Finally daring to step back in time
For the past few days, I have been in 1972…1979-1983…1986…then 1995-1997….teens through my forties, the incomplete adult through escape, suicidal to the warrior trying to fight him.
And it has been GRUELING. I would sit in the back room where I write, reading those years, and just reeling from the intensity of it all.
I thought I was ready for those pages…and I AM strong enough, but, oh God, I was still taken aback by the crushing pain in them.
To read the journals was to be back there again…living all the moments drenched in despair, confusion, fighting, and fear.
I had not read those journals since I wrote them. For a long time, they lived in a box in a closet, those parts of my life literally hidden. At some point, knowing I would eventually write this memoir, I emptied out every last box of photos, journals, and life documents, and put them in order.
I flipped through the pages of those books just long enough to see what was there and thus put them on a shelf chronologically. But that was it. I resisted actually taking in the full meaning of the cursive writing on those pages. I wasn’t ready, yet, to see, much less, feel, what my agonized and despairing younger selves wrote.
But the other day, I knew it was time. I can’t just “wing” writing about the worst part of those years. It would be wrong to trust my memory when I have actual, in-the-moment records soaked in the pain and despair of those days.
The writing up to this point has been to show who I started out as — that kid’s spirit, and the influences and world I was affected by. To show over time, how he kept hammering away at that spirit, doing to me what the elephant trainers do to them – *phajaan* — the Thai word for “the crush.” That training, which breaks the spirits of wild baby elephants, did the same to my young adult. And it hurts and still feels crushing just to read what I felt then.
Why do it?
Because who I am today was born from those times.
Because the answers to why my life took the turns it did are buried in those moments.
Because the key to releasing the shame I’ve felt for a lifetime is to look back at “her” – that younger self I so despised.
Because to heal and finally love me fully…is to look back and really see her not as dirty or broken, but as brave, and determined even in the worst moments.
Because she WAS brave and determined, or I wouldn’t still be here.
And one other “because.” Because I am not the only one who has been repeatedly sexually assaulted in their life. And felt dirty. Complicit. Like a failure, even though it was more about survival in the face of no other options. And especially on that last point, because I am not the only one who still struggles to believe that truth.
For all who share the pain of sexual assaults
People sexually assaulted feel like somehow they were to blame. Stupid. Responsible. Should have known better. Been braver. Did something wrong to set themselves up. Fill in whatever horrible self-judging word that applies. The bottom line is that I am not alone in trying to shed that undeserved shame.
I am writing this part for ALL of us. So I have to be real. Fully honest. Willing to show the messy side, because it is in that mess that healing comes forth. And in that mess, we can all be connected and walk together toward releasing that pain.
Daring to open the cover of truth
If I have written records of what I felt then, and what I had to do to move forward through all those years, I would be failing all of us to not face them, read them, absorb them, and write about traversing those roads. The pain of those years did count. They made me who I am now…and I am a person who DESERVES. And so does every single person who walked these same paths.
So, for all of us, I will continue the story now. On to the college years. They were my last time that I thought “it would just go away on its own,” before reality crushed me.
Tags: blog, life, love, mental-health, writing
Soul Mosaic 
Leave a comment