Last night I phoned Rape Crisis to share some emotions, to offload feelings I have about my mother. I struggle using that word, mother. She was not a mother, she was a monster, a terrorist. I know the full reality of her now. The denial I created around my experience of her as a parent was deep, layered within my body and mind. It created my Dissociative Identity Disorder. It’s widely recognised that DID is an adaptation children develop as a result of having to create attachments to parents who are unsafe. She and my father were that, unsafe. I recently had contact with her, choosing to speak to her on the phone, after I was sent a letter from them, basically pleading for some kind of contact with me. They are aware I do not wish for any such thing. But my wishes are not, and never have been part of their consciousness. They exist in a world where I do not, being only an extension of them, a thing to hurt, or need, to supply enjoyment or comfort. I was interested to see if they took any responsibility now for the damage they caused me in abusing me, and allowing me to be abused / trafficked within the organised group they were part of. I am assuming they were paid a lot of money to hand me over as they did. I felt I needed to take control and speak to them, after a long time with no contact, to see how I actually felt. Now that I had dealt with all of the dissociated memories of the abuse, integrating them as what I know today as the truth. Talking to them at this stage has been transformative for me. It took the last thread of denial I had and tore it loose. They are of course psychopaths, I know this, so with this fact I am aware they cannot change. However, my one thread of denial and my child’s compassion for them as elderly, having both recently survived cancer made me think that having faced death, perhaps they would take responsibility, acknowledge, show remorse for their complete lack of care. I was wrong. They are afraid, but it is only for themselves they fear. Death is near and I could make it easier for them if I was kind to them. They could pay me hush money and this would show the world they were kind too, just incase I exposed them for what they really are. Fear of being exposed motivates them to continue in their show of trying to fool me. Money is all they understand, they have lots of it. They do not fool me anymore. They are monsters, they were always monsters. What came through loud and clear was the complete obsession they have with their own comfort, the total lack of any courage to take responsibility for their crimes. Their evil is this and the continuing desire to hurt my daughter and I for having the audacity to confront this pathology. I confronted them in a number of ways over the years, but the main way I achieved this was to leave and take my daughter, severing all contact with them. They have never gotten over this, they never will. When I spoke to them although they may have thought they were pretending well, I could feel their hatred and contempt crackling like electricity over the line. I left them, why would I do that if they were so wonderful ? As wonderful as the rest of the world thinks they are. The pretence they have built is epic, but I shattered it, poking at their many lies. How dare I.
When I shared last night I tried to express my hurt, my rage. It is an almost impossible task. I see what I carry, what I feel about them and their treatment of us. I can detach and ask, what is it I can do with this? It seems it’s too much for me. Overwhelmingly so. Where is it you go with such a mass of hurt and anger. The reality of knowing I did not exist to these people as a human being, that the environment I lived in with them was one of terror, impending doom, and complete isolation. Talking to them released the very last drops of dissociation around these facts. I realise all of these emotions are potentially dangerous. Research shows that children who are abused sexually and physically in families like mine, have an increased chance of going on to develop cancers and other illnesses . I dissociated all of my experiences and the emotions attached to them, so my risk of various illnesses is real. I already have to manage physical illness/ issues because of the damage caused to me. I wish to prevent anymore, so it is in my best interest to feel all of these emotions honestly, face them, talk about them, be real. But being real leads to a detachment from the rest of the world. You simply cannot survive a family involved with organised child abuse , feel the reality of that out of the dissociation that once protected you and not experience disconnection from the rest of the world. You have seen and experienced things no human should, let alone a child. It is an odd, isolating, yet also comforting experience. The comfort comes from at last being in the truth. It is like lying back against love. Relief, warmth, escape. You know because you are out. You can look back at it. Out of the lies. Yet it is lonely too. Not an experience you can share with many. It is too extreme. So you are left with all these emotions and you try to find a way to manage them, least they manage you. And they will because they are the truth, they need to be seen, to be felt. They will not go quietly, why should they? They have to be known. I shared recently that I had come to the end of integrating my trauma, and by this I meant I have dealt with all the memories. There simply is nothing new left, I got it all out, I know the whole story. But the grief of the truth is what is left, and speaking to my parents was the final piece I needed to complete the integration of the memories. I think you have to go to another place, inside yourself. But this place is outside too. You have to go where ever it is you have to go to face these feelings. They are too much for you alone. So you become small again, because when you’re small you know. Looking at the trees and the stars in the forest from inside of yourself. You stay here, while living in the world, knowing nothing makes sense except this internal world you have created. Maybe you get as angry as you need to and swear a lot and run acknowledging your rage as yours, and that’s ok, because you two don’t have to hide from each other anymore. You do whatever it is you have to do to live with an experience which is too much. As long as you don’t hurt yourself. You live with a sense of gratitude most of the time, even when overwhelmed, because you know in your bones you shouldn’t have made it, you will never really understand why. So small things like your world inside, are very important. Leaves and flowers , trees and birds, cups of coffee, cake, books, clean sheets. Music, lovely, wonderful songs. Sitting in bed in the morning watching the sunlight spread across the ceiling. You don’t understand you see. You stopped trying a long time ago , but experiencing emotion you forgot for so, so long makes you not understand again. I think this is only natural. There is only so much a human can feel. It all catches up. It’s best to be still with it all and try to talk about it too sometimes. But I suppose having all of the feelings means you are really out of their system and what an achievement that is. You are in your body now looking out at the truth and it’s mind blowing. It took a long time to get here and you realise that all the reasons this society wants to ignore child abuse as it does, is because of this mind bending reality you now possess. I mean it’s an epidemic in the UK and else where, but it’s still a topic that is taboo. Looking at what adults do to children in the privacy of the family home. Under the cover of lies.
As a child I lived in a world of my own without being able to know the truth, now I have a world of my own with it. I know it, I see it. I exist with this once forgotten. To my family I did not exist and it was this abandonment agony which caused my dissociation. Healing then is coming into the known, all the feelings, all the experiences, no matter how painful, no matter how overwhelming. I can know this forgotten and live with it, finding our way together. It’s a lot for sure. The great psychologist Bessel Van Der Kolk describes trauma as not being seen, not being known. This is such an accurate description, especially for those of us who had to adapt using dissociation as a way to survive. There isn’t an easy way to recover from dissociation, but there is a way which involves the knowing of emotions and experiences that were and are too huge for us. I often try to share them with Rape Crisis to lessen their weight, afterwards finding I can live with all this and it feels easier. That’s just the way sharing works, it lessens the load. It doesn’t take it away, that’s not the point. Living alongside the truth in some kind of harmony, that’s an existence I’m aiming for.