Shock and talk. (Twitter.)

I spent the last week suffering in small circles in my head and not showering.  This was mostly in reaction to what I wrote about HERE.  

Then I decided to take a shower and to start using Twitter.  And I put my real name on it because... because I can.

Here is the link to my twitter account.  

I'm always being lost & found but never really sure which or when.

The final day of April, 2011.

Book.

Bravery.

Oh, April!  What a month you've been!! So much has happened!

Even though I just wrote the title 'bravery' I am now going to write about fear.  I am afraid a lot and of a lot of things and much of the time.  I am afraid now.  I am afraid every time I write on this blog and often even afraid thinking about writing on this blog.  I worry about who will read this and what they might say... or am I mostly worried about what I will think?  What I will learn from myself??  I think it has always been easier to act or be afraid of other people when really I am probably the most afraid of myself.

That is what I am the most scared of... me.  I really want to delete that last sentence.  Which is sad/funny because it is the point of this entire post but more than that... it is the very issue at the heart of what I am struggling most with now.

I worked for a really long time to survive.  And I did- I survived.  That was good- I was excellent at surviving.  But then something happened.......  I did all this work- to heal from the abuse I had survived and the whole time I was surviving, surviving, surviving.  There was a lot to say and a lot to work on.  I had to work a lot on stopping the self injury and a lot of other really hard things.  And after several years of therapy and a whole lot of crying....  I've come to a new place.  And it is really (REALLY) freaking me out.  Really.

Because the abuse started when I was really really little- I was always surviving actually.  I was doing a little living on the side- but mostly my life was a whole heap of surviving.  And when I finally started therapy to talk about the abuse I had survived I was still in major survival mode and for years and years and years of the work of healing- I was still surviving.

Now I will finally get to the place about the thing that is freaking me out....  I think I am done surviving.  !!!

Audible gasp.

Actually I know I am done just surviving this life- but I'm totally scared.  I HAVE BEEN SUCH AN EXCELLENT SURVIVOR!!!  The present moment is a strange beast.  The present moment is not really a beast at all- actually.  The past- that was a beast.  See?  I am so new to the 'now' that I am still struggling between the here and the then.  I am sure I'm gonna get it though.  I am sure I've already 'got it'... I am mostly just scared to use what I have.  I'm scared to be who I am.

When I met my doctor seven and a half years ago I was 26 years old.  When I started to talk about having been raped by my dad it was terrifying and painful.  When my doctor told me it was possible to heal- I always think I believed him then just because I was desperate.  I mean- I had hope- but I had no idea what 'healing' or even what 'feeling better' would really mean.

I had hurt so much and for so long that I had come to know myself mostly through the pain which I was in.  I thought that the violence and abuse had been love and I came to believe that who I was was really the pain I was in.  I had been raped and abused for all of my life- I don't think I have a better way to explain it than to say that I was surviving in a burning state of pain.

For a really long time I truly hated myself for wishing that my family would be better.  Now I understand that this was not only a part of what saved me but also a good quality about myself- I have hope.  I have hope in people.  I believe people can make choices and be good people.  My parents hurt me enormously- but I still always stared right at them and thought, "Be better! Please."  It was a wish and it wasn't all bad.  Eventually I had to give up that wish because I finally came to understand that while everyone can make choices- some people chose to hurt other people.  So I let that wish go and now I am at this other place- which is the present.

It is weird here, in the present.  It is a bit of a shock.

This week I started reading "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankel.  At the beginning of the book he writes about arriving at Auschwitz on a train with fifteen hundred other people.  He writes that ninety percent of those 1500 people were murdered within hours of their arrival.  He goes on to write about how he had smuggled the manuscript of his book into the camp with him.  He writes this:

"I tried to take one of the old prisoners into my confidence.  Approaching him furtively, I pointed to the roll of paper in the inner pocket of my coat and said, "Look, this is the manuscript of a scientific book.  I know what you will say; that I should be grateful to escape with my life, that that should be all I can expect of fate.  But I cannot help myself.  I must keep this manuscript at all costs; it contains my life's work.  Do you understand that?"
Yes, he was beginning to understand.  A grin spread slowly over his face, first piteous, then more amused, mocking, insulting, until he bellowed one word at me in answer to my question, a word that was ever present in the vocabulary of the camp inmates:  "Shit!"  At that moment  I saw the plain truth and did what marked the culminating point of the first phase of my psychological reaction:  I struck out my whole former life."

I love this because it explains something in me and to me which I have not been able to see or know until very recently.  Frankl is not just saying here that the book is his life's work- he is saying here that his life is the book- or at least that is what he thought then.  I understand this very well because I thought the story of what had happened to me was not just the story of what had happened to me.  I always thought that the story of the abuse that I had survived was who I was.  I've never been able to see the story of what happened to me as a book under my arm.

Actually... oh look!  I have a bunch of books here under my arm!!  And there are all these blank pages just waiting to be filled.  So I am scared, but I understand that I am not what happened to me.

Finally.  Yes.

I had thought I'd lived in fear; but I was tortured and I had lived in terror.  I can surely tolerate a little fear about the present.

And to my wonderful friend Eve: I am so excited about May!! I love you.  Thank you, Eve. xo

Pen and ink on paper.

I've struggled for the past week but I'm doing pretty well.  The truth about my past is painful but it is also the past.  Knowing about the painful thoughts allows me to know all of my thoughts and thus my own mind more fully.  I am sad; but also relieved and joyful.  x

6 PM, Thursday, April 28, 2011

I made this in 2005.

