Trigger warning: self-injury and suicide
There are hundreds of scars criss-crossing my body. Faded reminders of the pain from the not so distant past. I have hated these visible reminders of how bad it really was. But I still mourn as they fade and sink into the background of my skin. They are markers of my life. Twelve years of pain documented on my body.
I can still see the very first scars. The ones made with a broken bottle shard sitting under a tree near the highway. That first time, I wanted to die. Wanting to die, trying to die, those weren't new things for me. I'd already tried several other ways with obviously no success. This would be it, the ultimate escape. Back then, death was the only option I could see for getting free from the life I was trapped in.
Broken bottle shards do not make for good cutting tools. I cried because it wasn't sharp enough and then had to hide what I was doing when a classmate showed up uninvited. The burning stinging pain in my wrists got me through the rest of that week. It opened a whole new world of coping to me.
It spiralled out of control until I had to cut to make it through the day. It got harder and harder to hide, to excuse away. When I was arrested two years later they had to document any injuries on my body. I had almost 40 current self-inflicted wounds covering my arms. I wish I could say that I got the help I needed and that the self-injury stopped then. Instead I got creative. I found other ways that didn't leave a mark that could be seen by others. I continued to cut and it once again took over my life when I got a place of my own.
I'd love to say that I would have stopped on my own, but that wouldn't be the truth. I needed an external consequence that was serious enough to motivate me to stop. I still almost didn't make it. One day at a time added up to years. Four years, four months, and twenty-one days.
I wish I could say that I don't miss it. Some days that pull is still there. I don't know that it will ever go away. On the days that the pull is too strong, I trace the scars and remember. Remember the pain that drove me to cut for relief. Remember the self-hatred that demanded I punish myself for existing. Remember the lies that if I could bleed enough then maybe I wouldn't be evil. Remember that I have other tools now than this one and that I deserve gentle care from myself, rather than more scars.
Showing posts with label the past. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the past. Show all posts
Monday, August 4, 2014
Saturday, August 2, 2014
Leaving Prison Behind
The rush of anger
Where to go from here
Where is up from this haunted place?
Palm imprinted
With clutched freedom
Breezes tempt
One foot in front of the other
Walking into something new
Tastes like pennies
Bright shiny copper disks
Submerged in vinegar
The suddenness of fear
Sounds like breaking glass
Brightness spilled across the floor
Vinegar running into cracks and crevices
The beauty of exploration
Of entering into something new
Halted by the torrent of words
Slamming into a young heart
Layers of dust mark
Where exploration once lived
Beauty retreated
A never-ending list of doing
Dreams languished
Locked in her prison cell
Dreams languished
Locked in her prison cell
Where to go from here
Where is up from this haunted place?
Palm imprinted
With clutched freedom
Breezes tempt
One foot in front of the other
Walking into something new
Friday, June 20, 2014
Stories From the Past: A Beginning
I'm linking up with Marvia Davidson's Real Talk Tuesday talking about truth. This is my truth.
I couldn't settle to sleep, so I stayed up all night reading Every Shattered Thing by Elora Ramirez. If you haven't read this book, you need to. It wrecked me. Because while I've never been a victim of human trafficking, I have a good friend who is. This shit is real. It happens. And the lucky ones escape.
My words are tumbling around in my brain, as I fight tears. Because this story, it reminded me of something I'd forgotten. It reminded me of how bad the abuse was. About how it really is a big deal. I forget that. I forget now that it isn't happening every day. Now that I don't live my life in terror. Now that I don't have to worry about my room being searched or being caught doing something that would dishonour the family.
I've buried my stories. The fear and terror. The shattering of my soul. I've told them, detached, clinical. Listing the details as though they were nothing. Because they were normal. But Stephanie's story, it reminds me that it's not normal. Her desperation, her tenuous grasp on hope, it reminds me of my own. I forget how far I've come. I minimize the healing that still needs to happen. It's easier that way. It's easier to shrug it off. It's easier to live my life half-connected, but that's no life at all. It's this washed out watercolour existence, that has more colour than my life ever contained so I think this is living.
I'm still surviving. In too many places and too many ways. I'm surviving. I'm still hiding. Hiding my words here, hiding my face, my passions, my dreams. I'm hiding the nightmares and sleepless nights. I'm hiding the daily pain, the constant reminders of medical treatment and care that I was denied.
I don't tell. I still don't tell. I feel like I've written this post a million times here already, and somehow I need to keep writing it. I need to keep telling myself the truth, because really that's what this is about. It's about truth. My truth. I forgot what it was like to find stolen moments of time. Time to myself, hidden away from the parents. The lies upon lies that I told praying that he wouldn't catch me in it, that he wouldn't take away the tiny pieces of freedom that I had earned.
I understand what it is to be property. My value was in the work I could do around the house, the free babysitting, the way that I bolstered his image as a good father - and when I didn't bolster his image then came the rages. The screaming words hurled at my soul - the ones that I don't have to hear ringing in my ears any more because I wear them, carry them in my bones. They weigh me down and keep me trapped.
fat, lazy, rebellious, witch, liar, bitch, slut, disappointment, demon-possessed, why can't you be better, why can't you be like so and so...on and on, his words defining me, shaping me. Demanding respect, demanding love, demanding affection, demanding unquestioning, unthinking obedience. Demanding, pushing, pulling, tearing at my skin.
And I feel the numb set back in, the fog settling back down, sinking deep into my bones. I feel myself start to float away from these memories, back into myself, back into the present because what's back there is too much, too hard, too painful.
It isn't enough though that I survived it, that I was given a place, a home to escape to. I owe it to myself to heal, to come alive, to be the person that he was desperate to destroy. I don't know how. I don't know how to unlock these stories. I still don't know how to tell. Yet I'm convinced and reminded yet again that I have to tell them, in halting words and imperfect details. I have to tell them so that maybe my soul will stop shattering with every anniversary, phone call, visit, sleepless night, flashback, memory, and trigger. I don't know how to heal from this. There isn't a manual. But I'm determined to try.
I couldn't settle to sleep, so I stayed up all night reading Every Shattered Thing by Elora Ramirez. If you haven't read this book, you need to. It wrecked me. Because while I've never been a victim of human trafficking, I have a good friend who is. This shit is real. It happens. And the lucky ones escape.
My words are tumbling around in my brain, as I fight tears. Because this story, it reminded me of something I'd forgotten. It reminded me of how bad the abuse was. About how it really is a big deal. I forget that. I forget now that it isn't happening every day. Now that I don't live my life in terror. Now that I don't have to worry about my room being searched or being caught doing something that would dishonour the family.
I've buried my stories. The fear and terror. The shattering of my soul. I've told them, detached, clinical. Listing the details as though they were nothing. Because they were normal. But Stephanie's story, it reminds me that it's not normal. Her desperation, her tenuous grasp on hope, it reminds me of my own. I forget how far I've come. I minimize the healing that still needs to happen. It's easier that way. It's easier to shrug it off. It's easier to live my life half-connected, but that's no life at all. It's this washed out watercolour existence, that has more colour than my life ever contained so I think this is living.
I'm still surviving. In too many places and too many ways. I'm surviving. I'm still hiding. Hiding my words here, hiding my face, my passions, my dreams. I'm hiding the nightmares and sleepless nights. I'm hiding the daily pain, the constant reminders of medical treatment and care that I was denied.
I don't tell. I still don't tell. I feel like I've written this post a million times here already, and somehow I need to keep writing it. I need to keep telling myself the truth, because really that's what this is about. It's about truth. My truth. I forgot what it was like to find stolen moments of time. Time to myself, hidden away from the parents. The lies upon lies that I told praying that he wouldn't catch me in it, that he wouldn't take away the tiny pieces of freedom that I had earned.
I understand what it is to be property. My value was in the work I could do around the house, the free babysitting, the way that I bolstered his image as a good father - and when I didn't bolster his image then came the rages. The screaming words hurled at my soul - the ones that I don't have to hear ringing in my ears any more because I wear them, carry them in my bones. They weigh me down and keep me trapped.
fat, lazy, rebellious, witch, liar, bitch, slut, disappointment, demon-possessed, why can't you be better, why can't you be like so and so...on and on, his words defining me, shaping me. Demanding respect, demanding love, demanding affection, demanding unquestioning, unthinking obedience. Demanding, pushing, pulling, tearing at my skin.
And I feel the numb set back in, the fog settling back down, sinking deep into my bones. I feel myself start to float away from these memories, back into myself, back into the present because what's back there is too much, too hard, too painful.
