Being Multiple with over a hundred alters, presents me with chunks of blackout months and years, but I can say I Remember Nebraska and know that everything that happened there was from birth to 4 years old.
My parents lived in the same upstairs apartment from the day I was born until their move back to Michigan home.
Something huge transpired about a month ago. A reintegration of being inside our own body.
See, at 5 years old, at the Michigan house on Sylvan street, my father had gotten angry and choked me into unconsciousness. My body was no longer a safe and welcoming place to be. It became a location to avoid and try and stay away from, preferably as far as possible.
In therapy, we, the alternate personalities, the Others, the parts and People of Amy's psyche System, were able to verbalize this Whoosh (the name we used to identify this particular trauma event) over many sessions and from various perspectives.
People talked first about what it was like to observe dad grab Amy by the throat and lift her 5 year old body off the floor in the basement. Then, again, an observation but from closer, standing next to dad and her. A week passed. The observation was spoken with emotion and feeling from this personality, then that one.
The progression continued for weeks gradually getting closer to first person, to being in the body and feeling the force, the anger, the pain of dad's hand squeezing my throat causing breathing to stop, fear to rise and ultimately my passing out unconscious and laying on the cold floor.
Funny, or odd really, both my parents took my breath away, effectively killing me, stopping breath and pulse, and when both became aware how far those actions had gone, the hugs and cries of remorse.
When my body went limp, my father's anger was superceded by the realization I had stopped breathing and getting oxygen to my brain. He hugged and rocked and cried, coaxing somehow, breath and life to return to me.
How similar to when my mother held me under the water, in the kitchen sink, when I was 8 months old. It's like a switch flipped on within her when my small body stopped thrashing. She whisked me from the water; suddenly she cared about me a great deal! In the blink of an eye she had gone from maniacal infantcidist to loving mother pounding her babie's back in a concerted effort to dispel water and get her alive again.
Both my parents killed me once when I was little. Yeah, that shit leaves a scar.
Therapy allowed us to discuss and dispel all the pain associated with the Whoosh. Dramatically, the body became a safe place to be. It's new, this experiencing the world from within. It's warm in here and rather nice.
Somehow, I know not the mechanisms by which the human mind works, I have started remembering those Nebraska years fuller, richer, and oft in great detail.
So much to write.
Extraordinary events need to be recorded, for my sake, for other child abuse sufferers, and for those helping to heal the wounded that walk long-suffering amongst us.
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