"Achilles' Heel", by William Kloefkorn

Achilles' Heel

The student who asks for an explanation
has blue eyes and an oval face
and a voice that implies—
in addition to what it requests—
I just can't understand anything
unless someone alive explains it.

Because I want to believe myself alive
I recount the ancient story—
Thetis gripping her young son's heel
to dip his body head-first into the river Styx,
goddess neglecting then to dip the heel,
so that eventually he'll die
from a wound in that only vulnerable spot,
arrow released from the bow of Paris,
that other heel.

But she doesn't smile,
probably doesn't yet quite get it,
so I tell her how human fallibility
must somehow be accounted for,
how when my brother lay groaning
after a hemorrhoidectomy,
his dark eyes asking the ceiling Why?
I told him that our mother
dipped him newborn
into a Kansas equivalent of the river Styx,
then like Thetis neglected to make immune
that portion of the anatomy she suspended
him from.

And he didn't smile,
so while I had him captive and inert
I explained the ins and the outs
of classical irony,
how a woman though a goddess
had a fallen memory,
how Achilles though clad in first-rate armor
died dead as a stone at the hand
of a third-rate warrior.

The student with the blue eyes and oval face
closes the blue eyes, nods the oval face.
Is she asleep or thinking deeply? No matter:
when she returns already I have moved
to the death of Hector, his body
dragging an oval
outside the beleaguered walls of Troy,

Achilles riding high and for the moment
invincible in the saddle of his chariot,
sword raised and silver
against a slant of blinding
but universal sun.


by William Kloefkorn

4 PM on Thursday, April 28, 2011.

This morning I had therapy.

I talked about how I had always believed that the torture was love.  I had to believe it.

I am too sad to write today.

My healing becomes visible in every way.

"Heart.", April 28, 2011

Torture. Stockholm Syndrome.

I made this drawing today at my art therapy group.

I'm struggling today; mostly trying to reconcile how to not hate myself for what happened.  I wrote on here yesterday about the events of the past week or so which was about the trauma from when I was age 17 to 25.

When I first started talking last week about the fact that the abuse had not stopped when I was 17 one way of my thinking immediately started thinking:  I am not going to hate myself over this.  I started thinking right away:  I have suffered so much and for so long about the Stockholm Syndrome issues from when I was teenager and the rape was happening.  I thought: I am not going to go through all of that again over the fact that the RAPE kept happening.  The word RAPE is in all caps because today I am busy busy busy- mostly reminding myself every minute or two that it was STILL RAPE EVEN THOUGH I WAS... older.  It was still rape even though I was no longer living at home.

My art therapist was helpful with this today.  She listened to me talk about all of the struggle I am having over this and my guilt and shame and pain and then looked right at me and said:  "It was more than rape, Jenny.  It was torture."  And she is right.  I so much did not want to be having all of these bad feelings about myself- like it was my fault that the abuse kept happening.  I was on the phone with Eve this morning and I was telling her all of this.  I told her how I had thought last week that I did not want to be going back over all of the guilt and shame of the Stockholm Syndrome parts of this and now I am.  I feel guilty and sick with shame and horror.  Then I keep thinking:  It was not my fault.  Right?  No.  But how could I have...?  Ugh.  It is awful.

Just a month ago I wrote this and it was in part about Stockholm Syndrome.  I wrote about how when I was growing up my mind was divided amongst the road of knowing, the road of not knowing and the Stockholm Syndrome road.  The not knowing is/was painful; undoing and learning to understand and know about the Stockholm Syndrome is hell.  I've struggled with it before and for a long time- from the perspective of how it was to live and feel with the man who was raping me when I was a teenager... the fact that it continued on into my twenties- it is awful.  I did not want to be hating myself for this- but as I said to Eve this morning- I feel like I am on the third road and can't even see anything else.  I feel like I am laying out in the full sun on the Stockholm Syndrome superhighway to and from hell and honestly, I am thinking:  I feel dirty and ashamed.

I keep trying to remind myself that if this were the story of anyone but myself- I would look right at them- like my art therapist looked at me today- and I would know and say and tell that person:  IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT.  So that is what I am going to keep reminding myself.  Even though I feel sick about it all.  Horrible feelings and memories from the time when I was in the first half of my 20's and on top of that a big heap of shame.... which now as I write that I think: It is easier to have the shame feeling than it is to have the feeling/knowing that I was hurt.  That I was tortured.  That the reason I was driving home from college and still continuing a sexual relationship with my own dad- was the result of a lifetime of torture.

I am dealing with this in the best ways that I know how and writing here has always helped me.  I am struggling a lot though right now and while I keep trying to remind myself (literally every few minutes) that IT WAS NOT MY FAULT.... I do have a small fear that someone may read this and think that I am a liar or a whore or both.  I think those are really the feelings I am having towards/about myself and probably because it is easier to think that than it is to fully know with my honest and honestly broken heart how terribly much I was tortured and abused.

Today as I drove to art therapy this was on the radio and even though I am struggling with all of this; this made me feel glad I'm alive:

As I drove back home from art therapy I was listening to "Tell Me More" on NPR and they were discussing the attack on Chrissy Lee Polis.  You can listen to it here.  It is horrifying that people can be so grotesque and violent.  Listening to the story of the assault made me feel sick but it also made me think that people have to keep speaking out against every kind of violence.

Oh NPR... I do love you so.  Here is one more thing for today; kind of silly but much needed.  ART NOT VIOLENCE PEOPLE!!!

I understand that I sometimes lost myself.

