My internal world is clamoring for boundaries with three remaining siblings that did not touch me in a criminal way but were silent by-standers and co-conspirators. Once too anxiety ridden and fearful of rejection to express my truth and outlining boundaries, it is time. Especially after Don added me to an email list of an attacker’s relatives. Don was once a father-like figure but that was long ago. Grateful for his help then, he is not same person now.
_______________________________________
I am not an invisible, compliant, worthless doormat. What happened was real. It is not in the past; it is my every day. I must manage the damage done daily because I was permanently hurt in many ways. Sudden noises or movements cause a heightened scare. No trust for others, just fear. No happy sex life, just thoughts of rape.
The extensive damage is not only from the attackers but the rest who knew and did nothing to help or stop it. You and Seth knew. I told Seth, “Danny fucked me.”
A little girl with that coming out of my mouth which must mean Dan said it to me while he did it, but it had to have been so violent that even now my psyche will not allow it up. Aunt Ruth knew. These days, as a school nurse, she would be required to report it, but not then.
I still am expected to be compliant and silent. No. Co-conspirators cause as much damage.
The insensitively of giving my name and addresses like you did shows that the love you profess for me is conditional, based solely on whether I interfere with your plans or not, that of collecting a clan or ‘family.’
That was no family for me. It was a place of terror and trauma, ongoing, relentless, and severe. I was expected to be quiet about all of it making the damage permanent because unprocessed trauma stays in the body breaking many systems beyond repair.
Then you become buddies with Tom, his attack horrific, but more horrific was the way he treated me the rest of my life, causing so much more damage to my self-esteem than any attack by all 4; his sly put-downs, sneers, and nastiness spoken around everyone about me, done so slyly it was hardly noticed by anyone but me.
No one defended me or said anything to correct him. I was put in a bad light in everyone’s eyes without anyone really being aware that his treatment of me tainted their view of me-useless, less than.
What did you do to help or stop it after you ran in the bathroom when I was 8 or 9? I was screaming in the bathtub because it “‘hurt down there.” (my exact words) You left looking disgusted. That was right after Dan raped me when no came to comfort me, give me medical attention, nor stopped 3 more from attacking me.
Would you expect your daughter to cozy up to Chet’s relatives if he had committed years of attacks on her? The same with your closeness with Tom?
No. I am supposed to be quiet and compliant, and be muscled by your acceptance with compliance, or rejection if not. That is not love.
I want to love you, and I do, but I do not trust you.
Healing does not mean all can be fixed. There remains broken parts such as trust issues and much more that are gone forever.
But the drowning shame for crimes that were not mine yet inflicted on many children subject to sexual attacks by those loved and trusted within a family, have been washed away by excising the wound.
Exposing my wounds to air, telling my story in many ways as many times as needed, cleaned the black, tarry, gunk swimming inside me like sharks biting from the inside out.
For a child to keep such evilness within her throughout her life causes damage much of which cannot be healed, but instead managed. Yet, to finally use the word ‘healed’ and feel its meaning for the first time shows that all these decades of hard work succeeded.
Before, ‘healing’, was just a word. Now the feeling internally is not black, red, swirls of rage and hurt. There is placid safety where it once was dark and stormy.
Years of openly discussing the traumas of my youth have healed me, though it wasn’t till mid-life after my mother died that it felt OK to do it. A safe place planted here where anonymity gave me freedom. Others also traumatized, but also muted by their families and society, encouraged me to keep going.
Though writing for myself, focusing on going deeply inside, others responded, and for the first time the truth of what happened was expressed; opening me, freeing me, and connecting me to others who were also silenced about childhood sexual attacks.
A caged wounded human, bleeding internally for decades, opened the wounds to air and with time healed. Lots of time, and lots of expressing, over and over again, as long as it took.
That is healing, exposing the hurts to air, receiving love and care in return, not silencing, coercion, and betrayal, but openness, love, and warmth.
I am at peace. I am whole, I am alive and glad to be, not hoping that it would all be over. The blood washed away, raw spiritual flesh healed. I may be a conglomeration of shattered parts grouted together, but the whole is stronger than it was or ever could have been.
