Uncorked...

“The change of life is the time when you meet yourself at the crossroads and you decide whether you want to be honest or not before you die.” ~Katharine Butler Hathaway



I had been totally alienated from my feelings. That's how I protected myself all those years. It took me forever to feel a feeling, much less express it. People would say, “How do you feel?” and I'd say, “Just fine...” It was like learning a different language. It was a process of getting things intellectually, then at a feeling level, and finally being able to act from that position. I began to compartmentalize my life. The parts I kept to myself, the parts my family was allowed to see, and the other parts no one was allowed to see, and the happy face when I went to work. I was trapped in my own body.

I am learning to honor all my feeling, especially the anger and the outrage. One day, a friend of mine said, “You know that you created this because you are the creator of your universe and your soul set this energy into motion. So take responsibility for it and quit mewing about it. Just forgive and move on.”

I became so pissed! I was choked with anger and lashed out like a cornered animal. To this day, we have not totally mended our relationship. Through my sessions, I've learned when you're feeling anger, you need to honor that. If you try to get to the forgiveness before you get to the anger, you're going to fuck the whole thing up. This is exactly what I had done. You have to work from where you are in your gut, not from where you think you should be in your head.

I went through revenge periods. I imagined all kinds of horrible wicked things that resulted in torture, a shotgun aimed at their balls, or a Molotov cocktail thrown at their vehicles. Two wrongs cannot make something right, were the words echoing from within my mind. If I didn't feel love for the child in me who had been raped, I would not have had this internal outrage. Sometimes I sat and felt so much compassion for one of my abusers, I wept. I am letting it all come right on through, and the more I allow all of it to come up, the more I find myself moving to loving myself. The more I tried to block the rage, the more I stay stuck. I reconcile all of this by saying I trust the process. I trust the validity of my outrage. The outrage is because I honor and value and love life.

Circumstances in life change. In retrospect, I owe my daughter my life. From the time my daughter was born, my instincts kicked in, and I was able to nurture her and protect her. Somehow, my love and my desire that this child would not be hurt were strong enough to overcome the obstacles that stopped me from doing other things to harm myself. I literally can say I owe my daughter my life because she awakened that ability in me to mother. Time and time again, when for myself I would have chose to die, I chose to live for her. I knew that somehow it had to stop with me and that I would not pass it on to her. Yet, I didn't seem to know what the “it” was. Everything would have been better if I'd known all of this forty years ago. The one thing I couldn't give my daughter was my happiness, my love of myself. I was able to give her a love for herself, a feeling for her strength, but there was a lot of joy we were never able to share. I weep for that.

Chapter 11...Committed to healing

“If you enter into healing, be prepared to lose everything. Healing is a ravaging force to which nothing seems sacred or inviolate. As my original pain releases itself into healing, it rips to shreds the structures and foundations I built in having lived a lie. I am experiencing the bizarre miracle of reincarnating, more lucidly than at birth, in the same lifetime.”      ~Ely Fuller

When you're abused, your boundaries, your right to say no, your sense of control in the world were violated. You were alone and you were powerless. The abuse humiliated you and gave you the message that you were of little value. Nothing you did could stop it. If you told someone about what happened to you, they probably ignored you, said you made it up, or told you to forget it it'll go away. Some may have even blamed you. Your reality was twisted or denied and you may have felt you were going to go crazy, and resigned to the fact you deserved what you got. You then began to believe the only thing you were good for was sex. Your hopes and dreams are irreversibly changed in a prolonged moment of time. In that terrifying moment, your life actually flashes before your eyes and you focus on an inanimate object, the same kind of inanimate object your Lamaze coach told you to focus on to block the pain of childbirth. The same inanimate object your eye is unintentionally directed to when making love to someone you owe your life to, your soul mate and the father of your children.

