Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Hold Tight, Believe In Light

Last night's dream was more about the stepfather than the house.
He's dead. Remember when I found that out? That he'd been dead for like a year and no one told me?
Will I ever get over this shit? Will it ever be done?
No. I don't think so.
And the horror of finding him alive in my dreams is pure never-ending torturous entertainment.
And yes, my mother was there too.

What happens when a child is abused by a loved one? A loved one. Someone the child may or may not be related to by blood and whom the child trusts and loves and looks to for protection and safety who takes that trust and that love and uses is as a force to harm, to hurt, to devastate, to destroy, to confuse, to damage, to steal and rob and take from the child any innate innocence and ability to love and to trust as fully as might have been. That's what happens. At least partially.

You know, you can spend your whole damn life contemplating this and getting therapy and learning to love yourself and healing the child within you by loving others and your own children and then your grandchildren and reading and attending group therapy and BEING loved by the most stalwart and truly good people on earth and figuring stuff out, day by day, and being on medication and exercising and communing with nature and digging in the dirt and creating life and art and you can do all of this stuff and still find yourself having dreams, night after night of the person who abused you and also the person who did not protect you and you go over it and over it again and again in your dreams (your mind) and you can know in your heart that disease was involved and that parents are merely human and sometimes the best they could do was the best they could do, and you will still wake up with a quaking soul and tears.

Or so it is for me.

In a way, having been abused is a bit like having a chronic illness of remission and exacerbation. You may have great, good days with barely any pain or problem and you can recognize and appreciate those days with every grain of every fiber of every molecule of your being and then one night go to sleep and have the dream or maybe see something that triggers something or hear something or who knows? Perhaps the moon and planets wend their way to another part of the universe and twist open some brain valve that lets out the poison again and there you are. Anxious, depressed, afraid, tearful,  fearful, paralyzed, fraught with feelings of self disgust, and having no belief in one's own self worth even if she is absolutely just as surrounded by beauty and love and tranquility and light and sweet air and scratching chickens and over-abundance of everything good that any human being on this planet could ever want, as she was the day before. The disease has somehow roared back and trying to figure out why is useless. It just is the way it is.

Well. Thank you for letting me write it all out here this morning. How it is. How it can be. At least at my age I know that every moment will not be like this. That the feelings are naught but the dregs of the live virus injected in the soul at an early age which disallowed the proper and true abilities of the brain to make sense of it all.

And to you who wonder why I never, ever get over this and who would be disdainful of my continuing to talk about it- I say to you- good for you! You don't know and thank your lucky stars for that.
And to those of you who do understand I say, "I am so sorry, so sorry, you are not alone, we are not crazy so much as just altered by what happened to us and that we survived all of that and we will survive all of this and don't be afraid to talk about it because keeping it in is as dangerous and pointless and painful as trying not to puke when you've eaten something poisonous. And if I cry, I cry for all of us and I cry for the victims of childhood sexual abuse and every sort of abuse and let us remember to love those given to us to love and to accept love from them in return because honest to god, we deserve both of those great gifts as much as anyone on this earth.

Good morning. Be well. We are here with each other and don't forget it.
Don't ever motherfucking forget it.

Love...Ms. Moon







25 comments:

  1. You give me strength each time you write of it. Thank you which is not nearly enough of what I want to write here but who you are the entirety of you gives me courage.
    Love
    Rebecca

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  2. And I'm sorry for your awful dream.

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  3. I won't ever motherfucking forget it. Thank you for being there and for knowing it's very valuable that you share this. I'm sad and happy both to say I get it. Hug.

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  4. I hate that this man still haunts you. I hate even more than he ever even existed.

    I've been having bizarre dreams myself, and in the middle of sleep and waking with the alarm last night, and half still in dreamland I thought "This must be what Mary's dreams are like." So vivid and anxious. I hate it for you!! I'm glad you can write about it here. Don't you ever motherfucking forget it either.

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  5. ^Except, of course, that he gave you your little brothers.

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  6. I will never ever motherfuckingforget that we are all here together with our wildly insane stories and our wild loves and needs and experiences wretched and divine! Thanks as always for your sharing in your wonderful storytelling skill...I bless myself and all I touch with mighty gusts of love and gratitude, and send a specially mighty gust your way this day, Mary Moon.

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  7. human beings are fucked up creatures that's for sure. and yet we survive.

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  8. this is a powerful post, raw and real. i am glad you write about this, about how it is. we need to hear it, those who get it and especially those who don't.

    i'm so sorry this happened to you. I am so sorry this happens to anyone.

    write until the water runs clear. i love you.

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  9. Luckily, no, I don't know what you endured. But please know I'm as empathetic as I can be. If I was president I would make the crimes of abusing children and animals a capital offense. You're found guilty? You're executed within three days. Please don't think I assign the same value to animals as children, but victimizing the helplessness of any soul sets my blood boiling. I have a good friend who was abused by 'trusted' family members, and even after counseling she still has episodes of complete helplessness. All I can do is hold her, and wonder how counseling, communing with nature, or prescriptions are expected to make her all better. Ms. Moon, I can only send you love, hugs, and light. I hope that sometimes that's sufficient.

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  10. I have no words except I am so very grateful for you. YOU understand.

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  11. I am so sad for you that you still have such upsetting dreams, but thank god that they now are only dreams.. that that reality is in the past, but how scarred those episodes leave the soul, and the perpetrators feel nothing and no guilt how it affected their victims. You keep writing until all that sore and pus and pain is lessoned, if never gone.. I admire your truth and trust in letting us share in those moments.. I hope that today was a good one and that you have a better night with no bad dreams.. Love surrounds you because you refused to let it dominate you and your outlook... what a strong person that takes to do that.. the love you generate with family and all your friends and especially with those darling boys, is your tie to sanity... carry on loving and sharing, and the nightmares will have no affect any more.. love and hugs from across the pond..