It isn't enough though that I survived it, that I was given a place, a home to escape to. I owe it to myself to heal, to come alive, to be the person that he was desperate to destroy. I don't know how. I don't know how to unlock these stories. I still don't know how to tell. Yet I'm convinced and reminded yet again that I have to tell them, in halting words and imperfect details. I have to tell them so that maybe my soul will stop shattering with every anniversary, phone call, visit, sleepless night, flashback, memory, and trigger. I don't know how to heal from this. There isn't a manual. But I'm determined to try.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Soul Howling: The In-between anniversaries
trigger warning: aftermath of sexual trauma
You know when you're not okay, but there's nothing that will make it better, so you keep on doing the right things, putting one foot in front of the other, making time for self-care as the howling of your soul threatens to deafens you? I've been treading water long enough that the motions are mechanical, my thoughts incoherent, every last ounce of my will focused on not drowning.
I'm in between sexual trauma anniversaries for this month. One down, one to go. Maybe then my body will stop feeling what my mind doesn't want to remember. Maybe then I won't want to throw up when my husband kisses me. Maybe then the restlessness in my bones will quiet down enough that I can think.
It's been 8 years and 13 years respectively since these traumas happened. You'd think I'd be over them by now, that I'd have healed enough that they wouldn't haunt me like this. That my body wouldn't wake me up over and over again in the night with the feel of their hands, their bodies where they never belonged.
It's all I can do to put one foot in front of the other. This is normal for me. This is a normal state of being - this howling of wordless pain and degradation. Much of the time I'm tuned out. It's there - it's always fucking there, but I become deaf to it. I could tell you the details of how my body was treated like a commodity, a tool for his using and leaving, but those aren't what haunt me.
What haunts me is that both of these men knew. They knew I was multiple, knew I was abused, and had presented themselves as safe people, in places that were supposedly safe. My soul howls at the betrayal of the shreds of trust that I still had that had been placed in the hands of yet another who used me.
My fear tells me to run, to flee, to hide myself away from everyone and everything. To never share any of who I am with anyone, ever again. It's tempting. It wouldn't help me heal, it would be going backwards, but my mistrust of the world as a whole is at it's high point for the year. I don't feel safe, not curled up here in my office on the couch, not wrapped in layers of blankets in my bed, not in my husband's arms, not in my therapist's office.
I'm tired of riding this out. Tired of choosing the right thing with the immediate result being extreme restlessness. My heart came alive in a new way this year and now I can't numb myself to how this feels. I know this too is healing - and so my soul howls, wordless broken terrified.
You know when you're not okay, but there's nothing that will make it better, so you keep on doing the right things, putting one foot in front of the other, making time for self-care as the howling of your soul threatens to deafens you? I've been treading water long enough that the motions are mechanical, my thoughts incoherent, every last ounce of my will focused on not drowning.
I'm in between sexual trauma anniversaries for this month. One down, one to go. Maybe then my body will stop feeling what my mind doesn't want to remember. Maybe then I won't want to throw up when my husband kisses me. Maybe then the restlessness in my bones will quiet down enough that I can think.
It's been 8 years and 13 years respectively since these traumas happened. You'd think I'd be over them by now, that I'd have healed enough that they wouldn't haunt me like this. That my body wouldn't wake me up over and over again in the night with the feel of their hands, their bodies where they never belonged.
It's all I can do to put one foot in front of the other. This is normal for me. This is a normal state of being - this howling of wordless pain and degradation. Much of the time I'm tuned out. It's there - it's always fucking there, but I become deaf to it. I could tell you the details of how my body was treated like a commodity, a tool for his using and leaving, but those aren't what haunt me.
What haunts me is that both of these men knew. They knew I was multiple, knew I was abused, and had presented themselves as safe people, in places that were supposedly safe. My soul howls at the betrayal of the shreds of trust that I still had that had been placed in the hands of yet another who used me.
My fear tells me to run, to flee, to hide myself away from everyone and everything. To never share any of who I am with anyone, ever again. It's tempting. It wouldn't help me heal, it would be going backwards, but my mistrust of the world as a whole is at it's high point for the year. I don't feel safe, not curled up here in my office on the couch, not wrapped in layers of blankets in my bed, not in my husband's arms, not in my therapist's office.
I'm tired of riding this out. Tired of choosing the right thing with the immediate result being extreme restlessness. My heart came alive in a new way this year and now I can't numb myself to how this feels. I know this too is healing - and so my soul howls, wordless broken terrified.
When I Allow Shame to Steal My Voice
It's after midnight. I need to be asleep. Instead I'm writing, after watching the first three episodes of Gilmore Girls. I never watched the whole show - I found it triggering too much of the time. My relationship with my Mom is distant, complicated, strained. Some of it is my fault. Some of it is hers.
She's coming to visit next month. along with my father. I've been wrestling with my feelings around that for the past couple weeks. I'm not sure how to blog about it. I can write it for myself, but I don't know how to share it and so I've been quieter. It's one of the drawbacks of living afraid, of being raised in a world where you protect the family at all costs. I don't quite know how to stop.
I lie to myself saying that I'm protecting what little relationship I have with my siblings and my mother. The truth has much more to do with my fear. My fear that people will be hurt by my truth. My fear that I will lose what little connection I have left with my family. My fear that it will end any sliver of hope of reconciliation.
Deep down, I'm still a little girl wanting to be seen, loved, heard, accepted, valued, celebrated by the two people who brought her into this messed up world. Their version of acceptance though comes at the price of my Self. I will be accepted when I conform to who they want me to be - and I'm not sure that I even know who that person would be now. All I know is that I can't be anyone else. I can't hide my multiplicity, my self-injury scars, my recovery, my creativity, my evolving faith. I don't want to hide.
I don't want to hide, yet here I am, hiding. Hiding my stories, hiding my truth, hiding my name, pouring over what I write to ensure there aren't too many identifying details, that my story couldn't be matched up by those I'm hiding from.
I'm hiding because I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed that I'm damaged. Ashamed that I didn't leave the abuse earlier, that I stayed into adulthood. Ashamed that I couldn't find the right way to tell, to make it stop. I'm terrified that if I told my stories, you would side with my perpetrators because for most of my life, that's what every one did. I didn't know to call it abuse, or even abnormal. I'm ashamed to tell the details because I can't point to easily understood trauma - there were no broken bones, no hiding bruises, and those who molested, assaulted, and raped me weren't my parents. There have been too many people who have agreed with what my parents did. Agreed with their world view, their interpretation of Scripture, their God-given right to my life.
I can't point to a single movement, cult, or faith tradition that harmed me. There were pieces from all over the map, from before there was a map. If my father had been a little more charismatic, dynamic, he would have made a great cult leader. As it was, people avoiding him like the plague. Adults lived in fear of him and left his children and wife stranded, without measurable help, holding onto broken promises, living out the cycle time after time.
I got my butt handed to me today. Caiobhe wrote this amazing post that called my hiding right up on the carpet. I'm still wearing shame as though it actually covers and protects me. What a lie. Shame does nothing but steal my voice and rob me of living my life. It robs me of healing from the past, from moving forward to a place where fear no longer holds me as it's favourite captive. I'd gotten pretty good at telling myself that I didn't hold any shame any more. I got good at lying to myself that I had worked through my shame. Apparently it's time for another round.
I feel shame for still having shame to work through. Ugh. It's this vicious circle, eating me from the inside out. I don't know how to allow myself to be in process, to be better but not yet whole. I'm somewhere between broken and healed - and I will always be somewhere in-between the two. I want to either be broken girl, who needs compassion, help, support, healing or the strong-I-learned-how-to-thrive-and-my-past-no-longer-holds-sway girl. I don't know how to do this both yet neither thing. But I think publishing this post is a step in the right direction.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Standing Up For Me
My parents are coming to visit. Even typing that sentence makes me want to cry. I'm terrified. Scared out of my wits with all of the what ifs and what could happens. My protective instincts are kicking in and I am fighting like a mad woman to hold onto this self that I've finally discovered this year. I've done too much healing to deal with their visit in the ways that I have in the past, but not enough yet to decide if I am ready to no longer have them in any part of my life.
My fear has been stealing my voice, my creativity. It's robbed me of sleep, of peace, of the ability to rest. I am frantic, anxious, restless, unfocused. And I'm still free to choose.
I haven't lost what I've learned, even though it's gone into hiding for the last week. Those lessons and those tools, I still have them, I still know how to use them. I haven't lost me, even though right now it feels like I have. I am stronger than I give myself credit for. Today I am standing up and fighting for myself, for my voice, for my creativity. I won't allow fear to rob me of what freedom has brought. Today I lean into my fear, to hear what it has to teach me, to honour it's voice. But it's no longer the deciding force behind my actions.
