Soul Mosaic

The chapter in life never read aloud

We all, no doubt, have moments we are not proud of. Whether the transgressions were big or small, if they were in a book, they would be the chapters “never read aloud.”

But as many memoir writers have noted, to shy away from telling the truth is to defeat the purpose of writing. How do you learn? And if I am writing to heal and to share my story with readers, then I must be honest. How can I connect with anyone if I pretend to be above it all? If I were reading that kind of story, I’d spot it in a second and toss it in the trash.

A therapist, listening to my story a few years ago, said, “Did you expect to be perfect?”

Her frank calling out of my silliness in denying human frailties made me laugh and see how the only person I’d been fooling was myself. Of course, I had WANTED to be perfect…I had DEMANDED that from me. But then that had been demanded OF me my whole life. The truth was, I was just like everyone else — simply a human being. And…there is nothing wrong with being a human being. It just took me a lifetime to learn that.

Still, for me, this is the chapter that is the hardest to write. Others have been hard in a painful way. This one is compounded by the years of judgment and self-hate, and shame. Both by me, and by expecting others to judge and despise me. After all, I figured it would be easier for people…and myself… to feel compassion for me, the child who was abused. I assumed no one would have compassion for, or even understand, the messy path of my young adult self traveling on her way back to stability. So I hated me.

The months from the fall of 1984 through early 1985 were a time of need, yearning, confusion, and then of crossing a line I never would have crossed in the past. It is not possible to go smoothly from that abused, emotionally-battered, and immature young adult to a fully functioning, balanced, and confident one able to have and engage in adult relationships. Like so many other things I didn’t know then, I didn’t understand that the chasm that had to be bridged was huge, and the process for me, maybe for anyone, would be messy. I only knew I had a problem, it needed fixing, and one way or another, I would fix it. All it would need was determination and strength. No time for whining or weakness.

Having been brought up to be tough, to have no needs, and to follow Dad’s command to not be a “stupid woman,” aside from a couple of friends, I was, for the most part, a loner. Friendships with women were mostly a trainwreck, and I especially couldn’t stand to be around women who whined or seemed weak. I thought I was being strong, but the truth is, I was rigid and brittle. That is not strength. At some point, rigid and brittle shatters, and in those moments, you discover just how much you need, and how human you are.

Mother Hunger

I did have a good friend who was so compassionate about my ordeal. During my suicidal months, she checked on me, made sure I ate, and included me in her family outings. Her loyalty and intense caring blew me away. And I was so grateful.

But beyond nurturing, she saw me as a peer. Valued me as a friend. Needed me as well, as she had her own pain and wounds. And even though I was younger, she saw me as intelligent and mature in many ways, and didn’t mock my predicament or my wounds.

For me, I was incredulous. Surprised. Caught off-guard even, because I would never have taken anyone’s interest in me as real. I would have assumed I was misreading things.

Yet with her, for the first time in my life, someone listened to me, saw me…REALLY SAW me. And needed me as much. She affirmed me, defended me. Filled that empty core that felt it had no worth.

All my life, I’d had to fight for my survival at home all alone. There had been no mother I was close to that I could go to. No protection from his abuse. And often, I felt her coldness. I hadn’t realized just how lonely I was until I felt the power of my friend’s attention and caring, and bond. I had such a hunger for any mothering.

Daria Burke, in her book Of My Own Making, described the intensity of that need:

“For girls without mothers or maternal figures suffer an injury that author and licensed professional counselor Kelly McDaniels calls mother hunger, the feeling of terminal brokenness, of primal fear of abandonment, or disordered boundaries, a wound that resides deep within the right brain as a result of not receiving adequate nurturance, protection, and guidance in the early years of maternal attachment.”

So, my friend was exactly what I needed at the time, the combination “Mother-defender-older sister-best friend.” I couldn’t understand what she saw in me, but its effect on me was powerful.

The funny thing was that she was the type of woman I had also been told had no value. She loved nice clothes and was skilled with makeup — all the things in life I’d not learned to be good at, and had always treated with disdain. I wouldn’t have ordinarily been drawn to a woman with those interests, and I considered them trivial, maybe because those were the types of girls in high school who had shunned me. They may have looked good, but I was smart.

But somehow, in my friend, I saw you could be both. She was professional and accomplished, yet also valued makeup and feminine things. In fact, she gave them a grace and dignity. It went against all of my father’s programming.

But, I decided to hell with that. I’d already tossed out religion, God, and any life rules I’d grown up with. Time to toss the preconceived notions of womanhood my father had instilled, and give “femininity” another look. Maybe life, and women, didn’t have to be all one way or another.

The bottom line was that she was amazing to me. And I was grateful. Devoted. And intensely loyal for the care she showed me.

Oh, for tribal elders….

Most people have a time of experimenting during early teens. How to grow up? Have friendships. Meet boys. Share with friends. Those early teen same-sex relationships are a real bonding time that lets you learn so much and grow.

And as more than one therapist would explain to me later, those friendships and that time of life are all about experimentation and learning. Answering questions like who I am attracted to? What do I seek in them? What is it like to kiss? Am I gay? Straight? Mixed? And exploring things at your own pace as you move toward becoming a healthy, sexual adult. They added that most people’s first sexual experiences are often not great.  People are trying to figure things out, testing out approaches, and sometimes just trying to get beyond having sex the first time so they can get past that “never-having-done-it” stage.  You’re experimenting. Learning. Screwing up. And I didn’t have any of this.