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  12. It makes me so sad and so angry. In all my years as a therapist, in all my reading, in my personal experience, I have never had it more perfectly expressed than this. I'm sorry for all of the pain, even for the molesters who were probably molested themselves. We won't let anyone shame you for expressing this. Thank you!

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  13. Rebecca- And you give me courage. So there. Thank YOU. Oh, these dreams. I survive them but they sure can leave their marks.
    Love...Mary

    Mwa- I have to write about it. Sometimes I just have to. I am sure you know.

    SJ- You are such a peach of a sweet friend-daughter. You are constant in your presence, your love, your support. Thank you. A million times over.

    Big Mamabird- That sure did make me feel good. Thank you, sweet woman. I feel that mighty gust.
    It's mighty good.

    Ellen Abbott- As the mostly unrecognized Saint, Jimmy Buffett once said, "Humans are flawed individuals."
    And yet, here we are. Doing what we can.
    You are precious to me.

    Angella- "Write until the water runs clear."
    Wow. That blew my mind. Thank you, sister-friend.

    Catrina- I am so glad that your friend has you. So very glad. Your soul is an empathetic and loving one and my god- sometime all we need is to be held by someone we trust. There is no "fixing," sometimes. Only getting through with help. You did that for me today as well.

    Birdie- Unfortunately. It's a sucky club but here we are, holding on to each other.

    Janzi- It HAS been a good day although I find myself exhausted after not much physical exertion at all. And I am so damn lucky in the love in my life. It is something I would never have believed possible and yet- here it is.
    Thank you.

    Suz- I feel certain that my abuser was abused. But somehow, I still don't understand- I never had the slightest inclination to do such a thing to a child. I would kill myself first. But maybe I just lucked out there and who knows what constitutes all the pieces of the puzzle? There are many. So many. I remember when I first started going to counseling for this issue and I was stunned to find that each layer of the onion that was peeled back revealed another vile layer. And on and on and I'm not sure there is ever an end to them. Well. We go on. And we do our best to protect those we can.

    Elizabeth- Thank you, you goddess, you.

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  14. Psychic wounds are so complex, and often so paralyzing; I too was struck by Angella's comment.

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  15. No, you're right. We create Disney happy endings in our heads, but the reality is that some things will never be fixed, or fine, or ok now. The human brain does not respond to trauma like that, however much we wish it to be so.

    I wish it could leave you in peace now, and leave you alone. I hate that your dreams are still haunted, that you are. But I think this is just the way it works. You haven't processed it completely yet, despite all your hard work. Perhaps it is not a thing that can ever be laid to rest completely.

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  16. Oh Mary, you know I know and I am sorry for the both of us. Your writing about this soothes the shame I shouldn't feel and reminds me that when it's your very own mother, it is something you can never get over. And yes, to those who don't get it, they should thank their lucky stars they never had to experience something that is like an illness that you battle sometimes very well and sometimes not. I love you and wish you as much peace as is possible.

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  17. A- Me too!

    Jo- I think it is like having a bad broken bone as a child. It might appear to be healed but it will never be the same.

    Joanne- I think that betrayal by a mother is absolutely the worst that can happen as a child. I wish YOU as much peace as possible.
    Loving you...M

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  18. Mary, your writing is so powerful; I wish every person who has been through something similar could read this. I'm sure it would be a comfort and a help to them. I am one of the lucky ones you spoke of that did not go through this. But I appreciate those who write about it so that I may understand and maybe be able to help someone from that place of understanding. My heart goes out to all who have been betrayed.

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  19. I'm a day behind in reading this. I send my love to you, Mary Moon. Last night I dreamed of a vampire and in my dream I knew it was just a person in costume in a theatre piece who came into the audience. He pretended to bite my arm and it terrified me. I was trying to scream in my sleep and couldn't make a sound. It woke me even though I knew it was pretend. Good god. Your nightmare was real. You are a survivor who lives in the light of love and grace and goodness. You give out love every single day. Thank you.

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  20. I'm sure anyone who hasn't been through it can never completely understand what it's like. But I would certainly never be "disdainful" of your continuing to talk and write about it. If anything, it's IMPORTANT that you talk about it. It fights the stigma and isolation that others may feel and helps create greater understanding of the urgency of the issue.

    I also understand that it's something one never completely recovers from. I'm sure the fear and mistrust is always there at some level.

    To say your parents are diseased or merely human is one thing -- but this wasn't a run-of-the-mill human flaw. This was monstrous. You are an incredibly strong person to have survived it and to confront it regularly as you do.

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  21. I do not wonder why you don't just "get over it". I thankfully don't personally have a connection but I get it. It only takes common sense and empathy to understand you are affected for life.

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  22. I talked to someone about this today. She said she thinks it stays in us at a cellular level - and that it's about learning to anticipate and manage the waves as they flow in.

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  23. I'm here, Mary, offering love and an understanding. We never get over our childhoods, we just learn to manage our feelings about them the best way we can.

    I'm rethinking my life right now, hence the absence and blog removal, and my place in this world. It's nothing dramatic or dangerous, I'm just trying to be in my life.

    Owen thinking about the adult diapers? That was a fucking gift wrapped in shiny paper with a big red bow on it! Thank you for the laugh!

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  24. Abuse takes away trust. I haven't had the type of abuse you experienced but certainly emotional abuse caused me to have a lack of trust. I believe I have put so much of that behind me. But the fear of rejection and abandonment still will crop up. I just let it flow through now. It has to come out.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.