(How I know where I am (now)., April 27, 2011)

Staying in the vein of the truth.

Ok... Something has happened and I've spent the entire day struggling, crying, hurting and wondering which method of self-injury I can use to cover the enormous amount of pain that I am in now.  There is no way to cover this pain though and I will not continue the self-injury pattern.  I am not going to cut myself, over eat or do any other thing that would cause just a minor dissociation from my pain but then essentially be just adding more pain to it.  I am going to stay in the vein of the truth and let it bleed through my written words until the pain runs out.  In the past when I would hurt emotionally I would always turn the pain back onto myself.  I am now making the decision to put down the razor and let language be the weapon that cuts not my body but through the last of the tangle of the invisible prison from my childhood.  Here goes...

I have used this blog as a place to write about my life now and also the stories of my past.  For most of my life I blocked out the terror and trauma I lived through because it was too horrific for me to know about.  Blocking out the trauma caused a lot of problems- the biggest one being the fact that in order to block out the bad I had to block out everything.  I had to block out the bad, the good and almost everything about my own mind; thus I've been unable to know myself.  As I have been coming to know more fully my own mind I have begun to know and understand that as awful as the rape and physical abuse was- the emotional abuse, the lack of nurturing and the neglect were far more hurtful.  And being raped of myself- of the experience of knowing and having my own mind- that is by far the most heinous aspect of the rape.  I spent this gorgeous day indoors- thinking about my bike and not biking- feeling like a prisoner and that is just how I lived for far too long.  I am going to write out now what has been causing me to struggle and then I am going to go out- catch a walk and feel that cool evening air on my skin.

Last week- in the days leading up to the Race to Stop the Silence and End Child Sexual Abuse- I began to say to a few of my closest friends that the abuse I had lived through had not actually ended when I was 17 years old.  I first said it my friend Eve.  I cried and told her that "I had this terrible feeling..." and then I cried a whole lot more.  I did not want to say my thoughts out loud.  This is how all of the memories are when they come back- because actually they are not 'coming back'- the truth is:  The memories have been there and I have been expending enormous amounts of energy to try to push them away.  But I have been wanting (in some ways of my thinking anyway) to get the last of the truth out (parts of me have been terrified about this).  I needed to- in order to know my whole mind, in order to have back and be able to know all of the different ways of being me- tell the full truth.

So last week I said to a few of my closest friends that the abuse had not ended when I was seventeen years old.  And on Friday night, after my art therapy group and after talking about it there- the fact that I had been raped by my dad during the time when I was in college- I came home from the art therapy group and I called Eve and I sobbed and told her about how it had gone on all through college.  I emailed my doctor about it, cried until my eyes were swollen and then had a very restless night of sleep before waking up early Saturday morning to run in the race.

During the race on Saturday morning I asked myself a most direct question and as I ran in the race to Stop the Silence and End Child Sexual Abuse I received back from myself a most direct and painful answer.  I was running and I suddenly thought:  Why did I always think the abuse had ended when I was seventeen years old?  And the answer that came without a second of hesitation was:  Because I had to think that; because it would have been too painful to know about it all right away.

I knew when I was seventeen that I'd had an abortion, was betrayed by my mother and still was being raped my father.  It was too much.  I had to believe it had ended.  And so I did.  I had my first sexual relationship (outside of the one with my father) start then and the next year I went off to college.  I had been being raped by my father since my earliest memory and I it was as though my mind could not tolerate anymore.  I had created so many divisions in my thinking- I created another and imagined that I had died and that it was all over.  (When I first started to see this seventeen year old way of being me in my mind- after I started to talk about my father raping me in therapy- she was always dripping wet and enfolded completely in a black plastic trash bag.)

Immediately after the race I cried and hugged Christopher.  We had coffee with a few friends and as soon as he and I walked away from them- I started talking about what I had thought of during the race.  I kept saying I felt sick and I was holding my stomach and nearly doubled over on the street.  I got home and took anxiety medicine which I normally only take to help me sleep at night.  I slept and woke up feeling just as anxious as I had felt.  I emailed my doctor, called my friends and started talking about the details of how the abuse had continued on through college.

Sunday and yesterday I continued on writing and talking about everything I was thinking and remembering from the time that I was 17 until I was 25 and moved out to the east coast.  Yesterday I was DREADING going to therapy because even though I had told my doctor most of my thoughts via email- I knew that sitting in front of him and hearing myself say it was going to solidify it in a way that was going to truly pierce my heart like a knife.  And it did.  To hear myself say aloud to my doctor that the abuse had not ended until I was 25.... it hurt me and freed me in a way I hardly know how to articulate.

Yesterday morning I was so anxious I wasn't even sure how I was going to manage getting to my doctor's office.  I had known for a while that the part of me that most loves to ride my bicycle is a way of being me that is older and I suddenly thought:  I would bike there.  I had been stripped of so much- my childhood, my body, knowing my own mind- I had this moment yesterday when I thought with clarity that it was a gorgeous day and I would not let my biking be taken from me too.  I had know about two-thirds of the abuse and held back the last chunk of eight years.  And on the day I finally knew it with the most clarity that I had ever been able to tolerate thinking about it- I put Kermit the Frog into my bag, lathered on a layer of sunscreen and biked the 16 miles to my doctor's office to talk about it.

I leaned my bike against the garage to get my helmet out of the car and smiled when I turned back and saw it under the sign that reads: Welcome Spring.  I pulled Kermit part way from the bag and took this photo yesterday just before I left.