I'm printing my pictures and creating my wall of colours. I'm leaving my books on their shelves. I'm showing up scared and brave, using my voice even when, especially when it's shaking. I'm honouring the gift of words that my Muses give me. Today I'm standing up for myself, not with my parents, that will come one day. First I need to learn to stand up for myself to my fear.
My fear has been stealing my voice, my creativity. It's robbed me of sleep, of peace, of the ability to rest. I am frantic, anxious, restless, unfocused. And I'm still free to choose.
I haven't lost what I've learned, even though it's gone into hiding for the last week. Those lessons and those tools, I still have them, I still know how to use them. I haven't lost me, even though right now it feels like I have. I am stronger than I give myself credit for. Today I am standing up and fighting for myself, for my voice, for my creativity. I won't allow fear to rob me of what freedom has brought. Today I lean into my fear, to hear what it has to teach me, to honour it's voice. But it's no longer the deciding force behind my actions.
I'm printing my pictures and creating my wall of colours. I'm leaving my books on their shelves. I'm showing up scared and brave, using my voice even when, especially when it's shaking. I'm honouring the gift of words that my Muses give me. Today I'm standing up for myself, not with my parents, that will come one day. First I need to learn to stand up for myself to my fear.
Thursday, May 15, 2014
The Next Right Choice
One of the many clichés in recovery is to make the next right choice. It's served me well over the past three years. When I don't know what my next step is, or which issue to tackle next, when I haven't known what to do about the enormity of the dysfunction that I still live in because of my past - I don't have to have all of the answers, heck I don't have to have ANY of the answers. I need to make the next right choice.
It's not this pressure of perfectionism, oh I have to get it right. It's that I know I could choose to sit down and write, or I could go stare in the fridge and dream about what my next meal will be. My right choice is the one that leads me towards life, towards wholeness. It helps too, when I mess up, when I decide that I'm going to not just plan my next meal, I'm going to eat it right now too, even though I'm not hungry. It helps because I don't have to beat myself up, I can make my next right choice - to own my slip, to own that I chose medicating over feeling, and to release myself from my own judgement. I take my consequence and I make the next right choice.
Those choices add up, over and over until I'm now in this place where I no longer tie my worth to my weight. Where I like and even love who I am becoming - this introverted creative, full of scathingly brilliant ideas, who thrives on routine and is learning to live outside of the rules and the boxes. Where I can look in the mirror and see things that I like about myself, instead of only seeing what I hate. This place is one where I'm finally grateful to be alive, grateful that my best efforts to not live didn't succeed.
The past several months a recurring theme has been showing up - this theme of "I don't belong". It's not new. There were too many other things on my plate. It sucks, walking around feeling like a junior high girl left on the outside of every group. There's a lot of pain that says that it's true. There's pain that says that people would want me, value me if I was skinny. There's pain that says no one cares, you aren't unique, your words don't matter. There's pain that says I need to isolate, run away, withdraw, give up. I could do those things. I could believe all the things that my pain says. Much of what I'm feeling is based in the past. Because when I was a junior high girl, I didn't belong. I didn't fit in. I wasn't valued or cared about by my peer group. I was left out, repeatedly. Just because it was true back then doesn't mean that it's true in the present.
I've spent several days having to make my next right choice in this. Choosing to text a friend, choosing to tell my safe people how I feel, asking those closest to me to tell me one more time that I'm valued, that I matter to them, that I belong. It feels needy. It's also necessary. Some days I can hear my pain and validate what used to be true. Some days I can even list ways that it isn't true now. But some days, all I can do is add fuel to the fire and those are the days that my next right choice tells me to pick up the phone and ask for help.
This isn't going to just go away. My learning to like myself has taken years of hard work and choices. This is going to take time and choices too. It's not that I need to get rid of lies or stop believing them. My pain from then needs to be felt, to be written through, to be held and heard so it can then be released. In the process of doing that, my right choice then becomes reaching out when pain's voice drowns out my own.
Who knows, maybe three years from now I'll look back and see that I have learned to feel secure in my friendships, that I can trust that I am wanted, see that I'm valued, and feel included. Until that day, I'll keep making my next right choice.
It's not this pressure of perfectionism, oh I have to get it right. It's that I know I could choose to sit down and write, or I could go stare in the fridge and dream about what my next meal will be. My right choice is the one that leads me towards life, towards wholeness. It helps too, when I mess up, when I decide that I'm going to not just plan my next meal, I'm going to eat it right now too, even though I'm not hungry. It helps because I don't have to beat myself up, I can make my next right choice - to own my slip, to own that I chose medicating over feeling, and to release myself from my own judgement. I take my consequence and I make the next right choice.
Those choices add up, over and over until I'm now in this place where I no longer tie my worth to my weight. Where I like and even love who I am becoming - this introverted creative, full of scathingly brilliant ideas, who thrives on routine and is learning to live outside of the rules and the boxes. Where I can look in the mirror and see things that I like about myself, instead of only seeing what I hate. This place is one where I'm finally grateful to be alive, grateful that my best efforts to not live didn't succeed.
The past several months a recurring theme has been showing up - this theme of "I don't belong". It's not new. There were too many other things on my plate. It sucks, walking around feeling like a junior high girl left on the outside of every group. There's a lot of pain that says that it's true. There's pain that says that people would want me, value me if I was skinny. There's pain that says no one cares, you aren't unique, your words don't matter. There's pain that says I need to isolate, run away, withdraw, give up. I could do those things. I could believe all the things that my pain says. Much of what I'm feeling is based in the past. Because when I was a junior high girl, I didn't belong. I didn't fit in. I wasn't valued or cared about by my peer group. I was left out, repeatedly. Just because it was true back then doesn't mean that it's true in the present.
I've spent several days having to make my next right choice in this. Choosing to text a friend, choosing to tell my safe people how I feel, asking those closest to me to tell me one more time that I'm valued, that I matter to them, that I belong. It feels needy. It's also necessary. Some days I can hear my pain and validate what used to be true. Some days I can even list ways that it isn't true now. But some days, all I can do is add fuel to the fire and those are the days that my next right choice tells me to pick up the phone and ask for help.
This isn't going to just go away. My learning to like myself has taken years of hard work and choices. This is going to take time and choices too. It's not that I need to get rid of lies or stop believing them. My pain from then needs to be felt, to be written through, to be held and heard so it can then be released. In the process of doing that, my right choice then becomes reaching out when pain's voice drowns out my own.
Who knows, maybe three years from now I'll look back and see that I have learned to feel secure in my friendships, that I can trust that I am wanted, see that I'm valued, and feel included. Until that day, I'll keep making my next right choice.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
The Day Before Freedom
It itched
That place of being captive
yearning, straining for the new
Life-changing
hidden around the corner
Anticipation and nerves
Hurry, hurry, hurry
Waiting for it all to blow up in her face
The other shoe had to drop
didn't it?
Could it be different?
Would this plan work?
Heart-set, defiant, resolute
Her sanity, her soul
dependent on tomorrow's sunrise
That place of being captive
yearning, straining for the new
Life-changing
hidden around the corner
Anticipation and nerves
Hurry, hurry, hurry
Waiting for it all to blow up in her face
The other shoe had to drop
didn't it?
Could it be different?
Would this plan work?
Heart-set, defiant, resolute
Her sanity, her soul
dependent on tomorrow's sunrise
Monday, April 28, 2014
When Faith is Messy
This process of peeling back layers of my life, my story it's vulnerable, painful, yet some how, some times exhilarating. There's something about telling the truth - MY truth - that smells like freedom. I want to race to the end, to sprint ahead, but this is still a marathon journey. I do not have the strength to sprint the rest of the way.
As I write more pieces of the truth, more pieces show up. I've spent my weekend emotionally reeling from seeing the connections between all the pieces of what I thought were highly disconnected spiritually abusive groups. I knew there was some cross-over. I hadn't connected that they were all connected, that they all trace their own histories back to the same tainted source. Whether it was the extreme charismatic signs and wonders, the never-ending worship and prayer services, the character seminars that promised to reveal the hidden principles of a successful life, or the commissioning of house churches to serve under regional apostles it all traces back.
I've spent my weekend floundering, wondering if there is any part of my faith that hasn't been tainted by this toxic teaching. Desperately hoping that there has been something from the first 25 years of my life that wasn't connected to this filth in the name of God. It's painful to face the inevitable questions - is there any of it that was real? Have I ever had a faith that wasn't tied to a cult? Where do I go now? Is there any faith community that could be safe? How would I even know?
