Shaking inside I wake – afraid
and I stare into the darkness
wondering if you lie awake at night
and think about me….
Do you ever wonder if
you could have done better? Or
do you rest easy in your shroud of self-
righteousness and assume you are god?
Here is my heart…. take it
eat it…throw it away… break
it in two… love it… hate it…
just stop refusing to SEE it.
It is hard for me when I think about how Eddie’s abuse affected me. I hate that his actions have had such an influence over my life. It has tainted how I view people. It has made it nearly impossible to trust anyone – even myself. I feel isolated much of the time – afraid that if people really knew me they wouldn’t want anything to do with me. Because of what Eddie did I feel dirty and broken inside and that is not fair. I feel like I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop – waiting to be abandoned and forgotten. I grew up feeling invisible – I became the perfect chameleon, it’s how I survived.
I am still affected by his abuse today – I am so broken and so afraid. I cannot function in a healthy relationship without constant guidance and reassurance. I am afraid to have sex because I dont’ want my marriage tainted by Eddie’s touches. I don’t want to think of his hands touching me when I should be enjoying my husband’s caress. Because of the abuse I suffered as a child I feel powerless and tainted and worthless. My life is still affected in so many areas. I struggle in my marriage because I am unable to accept and trust love and affection. I am affected in my job because I struggle to find my voice. I am affected in my relationship with my family because I am still so afraid of them and I still feel crazy around them – crazy and so small.
One strength I developed because of the abuse is empathy. I truly have a heart for the suffering. I have a strongly developed sixth sense about people and their intentions. It has helped me survive. I developed a tender and caring heart and a strong desire to fight for the weak. I developed and artistic eye and a desire to make the world beautiful. I developed a rich imagination and a poet’s heart. I escaped into words, books and dreams. I found a way to wring pleasure out of almost any small thing – whether it is a gift or just the sight of a butterfly. I am a strong woman. I had to be to survive my childhood. I locked myself away inside the warehouse of my mind and kept myself save in there between the dusty shelves. If I survived this I can do anything. I WILL make it out of this. I WILL get better. I will heal. I am worth fighting for. I can do this.
Father, I thank you for the strength You gave me to overcome my past. I invite you into my heart, into my healing, into my broken places and into my marriage. Come, Jesus. Make the broken whole again…
Excerpt from The Courage to Heal pg xxiv ~” Time will dull the pain, but deep healing doesn’t happen uness you consciously choose it”~
John Eldridge says in his book Wild at Heart that “A wound unfelt is a wound unhealed.” So I have to ask myself – how do I feel? How has living with this abuse made me feel…? Following along in the first chapter of Courage I have journaled the following:
How abuse affected my self esteem:
I feel…..
I don’t know how to….
I feel like I can’t accomplish what I set out to do
I feel like I can’t move on with my life.
I feel compelled to be perfect
I feel like I am missing large parts of my childhood…
How this abuse has affected my body:
I have a hard time:
I have:
Sometimes I:
Relating to intimacy – Sometimes I:
It is hard to take an honest look at my life – to survey the damage like I am taking inventory. I don’t exactly know how to feel about all of this…mosty I look over the different aspects of my life and kind of nod to myself and think…”Well this explains a lot.”
Please bear with me dear readers. I am by far not through this journey yet.
Peace be with you.
I’ve been absent from the electronic world for quite a while now… I’ve been working on a wonderful book called “The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse” by Laura Davis and Ellen Bass. It’s a wonderful therapeutic tool with several writing and meditation exercises. This book has taken me on a journey though my anger, my pain and my memories. Through it I am finding connections to my past in many unexpected places and through many maladaptive coping mechanisms. I am learning to identify survival techniques that helped me claw my way out of hell but are no longer serving me now. I am learning to honor those defense mechanisms and to release them. By no means have I “arrived” but for possibly the first time in my life I am consistently traveling on the road to healing. If you will permit me I would like to share more of that healing journey with you through sharing my journaling from this wonderful book as well as my writing exercises from it and an honest look at my anger and fear and the relinquishment of the same. May love and peace find you-may it find me as well.