As I was biking both to and from therapy I was remembering things from the time when I had been in my early twenties.  It was excruciating and that is an understatement.

But this is the good news- from this mess of pain- this is the good part:  I get to know the rest of my mind.  I had started to remember with clarity a lot of things about my life from when I was a small child and then from when I was a teenager... then there was this huge blank space after I was seventeen and it was as though I could not think of anything from that time at all.  As soon as I started to talk though and let myself think about those older ways of being me last week- I started to feel like I was getting the rest of my mind back.  I have a lot of feelings of pain and horror- but I also started to feel relief from knowing I was getting the rest of the lie out.

The last week has been very difficult.  I know in many ways this is the first step in knowing about and tolerating what will be a lot of painful memories which I have always known and felt and tried for so long never to know or feel.  But today I felt trapped inside of my head and spent almost all morning and afternoon struggling emotionally.  I feel like a lot of pressure has been relieved from just starting to talk about this here.

Here is a small sketch I made today from a photo.  Below that is a collage I made a couple of months ago.

A different dissociation.

(Boden Sea, Uttwil, Hiroshi Sugimoto)

I've mentioned it before but I love the Metropolitan Museum of Art 'image of the day'.  The photograph from above was for today.  

I had a difficult therapy session this evening marked by a bicycle ride to and from with more painful memories.  Tonight I keep reminding myself:  There will be an end to the painful memories.  I was happy when I saw this image just now because it is like a rest for my tired mind this evening.  

That treasure-house of memories.

(On cheap paper, April 2011)

Today I don't feel.  Or I don't want to or I can not.  I am not sure.  Maybe it is all of the those.  Or wait, no, I can feel- it is just that I am afraid of it- afraid of feeling.  I've lived in terror of my own mind for so long- it is strange to not be running from it.  I'm like a foreign animal to myself.
I wake up in the mornings now.  It has taken me about two full weeks of feeling confused to understand that.  I think I used to experience waking up from sleep as a switch from one way of my thinking to another.  What is happening now is that every morning I am aware as I shift from sleeping into awakeness; into the consciousness of being awake and thinking.  It is so odd.  For the past couple of weeks I really couldn't totally understand what was happening and I kept saying to Christopher, "Something weird is happening in the morning.  It is something weird."  And I really couldn't figure it out.  I kept trying to describe to him this strange thing that was happening each morning... I was having thoughts and remembering bits of dreams and they were mixed and unmixing and I was aware of it.  
I've started being present for my own waking up from sleep in the morning and I've never really been able to experience it fully before.  It still feels very strange- to wake up and have my thoughts as opposed to flipping a switch in my mind from sleeping right into some way of being me.  Waking up is strange... both the literal waking up from sleep which I am more aware of now each morning and also the literal waking up from the dissociative coma in which I have both lived and yet not been able to fully live for all of my life.

"And even if you were in some prison, the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses - would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories?"  ~Rainer Maria Rilke

About being human.

Yesterday was the Race to Stop the Silence and End Child Sexual Abuse.  You can read about that HERE.

It was very emotional for me.  I am happy I was able to run in it and I am grateful I have so many incredibly loving and wonderful people in my life who support me.

My incredible friend Eve arranged for an AMAZING Easter basket to be delivered to my house to TODAY sometime between 10 AM and noon... so right now I am excitedly waiting for that.

I had a lot of really painful memories that become solidified in my thinking before, during and after the race yesterday.  The past few weeks have also been very challenging because I've been struggling with an important relationship in my life.

This morning I am thinking this:  It is painful to be real and human and to feel the complex spectrum of emotions that we are able to have.  As difficult as that is though- to fully tolerate the complexity of being alive and feeling real- it is a thousand times better than to try to block out our hurts and sufferings.  The problem that occurs when we try to avoid our suffering is that we then have to avoid knowing about the rest of our feelings and then we miss out on all of the greatness of being alive.

Today I have a lot of feelings of sadness and grief but also a lot of happiness and real joy.  Life is complicated.  Being real is messy with all of the emotions we can and do have.  It is wonderful though- to feel and to be real- even with the sadness and the suffering.  I am grateful today for being able to experience it all.

Here is the poem of the day from "The Writer's Almanac":

Little Things

by Julia A. Carney

Little drops of water,
    Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean
    And the pleasant land.

Little deeds of kindness,
    Little words of love,
Make our earth an Eden,
    Like the heaven above.

Seconds before I crossed the finish line!!

Christopher took this photo. I made it. Then I cried. : ) I made it!

RACE DAY! We made it!!! :-)

Four years of ARTCONSTELLATION.

This blog and the people who read, comment and support me here have all helped me in my journey to heal.  To celebrate four years of blogging I'm going to post a series of images and a poem:  A celebratory album of my family of friends who have helped me to change my life and made this journey possible.  Thank you to all of you.  I love you.  Jenny

Happy Birthday Blog

Skill increases, power grows

as the artist with beauty shows

that which we would never know.

As with grandeur, so belief

with the knowing, such relief.

Laughter comes, along with tears,

so revealing all our years.

Whether drawing out the past,

too rhyme and tune, they are at best,

a way to say, a way to see;

ah art, with song and poetry.

Skill increases, power grows

as the artist with beauty shows

that which we would never know,

Without her.

by D. Alexander

I'm so glad about you.

This morning when I woke up I was so excited and I thought:  The race to stop the silence!... Is tomorrow!!  You can read about it here.

MORE THAN A THOUSAND PEOPLE ARE ALREADY REGISTERED TO RUN TOMORROW AND I AM SO PROUD AND EXCITED THAT I AM ONE OF THEM!!!!

