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HEROES OF MY HEART
I once asked a woman who had worked in a mental institution, for many years, to guess how many of the women who came through there had been sexually abused as children. Her honest guess was at least 90 percent . . . maybe higher. I would have never guessed that. I never landed in a mental hospital. Not sure how I missed that crazy dance.
I am a normal looking wife pretty but overweight. I go to Wal-Mart, like many wives, to buy the husband's deodorant and sniff till I find one I like (Axe). I plant annuals in my perennial flower garden just for the color of it. We go to church on Sunday and shake hands with strangers. Our grand kids, when they sleep over, love playing in the dirt pile out back and eating all my sugar-free popsicles. My husband and I always have at least three projects not finished around the house. Sounds so normal to me too, but normal was a wish I threw away years ago. I learned it was more fun to be myself.
It was about fifteen plus years ago that I made a discovery. I had a hidden world inside me. There were hundreds and hundreds of people that lived inside of me . . . floor after floor of gray and dark rooms, and people inside a mountain too. I had my own ocean, green valley, elevators, aliens, a giant spider, and snow. I grew up, since infancy, with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). They call it DID now (Dissociative Identity Disorder). MPD is caused from severe abuse early in childhood. To all the many smart people who have written books on it and still can't comprehend it or believe it, see the previous sentence.
I lived in a highly functioning solid wall of defense inside myself that only God himself could penetrate. And since I was an infant when the abuse started I figured God helped create it also. Help comes in so many forms, really. How amazing is the mind and soul when the creativity is totally unleashed with the limitless power to save a baby.
Healing . . . everyone has his or her own unique journey. For me healing was a screaming ride down to the pit of hell with no seat belt or instructions, and I paid my therapist thousands of dollars to take me there! Along the way, I had to learn to love and trust the therapist first, then the other parts of me. Trusting the other parts was the hardest thing I have ever done. They began as the enemy within and gradually became . . . the heroes of my heart.
If you are a survivor of abuse and reading this article . . . I will tell you right off . . . I don't have the answer for you. I really did believe, in my broken mind, I would be OK if I could just find THE ONE answer to why I felt sad and afraid all the time. My need to know shrank to almost nothing as I kept going through my healing. So, keep going and don't give up! I want you to know you are not alone in the universe. I am here too! During the years in therapy for MPD, I read every Multiple book out there, desperate to find the answer to what was wrong with me . . . to find a connection . . . to find myself. My therapist said I had my own story and I wouldn't find it in someone else's book. To know my own story, I needed to keep working inside. I continued to torture myself with more reading (no Internet back then). I don't think he could even fathom the alone feeling being Multiple brings with it. Not connected to myself, or anyone around me, I read books because I desperately needed to know I was not alone in the universe. My therapist was right about me having my own story. I have a 50 lb box of journal notes in my closet in many different handwriting styles. I pull them out and read a bit sometimes. Here are pieces of me . . . proof of my fractured mind. We all have a most complex, creative, magical, and mind boggling defense system. You do not have to understand it completely to accept this is how you have survived in the world.
I was a single mom living in a small trailer park, on welfare and food stamps. The kids were on visitation with their dad that day and it all began with a prayer. “God please help me,” I begged, “I can't go on.” I was begging for death. The pain in my mind was too much. I could not make the children’s beds. Make the children’s beds . . . so simple, yet they were too much for me. My mind would not let me complete one simple task, or follow through with one thought. I curled up on the floor with an urge to suck my thumb and just wanted blackness to wrap its cloak around me and put me out of my misery. I just needed death . . . no more mind pain. It is so hard to raise three kids feeling this way. I had suspected I was a mental case for a long time. No one knew how hard I tried to seem normal or that I wanted death to take me away. It would have been a kind thing to do, so I thought. My prayer was answered in a way even I could not have imagined.
In one week's time, I was signed up for outpatient alcohol treatment (That was good because I was not good at drinking, could not afford it, and it did not help with the mental pain). Like everyone, I was required to take an extensive psychological exam to enter the treatment program. The results came back, after two weeks into treatment, with a surprise bomb for me. Jim, the alcohol counselor, took me into his office to go over the results. It stated I had been severely abused as a child. “What a crock-that was,” I told him!