What will I learn 5 years from now about the church that I've been a part of these past 5 years? This church that has been a haven and a family, yet that feels like it's now choking the new life being born in my deepest self. My fear and my fury are mixed together. My prayers are wordless screams again. I can't see straight about anything and I want to run. To run from anything that looks like Christianity or religion. To run to the water, the trees, the sunlight where my rawness has room to breathe.
There are so many questions: Do I dare? Do I dare follow where my heart is leading me? Do I dare try one more version of Christian community? I still need the Church. I know this to the core of my being. I need Her. I need her humanity, her history, her example. What I don't know is where to find her in a way that won't deepen my already bleeding wounds.
For now I stick with what I know. I run to the water, to the trees and the sunlight. I run to the thunderstorms and the cries of the geese. I allow my prayers to be wordless screaming and angry profanities mixed with heart-wrenching sobs. I honour the place where I am trusting somehow that Love will meet me here. And for now, that is enough.
As I write more pieces of the truth, more pieces show up. I've spent my weekend emotionally reeling from seeing the connections between all the pieces of what I thought were highly disconnected spiritually abusive groups. I knew there was some cross-over. I hadn't connected that they were all connected, that they all trace their own histories back to the same tainted source. Whether it was the extreme charismatic signs and wonders, the never-ending worship and prayer services, the character seminars that promised to reveal the hidden principles of a successful life, or the commissioning of house churches to serve under regional apostles it all traces back.
I've spent my weekend floundering, wondering if there is any part of my faith that hasn't been tainted by this toxic teaching. Desperately hoping that there has been something from the first 25 years of my life that wasn't connected to this filth in the name of God. It's painful to face the inevitable questions - is there any of it that was real? Have I ever had a faith that wasn't tied to a cult? Where do I go now? Is there any faith community that could be safe? How would I even know?
What will I learn 5 years from now about the church that I've been a part of these past 5 years? This church that has been a haven and a family, yet that feels like it's now choking the new life being born in my deepest self. My fear and my fury are mixed together. My prayers are wordless screams again. I can't see straight about anything and I want to run. To run from anything that looks like Christianity or religion. To run to the water, the trees, the sunlight where my rawness has room to breathe.
There are so many questions: Do I dare? Do I dare follow where my heart is leading me? Do I dare try one more version of Christian community? I still need the Church. I know this to the core of my being. I need Her. I need her humanity, her history, her example. What I don't know is where to find her in a way that won't deepen my already bleeding wounds.
For now I stick with what I know. I run to the water, to the trees and the sunlight. I run to the thunderstorms and the cries of the geese. I allow my prayers to be wordless screaming and angry profanities mixed with heart-wrenching sobs. I honour the place where I am trusting somehow that Love will meet me here. And for now, that is enough.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
A Plural Life in a Singular World
You don’t end up as a poly-fragmented multiple without severe, prolonged, horrifying trauma before the age of 7. I know this. All the literature agrees, well all the literature that acknowledges multiplicity as real, as possible. I laugh at the idea that something that I live can be debated still as to whether it even exists.
It’s always existed for me. I split before conscious memory, long before narrative memory. I will never get to know why. There is no story that I can tell, no threads to weave together into a tapestry that explains why when I was a preschooler I already had 5 distinct separate personalities. My abusers refuse to acknowledge the harm they did to me and I do not yet have the strength to force a confrontation. It’s around the age of 4 that I have conscious narrative memories. That is where my stories start - the first time that he thought I was demon-possessed and decided to cast it out of me. The first time that a friend wanted to play a game with me - a game that I've learned to label for what it was - sexual molestation and object rape.
There’s the story of the bullying, the name calling, the being pushed down on the playground. Of being excluded, always, forever left out. These are stories that I could tell, that I need to tell - and every story, every incident shattered me further. My words feel too small, too insignificant to do justice to the harm done to my very being in the name of God, love and family. I don’t have a before. All that I have is the abuse and the aftermath.
I can’t tell you the story, the first story where I learned that because I was a girl I was less than, I was evil. I can’t tell you the story because it was in every interaction with my father. I saw it every time he belittled my mother. I was taught it every time that the story of Adam and Eve was told. It was Eve’s fault, she destroyed the perfect world God had made. I have a three year old part inside who’s name is Eve. We only found her a year ago - locked in an internal hell, perpetually being punished for being a girl, for being sin, for being totally depraved to the very core of her being. Christianity taught me that. My good private Baptist school taught me that. My current church teaches me that. It’s taught every time a man gets up to speak and a woman doesn't. It’s taught every time a man is put into a leadership position over a woman. It’s taught in ways that are driven into the depths of women’s souls.
To stay in my church right now is telling Eve, this precious piece of us, two separate messages. Because we rescued her from that hell - both her and the young boy that was created to torment her for all eternity. We rescued them and have been teaching them both that they are more than that story from so long ago. We are teaching them that they each are beautiful and worthy and loved. But when I stay, I'm telling Eve that there’s a piece of that old story that tormented her for so long that is true. She is different, less than, over-looked and unseen because she is a girl. I can’t stay in a place that tells this beautiful piece of my heart that she is evil.
I must leave, and I don’t know where to go. It’s only been in the last 4 weeks that the internal structure that has kept us trapped in a cycle of torment and obligation about our faith has stopped. It’s shifting, changing once again as we take this next step to healing. This is my hard thing - my internal world, that is more real to me, more a part of me than anything else on this earth and this next step in my healing, finding a church that doesn't add garbage into my still open wounds. I want to live open and honest as me, as us. I don’t want to be the poster child for healthy multiplicity. Most multiples who heal choose integration into one whole self. That’s not an option for us. We've never known a life without each other’s company, opinions, voices, and our internal landscape. It’s not easy to live as a plural person in a singular world. We are always checking our tenses, terrified we said too much, that we spoke as a harmonious collective instead of a solo voice. It’s the secret that doesn't get talked about - not with the family, not with most of my friends, not in the places that I minister. There just doesn't seem to be room for all of me.
Yet all of me is here, we exist - and the more that we write, the more the struggle to stay singular seems worthless. And we’re scared. Scared people will run away like they have in the past. Scared people won’t engage with us as we are. Scared that we will turn into this sideshow freak. Scared to write this, even more scared to post it. We've been kicked out of things before for being plural and owning it. Our biggest fear though is that we’ll be ignored. The one thing I cannot bear is silence.
There’s no tidy neat bow to wrap this up with. I hate that this is an on-going writing, something that continues to surface. This healing from abuse is painful. Living in the aftermath is even worse. Maybe that’s why my eye keeps being drawn to trees growing out of rock faces. Trees that are thriving, and growing in the most difficult and beautiful of places. Maybe my eye sees what my heart doesn't dare hope for yet - that there is beauty here, growing out of these hard places.
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Thin White Lines
trigger warning: self-injury/suicide
Thin white lines
Memories etched in skin
Untold stories
The very first
Marking my wrist
Desperate hope
Please let me die
Interruption
Hastily covered arms
Pressure eased
Mind clear
The second
blurs into all the rest
hundreds of lines
hundreds of times
Elusive relief
Cruel comfort
Proof of life
Release for pain
The very last
forgotten
unnoticed
fading away
White lines
Speaking wordless stories
Voicing long ago pain
Thin white lines
Memories etched in skin
Untold stories
The very first
Marking my wrist
Desperate hope
Please let me die
Interruption
Hastily covered arms
Pressure eased
Mind clear
The second
blurs into all the rest
hundreds of lines
hundreds of times
Elusive relief
Cruel comfort
Proof of life
Release for pain
The very last
forgotten
unnoticed
fading away
White lines
Speaking wordless stories
Voicing long ago pain
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Unrealistic Expectations and Perfectionism
{It feels like I spend a lot of time talking around my past, or referring to it in a general way. I was reminded yet again that talking about the specifics matter. It's a struggle, because there are so many specifics that either I don't remember or else I don't have access to those memories yet. I have ALL THE FEELINGS, but very few specifics. It's frustrating for me and feels very backwards in my healing to not have the facts and details that seem to be there for everyone else.}
I learned perfectionism as a way of life. The expectation of my as a child and especially as a teenager was that I would be perfect. I would have perfect grades, keep my room perfectly neat, and would do everything in my life to the point of perfection - and until I reached that point, I would keep trying and improving. This meant that a 98% wasn't good enough. The focus was on what had I gotten wrong. I rarely heard good job, or well done. When I did, there was also a but attached. Good Job but you still need to work on.... or Well done except for... My best was never good enough.
Of course in the middle of this, the standard for what was perfection from my behaviour constantly shifted. One day it was enough that I had tried and given it my whole heart. The next day, doing the exact same thing with the same effort and focus, I was told that trying didn't count. What counted was results. Effort without results was worthless. It was crazy-making to live in that world.
