What I Know

What I Know
Friday December 14, 2007

I don’t exactly remember when my dissociation swallowed up almost all my memories/sensations of childhood but it did. Here is some of what I’ve recovered this year. Told to me by my father this year. “you were only partially circumcised” I did not ask why. I assume because I put up such a struggle. 1st recovered memory. I am a couple of months old I feel totally helpless laying down. I look up and see mom, she looks like a giant bird trying to eat me. I am terrified. I remember being under a table and touching my penis and it feels good. My mother sees me and reacts with horror. I am confused and frightened. I remember picking my grandmother’s tulips because they are so beautiful. She was the only person who ever loved me. I feel love for this gift. I am standing alone in a church the preacher has asked everyone who knows they are saved by Jesus to come and stand up front with him. I am small, 6 or 7 maybe, I am the only person that does not join him. I feel so small and so scared. Every one looks so nervous. I think Its because I’m so bad. I am running. My father is chasing and hitting me, dragging me around the house. His eyes are bulging out and his face is red he is screaming. This goes on for days for years, I have an out of body experience in therapy as I find this memory. I am terrified. Dissociation is beginning. My mother is hitting me so hard and she is so angry because she has hurt her hand. I am terrified and it hurts. I feel that I deserve this. This goes on for years. I am 8 sitting in a neighbors house with my parents in the next room their 16 yr old son’s room where I was sent to play. He rapes me. I feel like I am disgusting and I quietly pass by my parents and leave all alone. I take care not to upset them. I don’t know exactly what I feel but I am aware of being scared and dirty. I am 9 in my moms bed, my dad is not at home I just want to be near her. I feel sick something isn’t right. I am confused. I am being molested by an older boy, many times, It feels good. In therapy I find the feeling of terror and the knowledge that I sacrificed my body to feel anything that resembles love. I feel sick. Age 11 or so I start retreating inside . No one Notices. I have fantasies where I think of killing myself. Hoping, maybe if I do that at least someone will notice that when I’m gone they loved me. I am very very confused and dissociated. I feel self hate growing but don’t know what to call it. I feel I am the cause of all problems and the problem of my parents. I become a target for many other people trying to molest me but I now run, not just from them but from myself. Self hate becomes a constant companion. It grows into the twisted form of a friend. I am deluded. It comforts me. I retreat into a safe place deep inside where no one can reach me. The person everyone sees continues to perform for the world and no one notices I’m gone. Now I am very very alone but I feel safer. The outside person receives the increasing abuse from other’s anger. They do become very very angry that I don’t perform correctly and have withdrawn so deeply. In that withdrawal I preserve myself. The person everyone sees now becomes very angry. I move into years of self destruction, in many forms. I mostly only feel anger not so much pain. Below the radar of everyone the hidden boy continues to search for the truth. He feels determined. There is more but this is enough. Somewhere between yesterday and today I found the courage and strength to set aside all my minds trickery and to face the facts. One by one totally alone. To each simple fact I attached a real feeling. I now have two important insights. 1st. I have survived the reality of little love but I am loveable. 2nd. As I started to write this I had great fear that if I sent this letter people when they read it would jump out of my computer screen and try to kill me because of how disgusting I am. This was the twisted poison I drank. What I find here in the solitude of my room with only me and my beloved cat is a very loving and caring human being, not only for all living creatures and things, but most importantly for the person that I am. I am my gift and I am the only gift I have to offer others. James

AM: You found yourself and you want to listen to yourself. This is indeed, as you say, the biggest gift you could have obtained. And with this letter you let us participate in this finding. Thank you for your letter, also in the name of the people who will read it.