Between my total domination by my father, my isolation, and the rules of my religion, I was totally unprepared for this part of life. So while I was a 28-year-old adult, in a lot of ways, I was emotionally a 16- or 17-year-old. That is a difficult situation to resolve, especially when you add in intense emotional needs and then the physical needs of young adulthood. Hormonal power versus the terror of men. Not an easy mix.

It was understandable that there was terror about men and sexual intimacy. My life had been filled with violence, terror, and fear.  The message from my father was always, “I need this, you must do it,” so sex was something that had to be done or else. All depended on it. His messages: This helps me with your mother. This keeps the family together. This is love. It was all so badly skewed. And it put all the responsibility for family integrity and his personal satisfaction on me. There was nothing in any of that about love, connection, or soul mates. To me, as far as sex and men were concerned, it was all one-way demands that were out of control and sucked the life out of one’s soul.

Add in that even if I did find a man I liked and maybe even TRUSTED, I had that whole disgusting background. How could I ever explain that? How would any man ever love me, much less not revile or judge me?

Yet, the power of hormones and the impatience to make a “normal life” for me was such that, in spite of all the odds against me, I wanted to try. At this point, it was almost an obsession. A “let’s just get this over with,” and then it will be all right. I saw it not so much as an emotional thing or connection, but a problem to fix. I was out of sync in life. I had no good prospects or boyfriends. There wasn’t a relationship that was going to slowly lead me to a gentle crossing over from virgin to “initiated.” No, this was a problem that just needed to be fixed. It wasn’t going to solve itself. And I was going to have to do something to just GET THIS OVER WITH. It would need action, not the passivity I’d had to learn as a victim all my life. No one was coming to rescue me. I had to rescue myself.

That said, I so wished I were part of some tribal group where the women elders guided, instructed, prepared, and supported the younger women as they made this crossing into adult womanhood. But that wasn’t going to happen.

I shared my despair, impatience, and frustration with my friend. I trusted her. And she was my mentor, my older sister, the one I’d always wanted. Maybe she had some advice.

The “eyes” have it

Hearing my woes as we drove somewhere, she laughed and said, “You just really need a good lay!”

Totally frustrated, I acknowledged the plain truth of her words, “Yes! I know that! But HOW?”

I so deeply appreciated that there was someone I could talk to about this. Yes, I could have brought it up in therapy, but we hadn’t gotten that far yet. And he was a man. I wanted that mother/sister figure to commiserate with and help me find my path in this area. My friend didn’t mock me but honored me with her caring and empathy. I responded one day by telling her how much I appreciated the respect she showed me when no one else ever had.

“I just want you to know I so appreciate you, and am totally loyal to you. I would do anything for you.”

She had a funny smile and said, “Anything?”

I noted the tone in her voice and the mischievous look in her eyes, but shrugged it off. Just as I shrugged off a couple of other looks I thought I saw from her. One time at the gym when we were in a sauna, and another time when I was in a bathing suit, it seemed like there was a slow looking me up and down. I wondered, felt flattered almost, but figured there was nothing to it. At that point in my life, the fact that someone was nice to me was overwhelming. And while I sometimes wondered and felt a strong attraction to her because of the emotional connection, I had never allowed or even considered anything more. I was satisfied with having the friendship.

Yet, there were those looks, and the question in my mind.

We continued to discuss ways to help my “problem.” One time, she suggested that since I was a 27-year-old adult but an emotional teen, maybe I should find a teenage boy. It was probably a joke, and for me, even in my current dilemma, there was no way I wanted that. That would have been what happened to me, and it would be statutory rape. No. That was not the answer.

And another time, she said maybe I should accompany her husband on a business trip. That I was totally uncomfortable with.

I came to the conclusion that this was not going to get fixed through normal channels, given my age and background. I’d seen articles about sexual surrogates. To me, that seemed like a possible answer even as it was a fringe idea. But I had grown up through those 1960s years of the sexual revolution and free sex. Maybe extreme problems needed extreme answers? And at least it wouldn’t be some teenage boy. Maybe there was someone who could help me overcome my phobia? All I knew was that this was my responsibility to fix.

Now I will say that I would most likely have brought that up with my therapist. I don’t think I would have unilaterally taken such an extreme step without consulting him. I do know that these days there have been studies with therapists employing sexual surrogates as part of therapy, though I don’t know how mainstream it is even now. And I am grateful I never pursued it, given that the early 1980s were the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. In any event, before I could discuss this with the therapist, things took another turn.

The energy

The conversations between us veered more and more into the topic of sex. What we thought about same-sex relationships. Preferences during sex for being in control or being led. Also, there was a lingering, and an energy to the kisses hello when I came by to visit. I felt drawn, safe, and loved.

Before I pursued the idea with my therapist of a surrogate, I came across an ad for a couple of dating services. One was, in my mind, too weird, with people making videos and talking about themselves. It wasn’t me. But the other was almost more like a matchmaker. You had to visit their office and fill out extensive questionnaires. Were you looking to get married? What kinds of activities did you like? Dining? Theater? Sports? And it was expensive. More than I had.

