Ejection Day, Rejection Day

My Child and My Inner Child

I know none of you really know me except through this blog. But, I am an honest, upfront person. I can take a lot of crap from people, put up with their bull, etc. etc. But, there comes a time when I cannot take anymore and I have to eject them from my life...yes, just like the eject button in an air force jet. Well, for the GA zillionth time, I pressed the eject button yesterday. Same person was ejected because I was rejected. This is not just any ordinary person. This is my child...my child that I took care of for oh so many years because she has some health issues and some mental issues. I had second cousins sending me 'Happy Mother's Day' wishes and wishing me well. But, what do I get from my child...after getting her car fixed and getting her a new phone, bringing her food (when I am supposed to be giving her "tough love")...an ugly text that her computer is not working and more and more ugly words. Not one word about mother’s day. And it is not because she forgot. Probably the first reaction from people that read this will be "What did you do to her?" "Did you abuse her?" Since, I was abused as a child, many people will rush to judgment and think that I did the same to her...well the answer is NO I DID NOT ABUSE HER.  NO, I WAS NOT PERFECT EITHER.  But, I did everything in my power to protect her and help her while she was growing up. She moved out, moved back in, moved out, moved back in...until, she became angry at us because she had to depend on us. Long story short, I do not understand why this is happening and I can't take it anymore. This pain is so deep and unlike any other pain I have ever felt in my entire life. And believe me when I say that I have been through a LOT OF PAIN from the past, from the memories I have recovered and what all of this has done to my mind and the way I think. But nothing hurts worse than this…NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING.  I keep trying to hold on, to make myself want to live, but now there is just another hole in my heart that cannot be filled.  

DROWNING IN MY PAIN

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I HATE YOU BUT I NEED YOU BUT I HATE YOU

JUST STOP IT.  ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS RUN ME OVER.
Why can’t I trust you?  You make no effort to help me.  You just sit there and talk and talk and talk and I don’t even know what the hell you are talking about….surely you know this for a fact.  Do I know ‘IVVY’?  Do I even care?  You won’t help me reach my other parts.  You won’t tell me that you care.  You won’t do anything to help me feel.  I hate therapy.  I hate therapists. I hate you.   You all suck.  Too many mind benders and head games…is that all you learned after so many years in school…All your little certificates hanging in your office.  What does that mean to me?  NADA, NOTHING, ZIP, Bull crap…artificial bait.  You are all the same.  Why can’t you see how much I need your help?  You know that I am hurting.  I can see it in your eyes.  What do you do…ignore me, pretend I do not exist, but I am here…I know you realize I am here and yet you do NOTHING.  ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.   You are making me lose my mind.  Oh no, I forget, I am the one making me lose my mind.  I am the one that needs to reach out for your friendship.  NO THANK YOU.  KISS IT.   NEVER, EVER, FOR AS LONG AS I LIVE will I ever reach out to anyone else.  DO NOT HOLD YOUR BREATH.  IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.   You talk about the little ones and you do nothing.  Just stay away from me.  Leave me alone.  I want nothing from you.  I need nothing from you.  You are a jerk.  You are like everyone else in my life.  You make me sick…literally; I could vomit just thinking about you.


Photo from honourandhate.e-monsite.com



Thoughts on the Holocaust…Similarities in Surviving (post #3)

The Color of Night by Samuel Bak

ABUSE AND THE DEATH OF GOD IN THE SOUL

Every day, every moment, I struggle with my beliefs about God and what role He takes in our lives.  Some people believe that God is ‘punishing’ them when bad things happen.  Others may believe in destiny and that our lives are predetermined.  I believe that each person has choices.  We can choose to do good or we can choose to do evil.  These choices that have been made by mankind since the beginning of time trickle down and affect our lives.  Many things are passed from one generation to the next and are repeated over and over until someone breaks the cycle.  Most of the time, people who abuse have themselves been abused.  Please do not take this wrong…I am not excusing any abusers or letting them off the hook.  They could have been the ones to choose to break the cycle.  But, they did not. 

What I want to express and write about today is the abused child’s soul.  Let us contemplate on “…the death of God in the soul of a child who suddenly discovers absolute evil?”  This is a quote by Fracncois Mauriac in the Forward of Night by Elie Wiesel.  Mr. Wiesel writes, “Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.”  In my mind, this is the exact way we who have endured abuse view our circumstances.  We never forget.  At least, I cannot forget.  For those of us with D.I.D., maybe another part holds the memory, but it is still not forgotten.  It is there forever and its memory has forever changed us.   It has done something to our psyche, to our soul.  The abuse caused death.  It cause the death of innocence, self-love, and in some cases the will to live.  I have to agree with Elie Wiesel when he states in Night,  “Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.  Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.  Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to life as long as God Himself.  Never.”

By no means am I saying that we cannot heal from abuse.  I do believe we can heal to a certain point.  But after years of trying to overcome my past, I feel its breath on my neck; I feel its memory haunting my sleep; I feel the pain of not belonging; I feel the scars on my body; I feel the emptiness in my soul, the longing for connection.  I wonder where God was when all of this was taking place.  Again, I found an answer in the Forward of Night, “‘Where is God?  Where is He?  Where can He be now?’ and a voice within me answered:  ‘Where?  Here He is—He has been hanged here, on these gallows.’”  This is a difficult concept for me to accept.  That God is with us through all things, good and evil.  Because when you are abused, even before you are aware, you feel totally alone in the world.  You feel abandoned, by God, by the world.   I try to make connections with others.  I try to practice ‘faith’.  But in the end,  I am still in the prison created by my past.  It has left my soul hanging.  It has left my inner home broken.  It has left me blue.  The above picture by Samuel Bak, The Color of Night, represents how I continue to feel.

