Naming Memories

Its unusual for us to have more than one memory floating on the surface with open access. Currently, we have five trauma events being talked about in therapy and written about in journals. To help keep things organized, we have taken to giving each memory a nickname for reference.

Here are three core memories:

Sold- when we were 3 or 4 and our father sold us to his boss. I think it is the first time we saw money being exchanged. Maybe the first time prostituted. Unsure. It was to my dad's commander at the Air Force base he was stationed at. We remember the room, televisionand stand and have discussed some of the details but not all of them.

After this incident, we became afraid of people, men. We didn't want to be touched and it was our first recollection of that.

Shoulder- maybe 4 or so. Our dad shocked us by grabbing our upper left arm and yanking us quickly off the floor. Very scary in a deeply visceral way. Thought our arm was broke. Need to write more about this one, too.

This caused us to feel that our own body was an unsafe place to be in.

Spoon- geez, all these are but semi complete and require much more processing. 

We remember being drugged by our evil grandmother, her brother, my great uncle the priest and my great grandmother was there, too. 

This caused us to be suspicious of all food and drink.

Snuff- around 8 or 9 just like Spoon. First time seriously choked and molested by dad.

That's enough for now.

I need to take some time, focus on one incident and write thoroughly about it.

They do have connections. It's the first time I've discovered how one memory is connected to another, like each memory is an island and I'm building a bridge to each.

My Coconspirator Mother

The open secret was that my mother gave me to my father to sexually abuse so that she didn't have to have sex with him.

I could sit in the living room and look at her knowing she expected me, her teen daughter, would sexually satisfy her husband, my father, and save herself from such indignity. She knew. She sanctioned. She handed me over to him for his use, all the while lying to herself that either she didn't know he was molesting me, or that by having sex with me, it saved my brothers and sisters from being his sexual victims as well.

I wonder if mom knew he raped all of her children, including her precious, never-do-wrong sons. Probably not because she would have never continued to live with him if she thought he had defiled those worthy of love and protection, her sons. Daughters were nothing but garbage and trash but sons, well, that was mighty different.

I wonder if mom knew about the child prostitution when my sister and I would go to "parties" on the West Side of town, and sexually service groups of men my father gathered. Did mother question where we would disappear to at night? Did she wonder about the sudden large sums of cash and bags of groceries brought home by her unemployed husband?

I'm not usually a vengeful person but lately I've struggled to not write mother a letter telling her all these things.

I want her to hurt. I want to be the one to hurt her, to force her to drop the lies and hear the truth. I want her to feel the pain of her sins, guilt and despicable actions. Her greatest pride was being a mother to very large brood. Her greatest sin was knowingly neglecting and prostituting them.

Did she know her husband was training her two oldest boys to be just like him? With lessons in how to seduce, molest and sexually use others? That was a mighty fine homeschool you allowed to happen, mommie dearest.

To this day, I cannot imagine how my siblings ignore, deny and overlook her crimes. 

God, what children won't do to try and win a mother's love!

Egads, the "love", the semblance of love and care from a cold, heartless bitch can cause an adult with the unmet needs of a child to drastic measure.

Pity the godless, vile thing disguised as my mother. I don't know how she became so broken and warped, and frankly I do not care. May her sins haunt her day, night, alive and dead. 

The lives she's ruined. The childhoods destroyed. The neglect and abuse she passed on to another generation, no two. What a legacy, you bitch. Rot in Hell with your husband. 

I do not love my mother, a woman who could not bring herself to love me. 

Compulsion

I had a strong, unwavering, instinctual feeling that I felt compelled to act upon. It could not be ignored.

I've only felt this a few times before. Once, I felt compelled to contact my brother as my sister was in an accident near death.

Two, I felt compelled to move 2,000 miles away to Oregon completely alone.

Three, I felt compelled to write my ex and let her know, if ever she needed assistance, help, someone to care for her, if she lived close enough, I would help her. 

I have no concrete reasons to why I would feel, think and write this. The thought would not leave me until I acted upon it and wrote her.

I do not feel obligated to do this, not one single bit.

I had to. Call it Destiny or Fate or Just the way it is.

An Incest, Tortured, Child Sexual Abuse Survivor's Unhealthy Thinking Patterns

It's taken me 50 years and the hard work of a Multiple and her Therapist, but I'm happy to say that I have identified and been working to release some unhealthy thinking patterns that have plagued my every day.