I almost walked out of the office. But then I considered things. They promised 3-5 “introductions” a month. Better than I had been doing with friends, trying to match me up. This was in the Hartford area, and these were men who were professionals — businessmen, doctors, men who wanted more than the bar scene and didn’t have time for that. I considered how in my town, there weren’t many options, and they often involved the doctors at the hospital stepping out on their wives or guys in bars, neither of which appealed to me. The form said you could stop your membership at any time. I looked at the book on the table with photos of happy couples. I signed up and paid the money. What did I have to lose?

The way it worked was that they would send you a note with someone’s name and contact info. You would call the office, and they would tell you about the person. If you were interested, you could arrange to meet somewhere. That kept it simple, safe. If you didn’t hit it off, you could each leave, and no big deal.

That was how I met a nice, gentle man who lived near Hartford. I was relaxed with him. We met up a few times and had a nice time. So when he invited me to dinner and his home, I nervously agreed. My friend helped me get ready — pick out an outfit, do the makeup…all those things I’d considered silly in the past, but now really appreciated help with.

It was a lovely time at dinner, and yes, I felt safe enough to join him at home. It was a risk, but I was going to try. It didn’t work out well – that whole first time with someone is often awkward, but this time it was not because of my issues in this area, but his. Maybe that was for the best. It was an opportunity to experiment with “being with” someone and to learn that it didn’t have to be out-of-control, and that others, men included, weren’t perfect in the sexual arena.

While maybe that could have been worked out in time, the fact that he didn’t seem to care about my needs in this raised a flag. And the last straw was his mentioning about have had sex with his cousin. That was a deal-breaker right there. I flashed back to my father telling me on a car ride how upset he was when he was in the Navy, because he missed out on the same thing with his cousin when his brothers didn’t tell him about their escapades with her.

So while that first experience left me feeling more confident and less afraid, there was no satisfactory outcome.

Can you handle it?

At this point, things continued to be suggested in conversations with my friend. And a sharing of some porn videos. Then, on one car ride, she admitted she wanted to be with me. I was both surprised and electrified. By this point, the increasing innuendos had affected me. And the depth of my feelings for this person who had helped me through the worst times of my life was very deep. All of it together made it overpowering.

She did hold back on one point. She wondered if I was “up for something complicated like this.” The implication was that this would require a more “sophisticated” person who could handle “complexity and shades of gray.” Could I handle something like this?

It was that kid part of me from years ago who answered with indignation. That kid, who, when riding her bike around the block, and her buddy said he could nail his football right in front of her bike tire, retorted indignantly with, “Go ahead! I dare you!” That kid who never ran from a challenge and was convinced she could do it. I, of course, hated the implication that I was a baby and couldn’t handle sophistication.

So, overwhelmed with need, emotionally and physically, I went ahead.

I had no idea of my own power yet. And emotionally, I was too far gone to turn back. I knew what we were doing was wrong. Not because it was a same-sex encounter, but because she was married. That was the wrong part.

At my house, she said I had to make the first move so I wouldn’t feel trapped, and again, I rose to the challenge. It started okay. But it’s one thing to kiss, and another to try to actually have sex. I was awkward, clumsy, nervous, and after a certain point, non-functional, and didn’t know what to do. And, frankly, aside from the kissing, I wasn’t really “feeling it” in terms of proceeding. And based on her responses, I suspect it wasn’t working for her either. Afterward, we both noted that.

But instead of dropping it there, we moved to the next step. She involved her husband. That worked better. And it was a relief. Finally, a situation that worked.

At the time, I just remembered thinking, “FINALLY I overcame that terror, that hurdle!

I can be NORMAL…I can be like everyone else! I just wanted to leap and rejoice….and of course, I felt proud I had handled “complex.”

In over my head after all…

The arrangement didn’t last long. My friend bowed out, but did send her husband over a few more times. But then it started changing again. I was in over my head and didn’t know it. I actually didn’t understand the rules of this, and was stuck in the “present moment.”

She said something that was right on the money, and when she said it, it was like someone snapped their fingers and the hypnotic dream world of it all evaporated. Instead, I was like “DUH! Of course…how could I be so stupid and not understand this…”

And once out of that dream world, I found myself in shock, wondering, “How did I end up here?” It was like that time on my bike with my friend and the football…I DIDN’T outrun it and instead, found myself upside down in the air….

Making the sausage

There’s an old saying about not watching the sausage being made because it is such a messy process. Best to just enjoy the result.

We had a similar rule in our house for when our young son washed the kitchen floor. He absolutely loved to do it. He’d play his music, sing, dance, and splash water everywhere. Yet at the end, it would all come out beautifully.

The trick was not to watch it happen. Just set him up with the mop and water, arrange all so no harm could come to him, and then go upstairs until he was done. At that point, we could both be happy and celebrate, because I’d have a clean floor, and he would feel great about his success. We both understood that there was a “messy middle part” that was best not to watch.

I feel the same about the journey of coming back from that despair and rebuilding my life. It was a long, weary, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, trudging time. And it would get messy, something I would feel ashamed of for a long time. Something I would judge me harshly for, and refuse to look back at for decades.

Only now have I dared to stop running, turn around, and see that earlier “me” with more compassionate eyes. Only now can I pull out that mess, put all the pieces together into a whole picture, and understand why it happened that way so that I could welcome my younger adult part back with love. But that would take years.