People have recently said to me, “Why the hell are you dragging all this crap up now?” “Why? WHY?” I answer. Because there isn’t a facet of my life that hasn't been controlled by it. It's prevented me from living a comfortable emotional life. It's prevented me from loving the people I care about the most clearly and honestly. I don't give a damn if it happened over a hundred years ago. It does matter...it matters to me!

The void I've thrown myself into by letting go of this stuff is incredibly desensitizing, making myself more vulnerable to those who continue to strip me of my dignity. It is raising questions I never planned to openly ask and get answers I didn't expect. There is no turning back. I've committed myself and I know now, my life will never be the same.

Chapter 10... Walls

Trust in the Lord with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways acknowledge Him

and He will direct your paths.

~Proverbs 3, 5-6

 

Walls shield us from the sticks and stones some mean people like to throw in hopes of breaking our bones. We put up walls to protect ourselves from the names and faces that hurt us. We put up walls to keep someone from breaking out hearts. We climb walls. We sit on walls. We dig under walls. We peek around walls. Some walls even absorb our total essence, turning us into nothing more than a flowery image which eventually fades away. Walls trap us. Walls, in human behavior are nothing more than a simile for what I keep repeating to myself as “silly me.”

The two most common treatment approaches for PTSD is medicine and psychotherapy Earlier in the week, I did a little research on the medications I've been prescribed for PTSD and was shocked to find that two out of every five people (including veterans) who commit suicide were prescribed these very same meds. I question psychotherapy as the other obvious solution. Most people, like myself are not ready to explore those painful times again, and I'm anxious to the point of nausea and vomiting before each visit having to relive the past. I've already isolated myself from my community, my friends and my family and the last thing I want to do is to sit in a closed-in office with a stranger for what seems like an extended amount of time and relive a period of time I've worked at hiding my entire adult life.

How is it that PTSD can be cured by exploring feelings or even experiencing reminder of a horrible events that were undergone? Upon my further investigation, there have been no significant medical approaches to the resolution of PTSD since the diagnosis came into use over forty years ago during the Vietnam War. In all the medical advances made during that time, it's telling me no one knows exactly how we tick.

I am learning I can't achieve recovery by myself. I am one of those people who feel the need to do everything by myself, another way I was raised. When you're in the middle of the woods and the wolves are howling and you can't start a fire, there is no one else. I've had my legs kicked out from under me many times by this attitude. A dear friend of mine told me it was time to ask others to help me, especially those who cared for me, because that was a way to return the love for someone. I deprived myself of that love because it meant I was weak. I still find it hard to ask for help, I won't lie. I believe in love and I believe that it was ego that sabotaged me from healing earlier.

Last week I managed to take two steps ahead, this week I fell back again. It seems to happen more often than not. I'm reading about twelve-step programs and how it can apply to PTSD. The first step is to become aware that you are incapable of managing your life by yourself. I believe this challenge is my first step after darkness. Recently, I have been surprised where the most profound directions and support come from. It came from a supportive friend whom I haven't had contact in years whose kind words made me truly aware of how important the Serenity Prayer is to healing. It came from sitting in the outdoor chapel overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains where the verse from Psalm 121:1, I will lift up thine eyes unto the hills...” is carved in the timbers, another Divine source of strength. It came from mutual tears shared with my sister this past weekend as I told her my journey. It came from the moving letter from a surviving soldier who lost his legs in Nam. It came in a letter from the young firefighter who witnessed a family of four die in a burning vehicle. It came in the form of blue birds, and butterflies, and the purr of my fur kids. It came from all those who are reading this blog.

Those walls are beginning to crumble as the mortar weakens, liberating those of us from our self-made prisons. In the words of my son's old band instructor, “I'm not telling you it's going to be easy, but I am telling you, it'll be worth it!” Remember, you are not alone, we're in it together...

Take my hand...

Blue Butterflies...

Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is not excusing or condoning the event which happened, and you have to quit telling yourself that whatever happened was all right, because it was not and is not. It's not letting those who were involved escape the accountability and responsibility for what they did. We all have consequences for our deeds. Eventually justice wins out and one day balance returns to our world. Forgiveness is releasing that hate and revenge you feel to something else, a higher power. Forgiveness does not overlook the action. It rises above it.