I was naive when I left to start life on my own. I thought that I would be free of that perfectionism and unrealistic expectations now that I was no longer under my father's thumb. I didn't realize that after 22 years, it was engrained into every fibre of my being. It goes with me wherever I go.
This learning to let go of being perfect and embracing my humanity is a process. There are places now where I don't expect perfection of myself {yes housework and cooking I'm looking at you right now}. I don't expect myself to be perfect in my writing. I can accept that I am flawed and loved. That's huge.
I was surprised this week when another unrealistic expectation reared it's ugly head. I still expect that one day I will be fully healed - that I can be the person I was "supposed to be" if all the abuse hadn't have happened, and my personality hadn't split into hundreds of pieces. Ouch. I'm still holding this expectation, this idea, this false hope that one day I won't have the scars, visible and invisible from what all happened. This false hope keeps me from the grief work. It creates a barrier in my healing. I know there's redemption and I'm counting on it. But my idea of what that looks like is going to need to shift.
This side of death, there won't be a day when my past won't be part of my story. Really that's what this is about. I don't want to have lived what I lived. I don't want to be this strong because I survived hell. I don't want to be able to empathize with every type of trauma because I experienced it all. I don't want to be stuck in this label of "the woman formerly known as a victim". Yes I'm aware that there is a balance that has to happen here. But I'm realizing that I've been holding onto a faulty picture of what healing looks like.
My therapist pointed out to me multiple places where I currently have influence in people's lives because of the abuses. I get it, I do get it. I just don't want it. I don't want for this to be my life. I look around and wonder if this was always God's plan or if we're on plan M by now. My unrealistic expectation is that in doing the healing work I will get a do-over. That somehow, I'll magically catch up to my peers, that I'll stop being so unique with such a difficult life story.
There will be more balance - every May I mark my Freedom Day and that number is only going to go up, not down. One day the years that I've been free from abuse will be greater than the number of years I spent being abused. I don't want to pin everything in my life on that though. I need a new idea, a different idea of what healed looks like for me. One that isn't just theory. It's all part of my word for the year still. To become, there must be these shifts in my thoughts and attitudes. Here's to shedding one more layer of flawed expectation and learning to embrace what is, even though it hurts.
I learned perfectionism as a way of life. The expectation of my as a child and especially as a teenager was that I would be perfect. I would have perfect grades, keep my room perfectly neat, and would do everything in my life to the point of perfection - and until I reached that point, I would keep trying and improving. This meant that a 98% wasn't good enough. The focus was on what had I gotten wrong. I rarely heard good job, or well done. When I did, there was also a but attached. Good Job but you still need to work on.... or Well done except for... My best was never good enough.
Of course in the middle of this, the standard for what was perfection from my behaviour constantly shifted. One day it was enough that I had tried and given it my whole heart. The next day, doing the exact same thing with the same effort and focus, I was told that trying didn't count. What counted was results. Effort without results was worthless. It was crazy-making to live in that world.
I was naive when I left to start life on my own. I thought that I would be free of that perfectionism and unrealistic expectations now that I was no longer under my father's thumb. I didn't realize that after 22 years, it was engrained into every fibre of my being. It goes with me wherever I go.
This learning to let go of being perfect and embracing my humanity is a process. There are places now where I don't expect perfection of myself {yes housework and cooking I'm looking at you right now}. I don't expect myself to be perfect in my writing. I can accept that I am flawed and loved. That's huge.
I was surprised this week when another unrealistic expectation reared it's ugly head. I still expect that one day I will be fully healed - that I can be the person I was "supposed to be" if all the abuse hadn't have happened, and my personality hadn't split into hundreds of pieces. Ouch. I'm still holding this expectation, this idea, this false hope that one day I won't have the scars, visible and invisible from what all happened. This false hope keeps me from the grief work. It creates a barrier in my healing. I know there's redemption and I'm counting on it. But my idea of what that looks like is going to need to shift.
This side of death, there won't be a day when my past won't be part of my story. Really that's what this is about. I don't want to have lived what I lived. I don't want to be this strong because I survived hell. I don't want to be able to empathize with every type of trauma because I experienced it all. I don't want to be stuck in this label of "the woman formerly known as a victim". Yes I'm aware that there is a balance that has to happen here. But I'm realizing that I've been holding onto a faulty picture of what healing looks like.
My therapist pointed out to me multiple places where I currently have influence in people's lives because of the abuses. I get it, I do get it. I just don't want it. I don't want for this to be my life. I look around and wonder if this was always God's plan or if we're on plan M by now. My unrealistic expectation is that in doing the healing work I will get a do-over. That somehow, I'll magically catch up to my peers, that I'll stop being so unique with such a difficult life story.
There will be more balance - every May I mark my Freedom Day and that number is only going to go up, not down. One day the years that I've been free from abuse will be greater than the number of years I spent being abused. I don't want to pin everything in my life on that though. I need a new idea, a different idea of what healed looks like for me. One that isn't just theory. It's all part of my word for the year still. To become, there must be these shifts in my thoughts and attitudes. Here's to shedding one more layer of flawed expectation and learning to embrace what is, even though it hurts.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Dark Days
{Good Lord this post sounds melodramatic. It's not meant to be. It's honest. As honest as I know how to be right now. I'll be back to a more balanced place in a little while. Too often I don't acknowledge my own dark days. I'm trying that here, with this.}
Some days my broken gets too big. It eclipses every thing else in my life. I sink down, mesmerized with my own pain, sucked into the aching hole of my own private dark places. When I say some days, I mean at least once a week. Introspection is a good thing. At times I go overboard and know myself a little too well. I forget to look around. I've spent long years believing I was other and alone. I was told to get over my broken, to see that others suffer more than I can imagine.
I've heard the platitudes and comparisons with a little Jesus sprinkled on to make those who offer such filth feel righteous. They ring in my mind, in my memories. Some are etched in my soul. Other still block my ears and blind my eyes, tricking me into believing that what was is still now.
My voice is panicked, defiant, and silently screaming. There is no objectivity. Things that I know are right for me are called back into question once more. I back into the corner, desperate for protection, needing permission to choose for myself, to function, to breathe.
This is the fallout I hate. I hate my brokenness at times. I hate the way it dominates everything, that THIS, this is what I know. It's all I know. Trauma and recovery. I wish I could rip my heart out of my chest, to find some way to let all the darkness pour out of me once and for all. Darkness I never invited, never wanted, never deserved yet that darkness haunts me, torments me, taints me.
I lost the first 22 years of my life to abuse and I've spent the last 8 finding myself and healing from all the damage. I don't know anything else. The only beauty that I possess comes from ashes. Most days I embrace the mystery along with the pain - the mystery of why this was allowed in my life. The mystery of the purpose that it may one day serve. The mystery of abuse done in the name of a holy merciful God.
On these types of days, I loath the mystery. I demand answers. My heart's voice screams "why?!" until it's hoarse. There are still no answers. No more of a response now than there was back then. My pain swallows me and everything I know, all that I have learned is once more lost in the howls of a soul in agony.
Some days my broken gets too big. It eclipses every thing else in my life. I sink down, mesmerized with my own pain, sucked into the aching hole of my own private dark places. When I say some days, I mean at least once a week. Introspection is a good thing. At times I go overboard and know myself a little too well. I forget to look around. I've spent long years believing I was other and alone. I was told to get over my broken, to see that others suffer more than I can imagine.
I've heard the platitudes and comparisons with a little Jesus sprinkled on to make those who offer such filth feel righteous. They ring in my mind, in my memories. Some are etched in my soul. Other still block my ears and blind my eyes, tricking me into believing that what was is still now.
My voice is panicked, defiant, and silently screaming. There is no objectivity. Things that I know are right for me are called back into question once more. I back into the corner, desperate for protection, needing permission to choose for myself, to function, to breathe.
This is the fallout I hate. I hate my brokenness at times. I hate the way it dominates everything, that THIS, this is what I know. It's all I know. Trauma and recovery. I wish I could rip my heart out of my chest, to find some way to let all the darkness pour out of me once and for all. Darkness I never invited, never wanted, never deserved yet that darkness haunts me, torments me, taints me.
I lost the first 22 years of my life to abuse and I've spent the last 8 finding myself and healing from all the damage. I don't know anything else. The only beauty that I possess comes from ashes. Most days I embrace the mystery along with the pain - the mystery of why this was allowed in my life. The mystery of the purpose that it may one day serve. The mystery of abuse done in the name of a holy merciful God.
On these types of days, I loath the mystery. I demand answers. My heart's voice screams "why?!" until it's hoarse. There are still no answers. No more of a response now than there was back then. My pain swallows me and everything I know, all that I have learned is once more lost in the howls of a soul in agony.