Today my blog turns four years old and I am kind of happy about that too.

I will write more later today.  I wanted to write a quick post now to say how excited I am about the run tomorrow but mostly about the fact that I am feeling good enough that I am going to be able to be a part of it!!  Also- one of my friends that will be running tomorrow ran in the Boston Marathon this past Monday and I think that is just so cool; I've been wanting to mention it.  I have a very strong team with me.  :-)  !!!

This morning I was on the phone with Christopher and we were talking about the race and I was really excited.  I am asked him how he was feeling because he's been having allergies but he has a new medication that is helping him and I said, "I'm so glad about the new medicine."  And he said,  "I'm so glad about you."

Me too.

One of my very favorite poems.

Tomorrow will be four years since I started this blog.  When I first started here I thought I was just going to post images of my art.  One of the very first times I wrote about how I was feeling is here; May 15, 2007.  Here is one more link to something I wrote more recently; January 14, 2011.

And here is a poem that I love.  If you don't have time or the urge to read it all- you should skip to the end and read the last verse at least. x

In Memory of W. B. Yeats
by W. H. Auden
I He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers. Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living. But in the importance and noise of to-morrow When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse, And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed, And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom, A few thousand will think of this day As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. II You were silly like us; your gift survived it all: The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. III Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate; Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye. Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.

The miracle of speech.

(Dinner, April 20, 2011)

Today I had a painful memory come back.  It has been bubbling for the past few... days... weeks... ok.. always.  Anyway- it was painful- really painful.  In the past I probably would have cut myself or hurt my body in some other way because I was so upset about the memory.  Today I sat down and felt really sad.  I felt terrible.  Then I texted Eve.  Then I texted Christopher.  Then I was texting both of them and emailing a very long email to my doctor about the memory.  It took a few emails.  I didn't speak out loud for three hours and then I took my whole dinner and wrote out the above.

Then I called Eve and we talked about how amazing it is that I am able to tolerate the painful memories in this totally new way.  I am now able to have painful memories about the past and not hurt my body. It feels like a miracle.  It is really the product of seven years of therapy and a lot of good friends.  It is so good.  The work of healing is hard and it takes a long time.  But it does happen.  I am proof of it.

This is something I wrote to my doctor today in my last email over the pain of the memory:

The terrible of not talking finally was worse than telling the terrible truths.  It really is that.  The most simple and complex thing of all.


-------------------------------------------------


YES TO TALKING.


The Race to Stop the Silence and End Child Sexual Abuse is this Saturday.  I am ready!!

Say Hello.

When a person is forced to shut away parts of their own mind and keep secrets from themselves in order to not know about something terrible that is or was happening to them- a lot of walls have to go up in your own head.  You have to invent a lot of rules in order to never know about the things you wish had never happened and about the body you wish those things had never happened to.  It is a mess of complications; the work of trying not to know what the thing is you most do not want to and can not tolerate to really know.  You try to make everything in the present day be far less complicated.  Everything then is always: yes or no, on or off, here or there, black or white.  You had no control, your body and mind feel out of your own control,  you had to displace every painful thought and feeling and nearly every good one too- in order to protect your mind.

Once you go back and start to know your own mind and realize that you are not crazy but that you just had to think that in order to survive the craziness (or torture) that was happening to you; everything is different then.  Once you can tolerate to really know what you once could not; then everything becomes all:  Yes and no and maybe.  And black and white and every color in and out of the box.  The walls in your head that you had to put up- you have been taking them down and finally you start to see.

Daffodils

by May Swenson

Yellow telephones
in a row in the garden
are ringing,
shrill with light.

Old-fashioned spring
brings earliest models out
each April the same,
naïve and classical.

Look into the yolk-
colored mouthpieces
alert with echoes.
Say hello to time.

Freedom.

I need first to apologize to Christopher.  Yesterday I posted an image of him wearing a bike helmet.  Oops.  I have not mentioned this here before but Christopher is an artist and loves fashion too.  When we were biking around the city on Sunday I was loving the fact that I could suddenly stick out my arm and give a thumbs-up and he knew right away what I meant was:  That woman with the burgundy mohawk and incredible skirt looked awesome.  Unfortunately Christopher is still afflicted with the fear-of-bike-helmet-illness.  An affliction which I know many newbie bikers and also a few non-newbies suffer from. (To my friend who emailed me the beautiful Morris Graves drawing the other day: I am looking right at you.)  I told him there would be no non-helmeted-biking on my shift and he graciously complied.  I think the photo was a bit of a shock for him though.

I too was once afflicted with the fear of the bike helmet but I experienced then the curiously wonderful change which happens when you uncover your true bike-addicted self:  When we got off our bikes on Sunday to walk the couple of blocks to the movie theater Christopher immediately removed his helmet.  I was chattering on about everything I love about Capital Bikeshare bikes- which is pretty much everything- and I walked most of the way to the theater with my helmet still on.  I pointed it out and was laughing about it.  I was laughing and talking about how much I love bikes but how when I met my friend who is really into bikes and he would leave his bike shoes, helmet, neon yellow biking jacket- and yes, I am talking about another friend here- you with the rearview mirror still on your eyeglasses during the concert and through dinner- I used to think, "Really?"  Now I am all loud and proud about my biking AND about protecting my brain and mind which I have worked so hard on to heal.  So anyway... sorry about the photo of you in the helmet, Christopher.  Here is a cute picture of you in your Mr. Bill t-shirt.  Or wait, was I not supposed to mention you like toys???  ;-)

I had therapy last night and a way of being me who thought she was sort of the only way of being Jenny but kind of knew/wished about the idea of other ways of being Jenny... understood that she is not the only way of my thinking and it was very sad and painful.  It is great because it is great progress, but it is sad because there were some really good reasons a way of being me was still holding onto the wish that maybe somehow all this stuff about all of the bad memories from my childhood and the ideas of different ways of being me... yeah.  Anyway- it was sad.  I have given up a lot to tell the truth.  And I do not mean: To tell the truth on this blog.  I am able to be honest here about my life and who I am only because I am being honest with myself.  And it has been the hardest work of my life.