Lately I feel like I am drowning in pain. All I can think is, “I don’t know how to do this…” It’s crippling, really…I feel frozen in this spot and I am afraid to reach for help. No one can help me through this. The pain of my past has finally caught up with me and is taking hold of my life… it’s ruining my marriage…it’s permeating my relationships….it’s taking over! I see every relationship or potential relationship through the filter of my parent’s abuse. I can’t go on living like this. It is so terrifying and isolating and maddening. I want to be free of it all. I wish I could wash this off… I wish I could dust my ands off and be done with it. I wish I could change my past and give myself a blank slate – a fresh start… I wish there was a pill for bad memories… I wish…I wish…
Little girl, pigtails and blue-jeans
all muddy and smiling so big!
I love to watch you fling out your arms
and twirl in the sunshine. You see
the world through uniqe eyes that
accept with blind faith the beauty
and wildness of the world was created for you.
You know instinctively that joy is
your reason for being. You take delight
everywhere you find it and accept
without question that happiness is yours.
Perhaps I will come twirl with you today –
and you can show me the world through your eyes.
Father’s Day came and went this year like every year before it – full of conflicting emotions and empty of truth. What has ‘father’ meant to me? Why should I celebrate a day for him? I’m so confused. ‘Father’ has been ‘tyrant’, ‘teacher’, diciplinarian’, ‘grouch’,’hateful’…’father’ has also been ‘fun’, ‘companion’, ‘playmate’ and ‘preacher’. The trouble for me is there are too many faces, none of them consistant… few of them friendly. One good day is supposed to erase months of yelling, insults, fear and humiliation. One day spent laughing together is supposed to make me forget being ruled with an iron fist and a sarcastic sneer. Daddy, I forgive you… I just can’t be the sacrificial lamb anymore… you may find me more lion than you remember me…
I watch your Judas lips drip poison
and I smile in polite fascination
pretending to agree.
I nod in the right places,
I make eye contact, I hope
my disgust is well hidden.
I can’t seem to follow this thread
this back and forth
this friendly banter.
I am not sure how this is
supposed to work… this friendship
this conversation.
I am lost in a sea of political correctness
and cannot convey the thoughts
simmering beneath my surface.
I allow you to lie in my face
and thank you for your
endless unabashed betrayals.
I don’t know why I protect
you from me. I owe
you nothing. Nothing!
Yet you take from me…
day after day you diminish me –
rendering me irrelevant.
I will not die here – buried
under the avalanche of
your words…your indifference.
I will shake this off and
find re-birth in the flame
of your disapproval.
There’s something out there that is calling to me.
I hear the voice clearly – haunting – chilling-alluring.
I long to follow… but I am so afraid.
It whispers, teases, shouts – and still I stand-
frozen and impotent.
When I break free of this I will run blindly
into that tantalizing music of freedom
and find my laughter waiting for me there.
Fall always makes me think of home. I have so many good memories of this season… bonfires, roasting marshmallows, the smell of hay and sweet-feed in the barn mingled in with the smell of fresh milk after milking our cow…cool mornings being up before sunrise and looking up at the stars while tending to the animals… long evenings filled with family and music outside with lots of food and laughter and noise. These are the things I miss about my family…my old home. When I think of those cool nights when I would sneak out of the house and go for a walk by moon-light and listen to the call of the whippoorwills, I can’t remember why I was so unhappy there. It’s like these good memories crowd out all the bad ones and I feel stupid for being so miserable. Then I think about all the abuse, all the pain, the feeling that I was unseen, the feeling that I was property meant to serve a purpose in my home… and I remember. I remember how alone I always felt. I remember having to act like a pretty little happy robot just to survive. I remember how no negative emotion was allowed to show in my home. I remember being treated like a servant and not a daughter. I remember being screamed at and berated… I remember. Looking back all the things I loved most about my child-hood had nothing to do with the people and everything to do with the season, the activities, the animals, the sky… and I am determined to recapture that in my adulthood. I am determined to stop… to look around… to enjoy this beautiful world and to recapture my youth.
captivatingbitter 