How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever? How long will you look the other way when I am in need? How long must I be hiding daily anguish in my heart? How long shall my enemy have the upper hand?Answer me, O Lord my God; give me light in my darkness lest I die.
Psalm 13:1-3
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Reclaiming my Beauty
Once upon a time I executed a perfect pirouette and felt myself beautiful...until my body type was shamed as "not right" for a ballerina. Those shaming moments that came time and again beat down my sense of my own beauty. A sense that already came far too infrequently and already carried baggage with it.
The first sexual assault on my child body was when my body's beauty became used for someone else's exaltation of power and control. I was four years old and no longer innocent. The pattern continued, one perpetrator after the next, using my beauty for their pleasure. Beauty became something that needed to be hidden. Every time I started to reclaim my own beauty there was another perpetrator stealing what belonged to me.
In my pain I harmed my body. Cutting it hundreds of times in a vain attempt to purge the evil in me. I hid my body and my beauty. I buried it with clothes and when that didn't work, I buried it with fat. Now I could shame my body, to tell it how disappointed I was, how it had failed me in this too, that I now could never be beautiful again. There will always be scars and stretch marks - my life story written on my skin.
I believed that I had destroyed any beauty that was left in my body. I desecrated it and now what's left served only as a mockery of what could have been, of what was intended to be.
Over the last three years, I have journeyed with my body. For a long time I've referred to it as "my ugly". It wasn't mine. It doesn't look like me. As I've learned to let go of some of my self-hate and the false blame, my relationship with my body has come front and centre. I could see that who I was might be beautiful, but the skin it was housed in was deemed ugly and not suitable. My awakening heart wanted to feel beautiful, to be beautiful and I resigned myself that it would never happen.
I began belly dancing about a month ago. After that first lesson I walked out sore, alive, and more connected to myself than I had ever felt. I felt like a woman. Each lesson connects me more and more to my body. Every time I practice I see glimpses of how right now, in this moment there is beauty in my body. Beauty in the movement. Movement that comes from MY body.
As I learn to dance again, I'm learning that my beauty matters. Deeply. In times past when I felt my own beauty I was authentically and unashamedly myself. Feeling my own beauty, embracing it grounds me in my body and in the moment. Time seems to hold it's breath as my essence twirls in celebration. I owe my body an apology for the abuse I heaped on her and compassion for the abuse that was inflicted on her by others.
I cannot change what has come before. However, I can learn how to see myself right now as beautiful.
The first sexual assault on my child body was when my body's beauty became used for someone else's exaltation of power and control. I was four years old and no longer innocent. The pattern continued, one perpetrator after the next, using my beauty for their pleasure. Beauty became something that needed to be hidden. Every time I started to reclaim my own beauty there was another perpetrator stealing what belonged to me.
In my pain I harmed my body. Cutting it hundreds of times in a vain attempt to purge the evil in me. I hid my body and my beauty. I buried it with clothes and when that didn't work, I buried it with fat. Now I could shame my body, to tell it how disappointed I was, how it had failed me in this too, that I now could never be beautiful again. There will always be scars and stretch marks - my life story written on my skin.
I believed that I had destroyed any beauty that was left in my body. I desecrated it and now what's left served only as a mockery of what could have been, of what was intended to be.
Over the last three years, I have journeyed with my body. For a long time I've referred to it as "my ugly". It wasn't mine. It doesn't look like me. As I've learned to let go of some of my self-hate and the false blame, my relationship with my body has come front and centre. I could see that who I was might be beautiful, but the skin it was housed in was deemed ugly and not suitable. My awakening heart wanted to feel beautiful, to be beautiful and I resigned myself that it would never happen.
I began belly dancing about a month ago. After that first lesson I walked out sore, alive, and more connected to myself than I had ever felt. I felt like a woman. Each lesson connects me more and more to my body. Every time I practice I see glimpses of how right now, in this moment there is beauty in my body. Beauty in the movement. Movement that comes from MY body.
As I learn to dance again, I'm learning that my beauty matters. Deeply. In times past when I felt my own beauty I was authentically and unashamedly myself. Feeling my own beauty, embracing it grounds me in my body and in the moment. Time seems to hold it's breath as my essence twirls in celebration. I owe my body an apology for the abuse I heaped on her and compassion for the abuse that was inflicted on her by others.
I cannot change what has come before. However, I can learn how to see myself right now as beautiful.
Friday, March 21, 2014
The Girl In the Corner
i
or...thoughts on self-perception. also a further excavation into self-judgement.
ii
I've been turning this over and over for the last three weeks. I've started to write this and walked away. I've considered whether I needed to share it privately with my course-mates, or only with select individuals. In the end I settled for writing it here. Doing anything else is only fuelling the very feelings that I need to talk about.
I no longer believe that I'm intrinsically evil simply because I'm female. I'm still wrestling with all of the repercussions of how that belief has defined me. In the wake of that shifting and changing, another core belief surfaced. I have this perception of myself as "other". It has historical trauma roots like most things that I continually face. It's not just one root. This is almost as strong of a core belief as being evil used to be. They are tied together.
I was other the very first time I went to public school because I lived in the cult up the street. I was other because I already knew how to read. I was other because there were crafts that I wasn't allowed to do.
I switched schools two years later - and I was other from day one. It wasn't anything that I did or didn't do. I lived in a different city and I hadn't started in kindergarten with the rest of the class. The next fall the family moved out of the cult building into a house - and the friends that I had had there, well once again I became other.
When my self-harming behaviours escalated out of control in high school, I was the other that every one was terrified would succeed in killing herself. Even before that I was the other not allowed to see my peers outside of school hours, not allowed to go to parties and I had long ago learned that it wasn't safe to bring friends home.
It happened again when I went to college. It happened when physical health problems kicked in. It happened when I moved to a new country. It happens every time someone asks me "so what do you do all day?"
It's been a pattern in my life - a pattern of reinforcement. I have a mountain of evidence that says I'm other, different. I feel like the girl in the corner. She learned to hide there and watch people. Occasionally she will dart out to share a crumb of herself before running back to safety, to watch and see what these people do with the crumb. I hate this. I get it. I see where it comes from. I want to be open with people, and not in my defiant - here's who I am, you can take it or leave it, see if I care - way. I still believe that if people really knew me, they'd run away or try to "fix" me. That's usually what happens.
I don't trust that people are generally good or have good intentions. "Good" intentions are what shattered my personality. "Good" intentions kept people from calling CPS and allowed them to believe the deflections from my mother.
I'm rambling. Yes I'm learning slowly that there are places where I don't have to be the girl in the corner. The lies still surface, even in those belonging places. All week I've felt like the girl in the corner who can't stop crying. The one who's so broken, too broken. I want to stand up and scream that my heart feels shredded and I can't even tell you why. I'm using every self-care tool that I have - it's the only thing that's keeping me from disappearing into the madness.
iii
Part of my self-care is that I've begun learning how to belly dance. It never fails that I walk out after a class feeling grounded and connected to my body in a way that I've never been before. I walk out sore, of course, but centred in myself and my emotions. I can step back, look back at the part of this entry that I wrote this morning when all of the emotions were all up in my face and recognize that I don't always see myself as other. I have kindness for myself. I can see that yes I am broken and that brokenness doesn't define me, doesn't have to define me. There is a me that is bigger than the brokenness of my identity, a me beyond the horrors inflicted upon me by others, and a me that is becoming this kick-ass woman that I truly love fiercely and passionately.
or...thoughts on self-perception. also a further excavation into self-judgement.
ii
I've been turning this over and over for the last three weeks. I've started to write this and walked away. I've considered whether I needed to share it privately with my course-mates, or only with select individuals. In the end I settled for writing it here. Doing anything else is only fuelling the very feelings that I need to talk about.
I no longer believe that I'm intrinsically evil simply because I'm female. I'm still wrestling with all of the repercussions of how that belief has defined me. In the wake of that shifting and changing, another core belief surfaced. I have this perception of myself as "other". It has historical trauma roots like most things that I continually face. It's not just one root. This is almost as strong of a core belief as being evil used to be. They are tied together.
I was other the very first time I went to public school because I lived in the cult up the street. I was other because I already knew how to read. I was other because there were crafts that I wasn't allowed to do.
I switched schools two years later - and I was other from day one. It wasn't anything that I did or didn't do. I lived in a different city and I hadn't started in kindergarten with the rest of the class. The next fall the family moved out of the cult building into a house - and the friends that I had had there, well once again I became other.