Not wanting to miss out on anything

During those darkest days, I continued to keep walking, each day giving myself permission to always wait until tomorrow before deciding whether to kill myself. Fortunately, I started pushing out the “deadline.”

Over time, it eased more, and I could make it two days, then a week, then a “You can always come back to it in the future.” I knew I was turning a corner when that process began to be more trouble than it was worth, and I could feel shades of that feisty young kid from my childhood starting to push back at it all.

Eventually, my stubborn side did win out. I wasn’t exactly sure what I WOULD do with me, or what kind of future I might have. But, still, just like those nights driving by the Naugatuck River, I didn’t want to give up and risk missing something in life.

“Chewing on things”

Aside from more months of long walks, I started to take drives around the farm roads nearby. As I drove through the countryside, I let my brain chew on what kind of future I could create. At that moment, it was a blank slate. I’d dumped out all the pieces of my life on a table and was now picking through them to see which ones to keep and which ones to throw away for good. So, while it was still unsettling, at least it wasn’t bleak anymore.

Moments of Respite

I also went back to giving me those MOMENTS OF RESPITE. This was that same process I’d used all those years to get through the difficult days when life felt like a hand pinning me to the ground. At those times, when my mind would ask: “Why bother? Why try?” I would seek out a momentary escape.

Moments of Respite were my way to find beauty and refuge, even while surrounded by trauma. It wasn’t a “dissociation” thing, but maybe more like a ‘’hyper-focus,” or a meditation. I wouldn’t have known to call it that back then. I just did it, intuitively I guess, as a way to survive.

In the solitary moments when I could retreat from Dad and shut out the abuse, I would find some small detail in my environment to appreciate, a sensory experience to savor, or one of my interests to lose myself in, even for a little while. I could eke out sustenance where none seemed possible. And that would keep me going.

One of the things I did during this particular time was to go back to what I did best – learn and explore. So, I indulged my art side with classes at a local art shop, as well as at the local community college. That latter one even offered the opportunity at the end of the semester to take a bus trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. And I pushed myself another time, to go to Boston for a weekend bacteriology seminar through my job. All of these were hard in a way – it was a real effort to get back out there in the world more. But still, it was progress.

On other days, the moments of respite were more spur-of-the-moment outings. One Saturday, it was a visit to a local airfield to take a ride in a glider, and I even got to fly it for a bit. The beauty of the forested hilltops below me, wisps of clouds streaking by, the silence except for the sound of wind slipping over and under the glider wings, it was a moment removed from the heaviness of gravity, both physically and spiritually.

Another day, it was an adventurous ride in a biplane with a local pilot. That was sensory overload in terms of the noise of the engine, the rush of wind right into my face, and the pressure pounding my sinuses went he put the plane into a nosedive. One time was enough for that. But for sure, it was a respite. And even though I did all these things alone and I felt the loneliness, still, I was at least getting out there.

Most of the time, though, they were exercises in focusing on sensations in the moment, no matter where I was. And while the back of my brain continued to “percolate” on the question of what my future might be, those experiences would be feeding my soul. Whether it was picking out the strains of individual instruments in a piece of chamber music or the unified prayerful voices of the Abbey nuns singing Gregorian Chants, those moments gave me peace and a chance to “inhale” life.

That fall, there was one particular experience I carry with me to this day that just abounded with the bounty of sensory delights. I can still feel the crisp air in my nostrils as I walked under steely gray skies surrounded by bare trees…

The orchard barn:

Pulling into the dirt driveway of the farm, I parked near the barn, the only car in the lot. It was a small farmer’s barn not far from where I lived, and where he sold the many varieties of apples that he raised.

Dried leaves crunched underfoot as I approached the building, and the air was heavy with that sweet smell of damp earth and composting plants. The sun hung low in the sky as the late afternoons were already taking on the appearance of night sooner than I wanted.

Inside the dimly lit barn, with my breath visible in front of my face, bushel baskets of nature’s bounty were arrayed in rows before me. Grease pencil writing on cardboard signs listed the varieties there: Early McIntosh. Golden Delicious. Baldwins and Cortlands. Empires and Granny Smiths. So many to choose from, thanks to nature’s gift of abundance, whether of flavors and textures, colors, or sensations.

That gift, though, presented the dilemma — which one or ones to choose? Even the questions came in abundance: Sweet apples or tart? Crunchy or soft? All? How much money was in my wallet? (Farmers then didn’t take credit cards, and there was no Venmo or Squarespace.)

More questions followed. Would it be pies for the freezer? Or applesauce? Caramel or candy apples, or baked ones? The type of apples makes a difference, of course, depending on how you are going to use them. And then there was just that simplest of delights, eat them cold and crisp right after being picked.

I walked the rows of baskets, the gravel of the barn floor grinding against my boot soles. Back and forth, assessing the red ones, the green-red stippled. The sizes. The shapes. I sought out the best ones with the fewest bruises. It was good that I was doing this during prime harvest time, before the apples were all picked over. But even then, bruised apples made great applesauce.

Finally, I chose a large basket of McIntosh and another of Cortlands. Unable to wait any longer to sample one, I grabbed a large Mac, rubbed it against my jacket, and tore into it.