A rare few see me authentically beyond the permanent façade my mother carefully crafted with dedicated grooming. Yes, a mother grooms her child, not for sex though that happens, but to silence her because of what her sons (or partner, uncle, or family friend) did to her daughter.
In my case it was her sons. From early on the shaming she so persistently directed at me was so completely successful that I am still looking for me fearing she will never be fully found. Glimpses, moments, or a string of moments come when wholeness comes, but too much of the time unease strands me in the land of the lost.
But some see beyond the cultivated exterior. Friends, Sue and Marilyn, now both gone. Fellow bloggers who have become friends, though never meeting either in person.
My sons, Samuel, fellow bloggers and readers, and that is about it. It is enough, it will have to be because going out to become part of a group once again takes more energy than what is available.
As the sun warms and birds sing my soul awakens coming together in harmony with nature.
It is OK to be caring, thoughtful, sensitive, compassionate, and loyal to myself, focusing on needs, bodily hurts, and emotional wounds.
That is what comes naturally to others not living with chronic post-traumatic issues. But for me it takes work, attention, and persistence. And still there is no way to recover the shattered pieces, shards so miniscule they’ve scattered in the winds.
First it needs to be learned that it is safe in my body, that running from fears and memories splits me- how most of my life has been lived. Yet splitting has also meant survival. I could not be with it all at once, it has taken a lifetime to chip away at.
It is interesting that only late in life, after all 4 siblings who attacked me sexually have died, that this feeling of OK-ness tentatively wafts up from my core.
That it is safe to love me, or at least learn to. That tending to that tiny cut, or other seemingly minor wounds is not only OK, but of primary importance. But first I must be in me to even notice the hurt, not split between mind, body, and spirit. With courage the work of coming together continues.
What others take for granted, I work at, but that’s OK too. Sometimes the more you must work for something the more it is appreciated.
The haze of Tom’s death in December has brought him more alive than he ever was in life. Relief that no more snickering and put-downs occur, but also sadness.
Thinking about it too much harms me, yet not allowing in feelings is harmful too. The times he followed me around the hospital when Mom was sick, perhaps wanting to talk.
But only if it were easy for him, if he felt me open to it. As an attorney he didn’t want it in writing fearing it would be used against him?
But that would have felt safer to me. A true apology when it could be felt safely. But he wanted it easy, and safe for him.
Memories of all 4 who have passed make me sad. Then the thought, if I hadn’t lived, they wouldn’t have touched me that way, and THEN they wouldn’t have to carry the guilt and pain of it for life.
And me? What about me? It is so confusing to love, or want to love a family- but cannot, not safely.
After scrutinizing this fear in my belly haunting me these past months, my conclusion includes the illnesses, one after the other. Adding to that, or because of that, I feel victim to whatever the day brings.
Something, like two days ago when arranging a colonoscopy, my body went into fight or flight with shaking hands and fast, loud heartbeat. It wasn’t until bedtime that I realized my body was still in survival mode because it took a whopping dose of medication to sleep.
C-PTSD rockets are hard wired internally at the ready for launching when threats are detected, and even in my quiet life they abound. The re-wiring of systems to be always on edge is due to repeated traumas occurring in childhood when no help came to process them at the time. The family’s reputation was more important than my well-being or survival.
When that happens, a victim is left with a lifetime of repeating frights and terrors all because the originating trauma was left to bounce around internally causing damage to as many systems as possible.
Perhaps you become an addict to escape the pain and fright, whether alcohol, drugs, food, or shopping. Perhaps the pain and terror was so overwhelming you couldn’t survive, or picked abusive partners, or a myriad of other painful life scenarios.
Perhaps you live it cold and soberly, taking each day- and like me, ricochet from peace to terror in a heartbeat. But the problem compounds because when rocketing off into the terror zone, my body stays in the stratosphere until medication brings it back to status quo, to equilibrium, to much needed sleep.