Just words, you might say. I know, I've thought it and verbalized it. Easy for someone to write about all the right things you need to do to achieve the happiness, it's another thing to actually experience it. After being shown my brain scan, I was told one of the most significant effects of PTSD is losing the ability to find joy in your life. It assaults the pleasure centers in front of our brains to turn down to a very low level of activity making those who suffer with PTSD to lose that internal direction or the sense of control we have over our thoughts and our actions. If we don't have positive reinforcement in one form or another, our brains don't know how to heal and find pleasure.

This is where I am failing, and I'm discouraged my life is not on an even keel. Some days I feel like I don't want to teeter on the wall and just fall like old Humpty Dumpty did. By the way, how did that egg-head happen to be sitting on a wall and fall? Did he miss the Spring Equinox and deliberately fall instead his obvious fate of being scrambled by the queen if he failed to stand up on end?

How can you get positive reinforcement when those you love treat you like you have an infectious disease or that their problems surmount yours? It's not about any competition, or who's life was worse than yours. I miss the one person who I believe would listen, my mom. My mom passed away thirty-two years ago, and today is her birthday, she would have been ninety-eight. I miss her, and I think I would be brave enough today, to talk about the yest-er-years. I believe she would finally understand my actions and the words I wrote in my diary so many years ago. I don't believe I'm too damaged to be helped now. I know where I want to be, I'm just having a hell of a time getting and staying there. I am learning new exercises that focus on hope, faith and tranquility. It gets quite discouraging to see the sun set at the end of a beautiful day and feel nothing...no one said things would be easy.

I haven't seen any bluebirds since I wrote my last post, but this afternoon as I sat in the shade enjoying the less humid afternoon in the backyard, a Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly landed inches away from my hand. Was this another Divine sign? I think so. This blue beauty is more common in other places than my yard, and the admission I was granted to watch him dance was free. I smiled when I took note he was not carrying any rocks.

Chapter 8...Bluebird of Hope

"She can deal with stress and carry heavy burdens. She smiles when she feels like screaming, and she sings when she feels like crying. She cries when she's happy and laughs when she's afraid. Her love is unconditional. There's only one thing wrong with her. She forgets what she's worth!"



When we moved to the South twenty years ago, I spent many afternoons at my sister's home in the country. It was the first time I ever saw bluebirds in such an abundance. If allowed to, I could sit in awe watching the graceful birds until the sunset. There is something about any birds with blue feathers that can be hypnotic and mystifying. Perhaps it's because they're a shade of Heavenly Blue or that bluebirds are symbols of happiness, or maybe Godly is the word I'm trying to find.

Kevin Spacey starred in an early 2000 movie whose name was Prot. Prot was portrayed as a mental patient/possible alien. There were several characters Prot helped, but a fellow obsessive compulsive patient named Howie, was who came to my mind. Howie was tasked by Prot to look out into the garden until he saw the bluebird of happiness. Rather than going about his regular routines, Howie sat at the window watching the trees for the elusive bird to come to him. There's more to the story, but this is the movie that came to mind this morning. However, the thought and the setting seems appropriate for the state of repair I'm in.

Every home we owned had a large window, French doors, or sliding glass doors in the kitchen dining area. I based the purchase of our homes to have this requirement, because I thrive on bright natural light. It was important because the kitchen has always been the nucleus of our homes. It's the place our family and friends gravitate to. Its where we traditionally gather daily for meals, where we solved problems whether they were important or insignificant. Its where we entertained, studied, laughed and cried. When my children were babies, they were bathed in the sink while the aroma of fresh baked goodies escaped from the oven. Birthdays, weddings, funerals, and graduations all centered within the kitchen, and its no wonder to anyone who knows me that I'd be writing this at my kitchen table.