When you eat apples that are fresh off the tree, the sensations come all at once: the aroma of sweet and spice mixed together; the snap of crisp skin giving way under your teeth; a flash of tanginess as the soft flesh hits your tongue, and the syrupy juice that sprays out and runs down your chin. It is an overload of delight.

In that “Moment of Respite,” the despair of that day temporarily evaporated. In the raw air of a fall evening, drowned in the sensations of a fresh apple, I felt the totality of an autumn miracle right in the palm of my hand. And refreshed, I could go on.

Details, the “marrow of life”

So many times over the years, those Moments of Respite saved me, fed me, gave me the energy to try again. For all the times when my world was torn apart, life was sustained by the abundance of small details.

It is those precious details that preserve the lifeblood of our souls. To me, details are life itself. Personal friends. They make all the difference in the experience.

You can draw a circle on a paper and color it in with a red crayon and call it an apple. Or you can dive deep into the details and savor a miracle. Instead of the circle-and-red-crayon approach to life, you can paint on a blank canvas panel, slowly spreading burnt umber for shadows, then layer in increasingly bright pigments of cadmium red, cinnabar green, lemon yellow, and titanium white. You can vary the intensity of the colors and the depth of the layers. Whatever you choose, the details make it all the richer for the moment. And it is in seeing the details that we are reminded there is more to life than just the pain we are struggling with at the moment.

Moments of Respite would be my reminders that in the midst of chaos, life still offered worlds of richness and sensory escapes where my overwrought nervous system could retreat to find calm…where I could bind my wounds, restore my mind, and return, ready for another round of the battle.

I no longer live in New England, but the minute the leaves hint at shades of alizarin crimson and burnt sienna, the evenings get a chill, and the light departs sooner than I like, I remember that barn during fall harvest time. Even more so, whenever I hold a crisp, fresh apple, no matter the time of year, that moment comes flooding back — fall is right there with me. And, even if just for a few seconds, the world seems a little less daunting, and I am reminded that details are always my friends, and the very marrow of life.

The “lucky” break

I felt horrible. Whatever virus I’d picked up had spiraled into one hell of a sinus infection, and finally, my doctor called in a prescription for antibiotics.

Speeding down the road, I slid through the stop sign at the end of the street and turned, minus any blinker. And then, the blue lights filled my rear-view mirror.

Sighing, I pulled over and waited. In the back seat, my dogs – I now had two of them – growled softly as the policeman listed my offenses. I shushed them, then apologized and explained I was on my way to get a prescription because I was really sick.

I must have really looked it too, because I lucked out. The policeman just gave me a warning, told me to slow down, and let me go on my way.

The “contender”

I walked to the pharmacy counter in the back of Maxwell’s Drug Store, blinking in the glare of the bright lights, and asked for my prescription. From behind the counter, one of the pharmacists yelled a greeting. He came over – HG, my old boss. When I was 16, my first job was as a clerk in a local pharmacy, and HG was the owner. Here he was, after all these years, looking rested and happy. He’d sold his business, retired, and was working part-time as a substitute pharmacist here.

“So what are you doing now?” he asked loudly – he’d been hard of hearing for years.

I explained through my pounding headache that I was a Medical Technologist working in the laboratory at the local hospital.

“The lab?!” he yelled. “Why did you stop at the lab?! You’re smart! You could’ve been a doctor!”

Someone called him away at that moment, so he waved and wished me well.

It was good that they did because I had no answer for him. In fact, I choked up, without actually realizing why at that moment. I was just suddenly overcome by the intense ache in my heart at his words. “You’re smart! You could’ve been a doctor!”

I suddenly felt like Marlon Brando in that old movie lamenting his life, crying in agony, and saying, “I coulda been a contender!” I could have been the contender in life, too. But I couldn’t at that moment.

The future work

HG’s words reverberated in my head all the way home that night. And for many nights. And years. In fact, the pain of his words would only intensify over the years, right through to today. It is something I am only now realizing fully — Just how much of my future my father stole from me. I will talk more about this later. Because it is the anger and sorrow of that loss that I understand so much more now. And which I have had to grieve and work to heal from.

I will simply note, HG wasn’t being mean. He was being himself. He always wanted to see people go as far as they could in life. He, a man, an *older* man even back in 1984, felt that everyone, including women, was smart and deserved to reach for the stars. And he felt I had that capability. And yes, on one level, I did. I WAS smart. But what I couldn’t tell him was that with all the trauma and battles I was fighting, such a future was impossible at that moment. In fact, it is only now, with years of therapy and healing, that emotionally, I feel I could take such a path. But now it is too late.

It would be my future work to grieve that loss and learn to celebrate now, all that I have accomplished

But for that moment, I was still just trying to stay alive….

The vortex

I was hanging on just one day to the next. Change. Questions. Despair. Capitulation. Then try again.

A friend saw my struggle. She was compassionate. Very caring. We had given each other support. She was struggling in her marriage and had her own issues in life. I was struggling to stay alive, and life was my issue.

But I am eternally grateful for her endless support at that time. She fed me. Checked on me. Included me in her activities. Didn’t judge me, even the night I drank a bottle and a half of wine as I mourned the mess I’d been left to fix, then had a huge hangover the next day. In the midst of a spinning vortex, and no solid ground under me, she was a lifeline.