It is odd to believe through and through that something will never change no matter what you do.  And then one day it changes.  And the healing from child sexual abuse is like that.  You can't imagine you will ever truly be free from the past- and you work and work and work and still it never seems like you will ever be free- then one day you are.  And just like that: You are on the other side.  It took me several of those jumps- into understanding that I am finally free and that I will never be hurt like I was ever again- because my mind was so divided- it took me a few times to fully understand it.  And then I did.  And then I was free- one day, just like that.

The Race to Stop the Silence is this Saturday, April 23, 2011.

Trigger warning. "Cross-over moments."

(Hello Button, April 2011)

Last night I received an email from someone asking me about when I first knew that my father had raped me.  Below is a part of what I wrote back in response to her question.  I am posting it here because she wrote me back saying that it had helped her a lot- that it had made her feel less crazy- that she had experienced moments like I describe here; but that she had never quite known how to describe them.  I have several memories of experiences like the one I describe here below and nothing could better explain the strange terror of these sort of 'cross-over moments' than to say what I wrote near the end:
It was like I had found out something I was not supposed to find out about. 

"I think I knew and did not know for a very very long time before it started to gain clarity in my mind at all.  I was 26 when I said for the first time that he had raped me- I have been in therapy for over seven years and now I am 33.  I think I used to have a really faint idea of it for a very very long time- I have a lot of memories which I have come to refer to as 'cross over moments'.  I have no better way to explain it.  I have memories/examples of these 'cross over memories' from during the time I was still living with my mom and dad and still being raped and abused by them- and I have more after the time I moved out of their house at 18 and before I met my doctor and finally started to say the truth at age 26.  What I mean by 'cross over memories' (I really have invented that term to describe this thing- I am not sure what else to call it)  would be a moment when I would have a moment of knowing that something was terribly wrong- but I was not quite sure what.  They are very specific memories of events and I do not think I was really trying to reveal to myself the truth... so much as it was that something happened that would trigger me and it was like I was unable to switch fast enough from one way of being me to another- or from a way that was not trying to block out everything to a way that needed to block out something that was connected to many other unknowable things.  It would be something I felt for a moment- an extreme terror or a very extreme sense that something was terribly wrong- with me or about the past or with my relationship to my father- and then it would be over (I think I was able to switch then).  But I call them 'cross over memories' because it was like a more conscious way of being me had caught something that was supposed to be buried in a far away and deeply unconscious way or way of being me.

Here is one example I have of this kind of experience:  My father used to hate that when I was young I had short hair- people would call me a boy, I would get upset- he would get upset that I would cry and be upset and he would yell at me.  I had short hair for all of my life and did not grow it out until I was about in middle school.  My father loved my long hair.  He used to tell me that a lot.  He also used to hold me/ pull me by it sometimes when he would rape me.  In college I started to shave my head and it was not until after college that I finally let my hair grow out for long for the first time since I had been in high school.  After I was out of college (and I had long hair at the time and for the first time since high school) there was a anniversary party for my mom and dad I remember feeling sick about the whole thing- but there was a moment at the party- a moment when my dad had had a bit too much to drink I imagine and he reached over, put his arm around me and told me how pretty my hair was.  And I felt like:  I WANTED TO SET MYSELF ON FIRE AND DIE.  Then I think I walked away.  But I had not been expecting it- and it had been too triggering- and it was like I had seen my own seemingly 'overly strong' reaction- 'overly strong' because that way of being me that he touched and said that to really had not been on-guard, and the part of me used to knowing about him and his liking my hair was not 'near' in me and it took a second to switch and dissociate or change my stream of thinking- whatever.  What I mean is that a 'non-knowing way of being me' had accidentally been there and heard his comment and some other part was upset- and it was like I had found out something I was not supposed to find out about.  I hope you know what I mean- it feels difficult to explain- but I had several experiences like that before I ever said for the first time:  My dad raped me."

Here is a photo of a fellow I like- from our biking adventures yesterday.  It was our first time out on the Capital Bikeshare bikes and I was going crazy with happiness- a lot of random bell ringing was going on.  The bikes are fantastic.  And it was great to be cruising around the city on them.  We had a great time and then went to a movie.

Over the weekend I was talking to friend about how in just a few months (September!) I will be a student and a teacher.  I am very excited about both.  We were talking about it and I suddenly had this thought, "Anyone I meet will be able to type my name into Google and find this blog."  For a second I was filled with a lot of bad feelings.  Then I wasn't.  

I have spent so much of my life feeling shame and ashamed over what happened to me.  I will carry that no longer.  I have nothing to be ashamed of.  The incest and rape was never my fault and my abusers- well, I am not quite sure how they are even able to function on a daily basis with the amount of shame they are hauling around.  In any case- I am going to blog on and with my real name; Jenny Sawle.

