm typing.
What truly bothered me was that my subconscious appeared to be telling me that there was something still stuck in there, something else I hadn't gotten to, something so deeply entanged with my integral self that to pull it out would require a great deal of pain.
Who wants to get that message from the subconscious self? But what else can one expect from the subconscious? It's not like the subconcious is going to be like, "Hey, I feel like a Crispy Creme today, let's go eat one," or "I like that color on you, it really brings out your skin tone."
"What else is left?" I asked my therapist, anxiously.
She explained that life itself is a healing process. As long as we are living, we are healing, it's never truly finished.
I get that, but I felt like there was something specific the dream was bringing up. We went back to the few memories I have consciously and evoked them again, in detail. Nothing. What happened to me in the darkness of my own mind? Why is it that even now, I still didn't let myself remember the end of one of them? How bad could it be?
I just felt like, if I didn't know everything that had happened, how could I truly put it to rest? It became clear to me that the last leaf in my dream was symbolizing the memories that still hadn't been made clear.
I had an interesting therapy session, but there was no aha! moment. On the drive home, I was lost in thought. I kept tugging and pulling on that edges of that memory. I did so boldly, not having any fear that if it was still left in dark, then maybe there was a good reason. I just kept yanking away.
As I did, a sudden swirl of emotions and images slipped loose. A whole bunch of things suddenly made sense, in a horrifying way. I felt horror, pity, disbelief, shame, disgust, relief. (As my therapist would say, "Feelings are like grapes; they come in bunches.")
The amazing thing is that if this memory had come to me at any other time in my healing process, it would have come close to undoing me. There would have been no way to put it into context, I wouldn't have had as firm a foundation to support the weight of the shame.
However, because it came to light when it did, I was able to take my child self into my open arms with no hesitation (metaphorically, of course) and begin immediately to severe myself from the shame I had felt. I felt powerful, wise and full of resource. I knew exactly what to say to my child self and I believed it implicitly.
I told myself the beautiful truth over and over again. There is so much power in the truth. I know that the truth sets one free because I have lived it.
The fact of the matter is, I am more powerful than the abuse. I know this, because I define the abuse, not the other way around. The abuse is subject to my own interpretation, therefore I have not merely survived the abuse, I have transcended it.
It becomes something that has brought out not just the worst in me, but the very best, the thing which has given me depth and strength, the thing which has tempered me to steel. It becomes the lense by which I see the unbearable beauty in the world. Because I have allowed myself to feel the horror, the shame, the grief, the helplessness, I am now open to feeling the light and the air, the deep joy of merely being alive, of being loved. I feel everything. I am congruent.
Which makes me realize that there is no hurt, no abuse, no terror or pain so great that the human spirit and the grace of God cannot heal it. What a thing to say! How life tests, right down to the bone, that belief. But I know it to be true in my own life, so I'm going to hold that belief for anyone else that needs it.