It is not easy being a trauma survivor that received no help, no one to come and calm my terrors, to hold me, rock me, love me, and work me through the repeated sexual attacks by once loved brothers until I felt safe and powerful. Until I knew that if it were to happen again, I’d have help and protection- to possess the power to keep them off.
I didn’t, and was not. I was a little girl. They are all dead, yet I am still afraid. My body reacts with terror on its own volition to things that wouldn’t trouble another at all. My life sways in the way it responds, threatened, anxious, and often scared.
In a family when a little girl is sexual abused by her loved ones, you MUST face it, and HELP her. You must have the courage to face the world and say we as a family failed, and we must save this child. But no one does.
Stevie and I were excited; a mammoth understatement. I was nine and Stevie, only six. Though Dad had died the year before, kids recoup, and Mom agreed to our usual tradition. We were allowed to sleep on the couch, end to end, one night before Christmas watching the tree lights with “visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads.”
In the sunken living room, called that because it took two steps down to get into it from the dining room, the Christmas tree stood in all its splendor, smack dab in the middle of the gigantic picture window that looked out over the flower garden and driveway. The thick, floor-length curtains were closed, keeping out the dark chill, but the room sparkled with glowing colors from the fat bulbs twirled round and round the tree. Tinsel sprinkling from branches swayed lightly against the tops of presents.
We knew there’d be more. Santa hadn’t come yet, Christmas was a week away, but we were thrilled as each day brought us closer. And now, to our delight, we were to sleep right by the tree, Stevie curled up at the other end with the pillow he brought from his bed and me at my end, both with our own blankets. The long couch cradled us comfortably; I didn’t even feel his feet. And the tree! So pretty! How could sleep arrive when I was so full of excitement over the coming holiday, thinking of each gift I’d made for every brother and my mother?
After inspecting the pretty packages one more time under the tree—we’d already memorized to whom, from whom—we hopped back under our covers. Nothing new, we knew them by heart, heavy, light, shakes or not. The only thing left to discover was when they were opened, the culmination of all the weeks leading up to the big day. It’s no wonder we didn’t drift off to sleep till well after the rest of the household.
Stevie fell asleep before I did. Except for the tree lights, all the other lights were off and everyone had gone to bed: Mom, Tommy, Don, Danny, Seth, Chet, and Paul. “Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” Tommy, the eldest at twenty, and the brother I looked up to most, was home from college on Christmas break. We were all together! Somehow, finally, my mind fell into happy Toyland slumber.
Something woke me. It was dark, the tree lights were off, but something wasn’t right. Something was very wrong, but felt so good, confusion anesthetizing all ability to speak or move. My child’s mind couldn’t make sense of what felt so dreamy tingly down there but seemed so abhorrent. Was that my adored, eldest, most loved brother’s head between my legs, sucking and licking my peeing spot? Not a sound was heard. Santa spoke not a word either, but this wasn’t Santa. It was so quiet, and though bewildered, I didn’t cry out; my body became mesmerized by the very pleasing sensations yet disoriented into petrified stiffness. Then his head just disappeared. Up the chimney he arose? He must have crawled off.
Stevie and I awoke the next morning, hungry for cereal as if nothing had happened, full of kid energy for the day. But something had happened. Something had permanently altered within me, dimmed, unsure of myself or the world around me, my mother and the brothers I loved so dearly. They were my world, but it all shattered. I shattered. A cataclysmic shift, an avalanche had occurred with the nighttime brother, inside my belly where the edges no longer met, couldn’t meet, there would be no more crossing, no making sense of it and no telling. He made sure of that.
Tommy changed. With the morning light, I lost my brother. Malice and anger filled the eyes where love had once been. I knew not to tell from the frightful mix of menace and hate, and I didn’t. What could I say? What words would I use to describe what my little girl brain couldn’t comprehend anyway? And maybe what I perceived to be as hate was fear, apprehension of my telling, not that it made any difference.
Being the oldest carried weight in the family. We looked up to him, the only one besides me to have his own room, the first to do things like dating, working, then going away to college. I only wanted to please him, to make him love me still, though he didn’t anymore, or didn’t seem to.