It was as if I had a kind of “family” connection again. “Family” had been the whole focus of my life and self-worth up until that point, and I was desperate. Lonely. Afraid. Mine had “lysed.” In biology, cell lysis is the death of a cell. It blows open, spews its guts everywhere, and there is nothing left. With my whole family world blown apart, I was reeling, and so I grabbed on to her support for dear life.

The 10000-piece impossible jigsaw puzzle

There were so many things I didn’t understand, and I barely knew where to start. It was like I had a huge jigsaw puzzle to solve — 10000 pieces of one — and all I could do was to dump it out on the table, spread out the pieces, and one by one, start sorting them out – Which ones were right? Which ones should I throw away? How did they fit together? The puzzle pieces were the questions of my life, and I needed to find answers for each one.

About my life, the questions were things like: How had these things happened? Where had my mother been in all of this? Did she know?

And me…HOW could I have been so STUPID?! I was angry at myself for what I perceived as my cluelessness and gullibility. Looking back from now, I know that was an unfair judgment. But at that point, I hated me.

And if I hated me, what did that mean for my future? How could I ever trust ME again? If I had been so manipulated and “used” and not know it, how could I ever trust me to see through people in the future? To make the right choices?

And about those “right” choices…the philosophical side of life. What even WERE “right choices?” All those years, I did what I thought was right. Loving. I tried never to hurt anyone. I was loyal to my family.

Looking at it all now, did ANY of the rules even apply anymore? I didn’t think so. In fact. At that moment in time, I decided I’d had it with rules. I chucked out ALL the rules.

And that included the biggest set of rules – the elephant in the room – God. Religion. Right at that moment, I HATED GOD. I was so crushed. Angry. Betrayed.

All those years, I believed in God. Believed in prayer. Believed in “Ask and you shall receive.” And what did it get me? As far as I could tell, God had failed me completely…if there even was a God. And if there was, WHAT KIND OF GOD LET THIS GO ON, AND MY PRAYERS GO UNANSWERED?!

No. Religion, God, all of that went out the window, too.

As far as I was concerned, I’d been a FOOL. And IF I made it through this, I was NEVER going to be a fool again.

But…what things were actually TRUE? I wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. Where do you even begin to tease out truth and fact from lies?

The return of that science geek kid

There was one thing I did know how to be — a scientist. As a kid, I’d always dreamed of being the scientist. As I dissected frogs, looked at bits of things under the microscope, and experimented with my chemistry sets, I knew that these were the ways to figure out how things worked. And in my lab job at that time, I knew that testing, results, and research articles were the keys to unearthing facts.

If you could do it for a frog, or a blood test, or a bacteria, maybe I could do it for my life. My first target would be to understand things like how did incest even exist. What caused it to happen? What could have been done to prevent it? Stop it? WHO WAS TO BLAME? Where did I fit into it as a victim, and what could I do to heal?

Yes, I would start with facts. Knowledge. And there was one place in my past that could serve me perfectly for this quest — the UCONN Health Center. That same old UCONN Health Center that I’d failed at in my career. Maybe I wasn’t meant to work there those years ago. But they had a massive research library and stacks of research journals covering all topics. Maybe it could yet save me.

So I spent hours there. Days. Months. Whenever I wasn’t working or struggling to stay alive, I drove there and dug through every psychology journal and research study I could find. Surely that massive collection of knowledge had to contain some hint or clue about sexual abuse and the questions I was asking.

Disappointing

The truth was, there was a reason that the movie “Something About Amelia” was so revolutionary in being the first to talk about incest on network television. It was because no one was saying or doing very much about it anywhere at that time. The studies I could find on the subject were old. Based on outdated and biased knowledge. And in thinking about it now, it’s no wonder the conclusions in the Amelia movie were so out in left field. The research at that time was also out in left field, or non-existent.

I will say this has changed considerably. These days, there are volumes of research articles, studies, and even books for general audiences that talk about sexual abuse. And domestic abuse. Physical violence. Gaslighting. Trauma bonding. War. Today, we know so much more about these subjects. And about incest. And NO, it’s not the wife’s fault for not giving enough sex! And NO, it’s not the fault of the pre-teen girl to stop the adult man!

Today, there is so much more awareness of, and such a large amount of research taking place on the subject of what incest and abuse, and trauma do to you. Research into topics like PTSD — Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Brain scans to show what happens in the brain and nervous system during abuse and trauma. There are studies about the biochemistry of stress in the body, and ACE score testing to determine how children growing up in traumatic environments are affected by those things. And more research is ongoing into treatments ranging from therapy, antidepressants, mushrooms, and cannabis, to Yoga, meditation, and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). Even DNA research is showing just how prevalent this abuse has been. So, even as there is still a lot more to be done to stop abuse, there is more knowledge and awareness than in 1984.

So back then, I dug up whatever I could. And then kept working with my therapist, and taking in the kindness of my friend. That was all I could do.

The Naugatuck River, Revisited

Why did I stay alive? I wanted to die.

But sometimes even ugly things can save you…sometimes, even a “dead river “ can keep you hanging onto life.

Every day I’d go to work, come home, and then walk with the dog. Miles. Miles and miles of walking. I felt like as long as I was outside walking, out there in the land of the living, wandering past homes and people working in yards and garages, I was still in the land of the living. I might still make it.

I pondered suicide…every minute of every day. Why should I stay alive? Who would ever love me? How could I ever tell anyone what had been done to me and expect them to understand? I could see no future, no use for me. No hope.

