Noise, clanging, silence, terror, panic, anger, hatred, sadness, fear, sorrow, grief, loss, isolation are all powerful things that echo within my heart, my soul and my mind. They are tentacles that are bound to and spring  forth from the abuse I suffered as a child.  I carry these thoughts, feelings and emotions in every waking moment.  Sometimes I am conscious of some of them, at other times I am not.  Sometimes they interfere with my daily living and other times they are strangely quieted. But they are always with me.  For many years I buried them under the guise that I had forgiven the abusers therefore any and all repercussions of the abuse were long gone.  If it were only that simple.  A stolen childhood is not an event that is magically erased by a few simple utterances.  I am only really beginning to discover how much was taken from me and what that has done to my psyche.  I am angered by the struggles which the abuse has and is causing in my life.  I am saddened by the parts of my personality that have been muted.  I grieve over the loss of innocence.   I rage over the fact that now "I don't stray from the sidewalk" (to quote a part from Kelly Clarkson's song -Because of You) for fear that taking that extra step will take me out of safety and into danger.  So often I do not channel my energies into the emotions and feelings that I have just described.  Instead, I keep them turned inward, they get misdirected and come out sideways in many unpleasant and anxiety provoking thoughts.  I am weary of handling things in this way and wanted to give a voice to them.  In my therapy I am learning (albeit it slowly) that I need to put my focus on dealing with the hurt, the pain, the abuse and not concentrate and give life to the irrational thoughts and fears that plague me and disguise themselves as the "real issues".   This is still an uphill battle for me but I truly recognize that it is one battle worth fighting.

Oh and even though I think a job would be good.Give me self awareness,self esteem,etc.

I have others dictating no,don't get a job your to fucked up(pardon my eff word)I want a job,I have goals and how is over dwelling on the past and talking in great detail going to help me,what benifite would I see.All i can see is some one else making money off anothers trauma and suffering am I wrong in this,is it an assumtion or not.Sorry I think to much.

I had a powerful dream last night....

I am with some people and I am holding a tiny baby, she cannot breathe properly and everyone around me doesn't know what to do or what the problem is. In my own head I think, she needs a ventalator and she'll be fine, but I don't say anything.  The baby dies in my hands.  Its awful and this big man (the father perhaps?) is furious with me.  He blames me for the baby's death, like I did something to cause it.  I know its not my fault, although I feel guilt becasue I remained silent - but this is not why he is so angry with me.  Its not my silence that he even knows about, its this beleif that I actually caused the death.

He is a scary big man and when I try and tell him that its not my fault, he bristles to the point of nearly taking me out - killing me.  He is so much bigger than me - arms like tree trunks, etc.

When I woke up from this dream it was terribly powerful.  In my own journey through the sexual abuse that has happened to me, I've reached a point recently where I've recognized a block in my ability to fight against the perpetrators.  A deadness creeps over me and I feel paralyzed to emotionally fight back or access what should be rage against those who violated me.

It has occurred to me that I am waiting for someone else to fight, for someone else to carry the murderous rage on my behalf.  Stuck in those memories are the recollections of impotent family members who passively witnessed the rapes - blamed me for what happened.

In my dream, I am the baby that dies...I am the passive witness who knows its going to happen but can't or won't stop it (I recognize that a part of me has become those passive family members)...and I am the big man who blames me (again an identification with the voices of my family)...and I am the one who is myself trying to speak back to the big man who might kill me - "its not my fault!"  And I am the one who carries the guilt of remaining silent...

I know my dream is how my unconscious is trying to work out this conflict - so that I might dis-identify with the passive witness, fight the feeling of responsibility for what happened and finally to speak up for the baby and save her life.

I WILL save her life, damn it!!!

When I was in college, my family and I lived in a small home,everything was there bed kitchen couch tv, back then I feel safe whenever I am at home.  It started one morning, all of us is sharing one bed, and a couch, if someone wakes up another person transfer to either bed or tha couch, that early morning my brother went to school and my mom went to the grocery store, I was left alone with my father, he was sleeping too at that time, and I transferred as always on the bed where my father was sleeping, suddenly, I felt a warm hand touching my chest and embracing me, I don't know what to do, I was trembling and shocked, I know something was happening, suddenly, a voice whispered in my ear, saying "don't tell your mother what I'm doing".  I put all my strenght in my voice to yell if someone might hear me, my grandmother always comes in the morning to say hello, so I yelled and called her name stood up and try to calm myself, I have never been scared all my life.  That morning when my mother came home and she was in the kitchen starting to make something for lunch, I told her.  I told everything that happened.  At first, she was shocked, after a minute she said something, something that made me hate them.  She said that my father couldn't do that to me.  She said that my father became impotent.  It was the shock of my life, as if someone killed me or stabbed me to death, after that she confronted my father.  My father denied everything and I felt so alone, felt that nobody believed me, and the person whom I trust the most never believed me, after that I don't know what to say.  My mother told me not to tell anyone, even my brother, I feel so alone.  The next day came and as if nothing happened.  Everything went to normal, but me, nothing is normal to me, my physical and mental mind was abused and no one was there to help me.  After 3 years I left my country, hoping to forget everything, but it's still in my head, I am the breadwinner of our family and I'm still helping them out, I have never talked to my father after that day, but they act as if nothin happened, that hurts me the most...my hands is shaking while I'm typing my story, it's like it just happened yesterday...I hope someone will listen and help me go through this...