It feels monumental, it really does. Each one represents time and energy engaged in erroneous and harmful thinking.

I'm still a bit embarrassed. Maybe because it took so long to become aware I had these patterns.

A big part of healing these was finding the strength and courage to admit them aloud, first in writing and then out loud to me therapist. She didn't make fun of me. 

I'm healing.

This is why we go to therapy.

We got this.

Nothing is the same as it was six months ago.

We pretty much became aware of all these in the past few months.

Multiples are Mighty

I feel Great Pain

For the first time in my 57 years, I feel tired and want to go to bed before midnight. This began about a week ago right after the Big Release.

We had a blockage, a place, a series of internal "rooms" where we kept all the pain and hurt that we were not allowed to express. No one could see us hurt or we would be punished or tortured. We could never let our perpetrators see that they were hurting us because it would give them great pleasure and they would inflict more. So, we walled off our pain.

A week ago, we decided to become aware of our pain and let it out. It was an agreement we made. We asked our body what needed to be done to feel healthy again. We were drawn to our consistently tight and sore right ankle. It was the place we stored things, emotions and memories, that we were unable to handle as a child.

For a week, we wrestled with great emotional pain with an intensity we had never before experienced.  The external reality narrowed and faded away as we were consumed with feeling and releasing wave after wave of great pain. After a few days of constant tears, it abated a bit and we could breath again.

The depression and sorrow created danger for us. It was like we were grasping both hands into the ground struggling to hold onto a whiff of sanity and the willingness to live.

I guessed that others may experience this at times with the death of a loved one or something similar. 

I wonder if there is a threshold whereby this is the maximum amount of pain all humans can handle. Or, if due to my having stored and accumulated numerous events of pain, that what I was feeling was more intense than what others felt. I could not imagine any other human being able to quasi function and continue to live while feeling so much so deeply.

In my mind, there is a maximum pain threshold. When one event happens, one sack of intensity is felt. I was feeling dozens, one sack after another, my guess.

When we hurt emotionally, if we don't acknowledge and express it, it is stored away in our body, our cells causing us to malfunction physically as well as emotionally. 

I'm on the other side of the Great Pain. I'm learning that it's okay to feel.

The Smell of a Saginaw Summer 1968

As I integrate with Sunny 5, the young alter of mine that snuck down the stairs to make herself a jelly sandwich one early Saginaw, Michigan morning, I experience a flood of unfamiliar and distinct sensations.
I feel the mist of dawn lightly upon my arms, legs and face. It’s like a fine, wet powder on my uncovered skin. The air is filled with scents heavy and light. I can readily smell the asphalt road, a mixture of exhaust fumes and grime. Living next to a set of railroad tracks, I’m surprised that in addition to the familiar odor of creasote emanating from the railroad ties, the metal rails themselves give off a unique scent, like a mixture of sweaty tin on top of a thin film of oily diesel.
My face feels light and warm, nose and cheeks especially. I swing my legs playfully, in constant random motion so they feel cooler than the rest of me, even though, technically they are a wee bit closer to that giant yellow orb.
The porch smells like old wood, a bit of mold and peeling, dried paint. The dirt underneath wafts through the flooring and pours in from the sides. It’s chilly and moist from the morning dew.
My strongest smell is of grape jelly, as if I’m wearing it as a mustache, my slice of bread thick with my ill-gotten booty. The bread, perfect, fresh and plain. My right hand feeds my outhitting as my left parades and dances in frivolity. Being five years old, eating a self made jelly sandwich and eating it undisturbed while watching the sun rise from your very own front porch with nobody to bother you can feel a whole lot like heaven.

About me

I'm probably the quietest person you will ever know. I've always been a person of few words. Since I've moved cross country, to a place where I know only a small handful of people, I use even fewer words.
I've never really had much to say. I guess you could call me an extreme introvert without a hint of any exaggeration whatsoever.
This subject arises because at the local thrift store today, the clerk was talking to me quite a bit. See, I only realize how quiet, shy and demure I really am, if I say things out loud, am engaged in an actual conversation. I heard my mousey voice, noticed eye contact was difficult and felt like I was trying to hide within myself. Conversation sometimes feels like invasion.
Or that I have nothing to say, to offer. I'm not interested or interesting.
I'm tired. And kinda hapless. I just wanna go to bed.