The rape and the incest are a horrible trauma.  The brainwashing and the mind-fucking are the worst though.  I have never really considered the question of: Will I ever be able to forgive my abusers?  I have always just sort of assumed- NO.  But recently- as I have come to understand more fully how much the sexual and physical abuse stripped me from my own mind- made me have to hide myself from myself- I suddenly think with more clarity that what was done to me is completely unforgivable.  If there was one thing I could say to the two people that tortured me to the point of making me have to not even be able to tolerate my own mind and body it would be this:  SHAME ON YOU.

Here is another blog I follow.  It is called Reasons You Shouldn't Fuck Kids.

(Ipecac, Lite Brite, April 2011)

Dinosaurs, bicycles.

(Cave photo, April 17, 2011)

When I was young I used to play with dinosaurs a lot.  I used to take all of the dinosaur toys that I had into my closet and I kept them all in a big old wooden tool box.  I would 'dust' them off like the way you would see a person cleaning guns on a television show.  I remember thinking once when I was young:  I don't even like dinosaurs.  And I didn't really- in a lot of ways of my thinking and also (and mostly this)- it was never about 'liking dinosaurs'.  It was about protection.  And I needed it.  I used to image that the dinosaurs would protect me.  And I used to imagine that I was a dinosaur and I used to think when I was attacked- that I was a dinosaur who had been hurt by another dinosaur.  When I was six or seven I did not know what 'rape' was or think it was ever happening to me.  I knew I was being injured though and I knew that not all dinosaurs on TV were killed.  I knew that there were dinosaurs on TV that sometimes got very seriously hurt, but then were able to limp away to safety.  I was like that; I would get injured badly then limp away to safety.  The safe place was my closet; in which I used to sit a lot when I was young.  It was good because it was small (but a walk in closet, so not so small) and because there was a light inside so I could make it be light or dark in there and it was also good because there was a door on it and I could shut that door and it would close me off from the other space of the house.  It was like a cave then.  But the best thing about the closet- the thing I loved most- was that it was the farthest point in the house from the rest of the house.  I would go into the far back corner of the closet and I would know I had gone as far as I could get away.  I loved to sit in the closet because it was the farthest point of distance from the rest of the house.  And I was never safe in that house; never.

It is sunny and gorgeous here today.  It makes me smile that I just typed that.  After I wrote it I thought of what I was going to write next- which is that I am about to go out on a bike ride with this guy.... who represented the letter G in The Coming Down the Mountain Alphabet.

The above reminds me of something else I have been wanting to mention and write about here.  I always thought that when I started to know more fully about the different ways of being me- that it would all be bad.  I really mean that I felt that every memory would be terrible and I protected myself from it by not knowing about any of it.  And I protected myself from the truth about my parents by always thinking and feeling that I was the bad one.  Because it had always been too painful to know and understand about the ways in which they had hurt me.  While I do have a lot of terrible memories from my childhood- not every memory is terrible.  In going back and starting to know my own mind more fully I finally get to reclaim my own mind and understand FULLY that I am neither bad nor crazy.  And that I was NEVER BAD NOR CRAZY.  And that is such a relief.  I can barely articulate what a relief that is.

Also- as much as it is painful and sad to remember- the pain does pass.  And the stories- while they are a mix of good and bad- for so long I could not know anything about any of the stories of my past- and now I get to know it all- the good and the painful parts of the story.  And once the pain passes- I am able to have the happiness of knowing and finally being back in my own mind and body.  Then I can go out for more bike rides in the sun.  : -)  Healing from child sexual abuse is an enormous amount of work and pain.  The great part though is that it is possible to heal and that when you do you get to take back your own life, body and mind.

Taking my life back.

Reading my childhood medical file yesterday was the most poignantly painful and ubiquitously liberating work I have done to heal from the child sexual abuse I survived.

Today at my art therapy group I began to talk about drawing the things that I love; instead of always things related to the abuse.  The image above is a drawing I started working on today.

The poem on The Writer's Almanac for today is lovely: I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, by William Wordsworth.

Here is a blog that I follow which is very well written and full of great poems, quotes and wonderful links.  I am posting the link to it here today because of this courageous and insightful post she wrote a couple of days ago.

Today I realized I started this blog four years ago on April 22, 2007.  The Race to Stop the Silence is next Saturday, April 23, 2011.  It will be my first time running it.  I am both nervous and excited.  I will be wearing one of the t-shirts I designed when I run it and so will my friends who will be there with me.  You can help raise awareness about the epidemic of child sexual abuse by wearing one of the shirts too.  The t-shirt can be purchased HERE.  (CafePress charges $17.99 for the shirt.  There is no markup on it.  The image is printed on both the front and back.)

HERE is one more incredible blog that I read; the woman who writes it is amazing.

Fastest runner.

Today I read through my medical records from the time that I was growing up- the time that I was being sexually abused.  I felt a lot of things reading it all- mostly anger and a lot of sadness.  It was a relief this afternoon then when a certain way of being me thought:  Maybe I will transcribe the whole 88 page document using ALPHABET MAGNET LETTERS.
And it was the only time I laughed out loud all day.

I wrote this into a sketchbook in 1999.