I tiptoed around “it,” afraid of waking the beast because Tommy could get very angry. He had snapped at me before just for tugging at his sleeve during a phone call. Though in his defense, the phone call had been of utmost importance for a student home on holiday. It had been to his new love at college who later became his wife. But the sinister being in the house that morning was not Tommy, the brother I would do anything for. He had become something else.
The earth split; his eyes pierced me with a spear of hatred, but only me. I fell through the crack, falling, falling, then steadied when his voice softened with apparent kindness, sweetly toned toward Stevie, until Stevie left to get dressed. Then the thing, posing as Tommy, turned again towards me, reeking of malevolence which shed off his body like dried snake skin. The hissing, threatening eyes never matched the syrupy smooth words.
This dissonance of tone and action became a pattern, a way of life; the beast changed colors like a chameleon, but also changed shape depending on people and circumstance. I never got a hold of the real Tom again. Others did, but not me, and no one else noticed the schism or the way he played it to perfection.
A child grows though, and the sister he had power over and controlled by the use of psychological force found a partner outside of the so called “family.” His sweetness became so thick it couldn’t be stirred and sat in my stomach like cold hard stone. Samuel came with me to Tom’s house in the city for fancy dinners he and Tara cooked, elaborate and expensive. But it was too late. No longer a child, in my early twenties, I watched him. I observed it all, sensing the phoniness, feeling it, seeing it, yet never knowing how to make it real between us again.
Being the eldest, starting college when Dad was still alive, he received a solid start financially. He passed each hurdle, every year in college, one after the next. The entire family flew to New York City to see him graduate cum laude at the Waldorf Astoria, a huge undertaking for Mom. The expense of flight tickets and hotel costs for all eight of us must have been substantial for a woman recently widowed. But he was her firstborn and Dad would have been proud too. Tom followed Dad’s footsteps into the legal arena.
He continued on to law school, graduated, then passed the Bar and was invited into a prestigious law firm where he later became partner. The rest of us struggled with college and several didn’t make it, some only through a semester or two, one not managing life at all. But Tom succeeded with honors and aplomb.
A person could go insane with these thoughts, secrets, and memories. I try to imagine myself at twenty going after a younger sister sexually, or any child. I just can’t. Is it possible males aren’t accountable because they have such irresistible urges? Or because our double standard doesn’t hold them accountable?
Tom and I attempted to talk about the past on the phone in my late thirties. To explain, he said, “I was so young then.”
Not ready for excuses and a long way from forgiveness, I screamed into the phone, “You were twenty, home from college, you could have been prosecuted!”
Crushing the receiver down so hard it rattled the wall, I rushed outside for air and release, whacking at a tree with a bat till some calm returned and the red blackness of rage lifted. We didn’t discuss it again.
Years passed and we attended some of the same functions, a funeral, a wedding, but I wouldn’t talk to him, I couldn’t. The fight for my life continued. And there was no winning against an intelligent person slyly looking out for himself, only the loss of my own dignity and worth. Tom belittled me with comments interspersed so cagily that no one else in the family noticed, but the effects of his disguised put-downs on me were disastrous. His method reduced his crime to less than nothing; if I’m looked down upon as inconsequential, a sister unworthy of love or respect, then what he had done was no big deal.
And in my family system, it seemed to work. His diabolical, unrelenting manipulations hurt more than all else endured. I was stomped upon so repeatedly I couldn’t get up, yet did anyway, bruised but persistent. I felt trapped alive in a coffin with nails hammered down, scraping and clawing for a way out, fighting for a life with my head up and heart full.
He garnered sympathy from other family members because of the way I treated him, ignoring him, stepping away from his attempts to hug me as if he were dangerous. In the reception area at Shasta’s wedding, we gathered, sipping drinks, several siblings and their wives. He moved back from the group so I felt comfortable. It may have been the first time I allowed for the possibility that he possessed genuine empathy, not selfishness, but hope springs eternal. The deferential movement made him look magnanimous, more likely the goal.