I certainly would have remembered that! He asked what I did remember from childhood. I had no memories of childhood, I explained, because I suspected I was adopted. In my mind that explained the no memories. Jim told me I needed treatment right away for childhood abuse. He made a phone call right then and there and scheduled an appointment for me, the next day, with a therapist friend of his. I don't even remember what I said to the therapist at the first appointment. It was like slowly coming out of a dream and when I was awake I discussed the dream.
That first year in therapy, there were quite a few therapy sessions where it felt like I had come out of a fog or a dream during that hour and discussed with the therapist what I saw or felt. I was feeling more and more like a scared kid when I went to therapy instead of an adult. This was the opposite of what I thought should happen. The outside world around me was starting to come into focus but inside . . . the terror was being exposed and continued in that fashion for 12 long years.
Therapy is a long process of chipping and cracking the walls of defense. I began to remember bits and pieces of my childhood. Like tips of icebergs, I touched the rage or pain and wanted to die. Rape, incest, naked kiddy porn, going hungry, bad mom, bad dad. I had no escape from the mental pain that came with working in therapy. It seemed like honest pain but I was not a quick believer...at all that it was my pain.
I remembered when I was about nine years old and I got up the courage to ask my mom the question I had dreaded the answer to. I asked if I was adopted, because I could not remember growing up. She was angry because I couldn't remember things. She said, of course I was not adopted! I asked to see just one baby picture. She said she did not want to get the pictures out right then . . . they were buried.
Later in my life, when I was a young mom, she showed me one picture of me as a two year old little girl. I remember it looked just like my middle son in a dress, when he was two years old! That was the only picture I saw until she died 20 years later, and I discovered she had boxes of baby and early pictures of me. I also knew by then that it was my mom who could not bear to look at the pictures.
My journey of healing began when I was 29 years old, divorced, with three small kids, and I did not want to carry on the family traditions of drinking and more drinking. My mom was very angry that I began therapy for childhood trauma. (Yes, she denied there was any). One time I asked for a family meeting because I was beginning to remember being raped when I was five and said I needed family support. It started out with my mom crying and said she must have been in the hospital getting an operation at the time because she did not remember that at all! (ya sure)
The family gathered around her and hugged her because she was so upset, and I sat on the couch and wished I were dead all over again. I did not attempt to share with family again. You see, she was not in the hospital . . . I was in the hospital from the brutal rape at 5 years old, and she brought me home and told me to not talk about it and don't touch down there. It took me years in therapy to understand why mom would scream at me and call me names when I began my healing journey. I was confused because I had expected her to support me. She and dad were having difficulties. (I believe someone quit drinking at that time also). My journey into healing seemed to frighten her more than me. She would scream at me on the phone and tell me she wished I were dead. Dead. There was a clue! I was slow to catch on. There was too much to catch.
Memories surfaced that I did not believe were my own. My mom, who baked cookies, helped me with my own kids, brought me paper towels and extras I could not afford, tortured, and performed sexual acts on me as a little girl. I told my therapist I was remembering someone else's memories, like a radio picks up radio waves. He said you have to heal from them anyway. (He always squished my best explanations). I wonder how many times I said to him, “I would have remembered that!” (probably hundreds).
I struggled so hard, in my heart and mind, for an explanation because I could not believe the memories when they surfaced. Flashbacks and pain, and being afraid of my own mom. My therapist said body memories do not lie. I really did secretly believe I was losing my mind. I didn't even know how to grasp the truth. I needed to know what the real truth was first. Was she the mom who baked cookies or the one that tortured me? How could she do both? It did not compute. My writings in my journal went on for hours at times. It helped to puke out what I thought was my insanity onto paper.
I discussed death a lot in the first year. My therapist mentioned that if I died now I might be stuck with all that pain inside of me. I figured there was a slight chance he could be right, and I knew it was the old pull the cow’s tail to get it to move forward . . . but it worked and I moved forward. I agreed to attend an incest group. More hell. I was the only one with Mommy Dearest issues and only one book in the whole world had been written about that in the past 50 years. Every moment I felt a ghostly frightened need to escape what was revealing itself inside to me, and I was absolutely sure, in the deepest part of my being, that I did not belong in this universe.