But in those moments, I kept remembering those car rides home from Bridgeport when I was a kid. How, in spite of what a polluted river the Naugatuck was during the day, it was so beautiful at night as we drove by it on our way home. I remembered thinking I didn’t want to fall asleep because I might miss something to see. The lights sparkling on the surface of the water. The houses along the river. People moving beyond window frames. It was all so interesting to me, and I DIDN’T WANT TO MISS ANYTHING. So I would fight to stay awake and keep watching…to not miss anything.

It was the Naugatuck River and those memories that kept me alive in those moments. For almost six months, I was suicidal. For almost six months, I walked and walked, and listened to the words in my head as I remembered those drives home:

Don’t do it today…you can always kill yourself tomorrow.

You might miss something. You can always kill yourself tomorrow.

3:00 a.m…

My bedroom was on the third level of my condo. But I couldn’t go near it. Nights were terrifying. You never feel an illness, your problems, or your despair more intensely than in the middle of the dark nights. I couldn’t take being upstairs. Alone. Surrounded by the din of silence.

I was already so alone in my life. The days I could crawl through. I would get up. Dress. Thank God I wore uniforms to the lab, so I didn’t have to figure out what to wear. Then I’d go to work. And even as I didn’t want to talk to anyone, at least there was the busyness of work, people, and routines to keep me going.

But the nights….oh…the nights

For months, I slept on the flower-patterned sofa in my living room, my dog stretched out on the floor next to me. Thank God for the dog.

The room didn’t have a lot of furniture, but it had enough to feel like a secure cocoon. The sofas. A microwave and table set. The clock. And the TV cabinet.

The TV. I would leave the TV on all night. Unlike when I grew up, and TV stations went off at midnight, now, with cable, there was always something to watch. It’s not that I even wanted to watch anything in particular. I just needed the sounds of human voices. The sense that I wasn’t as alone at that moment as I truly felt in my life.

I would put on HBO so that no matter how many times during the night I woke up, there was the comfort of hearing a human voice. I will admit there were some really strange things on at 3:00 in the morning, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t about content. It was just to have “someone” in that room with the dog and me.

It was just so I might make it through another night.

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.

If you ever…

It was dark when I got to my parents’ house. I was scared but determined. The therapist and I agreed that this had to be done, and I saw no point in delaying the inevitable. But for safety, I had told a friend exactly where I was going to be so that if she didn’t hear from me in a couple of hours, she would know something had happened.

I don’t remember any of the preliminaries, and I don’t remember leaving. But I do remember sitting at that table and, for the first time in my life, drawing a firm line in the sand:

“I’m in therapy.”

My father sighed. My mother said nothing.

“I came here to tell you that you won’t ever lay a finger on me again.”

His eyes widened. A look of surprise on his face.

“I want you to know that from now on, if you ever touch me again, I will call the police and charge you with assault.”

I expected an explosion. What I saw was shock. And fear. He grimaced, put his hand to his forehead, and looked away. I think he groaned something like “Oh no.”

My mother sat there stone-faced. No words. No expression.

That was it. That is all I remember of that moment in that house. If more was said, I can’t recall it. But my delivery of those lines, and his cringing across the table, those are seared in my brain.

I know I didn’t stay long. It wasn’t a social visit. I had gone to do what my therapist and I decided was needed — set me free from them, stand up for me, and set up my zone of protection. And I had done that. Strongly, calmly, fiercely. Now I could go on with my healing, undisturbed.

The only other thing I remember from that night was heading straight to my friend’s house to decompress from exhaustion and relief.

The aftermath

It’s funny. Looking back, when I said those words, I still wasn’t even thinking about the sexual abuse. I had never told my mother, or anyone except my friend and my therapist, about that. At that moment, I was determined to lay down the law about his violence. I wasn’t ever going to be threatened by him again. But I expect, when he heard my warning, he took it to mean both the violence and the sexual assaults because he never tried anything with me again.

The aftermath is a bit fuzzy. I know somewhere in there I asked them to join me in therapy. He refused. There were questions about why I was doing this and how long this would take. In spite of putting on a brave face to my father and standing up to his family system, it was very fragile for me. I had waves of guilt. I felt like I was betraying my family and questioned myself constantly about “Was it REALLY that bad?”

And I felt totally alone, and vulnerable. He had built a family system of rules all those years and I was breaking all of them. It was shaking his rules to the core. He was angry. Then the martyr and victim. When a person makes major shifts in how the family rules operate, don’t expect that system to be happy at what you are doing. Any threat to the carefully constructed walls and denials and that system will blame and attack you, not the abuser. And the terror is so strong. I felt like there was no place deep enough, dark enough, and walled off enough to be safe.

Painting by author

Then my mother ended up in the hospital ICU with chest pains that turned out to be an anxiety attack. And I remember standing outside the ICU with him, looking him in the eye and asking him when he was going to change the way he lived his life. The violence toward my mother. Me. Wasn’t it time to stop?

Within a few months, he took a field representative position for his company. He and my mother moved to Texas and sold the house. Even though they would return to Connecticut in a few years, they would never again live in Torrington.

My therapist offered to provide them with referrals for therapists in Texas, so my father could get help. Again, Dad refused.