There was a point, as I approached fifty, when we tried again to reconcile. We met at the old building where I took pottery courses.
He helped move my stuff that needed glazing to the back room and told me, “I used to teach a class here,” paused, then added as if with humility, “Just one though.”
And I thought, So you surpass me once again, here at a place where I found joy, my hands happy in the wet earth with women who laugh and play with me.
Our plan was to go have coffee together. I hopped into his little sports car and we zipped off to a coffee shop closer to his neighborhood. Though he owned a snazzy, expensive car, it was messy, with paper coffee cups strewn about, food wrappers, and books he moved so I could sit. We were lucky to have made it alive. I didn’t realize how nervous he was and we almost creamed into another car. Shaky, questioning doing this, we got out and he helped me negotiate our way into the place he frequented.
He seemed generous and expansive in his willingness to buy our coffee. “Want a pastry?” he asked, a little too eagerly.
“No, coffee will do,” I replied. We sat and chatted for half an hour or so before running out of banter. At my request, we didn’t talk about the past. I had wanted to begin where we were now, yet what he did seemed like it had happened yesterday. Why? I want to know why? There’s no hope for a connected, close relationship.
The ride back was calmer and without incident. He dropped me off. I watched him go, but felt empty.
Sometimes I feel pity. I replayed what he said once when we tried to reconnect, something about having the sister he wanted. I immediately thought, That’s not your choice, it’s mine. You lost that right to choose; it’s my choice now, under my control and you’re not ready, you may never be ready. Remorse means true sorrow, not concern over what your law partners, friends, and family would think if they knew what you did. You worry about you and your reputation, not me. And family members do know and don’t seem to care.
I don’t see him anymore since Mom’s gone. There were occasional get-togethers for brunch at her apartment and then times during her decline when we’d be together, sometimes for long periods in the hospital and that last night of her life. It seemed okay, like no rift existed, and during these emergencies, when life or death decisions had to be made, Tom was the steady voice of reason while my anxiety over losing her made me frantic. And though my biggest fights with her were about Tom and her wish for our reconciliation, there’s sadness in the loss of hope for closure for us both.
She was right all along, and not just for his sake. A victim as a child, I then became a victim of rage. I have luckily lived long enough to quell the fires and know what a peaceful moment is. And through meditation, my broken brain mends. Life is for giving, yet some things are unforgivable. Still I try. I forgave Tom for using my child’s body for lustful sexual pleasure. Harder is what came after. Dismissing me like I no longer mattered or existed killed something in me, or quieted it for a very long time. She, the essence of me I barely know, slowly comes out, showing her face in small doses to those I love and trust, a select few.
During my sessions with Raymond, I relayed my perceptions of Tom’s treatment towards me.
Raymond said, “If it’s true, that’s psychological abuse.”
If?
Though I’ve thought of ways to torture and dismember Tom, and more him than anyone else, it’s in the past. I do not wish revenge, just peace. Though rage sputtered into ash, it reignites. I dance with her ghost shells, blowing away the swirling smoke, tamping it down, remembering its unwanted vapory clutches.
I impulsively sent a Christmas card to Tom the year after Mom’s death, the first in over thirty years, and a birthday card the summer after. And the very last communication since was a phone call where I apologized for ostracizing him, for not letting go sooner. I felt peace, felt all ties, even unholy ones, unravel, dissolve, evaporate. After fifty years, I have myself back again. I did what I had to do, what he does is up to him. The craving for a family will never go away, but lessens with time and the acceptance of what is and was. I long for a family, any family, just not mine.
After my latest bout of diverticulitis died down and the antibiotics were done, it was time to get off my night-time sleep medication which had increased to alarming amounts to get any sleep at all.
The more it was used, the more that was needed. So, the first few nights without it were rough, but then bliss, 4 nights of uninterrupted sleep except waking to use the bathroom.
Before, that was the killer- up at midnight then my mind freakily bubbling with activity and no sleep would come without a sleep aid due to feeling so hyper and unsafe.