One day I went to visit my mom. Everyone pretended now that our family gathering had not even happened. I also pretended I was not in therapy to keep with the family rules of see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil. When I came into her apartment, she was cleaning the kitchen and watching TV. She offered me some juice to drink then casually announced to me that a talk show finally had a program on for her . . . women who were pedophiles . . . she mentioned she wanted me to be happy for her.
I must have turned white. I held on to the counter as my left over denial quietly shattered. In that moment I felt like I was two years old, standing naked before her while she tied my hands together with a dish towel and another my eyes. Then the blows to my head came as I bounced off the walls. Don't cry . . . never let it show . . . the place in my chest where she had long ago ripped out my heart was a deep pit of pain. Pretend there is no pain. Pretend or you may die.
I had begged and begged her to stop. (You cannot hate the one you need if you want to survive). She would eventually stop and would cry, and then I was expected to comfort her and she would use me sexually. I learned that I disappeared during the abuse. Another part of me took the abuse and sometimes it took many parts to survive it. This was a great kindness...disappearing
.
I made an excuse to leave my Mom's as quick as possible that day. She knew I was upset but thankfully said nothing. They say God does not give you more than you can handle but . . . parents can. I cut contact with all of my family soon after that. I moved with my kids to a different town. It was my choice. I chose to heal.
A couple years into therapy when I was just sitting at my kitchen table thinking about what I wanted to say or ask in therapy that day . . . I glanced inside myself, and I saw people crowding closer to the front. There were about 25 of them in a group with kids and adults, and some with big eyes full of pain and despair. I puked in the kitchen sink and went into shock. I had nowhere to escape to. Husband was coming home from work soon. I had to get the laundry done and fix dinner and get baths done for the kids . . . I did not want this! My husband wanted a sane wife. but I saw people, a lot of people who were alive and moving around inside. I found a corner of my bedroom and crawled into it. I called my therapist. He seemed pleased that this happened and assured me I was having a normal reaction. Do they go to school to learn how to not really tell you anything . . . but make you believe they did tell you something important so that you feel better? This time . . . it helped.
The people I saw inside,each had a story to share with me, he said, and I would eventually learn to listen and feel more than sadness and fear with my emotions. He mentioned that they took the pain because I could not. They who? It did not make any sense to me! It was like turning on the TV and on the news they had a story about a woman who was run over by a truck and died . . . and it was me who died! I would have remembered that! I did not call anyone for support. It was more than I could share. I had learned so well to keep it inside to avoid trouble.
So began remembering and accepting the forgotten memories. Of course my therpist asked if I had "time loss". I said no. I didn't even know I had experienced time loss. Because it was so traumatic, the mind blocked out the trauma from the time loss also. I would be punished for not knowing something . . . I would be gone in a blink and come back in an hour, or a day, or a month, or even a year later. Talk about working with part of a deck!
Once when I was around nine years old, I was watching the new kids playing across the street. I told my mom I would really like to go over there and play with them. She said that I went over and played with those kids yesterday. I could not believe this! I went right over, knocked on the door, and asked them if I was there yesterday. They said yes, took me to the girls’ bedroom, and showed me the horses I played with. I had no memory of this but I stayed and played anyway. The kids did not care if I couldn't remember.
One day, about a year later, when I came home from school, our house was empty, and my family was gone. I sat on the porch and sobbed. I thought my family moved away when I was in school that day. The neighbor saw me and called my mom who came and got me. My mom was angry that I did not remember we moved a month ago across town. She took me home to a house I had never seen and a bedroom that she said, I put together. I pretended that I remembered. I lied.
In school, I would go to my class and it would be a different class . . . a different teacher . . . a different year! I went to the office many times for a copy of my schedule always to be scolded for losing the last one (what last one?) I got parts of Math and parts of English. In my desk was papers I did not do and I wanted to draw sports cars, not stupid Barbie dresses in art class.
I graduated from high school because pretend/switching is the ultimate coping mechanism for a person with MPD. You blend . . . you learn to function differently . . . your whole life is very small and emotions are mostly fear and sadness but people don't like this so your mind switches to happy kids and the fear and sadness lives inside. I learned to live inside. It’s exhausting. It works till it begins to stop working and you end up in therapy or you die very alone. Switching parts is the only natural defense to a person with MPD. It is your mind working automatically without your permission. Therapy is a process of facing yourselves, facing the memories and emotions with them and in this process...taking your own mind back. First, you have to accept the abuse. Second, you have to want your mind back. That was harder than the first one for me. God only knows in what condition it was in! Besides I was still angry because I did not know I lost it! I was angry at God and reaching out spiritually for long time. That is a life long process.