Several weeks ago, my father who lives out west came to visit me and through something he shared with me, one more tidbit of insight was gained into the cycle of abuse that existed in my family.  I have come to see that the home he was raised in and continued to live in well into his adult life was one riddled with abuse of all kinds.  The most glaring of abuses was that of his father towards his sister (my aunt) as she endured her father's sexual abuse which eventually lead to a pregnancy.  The cyle of abuse continued as my aunt married a pedophile who in turn sexaully violated me and my two sisters.  Sometimes the abuse occured while we sat on his lap in the back of a car with my aunt seated right beside him.  She sat siletly either complicit or perhaps totally unconscious.  My dad in a very breif sentance shared with me his acting out of abuse as a young man with is untoward sexual activities with young women.  He ended by saying "but that's just normal, not like what my dad did to my sister".  I was a little dumbfounded by what he shared and did not respond to him at the time.  Many other abuese took place in his house of origin and through my therapy my eyes have been opened to how widespread this abuse has been with my family and my extened family.  When I was younger I simply closed my eyes to the abuse I endured.  As my eyes were slowly opened to my own abuse I began to be able to articulate about the other occurances that took place.  I use to like to pretend that I came from a pretty perfect family.  I remember describing scenes of Christmas at our house to others.  I shared how as a family we would gather around the piano and sing Christmas carols and then read from the bible the Christmas story before opening our gifts.  A friend once said it sounds like you grew up on "Walton's Mountain".  The scene I described was real and to this day is a good memory.  However, before I entered into therapy I really did not want to "see" or open my eyes to the ugliness that co-existed along side of those "picture perfect" moments.  I am so very grateful that I am in therapy and am learning how to hold the good memories and at the same time not deny the various abuses that took place and the ramifications of that abuse upon my life and the lives of others.

I always knew that the sexual abuse I endured as a child had a powerful influence upon my life mentally and emotionally.  I also recognized its power and effects upon my intimate relationships.  As a young adult I had shared my story with a few spiritual mentors.  However, in the fundamentalist faith which I was involved with the answer to dealing with problems particularly abuse was forgivness.  All that one needed to do was forgive the abuser and move forward.  At this point in my life I was active in church work and in a place of leadership so inwardly I felt a huge amount of pressure to deal with abuse quickly and efficiently so that I could then be in a position to help others.  So I prayed the prayer of forgiveness and attempted to move forward. Unfortunately, for me this only drove the effects of the abuse more and more inward and the need to outwardly be perceived as perfect and healed only increased.  However, in my own journey and even continuing in my faith I came to at least realize that one had to “know” or “be in touch with” the thing that they were professing to forgive or else it was merely lip service.  After many years of suppressing the abuse or floundering around in some veiled attempt to deal with it I finally entered into therapy with a psychotherapist who is well equipped to help me deal with the painful abuse.  In reading the book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, the author states how our environment actually changes the structure of the brain, including those who have been sexually abused.  I was really blown away at the fact that abuse is so devastating and powerful that it actually changes the brain structure.  The good news, or shall I say the great news is that talk therapy can actually change those neural pathways.  This part of my therapeutic journey is not over and I know that more healing needs to take place.  However, I am so grateful that I am with a therapist who understands the power of abuse and is willing to walk this journey of healing with me.

Isn't it good to find a therapist who accepts your story as your story and goes from there...sometimes my therapist holds my childhood reality more firmly than I do...sometimes it's hard to know which reality is real, the understandings I have now, or the accepted family stories about the then...it's like having glasses on with the wrong prescription everything is out of focus and I feel ungrounded...dealing with childhood trauma and abuse is still hard even after 16 years in therapy...it's good to have a therapist who can hold my difficulty in hanging on to what really happened.