But last night a medication was needed. Was it a friend confiding in me that her GYN was too much like her father’s raping her all through childhood? Was it having two on-line chats with overseas customer service agents about an order that never came to finally get the refund?
Both happened in the evening so maybe. But in the dark my mind wasn’t whirling about those things. Yet subconsciously it might have pricked at my past causing my thoughts to spiral making everything look bleak and worrisome.
One, being taken advantage as my siblings had with my body. And two, my sadness, almost tears that my friend, even in adulthood re-experiences her childhood traumas. Neither of us invite the past. I wish I knew the magic of sleep, because it does come, then not for weeks.
I told her we are more beautiful, even after shattering, like the vase repaired with gold.
I had it all worked out. Raymond sat opposite me, his gaze unblinking. I felt like a bug pinned to cardboard, wriggling, but sure of my ability to intelligently represent what “life as Patricia” was. Though he smiled, exuding warmth, something else filled in the lines of the smile, something I wouldn’t run from.
With unflappable courtesy, he began our first session. “Tell me about yourself,” he said, the grey-blue eyes focused. He had no notepad.
I jumped right in, ready to describe all of me in one sentence. “I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, I attend Overeater’s Anonymous, and I’m a Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse,” reducing myself to a bunch of abbreviations, ACOA, OA, and SCSA. A slight smirk lifted the edges of his smile, almost imperceptibly, yet I caught it because I had learned to study faces at an early age. He tried to put me at ease, but I looked beyond him to the door, an escape route.
Later, nearing the end of our time, he narrated a story, the first of many that captivated me. “My wife and I like to hike the Adirondacks. We backpacked into a favorite park carrying all supplies following a well-marked trail. But this time we veered off, taking one unmarked. The tangled thicket opened up to waterfalls splashing into a deep pool. We stripped off our clothes, swam, and then sunned afterwards on the rocks,” he watched me with riveting clarity.
Picturing him skinny-dipping naked reduced the godlike entity slightly. Still, the pedestal he perched upon soared through the stratosphere. But I had something to chew on. Like a cow with cud, enjoying the taste of sweet grass over and over. Take a different path.
We continued to chat till the time was up and he seemed satisfied. Then he said, “Okay, let’s get to work.”
I thought that was an odd thing to end with, but also encouraging. He took this seriously, he took me seriously.
The next week, Raymond said, “I’d like to prescribe Prozac. There aren’t any side effects,” he added quickly because my face must have registered shock. “It will help.”
I filled the prescription reluctantly, taking it for about a month, pissed off at the liar who said there weren’t side effects because changes took place in my body I couldn’t put my finger on. I wanted off and he didn’t fight me.
I tapered off, glad to be rid of it. Eventually, in nursing school, I learned that Prozac has many common side effects, like most drugs, and some that can be serious, even life-threatening. But it has been around a long time and serious side effects are rare. I didn’t know that then. I felt lied to and cheated, but couldn’t simply say, “You lied to me. There are side effects!” But my body language belied the nice, pleasing persona I attempted to put forth. It trumpeted resistance, bellowed rigidity, erect and wooden as the chair legs.
Uptight already, I became tighter, my muscles taut like coiled springs. Anger bubbled below with no way out. Why couldn’t I complain about something so minor? I had no voice, just buried feelings.
One day I arrived in a navy blue sweatshirt Mom had crafted with fabric balloons on it. He gentlemanly closed the door, noting every detail.
After we sat, exchanging a few words, he began, “Some of your parts are like balloons on your sweatshirt, larger, predominant and to the forefront. But there are other parts, like the ones in the background…”
I was quiet as usual, fascinated by his stories, soaking up every word, hope fluttering up through a crack in the darkness like a sunbeam.
We worked so fast my head spun. By fall he had me dreaming of who and what I could be, hairdresser or nurse? After explaining the pay for both, nursing won, enticed solely on the fatter paycheck, not the wish to heal the sick and wounded. I registered immediately for a few courses, one of which would complete the long lost Associates Degree dangling unfinished from almost twenty years before. There was a lengthy waiting list for entrance into the nursing program. The college looked at current curriculum to determine if one had the ability to complete its rigorous training.