It begins

As for me, it was a relief to be free from his interference. With the physical distance of them being across the country, I no longer had to worry about him just “showing up somewhere” unexpectedly.

Now…I had work to do. A lot of it. With him out of the way, that was about to begin in earnest. I didn’t know it then, but things were about to get a lot worse before they would get better…

Countdown….

The waiting room was hot, but I just couldn’t get warm.

My hands shook.

I wanted to throw up.

I should just leave.

Why am I here? I shouldn’t be here…I shouldn’t be doing this…

I was about to break the HUGEST rule of my entire life…the thing that had been most strongly and constantly drilled into me — keep SILENT…protect the family from outsiders.

Was this what it felt like for someone in the Mafia to break the rule of Omerta and speak? That was a betrayal of that ‘family!’ Well, I was betraying my family. Would this spin out of control and hurt them? I should just leave.

The clock showed 10 more minutes until my appointment.

I’ll just keep it just between me and the therapist…

Maybe this won’t take too long to fix. If I work really hard, I can fix everything in me quickly and just go on with my life.

My family doesn’t need to know.

The minute hand on the wall clock pounded out the seconds. Just a few more minutes. If I was going to leave, it had to be now.

I couldn’t move.

I hope this doesn’t hurt them. Do I have a right to risk that?

I’m too sensitive.

I don’t want to hurt them…But I just can’t carry this any longer.

Two minutes more…

Dad will be furious…and hurt…

I will just have to do this fast…

The moment of no turning back…

The receptionist called my name and ushered me into an office. The doctor was waiting for me. A man. Curly hair. Mustached. Jacket and tie.

My throat closed up. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was so ashamed. Afraid. Shaking. No words came out.

He spoke softly. Reassured me I was safe. Told me to take my time.

I tried again, a couple of times.

Finally, the word I had just learned from the movie tumbled out of me. Just a shaky whisper. The therapist leaned closer to hear me.

“Incest…my father….I…sexually abuse….”

The MAN’S reaction…

It took all I had to say it. I was afraid of this man. What would his reaction be? After all, he was a man. Would he side with Dad? Would he judge me?

Those thoughts were cut short rapidly.

He asked me questions about how long it had gone on. He was absolutely enraged when I told him. But not at me. He was ANGRY at DAD and spoke in VERY certain terms of how horrible my father had been for doing these things to me. Spoke firmly that I had not deserved this, and IT DEFINITELY WASN’T MY FAULT. Spoke defiantly about how my father was totally wrong and….

I was in shock… surprised. Reassured. After all. This was coming from another MAN. I figured if I told a woman therapist, she would, of course, tell me he was wrong. But this was coming from another man! He wasn’t defending my father, a fellow male of the species. He was absolutely destroying any illusion that my father acted out of love. And very plainly laid out how much this was abuse. And how I had been harmed and DESERVED better. It was mind-blowing.

I stopped shaking…then started again. I wasn’t afraid of the therapist any longer. But now, given how strongly the therapist reacted about my father, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to “contain the fallout” from my choice to speak.

Can I contain the fallout?

I wondered how I could keep this a secret between the therapist and me…how to hide this from my family. Not hurt them. I knew Dad would blow a gasket.

The therapist, though, was all about protecting me and standing up to Dad. Stopping this in its tracks and letting Dad know in no uncertain terms that he was on thin ice and from now on I had a right to…in fact, I MUST draw a boundary for myself.

I was shocked.

The therapist said we could get him in there with me. Confront him together.

I was TERRIFIED AND REFUSED. In looking back I still remember the gut-level fright about that. I wasn’t sure I could stand up to him, so intense was my fear of his seeming power. Apparently I was not alone in reacting that way. Jen Cross, in her book, Writing Ourselves Whole, said:

“My stepfather had tried to occupy every fragment, every nook and cranny, every inch of my psyche — he believed, and trained me to believe, that he had a right to every thought in my head, every emotion, every instinct.It took almost a year after that terrifying conversation with my stepfather before I could let myself believe that I would not be physically harmed if I told my story to a therapist…”

Anyway, the therapist then assured me that we could do this as slowly and in whatever way I needed.

He would work with me over future visits to help me calm. Reinforce I was absolutely NOT to blame. That I wasn’t dirty, or the cause. That I had been abused and was treated horribly. And then figure out what to do next to help me heal.

Leaving his office that day, I was reeling. When you live for 28 years thinking your life is “normal” even if unpleasant, then see how powerfully appalled someone else it by your story, it just takes time to absorb that reality.

But at the same time, I was comforted. Amazed. Scared….so many things all at once. Then…concerned. I suddenly realized this was not going to be such a quick fix. How much was this going to cost me? COULD I afford the help I needed? Money was really tight with my mortgage

Money and time…

I stopped in at the cashier’s office. I knew I needed this. That if there was any hope for a future for me, I had to do this. Maybe I could work out a payment plan?

The advisor was a blessing. Gentle. Reassuring. The first thing she told me was not to worry. That because I was an employee and my services were being done through the hospital, they would cover any costs that my insurance didn’t.

I was in shock. And grateful. What a gift. For sure, that is not how places operate today. But my God, what a stroke of luck then. That sealed my fate that day. With money off the table and a kind, strong, affirming therapist, there might be hope. No matter what, I was going to see this through.

And of course, I would work really hard so I could “fix me” fast.

Yes, well….