Her Eyes

            So, the desire to never leave the house again is still here. I fight it to go out. My brain is still a tangled mass of fiber optic threads. The paths they once neatly followed are barely visible underneath the heap of glowing yellow strands. At least the fire works have slowed down. There is not as much exploding now.

I still have no proverbial shoes on. My feet are ice cold. For the past several weeks it has felt like this process of remembering is eroding and devouring my life energy. Having verbalized that in therapy last week, the last half of this horrendous memory came out very quickly. Instead of weeks or months to ease it out, the rest of it came in one session.

The whole point of drawing it out was to survive it. Our amazing therapist has been painstakingly distancing us from the images so that we are not overwhelmed. We have lost parts for months at a time who just disappeared due to being re-traumatized during the remembering. Our therapist says we are getting stronger and are doing better. It is hard for me to see how I am objectively. It does not feel like winning this war is worth knowing what I now know.

How much I really know is very relative. I have “known” the main points of this memory for quite a while… or rather, someone has. There are different levels of knowing also. Memories that have been packed away from ones consciousness are often broken down into elements:

1)      Images

2)      Emotions

3)      Somatic sensations (Body memories)

4)      Cognitive knowing

These elements can be remembered separately. I have had flashes of cognitive knowing and images. The emotions have mostly come out in session. The terror has always been with me. I just did not know what it was or where it came from. It masqueraded as many things through out my life. It learned to skip in and out of my experiences, keeping its disguises so I wouldn’t remember too soon. My ability to hold back the feelings has been eroding. Keeping everything manageable is a delicate balance.

            I can hardly handle knowing what happened. I feel like a dancer in an endless pirouette. My skin hurts. My ears hurt. My eyes hurt. Maybe like sensory overload. I don’t know what is worse…taking a long time to remember…or remembering quickly. I suppose there is no easy way through this minefield!

            It is her eyes that I see…every waking minute of the day. Eyes from a dirty face streaked with tears. She is gagged, and at this point, all her tears are spent. I did not know one could cry until there were no more tears. I know it now. Her eyes held mine steadily. Our eyes were locked in a wordless conversation. They flickered hope, shouted pleadings, faded into despair, and then started over again. I can see the hope finally fading in her eyes. I cannot bear watching the image of her dying. Her eyes were focused on mine until they turned in resignation to look at my father. She was so very brave. If she’d had a chance she would have won, fighting back. My inner children refer to her as “the poor little girl who never got to go back home.”

            I don’t know if their bodies were ever found in that deep grave behind the First Baptist church in Bladenboro. Maybe their families are settled and at peace. They may not still be alive…but if it matters in the eternal scheme of things, I have no doubt that someone will find them

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Then and Now

“I’ve lived my life seeing through sunglasses, hearing through earmuffs, touching through gloves, breathing through a face mask. I have painted my experience with a 3-foot long paintbrush… now I have begun to use finger paints. My sunglasses are gone, so are the earmuffs. I lost the gloves and face-mask sometime last week. I am naked and exposed, in pain. To live like this might kill me…but I’ll die without doubt if I stay as I was.”

Owning my stuff

Today I publicly take ownership of me...all of me. Katherine started this blog while I was sleeping...and Charlotte removed references to me. Now I will, for good or ill, own it. The only ill I can see is negative reactions from my siblings, cousins, or in-laws. My mom is gone now, and she is the only one I care about protecting.

I have, for the most part, tried to hide my multiplicity. The whole purpose of DID during childhood is to hide the truth of the abuse from everyone...mostly yourself. Keeping everything at an even kneel is paramount to survival. I'm done hiding. I'm done making excuses for my father. I'm done shielding everyone who doesn't believe what I remember. I'm done doubting myself (no doubts for today anyway). I want to stand up straight and look around me. I want to look through the crowd and over the crowd, not at the ground around my feet. I may not have shoes on, but I am standing. One day, I will fly!