I took Chemistry, a prerequisite. I had managed a final grade of forty in high school but dove in with zest this time around. One day the professor became livid; no one had answered a question correctly. He slammed the door, threw a pencil at the girl who had disgusted him, then turned towards me and through clamped teeth managed, “Patricia?”
I answered correctly. He seemed almost pleased and continued the lecture.
I discussed, or rather complained to Raymond about the incident, “He closed the door, told us we were all stupid and threw a pencil at a girl!”
Raymond inquired, “What is his name?”
“Dr. Payne,” I answered. We both snickered. Hard to believe, but perfect. And just as hard for me to believe as the knowledge that I, who had flunked three courses in tenth grade and took summer courses to catch up, was now being singled out to answer a question no one else could.
I earned A‟s in almost every course and the Dean’s List included my name a few times. All because Raymond had dared suggest one facet of my worth: intelligence, scholastic achievement the proof.
The work over the next four years was intense. Before coming to therapy, I’d gained back much of the weight lost after surgery.
One day he asked, “Why are you fat?” Who was so dense, rude, and insensitive enough to ask that? I didn’t have an answer, just looked back mutely while my raised hackles created a hurricane in the room.
His inquiry hurt exquisitely, enough to do something about it. Humiliated into action, I joined a gym and Weight Watchers, dropping the excess pounds again. As weight disappeared, so did some self-hatred.
The beast of resistance was attacked on every front. His next objective would clear out the negative.
“I would like you take one half hour each day and make it your time. Create on the outside what you feel inside,” he said.
It took a while for me to understand what he was asking for, but over the next few weeks and months, I worked diligently.
A hunk of clay left over from pottery class became the first sculpture. It erupted from gut to hands, as I worked the clay a serpent formed, hideous and frightening. Alone in the house at the kitchen table, the room reeled. Though unsteady, my hands kept on as the second head of the snake appeared. I trapped the unholy anomaly in a cardboard box, fearing the rattling of its tail, or the bite of its fangs. The next form that appeared under my hands in clay was an oversized, ugly, bumpy penis, which also went quickly into the box.
After lighting a candle every morning after the bus left with Shane, the ritual half hour began. I drew page after page of how my tummy felt, hellish black swirls emanating outwards like volcanic explosions, splashed with watercolors and acrylics of red, red, red, the blood splatter of rage. Black also dominated, with pictures depicting gory ghoul hands reaching up for me. Other illustrations included my stick figure separated from the group, cheeks scarlet with shame. After piling in the fury and terror, I painted the cardboard box black, hoping the fermented rot in my belly was out of me. It was a start.
In the closet nearby, I felt afraid, imagining that shit inside slithering out. I asked Raymond if he would keep it for me rather than have it sit in my closet. It was his idea to have a ceremonial fire on his property in the spring during one of our sessions, and I readily agreed. Burning that vile box would be cleansing, and I looked forward to it. The contents of the box felt so real, and so scary, that even far away at Raymond’s house, I had nightmarish snapshots of the box’s contents creeping out for him too. But the thick-coated, pendulous penis, exposed when I was just a young girl, came only for me, so I reassured myself he’d be safe from it.
Raymond never saw what was in the box. Spring came and we carried it out back behind his barn and lit it.
He said, “Do you want to say anything?”
I shook my head no as we watched it burn. Then thinking I ought to cough something up, I squeezed out, “It’s as good as Dulcolax.”
He chuckled. Having managed the first semester of nursing school, I knew Dulcolax to be an effective laxative. I wished he’d seen some of the pieces. Though horrible creatures, they were surprisingly well done, but once I’d put them in the box, they stayed there. I didn’t look at them again, go near them, or touch the box till our ceremonial march to the fire pit.