(The three ways of being A., April 13, 2011)

May 24, 1999:

I want to be quiet more.  Speak less.  I want to take things in and put them out in a better way than I have been.  I want to feel healthier- about myself.  I don't want to talk bad about anyone.  Why is that so hard to do?  I am sick of it though and it really has to stop.  Anxious for my laundry.  How easily my mind slips away from what I want it to focus on.  I am having a hard time with that now- I keep getting up to do things and then coming back.  My mom, dad- problems deal with them in the summer? Sometime.  Eat It before it eats me.  Fix the leak, the whole damn mess.  Why is something wrong?  Is it my memory?  Is something wrong with me?  Did something bad happen to me?  It couldn't have.  But did it?  When will I be sure?  I need to know.  One way or the other- I have to figure or find out soon.  Is that what all of this craziness has been about lately?  The panic attacks, the nightmares. Please just let it have been anyone but Dad.  I don't want it to be him.  I could hardly write that word here.  DAD.  I hope my dad never did anything to intentionally hurt me.  And I don't think I should have to feel bad for asking.  Something made me ask.  I feel sure that this will all become clear!? Maybe it wasn't that at all and I am just looking for someone to blame my problems on.  Why though?  Why AM I DOING THIS? Why can't I remember more?  Why is my memory so bad?  If something happened to me- Why don't I remember- but why am I even asking about it, if maybe it wasn't real.  Because you are tired of all of the questions I will give you some of the answers.  It was before you were born at all and it wasn't you but to someone else you loved.  Is that true?  Yes.  How do I know.  I will prove it to you and in time you will know I am right.
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I wrote that four years before I finally said out loud for the very first time: My dad raped me.   It makes my stomach churn to think of how much I suffered carrying the secret of his rape in silence for so long.

After I started talking about there being 'different ways of being me' my doctor asked me once how long I had known about that- the different ways of being me.  I remember thinking: Always.

I had a burning question.

I wrote the previous post about a thought I had today when I was out jogging.  I had a lot of thoughts while I was out jogging though- my previous post was one of them- this is another:

One of the things that has happened in the past few weeks and as I have been writing and talking more- I am feeling the push of a lot of different streams of my thoughts to get ideas out and it is kind of overwhelming.  I am frequently reminding myself now though that I need to have more faith in the system of my mind- the mind which saved me from the abuse.  I mean: I start to get flooded with feelings and ideas- good, painful or a mix and I have to remember that my mind filed away a lot of my own thoughts which I was not at the time of their happening fully able to tolerate or process and it was all done in the name of protecting myself.  My mind is not going to suddenly let loose some flood of information or ideas which I can not fully tolerate- it goes against the very system of the entire way my mind works.  Instead of panicking now when I am having a lot of thoughts or feelings and things FEEL strange and or new- I try to remind myself: I am ready for this.  I worked a long time to heal from the trauma I lived through and then I came to this weird place- this place I never imagined because I had no context for imagining it.  It is the place of feeling better.

I used to always wonder:  How can someone heal from so much trauma?  It was not even a question specifically about me or my trauma- I was always looking at other people and their stories and wondering:  How do people REALLY heal from huge trauma?  I asked my doctor this question many times over the past several years of our working together and his answer was always pretty much the same.  He would tell me that people start to feel better and then they get their life back.  And the look of extreme annoyance I would give him was pretty much always the same look too.  The problem was- I wanted to feel better- but I had never really felt very good- so I really had no idea what "getting my life back" would mean.  And then it started to happen.  I started to get my life back.

One of my favorite things that my doctor says sometimes about getting through this pain is that, "It does not have to be graceful."  And it surely has not been- I am laughing now as I type that though.  Tolerating the memories and the pain of the memories has been excruciating at times and I have been about as far from "graceful" as a human being could be.  I came to understand that sometimes tolerating the pain of the truth has really meant "Stay alive no matter how much you think you do not want to in this moment- because this moment is going to pass-even though it does not feel that way at all."  Tolerating the memories has often meant simply: Stay alive.  And I did.  And as I type those words I think: Maybe I have done better through this than I imagine.  And I think that I have.

The last week and a half or so has been pretty rough.  I was making a list of all of the difficult things that happened in the past 10 days or so but also thinking I had 'tolerated the pain' pretty well when Christopher said to me:  A lot of good things have happened too.  He was right.  I had been going over the past  bunch of days and I was going over every hard thing- and I was leaving off every good thing.  I had heard a great classical concert, I had laughed a lot one day at my art therapy group, I had done some dog sitting, dinner with friends, trips to the library, making art, running, sleeping well, listening to music, planning a GREAT trip for this summer... there were a lot of good things.

I spent the day today writing and making art.  Both were pretty painful but also enormously productive.  I also went for the run, felt the rain on my skin, talked on the phone to 4 different people I love and signed up to do some volunteering.  I have wanted to do volunteer work since I moved here 8 years ago- but I have never felt good enough to do that- today I do.  So the answer to my 'burning question':  How do people really heal from huge trauma?  I was running and I was HAPPY and I thought:  THIS.  This is it.  This is me getting my life back- feeling the strength of my own body, having a lot of thoughts come and go and weave together and then not again and tolerating it all- feeling better.  I don't really know how to explain it, but there is this weird thing that happens- I guess it really is like a tipping of the scales.  While you still know all of the horrors of the past- you have the ability to see it as the PAST and to recognize fully that you are free and safe and able to make your own choices now in the PRESENT.  So even though you still have to live with whatever the trauma is that you lived through in the past- you finally (finally) want to be alive.  Because after a huge trauma... after a huge trauma you kind of feel not very alive at all.  I felt 'dead' for such a long time.  I am thankful to my doctor and my enormous group of good friends all of whom helped me to hold on, tolerate the pain, keep going and STAY ALIVE.  Because now- finally- after a long time suffering and a lot of work- I don't wake up each morning to simply stay alive- I wake up to live.