When my self-harming behaviours escalated out of control in high school, I was the other that every one was terrified would succeed in killing herself. Even before that I was the other not allowed to see my peers outside of school hours, not allowed to go to parties and I had long ago learned that it wasn't safe to bring friends home.
It happened again when I went to college. It happened when physical health problems kicked in. It happened when I moved to a new country. It happens every time someone asks me "so what do you do all day?"
It's been a pattern in my life - a pattern of reinforcement. I have a mountain of evidence that says I'm other, different. I feel like the girl in the corner. She learned to hide there and watch people. Occasionally she will dart out to share a crumb of herself before running back to safety, to watch and see what these people do with the crumb. I hate this. I get it. I see where it comes from. I want to be open with people, and not in my defiant - here's who I am, you can take it or leave it, see if I care - way. I still believe that if people really knew me, they'd run away or try to "fix" me. That's usually what happens.
I don't trust that people are generally good or have good intentions. "Good" intentions are what shattered my personality. "Good" intentions kept people from calling CPS and allowed them to believe the deflections from my mother.
I'm rambling. Yes I'm learning slowly that there are places where I don't have to be the girl in the corner. The lies still surface, even in those belonging places. All week I've felt like the girl in the corner who can't stop crying. The one who's so broken, too broken. I want to stand up and scream that my heart feels shredded and I can't even tell you why. I'm using every self-care tool that I have - it's the only thing that's keeping me from disappearing into the madness.
iii
Part of my self-care is that I've begun learning how to belly dance. It never fails that I walk out after a class feeling grounded and connected to my body in a way that I've never been before. I walk out sore, of course, but centred in myself and my emotions. I can step back, look back at the part of this entry that I wrote this morning when all of the emotions were all up in my face and recognize that I don't always see myself as other. I have kindness for myself. I can see that yes I am broken and that brokenness doesn't define me, doesn't have to define me. There is a me that is bigger than the brokenness of my identity, a me beyond the horrors inflicted upon me by others, and a me that is becoming this kick-ass woman that I truly love fiercely and passionately.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Another Step Out of Crisis
For 22 years of my life I existed in a constant state of crisis. It was all about survival. There wasn't room for anything else. Every moment of every day was poised on the edge of the unknown - would I walk away this time unscathed? Would my words be thrown back in my face? Could I somehow have correctly predicted his mood and matched my behaviour accordingly? Did I dot every i and cross every t so that nothing was out of place?
It was hell. I'm sure I'll continue to write about those years - there is so much there to heal from, so many pieces that still are untold, unheard, unseen. I also don't know how to write about spiritual torture. I don't know how to tell the stories where prayer was supposed to heal my body and when it didn't I was to blame. I don't know how to tell the stories where I was sat down in a circle of people who claimed to love me while my father commanded the demons to leave my body and wouldn't stop until I was throwing up from sobbing so much. I don't want to tell those stories. I don't want people to know how every time these things happened pieces of who I was split off, sent to live in an internal hell in a vain attempt to be good enough and to separate out the memories of the torture that our soul was being subjected to in the name of love and being raised in the faith.
I'm still recovering memories and powerful emotional echoes from the years before the memories. I'm still learning about pieces of myself that have been lost along the way. Parts locked away, holding onto memories and feelings so that our sanity could survive.
I spent so long always in crisis, everything was do or die. I'm still learning that I don't have to run away or fight back. I can simply be. I can exist and in this moment there is nothing that can harm me. I don't have to protect myself or those that I love. I can sit here and watch my candles bring pinpricks of light into the middle of the darkness. I can trust the process, the messy-snot-everywhere ugly crying and the quiet stillness. I can trust that the Divine has my shattered heart cupped in their hands - this Divinity that understands the mystery of being I and we at the same time. I can trust them to mend my broken pieces of self with seams of gold. It's just going to take more time.
It was hell. I'm sure I'll continue to write about those years - there is so much there to heal from, so many pieces that still are untold, unheard, unseen. I also don't know how to write about spiritual torture. I don't know how to tell the stories where prayer was supposed to heal my body and when it didn't I was to blame. I don't know how to tell the stories where I was sat down in a circle of people who claimed to love me while my father commanded the demons to leave my body and wouldn't stop until I was throwing up from sobbing so much. I don't want to tell those stories. I don't want people to know how every time these things happened pieces of who I was split off, sent to live in an internal hell in a vain attempt to be good enough and to separate out the memories of the torture that our soul was being subjected to in the name of love and being raised in the faith.
I'm still recovering memories and powerful emotional echoes from the years before the memories. I'm still learning about pieces of myself that have been lost along the way. Parts locked away, holding onto memories and feelings so that our sanity could survive.
I spent so long always in crisis, everything was do or die. I'm still learning that I don't have to run away or fight back. I can simply be. I can exist and in this moment there is nothing that can harm me. I don't have to protect myself or those that I love. I can sit here and watch my candles bring pinpricks of light into the middle of the darkness. I can trust the process, the messy-snot-everywhere ugly crying and the quiet stillness. I can trust that the Divine has my shattered heart cupped in their hands - this Divinity that understands the mystery of being I and we at the same time. I can trust them to mend my broken pieces of self with seams of gold. It's just going to take more time.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Detaching and Protecting
I've been detaching from people all week long. Part of it stems from having been overwhelmed with people last week. The weekend helped to balance that out. But I'm detaching still. My heart is behind my walls again. I'm protecting myself. But why? What the hell is going on that my instincts for self-preservation have kicked in?
My reaction is disproportionate to the present circumstances, which of course means this isn't about the present, but is about the past. 22 years of trauma tend to make for a hell of a lot of triggers. I know the big ones, but this one?
What is it about re-framing how I see that is setting it all off? Is that even the trigger? It seems to have started there, but it could just as easily be held over from last week. Sometimes I wish this was easier. Right now I'd settle for a book or an idea or even some good questions. My questions just seem to keep my brain spinning in circles right now.
Here's what I do know.
I'm homesick. I miss President's Choice Blue Label products and their decadent chocolate chip cookies and deluxe white cheddar mac and cheese. I miss my chosen family - it's been 5 1/2 long years since I last got to hug them. It's an ache that never goes away and I don't want it to go away. Because loving them is worth hurting every day that I'm not there doing life with them. I'm building something incredible here - and I know this is where I'm called to be. This space, this time has been carved out for me to have all the pieces that I need for me to do the deep healing that's necessary for me to even live day to day life. For my marriage to even have a chance at lasting or being healthy, this is where I need to be. Maybe one day I can have all the people that matter most to me living in the same country, or at least on the same side of the continent.
I am grieving still for the marriage that I thought I would have. The one where my husband isn't an intimacy anorexic. The one where recovery was something that was there for other people. The one where I didn't have to gear up and fight every day. I knew marriage was hard. I knew for us it would be horrific - it's all kinds of messy when two abuse survivors marry. But I didn't expect it to be hell for the first 5 years. It's better than it's ever been and I'm impatient. I hate that he has to chose every day to be brave and connect with me. I hate that connecting with me requires him to be brave. I hate that he was hurt so badly, abandoned and neglected to the point that no one is trustworthy.
I am wrestling with God, faith, belief and what that all looks like in my life. I am still de-programming from the toxic abusive bullshit I was taught in the name of God. It's hard, painful work. I am still questioning how an all-powerful God allows abuse, especially that done in His name.
I'm tired of being patient and waiting. I'm tired of everything taking hard work. I'm tired of continuing to pay the price for the sins of others.
I am tired. I don't know how to even begin to re-frame any of this. I don't want to let go of my judgements. yes they hurt me, they hurt people that I care about. But letting go of one more thing? I already feel stripped of my defences. And yet I know this is what I'm called to do - to live with my heart wide open. This week I'm running away from that calling and that's why I'm detached. That's why my walls are up and I can't seem to engage with my course. This week requires an openness of my heart that I'm not ready for yet. I'm learning - and I'm not there. Not yet.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Chewed Up and Spit Back Out
I ran into one of my top 5 triggers yesterday. I spent the rest of the night working through it and it's aftermath. I hate this. I hate that this is still my life. That the mention of something can send me right back to being 16 and trapped. The people who were intended to help me did yet more harm and they used their "God" to do it. The thought still turns my stomach. I hate revisiting teenage me. Not because I hate her, I actually (now) really love pieces of who I was back then. The intensity of her anger and the anguish of her daily pain - God how did I survive that? No wonder I wanted nothing to do with faith or God.
I don't want to talk about it. I don't want this to be part of my story. Christian Ritual Abuse is ugly. It takes what is sacred and spins it around, using prayer, faith, and Scripture as weapons against innocent victims. I hate that so much of what was done to me was done in the name of God. It still brings up unanswerable questions - and I have nothing left in me today to wrestle with them.