Maybe ridding unwelcome spirits is as easy as lighting a match. But the beast of rage in my heart was extraordinary, so writhing and undulating that it encroached on all other feelings, even the physical ability to breath. Raymond tried to help with my high anxiety right from the beginning. At one session he handed me a paper he wrote covering the subject of diaphragmatic breathing.
Instantly noting suspicion, he questioned, “You don’t believe in such a thing?”
I didn’t. How could there such be a word as “diaphragmatic”? Did he make it up? I just looked at him, again unable to vocalize disagreement.
My inability to trust was, as always, paramount, its periscope of suspicion constantly scanning for threats. Mistrust had become a fervent religion. It’s not a religion that allows freedom. Locked up tightly, I was unable to feel my own center, a place guarded as if life depended on it. Breaking into a sealed, guarded vault would be easier than finding my heart.
But eventually he found a way through.
I devoted time each day to slow down my breathing and visualize soothing nature trails, listening to the meditation tape Raymond had recorded during a session. His voice, silky smooth like Dan’s had been, led me to gentle streams and quiet falls trickling over rocks, then a barebacked horse ride along a sun-dappled forest path.
And then there was that nut in my pocket. I paid ninety dollars for someone to tell me to rub my thumb over something smooth in my pocket when I felt stressed. I thought him loony for suggesting such a dumb, insubstantial little thing, but did it anyway. By the sidewalk in town, chestnuts had fallen. I gathered a basketful and always kept one in a pocket. Anything was better than taking that awful Prozac.
Then he said, “I’d like you try writing without stopping. Don’t stop to think, punctuate, or check spelling. Don’t stop at all, just keep going. It’s called “free association.”
I looked at him, perplexed. Another stupid idea. Journaling was one thing, but this? My disloyal head nodded agreeably though, as if attached to someone else’s body. I tried it at home, hating it even more than I thought I would. He read the letter handed over during the next visit after sitting down. I wrote out very courteously, sweetly really, how his idea of “free association” didn’t work too well.
“Ah, free ass,” he said, looking up at me, that smirk on his face again.
What the heck was he talking about, free ass? I had merely abbreviated “association.” I didn’t mean anything by it.
Or did I?
He went on unperturbed, “You didn’t find it helpful?”
His tranquil smile both threatened and annoyed me. I squirmed in the chair, beginning to sweat as he waited for an answer. He wasn’t getting one. The struggle to disagree, or vocalize any feeling, was a lifelong endeavor. But he torpedoed past defenses others did not, doing so with precision. I was found out, with nowhere to hide or run from those gazing glittering eyes.
Through many starts and stops, I did make it through nursing school. I returned and re-bought the heavy massive books many times, once quitting for an entire year, once for three days. The lead nurse instructor showed great tolerance, allowing reentrance twice. The fear took its toll. Because of long ago trauma—untreated post- traumatic stress—any additional stress would shoot out chemicals designed to prepare the body for imminent danger. “Lions, tigers, and bears‟ were around every corner. Anyone standing nearby worried me. What were they talking about? I was sure it was me, even if I didn’t know them. Every human posed a threat. What would they do to me? How would they hurt me? What would they take from me? The more intelligent a person, the more threatening they were.
My immune system couldn’t take the constant beatings. I developed phobias of elevators and flying and had my first, and so far last, panic attack. It occurred after quitting the first time. The world crashed in. Suffocated by failure, I grasped at any lifeline. Shane, only twelve, got off the bus. My distress at the darkness drowning me pulled him into the fight for my life.
“Go outside, Mom” he said, knowing how I loved the outdoors.
I gasped for air outside too as he followed, worried.
I called Raymond, desperate for relief, crying, and tried to relay what was happening. “I feel like I can’t breathe, like I’m dying!”
He calmly replied, “Allow the feeling in.”
It wasn’t the first time I thought he didn’t understand. During our next meeting he prescribed Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication, but had to persuade me to use it. I resisted taking in foreign objects and never really took enough the way it was prescribed. But just having it with me at all times after that first panic attack was the panacea I needed to prevent another one, a kind of security blanket. That and the fact that finally I succeeded and graduated.
Patricia J Grace 