Lately, more often than not, I've been sitting at this same table with my head in my hands, wondering. Wondering about trivial things and those which are not so easy to define. I gaze without expression at all the beautiful flowers I've planted that have finally reached maturity and the freshly mowed lawn, and feel nothing. An emptiness I can blame on many things, but my mind goes blank when I try to pinpoint any one thing, and the other is fear. Then one day not long ago on a particularly “blue” day, I lift my head from my hands and focused my medicated eyes to see a bluebird sitting on a planter directly in front of the window. I didn't move except for the tears that ran down my cheeks. If I didn't know better, it looked like he was looking at me looking at him and transmitting the thought that tomorrow will be a better day. I praised the Lord. Did God know I needed to see that bird of hope? I believe He did.

This exact incident has happened three times since then, and each time my eyes teared. It was therapy I didn't have to pay for and I know in my heart, God is walking by my side through this journey. I felt the same overwhelming hope Howie did when the bluejay landed by his window.

 

Chapter Seven...Letting go...

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” Lao Tzu

 

You wonder if you will ever feel normal again. You want to go back to being the person you were before the trauma took place. You seek ways to forget that the experience ever happened and look for substances to help you forget. Sometimes you attempt to create a life for yourself in which you try to avoid the memories. It becomes a purposeful attempt to forget. I don't know what kind of person I was before, or how I can define normal to today's standards. I made a mistake not talking to someone about what happened to me, and the life that followed was half-lived. I have so thoroughly avoided dealing with that part of my past, and let it affect me in serious and substantial ways, that I've never experienced my true self or a real life to its fullest. When I hurt the most I have a tendency to think family contributed to the cauldron of my growing-up years, all the emotional hurts, lack of emotional support, rivalries, and misunderstandings had a way of casting a long shadow of mistrust on my adult years. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. Maybe it was just me. It's taken an enormous kind of courage for me to step beyond the normal roles and expectations for my past behavior and share. I want to fulfill that normal role, find that normal place and relax in the idea of it. To find serenity within and accept that it did happen to me rather than work so hard to deny it ever happened or believe that I'm somehow dirtied and damaged from it.

 

How does one find happy? How does one let go once and for all? Some days any strength I try to produce seems to be missing from me. The damage turned into an infected wound. It takes some time for a scab to form, and even more time for it to fully heal. Do you remember that movie with Jodie Foster? She was gang raped in a public place and others watched for fun. She was portrayed as someone who asked for it because she drank alcohol and seemed promiscuous. I hate it. I will never understand the logic that someone could ask for something like that to happen to her. Only people who have not been raped could believe that someone asked for it. The classic abuser mentality, “I wouldn't have hurt you if you didn't make me.”

Most decisions start with a goal in mind. At the end of this new life adventure, where do I want to end up? I don't know. I certainly don't want to walk around talking about what happened to me when I was a little more than a child to people who only pretend to be supportive. I don't see myself becoming a public advocate on the rights of women and children, I tried it recently and it was another set-back. I don't see myself cutting up a cardboard box to make a sign with red paint that reads, “Stop Violence Against Children,” or worse, “I was raped in a cabin by three older teens and no one cared.” Where the hell would I even picket? It's hard to even imagine picketing when I can't picture the who, the what, the where and the why's or the action. Lastly, I don't want to write a depressing blog forever.

 

I am new to my recovery. I have good days and I have bad days. I am learning to use imagery to wipe the filth and grime out of my mind. It happened to me, and yes, occasionally it will get me down. Instead of letting the dirt seep in, I am learning to clean it off. Breathe it out. I'm learning to tweak my perceptions. I viewed the experience as something that dirtied and scarred me. Something that anyone could see if they just looked at me. In reality, no one ever guessed what happened to me that fall evening before my fifteenth birthday. I give power to the hurt by keeping it close to my heart and soul. I don't want that hurt as part of my heart and soul anymore. Instead, I want happiness, forgiveness, acceptance and hope for a better tomorrow.

