It feels like a dream … I am walking through a field hoping to find some wild-flowers to make a bouquet… there is mist everywhere and it hangs so heavy I cannot see the ground. As the sun comes out and the mist clears I find that I am not in a meadow at all – but a battle-ground – bodies mutilated all around my feet… every face is my own… The only daisies here are resting on the closed eyes of the dead and my bare feet are wet not with dew but with blood.
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…
Dear M____,
This is the most difficult letter I will ever write to you. I know I have apologized a thousand times to you over the years and I know I have hurt you a million more. I know that you have no reason to hope for me to change, but I promise you I am trying. I realized this morning that I have become an abuser. The cycle must stop with me. You have pointed out to me that I have been abusing myself – but I realized this morning I have been abusing you as well.
All my life I learned that love meant judgement, rejection and pain. Though I had glimmers of real love in my grandmother, sadly, she wasn’t the stronger influence in my life. My toxic parents were…their lessons of love driven home much harder and deeper than hers. This is not an excuse, just an explanation. My life has been filled with overwhelming pain since birth and pain has been my constant companion. I don’t want this anymore.
All of those unhealthy abusive behaviors followed me from my parent’s home into ours. I have neglected you and withdrew into myself and withheld love from you. It does not matter that this was not a conscious decision or done with intent. The result is the same. Pain. Doubt. A crumbling marriage.
I realize this morning that the times I am feeling the most fear and panic and doubt are the times I need to be running to you – not away from you. Because of my fear of love and feelings of worthlessness I have continued my parent’s toxic abuse cycle with you in our marriage. I have been come the thing I hate. No wonder you don’t feel safe with me.
I don’t know why God brought us together but I fear that I don’t have much to offer you. I know I have a long road to recovery ahead of me and I know I won’t get it right all the time – but I promise to get it right more often than I get it wrong.
I want to tell you that I am profoundly sorry fo all the pain I caused you through the course of our relationship. I want to tell you that I truly understand if you don’t want anything to do with me – after all – I am more like our fathers than you mother or my grandmother. I am self-centered and neglectful nd don’t deserve another chance to hurt you. You have this beautiful, loving heart and I have done my best to destroy it. You don’t deserve this.
this is what I can promise you… I love you with all my heart and I am fully committed to you – to us- and I will do everything in my power to break this cycle. I will make better choices – when all of my instincts tell me to withdraw – to hide…I will make a conscious decision to seek your heart that much harder. When I feel like pulling away I will cling to us and to God. I will pray against my strongholds daily and I will seek God in our marriage. I will see you and love you and not hide myself from you. I will fight harder against the lies and patterns I was raised around and I will talk openly about my hopes, beliefs, fears and doubts instead of retreating into my head and locking down my heart.
I take full responsibility for the current problems in our marriage and I beg your forgiveness.
I love you M___. I pray that I haven’t ruined this.
Love,
No Longer Damaged Goods
I don’t know how to be in this much pain.
There is so much I don’t understand about this life. It feels like it is crumbling around me.. every time I feel safe – like I might possibly have a chance at being ok, like I might actually be beginning to grasp things and see some glimmer of day-light… it hits. Life socks me right in the gut and tells me again how worthless I am. How am I supposed to stop believing that I am worthless when the evidence is all around me. I hurt the people I love. I am desperate for forgiveness – for absolution. I pray and I pray… I am doing the work – reading the books… I am trying to get in touch with my heart and find some true peace but I don’t know if I will make it. I am terrified. There is one person on this earth who truly knows me and loves me and he can barely stand to be with me because I am so hurtful to him… I am screwing this up! I am failing all over again and I don’t know what to do. I can barely function. I wish I could just die sometimes so I could stop hurting people…stop hurting me. I wish I had never been born. I wish I didn’t exist. I keep praying for God to remake me… maybe I could be better -I don’t know. I just know that there’s something profoundly wrong with me and I am afraid I’ll never be right again.
Dear Mom & Dad,
I am so disappointed in you. I will never understand the way you treated me. Why didn’t I matter to you? Why, when you found out I was molested, was your first thought about how you could protect your reputations and not about how you should/could have protected me? How can you play nice with and spend time with family that treated their daughters like human sacrifices? Why was it so hard for you to love me? Mark loves me and he says I am easy to love – so why is it so hard for you? Why couldn’t you see me? Was I invisible? Was I too much? You always made me feel like I was too much – like loving me would just overload you somehow. Why wasn’t I ever good enough for you? Why did you turn on me? How was it my fault that Eddie raped me and his daughters? It wasn’t my fault, it was never my fault! How dare you blame me! It is so unfair. you should never have had me – you didn’t want a daughter – you wanted another notch in your belt… another blessing to claim… some other piece of evidence to prove you were a man & woman of God. You wanted a trophy not a child. You treated me like a display and when I wasn’t ‘pretty’ when I didn’t display just right you didn’t want me anymore. You would rather think I was possessed by the devil than to think I didn’t believe like you anymore. You would rather count me among the lost souls than to consider you may be wrong in you beliefs and there may be more to life and to God than wrath and anger. It isn’t my fault you don’t know me (or God.) It’s yours. you had plenty of chances to know me and you didn’t bother. I am worth it. I don’t deserve your criticism our your disdain. you don’t know me because you don’t think I am worth it…well, you’re missing out. I am worth it…I am a good woman. I am smart, beautiful and loving. I love God with all my heart and I serve Him. I love my husband and I am a wife to be proud of. Being raped by Eddie was not my fault – it was yours and you are not worthy to be parents.
It was not my fault. It was not my fault.
It was not my fault. It was not my fault.
It will never be my fault.
Love,
No Longer Damaged Goods
The Dream:
I am spending time with my uncle, Eddie, and his 3 daughters. We’re at my parent’s house listening to some Southern Gospel music and debating on the merits of the old Southern Gospel music vs modern Christian Rock.. We’re all laughing, teasing and so happy. We’re flipping through CD’s and my MP3 player playlist… It’s a good day and I feel so safe and loved.
So what makes this a nightmare?
My uncle is a rapist and a child molester and in my dream I don’t know this… in my dream I haven’t remembered what he has done to me and I don’t yet know what he is doing to his beautiful daughters.
The part of me that is always me (no matter what I am dreaming) is terrified and screaming at the dream me to get out of there ! I hate that I can feel so safe and terrified, so innocent and soiled all at the same time. Most of all I hate how much this dream has set me back. I hate how vulnerable I suddenly feel. I hate how I can barely accept touch. I hate how I want to hide away and not face all of this. I hate the temptation to morph back into that robot of a woman and pretend that everything is fine even though I can barely breathe.
So what’s the plan? I am going to breathe in and out. I am going to face my fears. I am going to feel this and not be a coward or a zombie. I am going to admit that I have been hurt – terribly – and it is ok to be afraid for a while. I am going to allow my husband to comfort me and allow myself some room to be vulnerable. But most importantly, I am going to go through this. No short-cuts or detours. Because that is the only way I am ever really going to find peace.
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…
Fear blossoms in my chest
a familiar rose – black instead of red.
Each petal a knife.
I cannot shake this chill
this fingernails on a chalkboard
vibration in my bones.
I feel the knife twist deeper and
cannot even bring myself
to gasp in pain.
I am beyond surprise;
beyond shock. I am simply
accustomed.
Your eyes smile as you lick my
blood from your blade
holding your knife in one hand
and your bible in another.
Scribe, pharisee, hypocrite!
Who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
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.
captivatingbitter 