On my good days, I know that the "God" I was taught about is not the one that I choose to follow. Nor do I see that "God" in the world around me or in the pieces of Scripture that I can hear. Today is not a good day and I find myself pleading in tears for mercy. Mercy for my doubt-riddled belief. Mercy for my angry words of pain. Mercy in this fight, because today I can't fight.
I can't fight. All I can do is rest. I wrap myself in softness and purple. I let the music flow over my rawness. I sit in the pool of sunshine and grieve for the child I was.
Gungor's "Please Be My Strength" is one of my favourite songs in this season. It's deceptively simple - a heart psalm, and one that I find myself often repeating.
I don't want to talk about it. I don't want this to be part of my story. Christian Ritual Abuse is ugly. It takes what is sacred and spins it around, using prayer, faith, and Scripture as weapons against innocent victims. I hate that so much of what was done to me was done in the name of God. It still brings up unanswerable questions - and I have nothing left in me today to wrestle with them.
On my good days, I know that the "God" I was taught about is not the one that I choose to follow. Nor do I see that "God" in the world around me or in the pieces of Scripture that I can hear. Today is not a good day and I find myself pleading in tears for mercy. Mercy for my doubt-riddled belief. Mercy for my angry words of pain. Mercy in this fight, because today I can't fight.
I can't fight. All I can do is rest. I wrap myself in softness and purple. I let the music flow over my rawness. I sit in the pool of sunshine and grieve for the child I was.
Gungor's "Please Be My Strength" is one of my favourite songs in this season. It's deceptively simple - a heart psalm, and one that I find myself often repeating.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Found Poetry - A Processing of Fear
I hate this theme of fear running through my words, my life, my heart, my veins. The fear feels like it's bonded to my very blood. I know it's March and for reasons beyond my understanding, the terror that comes with March, that terror in my blood - it shuts my heart down as the depression rears her ugly head for another life and death battle.
I have to laugh or cry right now. This entire experience with Be so far has been staring my fear in the face, of allowing myself to be stripped down just a little bit more, of putting down things that aren't helping me to be fully me and picking up things that are helping me learn to dance, to be.
As I've read through our Found Poetry exercise for this week, I've tasted that old familiar shame. The one I heard time and again. The one thrown at me any time I did something creative. "That's so artsy-fartsy." Lectures on how only math, science, and engineering degrees were "real". "Play the music as it's written...there's no rubato there and definitely no retard." It was less painful back then to shut down any part that wasn't logical and rational. I remember taking a right-brain/left-brain test in 2005 and I was very left.
These days I'm pretty close to centre. A big piece of my healing over these last years has been about discovering my creativity. Polyvore has given me some space in which to do that and it's been amazing to explore. I've got a feeling that as I continue to heal, as I continue to become that I'm going to end up as a right-brain. I'm discovering my love of crafting candles and blending oils.
Each step on this reclaiming of myself has been scary - and now here's the next baby step. The exercise this week - oh I want to bawl like a baby. To approach a passage of Scripture and find the words that taste just right from it....there's nothing about this that is safe. I have put so much work into making sure that Scripture in my life is always in context. What would it look like to let go of that for this? I could use something else, but I don't want to. I sense there's something here, something beyond the scope of the exercise because I see the colours of the Spirit dancing in my soul every time I read through the instructions. There is freedom here, another layer, another piece. I won't let fear snatch it from me.
I have to laugh or cry right now. This entire experience with Be so far has been staring my fear in the face, of allowing myself to be stripped down just a little bit more, of putting down things that aren't helping me to be fully me and picking up things that are helping me learn to dance, to be.
As I've read through our Found Poetry exercise for this week, I've tasted that old familiar shame. The one I heard time and again. The one thrown at me any time I did something creative. "That's so artsy-fartsy." Lectures on how only math, science, and engineering degrees were "real". "Play the music as it's written...there's no rubato there and definitely no retard." It was less painful back then to shut down any part that wasn't logical and rational. I remember taking a right-brain/left-brain test in 2005 and I was very left.
These days I'm pretty close to centre. A big piece of my healing over these last years has been about discovering my creativity. Polyvore has given me some space in which to do that and it's been amazing to explore. I've got a feeling that as I continue to heal, as I continue to become that I'm going to end up as a right-brain. I'm discovering my love of crafting candles and blending oils.
Each step on this reclaiming of myself has been scary - and now here's the next baby step. The exercise this week - oh I want to bawl like a baby. To approach a passage of Scripture and find the words that taste just right from it....there's nothing about this that is safe. I have put so much work into making sure that Scripture in my life is always in context. What would it look like to let go of that for this? I could use something else, but I don't want to. I sense there's something here, something beyond the scope of the exercise because I see the colours of the Spirit dancing in my soul every time I read through the instructions. There is freedom here, another layer, another piece. I won't let fear snatch it from me.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
My Hedge-Hodge (The Girls We Once Were Link Up)
Brandy Walker: The Girls We Once Were (excerpt)
The stories my little girls hold are stories of hands in places she doesn't want and games played in secret. Stories of too loud voices and the Black reaching out hands to steal their breath. Stories of splitting because the pain was too much for one little girl to hold and so she created friends to help her, to hold the beauty and the horror separate, so that neither were lost. I hope that somewhere inside there are also stories of swinging high enough to touch the sky, of tea parties while dressed up like ladies, of giggles and bubbles, and songs belted out at the top of her voice. I know there must be.
She is my hedge-hodge, and I must practice quiet watchfulness for her to uncurl and show me her vulnerable softness - her love for colours, all the crayons neatly arranged in shades, her delight in sunshine and stomping rain puddles. It doesn't cross her mind that someone might sing better than her, she throws her head back and sings for the pure joy that the singing brings. She loves words and how those words go together to create magical worlds hidden in the pages of her books.
Her spines also show me her determination, her fierce protection of those she loves, and her willingness to do battle instead of running to hide. She bristles easily, her tenderness makes her so easily wounded and we learned the lessons of her spines too well. It was too easy to learn to be hard, to keep people at a safe distance. I didn't see that she only protected because it was necessary. It's no longer necessary for me and so I must learn from her to uncurl myself and share my tenderness.
I'm ready now, ready to hear her stories. Ready to be the arms that pull her close and hold her until her screaming dissolves to hiccuping sobs. Ready to rock her small body with mine, stroke her flaming hair, and sing her songs she taught me until she sleeps - safe, protected, mine.
Story Sessions International Women's Day Link Up.
The girls we once were are coming back to us now.It's haunting us, that this is written in the plural. I know it's plural because it was meant for a group of women. Yet it also seems to be giving me permission to acknowledge my own plural, my collective of pieces. There are so many little girls in the system of us. They keep surfacing, sharing their stories, their intense feelings - shame, rejection, betrayal, fear - oh the fear that these little girls of me still hold. My girls are telling me their stories - stories told in colours, in images, in shapes, in feelings. Stories that don't start with once upon a time and never end in happily ever after.
Whispering their stories, our stories, in our ears.
Let us hear.
Let us listen to the little one that is who we were
that is who we are
before the shame and obligation took their toll.
The stories my little girls hold are stories of hands in places she doesn't want and games played in secret. Stories of too loud voices and the Black reaching out hands to steal their breath. Stories of splitting because the pain was too much for one little girl to hold and so she created friends to help her, to hold the beauty and the horror separate, so that neither were lost. I hope that somewhere inside there are also stories of swinging high enough to touch the sky, of tea parties while dressed up like ladies, of giggles and bubbles, and songs belted out at the top of her voice. I know there must be.
She is my hedge-hodge, and I must practice quiet watchfulness for her to uncurl and show me her vulnerable softness - her love for colours, all the crayons neatly arranged in shades, her delight in sunshine and stomping rain puddles. It doesn't cross her mind that someone might sing better than her, she throws her head back and sings for the pure joy that the singing brings. She loves words and how those words go together to create magical worlds hidden in the pages of her books.
Her spines also show me her determination, her fierce protection of those she loves, and her willingness to do battle instead of running to hide. She bristles easily, her tenderness makes her so easily wounded and we learned the lessons of her spines too well. It was too easy to learn to be hard, to keep people at a safe distance. I didn't see that she only protected because it was necessary. It's no longer necessary for me and so I must learn from her to uncurl myself and share my tenderness.
I'm ready now, ready to hear her stories. Ready to be the arms that pull her close and hold her until her screaming dissolves to hiccuping sobs. Ready to rock her small body with mine, stroke her flaming hair, and sing her songs she taught me until she sleeps - safe, protected, mine.
Story Sessions International Women's Day Link Up.
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