 

Tonight, my thoughts are scrambled as I reevaluate my life. If my thoughts intermingled with other thoughts and left you scratching your head wondering what I said...sorry, I'm working on that too.

Chapter Six...My Soul

 

Cabin In The Dawn

1970

Words upon words, I lay on once more

Promises and lovers are gone with the morn.

When one day a fair haired boy came with promises in poem.

He was wild with rage, he was crazy and scorned

Telling me of his world where I will not mourn.

This boy made me a woman the boy killed my life

Flying in midair he slashed my soul with his knife.

This was written a long time ago by the hand of a once innocent girl. It's one of hundreds of poems and short stories I wrote and still possess. The aging notebooks filled with penciled doodles and handwriting are now beginning to fade. I've carried them through the years tucked away in an unpacked box rarely ever reading them except for one or two. I wrote them in study hall, at the library, in the confines of my bedroom and at my most favorite place, the lake. I don't remember where I wrote most of them, but the scraggy script on some told me I either wrote them on the way home from school on the bus, or with gloved hands and shivering on the icy lake shore. Some are wrinkled with the sweat of a bottle of pop that dried in a circular pucker, or an occasional mascara stained tear. Every one was filled with the emotions of a heavy heart that no one but me would understand. I may not remember the where, but I can clearly pin the events of when each was written. Reading them now, I see a very forbidden world, filled with ups and downs, the kind not reserved for a young woman. I was reading a bipolar account of being a damaged teenager and looking into the soul of the person I forgot, unable to distinguish love from abuse.  

Today, I placed myself in the best comfortable yoga position I could muster in front of the paper shredder, and began to shred some of those poems...the ones that caused me the most pain. I have kept them sacred for over forty years, and just like the pain I've hidden so well, it's now time to dispose of them one by one along with the memories attached to each. The time has come to perform a final exorcism and rid the ghosts that have attached themselves to me. We moved across country twice in the past 30 years. I thought by leaving the beautiful state that runs through my blood, I would be set free. I was not.

My Soul

1970

i stood naked in the ocean holding my soul

and watched as it turned to hot salted sand

desperately clenching my fist to hold it

until the grains began to burn and etch my skin.

through my small straining fingers

every grain escaped into the lapping waves

and dissolved into the foaming gray water at my feet

now, nothing but every tear, every lie

and above all, every sinful act lingers

when i opened my tired hand my soul was gone

i trembled and died.

i struggle to hide the deadness inside

and conceal the emptiness in my eyes

my body shudders and my mind screams

fight

fight to live.

but why?

because my handful of existence has vanished

and my soul is lost.

 

At fifteen, I never saw the ocean, but I imagined a magnificent body of water illuminated with fiery diamonds dancing on the waves. I knew the power and beauty of God's making was certain to take my breath away, and it did just that several years later. My memory of writing that poem was after standing in slightly mucky lake water after looking for skipping stones. I never learned to be a proficient swimmer and the thought of wading out until the water was over my head was a terrifying thought. I knew I would panic and drown. Drowning, was a thought I contemplated on that particular day. It was a thought I had when I walked for miles on the ice covered lake and unexpectedly fell through a thin spot. I read somewhere back then that when people drown, it's like falling asleep. But, one night reality dug its gnarly nails deep into my arm and my life force kicked in when I was threatened to be electrocuted, wrapped up in a shower curtain and dumped into the lake. It no longer seemed like a peaceful easy way to go.

Drowning danced off and on in my mind, but the consequences to my everlasting soul kept me from doing it. I owe my life to a strong religious upbringing. Even though I had my mind made up I was going to hell and I was heading there on the fast train, there was a chance I would find someone who would love me for who I really was. The greatest sin would be to take the life God gave to me and destroy it and spend eternity with all the other lost souls. I turned my back on my faith and ran rampant with the rest of the wolves, knowing redemption and forgiveness would eventually find me. It got worse before it got better and the things I did, I am not proud of.