21 Guns

Did someone break your heart inside...

Nothing's ever meant to last...

You're in ruins....

Depression...Chisel away no more

Another day another dollar...really who cares?  Not me.  Although I realize we have to have money to stay alive.  But, I do not really care to be alive…to fight the good fight.  BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.  I wake up before sunrise with tears filling my eyes.  What is the problem?  How do you wake up with tears?   Is it those night terrors making me feel like I cannot breathe; I cannot move; I am paralyzed, suffocating, and dying?  I do not know.  I am just finding it very hard to keep myself going…going to where?  NO WHERE.  I am stuck…that is putting it mildly.  I am cemented in this life of confusion.  I have been chiseling away to no avail.  My tears and my pain have been my chisel.  Look at the picture...Tears falling from stone.  That is how I feel; stone cold, yet crying to break  free.  I am tired of trying to break free.  What is the use?  Yeah…I know, for me.  Which me? 

“I grieve, and dare not show my discontent;

  I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate;

  I do not dare to say I never meant,

  I seem stark mute, but inwardly I prate,

  I am, and am not; I freeze and yet am burn’d,

  Since from myself my other self I turned.”

~~Elizabeth I

Thoughts on the Holocaust...Similarities in Surviving (post #2)

Above and Below, By Samuel Bak 2003

Death above or Death below...I ask you what is the difference?



Today I would like to address a subject about with which many survivors struggle.  The psychological term is Suicidal Ideation.  Yes, obsession with death, not just any kind of death, but a self-inflicted death.  It is a very touchy subject for many, especially therapists. However, I never could understand why it was such a big deal to my therapists and is still.  Perhaps, I view death differently than most.  I do not feel afraid of death.  When someone in my family dies, it only touches me for a few minutes and then it is over.  It is not that I do not have feelings, I do.  I feel very deeply about many things.  But, death is different.  As a survivor of extreme childhood abuse, death is a release.  Death is my escape from the pain that never stops; the pain that permeates my soul; the pain that is always right below the surface.  Death is a longing; a desire within reach; a release. So unlike the feelings the past imparts upon my psyche; the past from which I cannot get away.  I would rather someone die than to abandon me.  I know this must sound so uncaring and evil.  But because of what my past did to me, abandonment is worse than death.

In his book, Night, Elie Wiesel describes his thoughts on death during the ‘march’ at Auschwitz.  I use his words because to me, this accurately describes how I feel; this is how suicidal ideation affects my mind.  “Death wrapped itself around me till I was stifled.  It stuck to me.  I felt that I could touch it.  The idea of dying, of no longer being, began to fascinate me.  Not to exist any longer.  Not to feel the horrible pains….NOT TO FEEL ANYTHING, neither weariness, nor cold, nor anything.” p.89 [emphasis mine]   In the Preface for the twenty fifth anniversary edition of Night, Robert McAfee Brown writes of the trials Elie Wiesel encountered when trying to publish this book.  Publishers did not want it:  “Such depressing subject matter.”  When it was finally published, “few people wanted to read about the Holocaust.  Such depressing subject matter.  But we cannot avoid depressing subject matter, particularly if it is true…”  Do not you come across this attitude about sexual childhood abuse?  Is it not a taboo subject in many circles?  For those of us living in this “shame”, does not the denial only cause us more pain?  Mr. Brown continues with, “we would much prefer to disbelieve, treating it as the product of a diseased mind, perhaps.  And there are those today who—feeding on that wish…are trying to persuade the world that the story is not true, urging us to treat it as the product of diseased minds, indeed.  They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another:  telling PEOPLE WHO HAVE SUFFERED EXCRUCIATING PAIN AND LOSS THAT THEIR PAIN AND LOSS WERE ILLUSIONS.”  [emphasis mine]  This book changed the way the Holocaust was viewed.  Because this brave soul, Elie Wiesel told his story, he made believers out of non-believers.  It is the same for those of us with D.I.D.  There are so many non-believers; so many people who do not like the subject matter; so many people who want to deny our existence.  But, if enough of us tell our stories, we too can change the way most of the world views this very horrifying topic.  To quote Mr. Brown, “Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling…if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.”  Would it not be wonderful if we could change the way people view the rape of a child, the breaking of a child’s will, the destruction of their soul.  We could be the champions of the abused child. 

Again quoting Mr. Brown, “At the end of Night, the immediate devastation has ended:  the war is over, the camps are liberated, that author is alive.  But the ongoing devastation has only begun, THE DEVASTATION THAT WILL NEVER END:  THE DEVASTATION IMPOSED BY MEMORY THAT MAKES THE LINE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH A THIN LINE INDEED. [emphasis mine]  The descriptive term imaging the author at the book’s end is that of a corpse.” 

And for me, here we have come full circle.  Memories so painful, so sordid that I feel my only escape is death, to become a 'corpse'.