ACE's...Adverse Childhood Experiences

 An amazing study done on the physiological effects of childhood trauma. 

http://acesconnection.com/

Sobering, frightening and validating. It's purpose is to educate, inform and explain why adults abused as children suffer from so many physical problems. Illnesses that are hard to diagnose and are even harder to treat.

Check it out. 

To My Doodle Bug Friend

My heart is soooooo heavy. Yesterday was an old friends birthday. We were 12 together. We both were creative and loved to draw. We would write notes to each other decorated with "Doodle Bugs." We were 12 together for only a short time because the innocence lost when we were 12 changed us both.  His father was also a sex addict and child molester. I'm guessing their house was full of incest too. G's father was one of my eighth grade teachers.

My father, along with G's dad and several other men did unspeakable things to us one day. I was lucky to dissociate and spin off alters to hold the pain and the memory. G wasn't so lucky. I remember wondering a year or two later why G was so distant. We had been good friends. I could see incredible sadness and pain in his eyes...but I had no clue why.

A few years ago I started remembering what happened that day. I searched until I found G. I called and left messages but he would never call back...finally I was able to talk to him. He came to the phone angry. I told him that I thought of him often and that I hoped he was well and happy. I told him that I had very few memories of my childhood but that I knew he had been a good friend. I told him I was beginning to remember some horrible things and that if he ever wanted to talk I'd be willing. As we talked that day on the phone, he softened and his voice smoothed out. I wrote him afterwards and said that I did not blame him for anything and that I knew he was horribly hurt by what happened and that I hoped he found peace. I told him I would understood if he did not respond to my letter. I was okay with whatever he did.

I never heard back from him. I hope my phone call and letter helped him to set the pain down and know he was not to blame. I hope he is alright, and if not that he will have the courage to seek help. I never forgot that we drew Doodle Bugs" but I also could never remember how we drew them...until the memories started coming back and one of my 12 year old alters started drawing Doodle bugs again.  :o}

Why kids don't tell

People often ask why I didn't tell someone what was happening to me as a child. I have thought a lot about this and have finally come up with an answer that fits for me. A therapist will give reasons why children remain silent. I have heard them all, and agree with them...but I need more. I want to see more fully from a child's eyes and understand from a child's heart. That shouldn't be hard with so many internal children, except that kids don't have words for such things, so I have to take what they feel and verbalize it.

1) I did tell. Not a lot of people, but enough that someone could have responded. When no one responds, a child stops trying. It is more important to hold onto hope than to risk telling and not be taken seriously. More on hope later...
2) There are usually enough normal/good things in a child's life to make reality too confusing. It is crazy-making to hold onto two realities at the same time. A child will want to sort it out...but that isn't possible.
3) My fathers retribution was not worth the risk of telling. 
4) The perp's threats are terrifying.
5) Perp's always blame the child.
6) It felt like to me that my father was omnipresent. It felt like he knew everything I did, thought or felt. In order to preserve hope and not die, I "needed" to take the blame for the abuse. If I would bathe more often, comb my hair, make better grades, be more quiet, then maybe daddy would love me and stop hurting me.

I have always thought that the opposite of death is life...but there are many ways to die as well as many ways not to be alive. I rather think now that Hope is the opposite of death.

There is a huge difference between cognitive and emotional understanding. As an adult, I can know something but not be able to emotionally accept it as fact. I can handle waiting until the emotional catches up to the cognitive. As a child there was no way I could do either. Cognitively I KNOW the abuse WAS NOT MY FAULT and that I had NO CONTROL over my fathers actions. These things I know for sure now. But as a child I could not know that without dying. To have acknowledge that I had no control over my life would have stripped away all hope. With no hope that life would improve, I would have died.

Maybe I am slow...and everyone else has already figured out the connection between life and hope and keeping silent. Part of my process now is to emotionally acknowledge and accept the fact that I had no control over my life...and to do it now without dying or losing my mind.