Many people with MPD, like me, do not have any other defense, so therapy has to go very slowly if you are replacing MPD with natural new defenses and coping mechanisms. So many memories to feel! Who wanted to volunteer for that job? Not me!
But I had a support system of women who believed in me with their whole heart. . . I let them into my world and discovered I did not curl up and die when someone loved me . . . MPD and all. Pain and fear was much easier to feel. Like familiar old friends. I remember when one of my friends hugged me. It physically and mentally hurt! They kept hugging me till I learned to let it in. Kindness and acceptance and very powerful healing balms. My friends believed in me when I certainly did not and helped me to believe the most insane stories. They supported me through my self-hate and denial. With their love and kindness, I began to believe and have hope. My dearest earth angels showed me how to accept the brokenness in me I had not even known existed.
My way of healing was to face the terror inside one moment of memory at a time. I learned to pretend and smile, make breakfast and take the kids to school then come home to curl up in a safe place in the apartment and go inside to work. It wasn't quick and easy like seeing a child standing there and giving them a hug and zap! The memory was healed. That's not how it worked. I wish.
Memories inside have taken on a form and power. It is more like feeling a mile wide tornado close by for days ready to rip me apart, and I have nowhere to run. I worked a lot inside at home. I had to be willing to walk into the raging tornado and hold tenderly a part of me as they shared the horror and pain that had created it . . . that had already ripped me apart when I was young. If I was lucky, I would be able to get close to the child connected to the powerful storm right away. Sometimes it took years, because some walls that separated me from a hurting child were very thick.
I was not good or kind when I first began going inside to work. I was terrified. I did learn I could create things inside just by visualizing it but I also discovered that most things inside had been there a long time and had a life all there own...and had for quite some time. One specific time I was working on a memory and it took me into an ice cave. At the end of the cave was a 12 foot black spider blocking the way to the inside so I stabbed it with a long spear. I thought I was so brave because I was terrified of spiders! Many children came and gathered around the spider. They were sad and crying. I then realized I had just stabbed the protector of the frozen children. I then watched as a little 3 year old blonde girl came up to the spider and placed her hands on the spiders wound. I could feel this enormous love she had in her heart for the spider and the wound was healed by her. I was a stranger in a foreign land. Then I wondered if that little girl could come out and heal others on the outside. I thought that would make me feel special. At this point in therapy, as you can see, I was totally in the dark about how love worked.
My days were pretty normal to me. As my outside birth children had a nice day at school I was at home feeling the terror of a 3 year old being ripped apart emotionally, being used physically, feeling her feelings of being alone and suicidal and no one in the world to turn to. Then it was, try to finish up in time to start dinner, pick up the kids from school, help with homework and pretend that there is no tornado close by . . . pretend . . . pretend. It was the only way I knew to protect my husband and children from my personal pain. It still leaked out all over the place at times. Even dreaming at night was work, more feeling and accepting and learning to love a child who will not let you close to her because she is ashamed of what she did to survive.
After many long years, and 35 pounds of journal books, therapy ended. I saw my Mom in the store one day and talked to her. I was still afraid of her but not terrified. Before she died we had a couple of nice years doing mother daughter things; making cookies, shopping together, trying to forgive... . I still could not allow my grand kids or kids to be alone with her. She knew why. My husband stuck it out against the advice of his buddies. I could not have done it without him. My children survived me and have beautiful children of their own now. I heard my oldest son say to his wife, “This is my Mom. She isn't the same person who raised me.” That was a compliment ( I think) :-)
So, my way of breaking through the many different walls of numbing fear was to go towards it. It was my own offense and it worked for me. It was always a broken child I found inside that was afraid even of me. I had to reach out with love first. I learned to listen, hold them, love them, feel the terror, pain, and sadness I had never felt before . . . and thank them for saving me. Hundreds and hundreds of sweet, innocent children . . . my brokenness. The heroes of my heart.
