The catastrophic break…
People talk about their world turned upside down, or the ground disappearing beneath their feet. But how to describe what that actually feels like? I tried to express it through my writing and painting.
Initially, there was the relief and almost joy at having a therapist who was so supportive. His clarity during those early sessions, that my father had terribly violated me and I had every right to break things off, anchored me and gave me strength. After all, if my doctor, a man, said it was so, then it must be. It all seemed so clear and straightforward during the sessions.
But outside of them, I was still alone, defying the full power of that system’s rules, guilt, and manipulation. It is one thing to have someone tell you that you have worth and deserve to stand up for yourself. It is a whole other thing to actually internalize that and …believe it….and…do it. Twenty-eight years of programming that said I was hurting my father, that I had no right to do that, that it was family first, my needs second, all of that was almost too much to fight on my own.
And worse, I was still reeling from the shock of learning that everything I believed about my father, about my life, was totally wrong. You don’t just get over that. You don’t just “delete” the file in your brain that says “Family Systems 1.0” and replace it with a new file, “Family Systems 2.0,” and go on as if nothing happened. The reality of what my life truly had been, I was still trying to wrap my head around. And it started with the searing pain of having my heart torn open with the realization of how badly I’d been used, abused, and lied to.
The truth is, if everything you believed in your whole life turns out to be a lie, then what DO you believe in? What can you trust? Can you even trust yourself anymore if you got it so badly wrong all those years?
The psychic earthquake that kind of discovery sets off, blows away any confidence, and rends your heart apart. The damage is catastrophic, and all you are left with are questions: What, if ANYTHING, in your life is true? Is living worth it?
The Free-fall
Once the confrontation with my father was done, all the “strength” I had mustered to do that rushed out of me like a deflating balloon. And once my parents left town and things settled into a routine of digging through the mess to see how bad the damage was, I wasn’t sure I could do it.
The only way I can describe it is if I’d had a problem that required major surgery to fix. Then, at first, before the pain relievers wear off, you have the joy and relief of that problem being addressed. Life seems okay. Possible. But then the painkillers wear off. The full ache of those wounds hits you. And you are faced with the huge work of repair and recovery. I’d gone through the “surgery” of getting out of the house, confronting my father, and having the support of a therapist. But gradually, after the relief of all of that, there was still a long, long road to recovery. If ever.
The truth was that my life was now split into two halves – the “before the TV movie moment,” when I’d had a family, supposedly love, and a “normal” life. And then the second half: the dive off the cliff I took when I heard the truth. At that moment, I was alone, confused, and afraid. I was in a free-fall, and hadn’t yet hit bottom. In fact, I couldn’t see the bottom. I wasn’t even sure there was a bottom. Or if there was, would the landing kill me? I was being consumed by the intense betrayal, pain, and loneliness my “surgery” had left me in. Did I even WANT to keep going?
The long agony
Of course, I kept working with the doctor regularly. And he was a gift for sure because I wouldn’t have made it at all without him. As strange as it sounds, the healer I needed at that point in life had to be a man. The “man’s word” was the only thing that mattered all those years in my life. I was taught to believe the male and despise anything feminine as weak and useless.
So to stand any chance of reversing the damage Dad had done, I would only believe in another man. It would be many years before I would be ready for the most important healing in my life – the gaping hole in my relationship with anything feminine. That would have to come from working with a woman therapist. But at that moment, though, I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know if I would survive this part.
All I knew was that no matter where I looked in my life, everything felt bleak and hopeless. I was immersed in a world of agony. And there didn’t seem to be any way out of it.
Soul Mosaic 
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