~Visiting My Little 7-Year Old Girl~
My first day at the therapist. I am sitting on the couch in the middle of a great big office that is decorated with such beautiful dark mahogany wood around the windows and door frames I am looking at a woman I've never met, pouring my heart out and trying to keep down the bile that climbs my throat. I know that this is the person I will confide in over who knows how long with all my dreams and fears as well as all my dirty secrets.
Of course with me I open up so easily that doing it almost has no meaning anymore. My story of abuse, rape and cutting comes from my mouth like a grocery list... I have said it so often I almost don't let in the reality that it is my past...Almost. Its the details that have wiggled their way out of my psyche after years of blocking them that has me crying.
Today I've said it, all of it, listed in order of when the first man molested me to when I was 17 but she stops me before I can say another word. She tells me that she wants her office and our time to be a safe place and that my memories of my abuse and abandonment should feel safe to me as if when I go back to deal with it I am wading carefully into a pool of water, always holding the side. She says that like a child who needs the safety of their own control over that pool, I should be feel free and ready to get out when I am ready. No, she does not want me to dive in and start to drown in the anguish and trauma that is my childhood. Too late for that. I am flailing from the depths of the lake I am in.
Trauma. She says the word slow and heavy as if it the walls of that very word and the meaning of every abuse, hurt and touch that has happened against me is held there inside. It brings memories of that poor 7 year old I left behind so long ago. The memories slash through my head like knives. I suddenly let go and weep like I have never done before. She asks me what I remember. As I tell her its like I am transported back in time some 30 years ago and stand watching myself sitting on this man's lap...I am hovering like an unseen visitor watching powerlessly as that sick, old man molested me. Ironically I had even less power on that day when I was 7. I suddenly don't know where to put all that pain. All the words, memories and feelings that I've somehow become matter-of-fact about for years are suddenly real again and I am feeling them like they are new to me. I don't know how to get away from it.... Not then at 7 and not now either. I tell her how I abandoned that girl~Left that very loving and sweet,and worst, trusting, that 7 year old to fend for herself, back at that apartment where that monster lives. I fear the next thought...Everyone else did too.
I needed my Mom, my Dad~ I needed someone to shelter me,~that stupidly loving and trusting child~ but no one came. The therapist wants to know, Why did I protect the truth of what happened from my parents? Why did I go through all this pain alone?? Why did it take me many years to tell even my own Mother? Because all I wanted was to be good. I didn't want to be a problem...All I ever really wanted then-and want now- is to be loved and to be forgiven for being so imperfect at everything that matters... Why are you bad? she asks me...Because I wanted to be loved, to be paid attention to. I got what I wanted in one way--the attention~ but the love I missed out on.I tell her that I felt, and feel lately too, that I deserved what happened. If I wasn't so stupid and didn't yearn for love and attention that this would not have happened at all.
She shakes her head, argues with me but the truth as I know it is there like a impish child pointing and laughing at me...The feeling has been there always. The 7 year old I was and the 36-year old woman that I am are allowing and have always allowed myself a way for men to abuse me. I have felt that I am not worth more than that.
She asks me now, what do I want out of therapy? What do I hope to gain? I want to rescue that poor 7 year old, stop hating her and finally love her like no one else really did...I want to finally feel love and feel worthy of it. I want to stop looking to other people for validation.Want to stop letting men use and abuse me over and over just so I can feel like I am anything to them when the truth is, I have never been more than a body or away for them to control me...But more than anything, I want to love and forgive myself for something I know that i had no control over at the ages of 7, 8 and at 17 (and maybe much earlier as I feel there is a blocked memory on the edge of my consciousness waiting to lunge at me) I did not make these men bad. I did not get abused because I was a bad girl... I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The session ends and I realize I have learned so much about myself...about that 7 year old girl who wanted only to be loved. I have always been so intent about pleasing others, so concerned with other peoples needs and not my own, that I would give other people control as long as they gave me "LOVE". I walked out of the office so cold and angry, but for the first time I was angry at my molester, my rapist and the men who have taken all the hope that there is good in me. I have started to forgive myself. I am fighting to gain back control to become a SURVIVOR not a victim.
Of course with me I open up so easily that doing it almost has no meaning anymore. My story of abuse, rape and cutting comes from my mouth like a grocery list... I have said it so often I almost don't let in the reality that it is my past...Almost. Its the details that have wiggled their way out of my psyche after years of blocking them that has me crying.
Today I've said it, all of it, listed in order of when the first man molested me to when I was 17 but she stops me before I can say another word. She tells me that she wants her office and our time to be a safe place and that my memories of my abuse and abandonment should feel safe to me as if when I go back to deal with it I am wading carefully into a pool of water, always holding the side. She says that like a child who needs the safety of their own control over that pool, I should be feel free and ready to get out when I am ready. No, she does not want me to dive in and start to drown in the anguish and trauma that is my childhood. Too late for that. I am flailing from the depths of the lake I am in.
Trauma. She says the word slow and heavy as if it the walls of that very word and the meaning of every abuse, hurt and touch that has happened against me is held there inside. It brings memories of that poor 7 year old I left behind so long ago. The memories slash through my head like knives. I suddenly let go and weep like I have never done before. She asks me what I remember. As I tell her its like I am transported back in time some 30 years ago and stand watching myself sitting on this man's lap...I am hovering like an unseen visitor watching powerlessly as that sick, old man molested me. Ironically I had even less power on that day when I was 7. I suddenly don't know where to put all that pain. All the words, memories and feelings that I've somehow become matter-of-fact about for years are suddenly real again and I am feeling them like they are new to me. I don't know how to get away from it.... Not then at 7 and not now either. I tell her how I abandoned that girl~Left that very loving and sweet,and worst, trusting, that 7 year old to fend for herself, back at that apartment where that monster lives. I fear the next thought...Everyone else did too.
I needed my Mom, my Dad~ I needed someone to shelter me,~that stupidly loving and trusting child~ but no one came. The therapist wants to know, Why did I protect the truth of what happened from my parents? Why did I go through all this pain alone?? Why did it take me many years to tell even my own Mother? Because all I wanted was to be good. I didn't want to be a problem...All I ever really wanted then-and want now- is to be loved and to be forgiven for being so imperfect at everything that matters... Why are you bad? she asks me...Because I wanted to be loved, to be paid attention to. I got what I wanted in one way--the attention~ but the love I missed out on.I tell her that I felt, and feel lately too, that I deserved what happened. If I wasn't so stupid and didn't yearn for love and attention that this would not have happened at all.
She shakes her head, argues with me but the truth as I know it is there like a impish child pointing and laughing at me...The feeling has been there always. The 7 year old I was and the 36-year old woman that I am are allowing and have always allowed myself a way for men to abuse me. I have felt that I am not worth more than that.
She asks me now, what do I want out of therapy? What do I hope to gain? I want to rescue that poor 7 year old, stop hating her and finally love her like no one else really did...I want to finally feel love and feel worthy of it. I want to stop looking to other people for validation.Want to stop letting men use and abuse me over and over just so I can feel like I am anything to them when the truth is, I have never been more than a body or away for them to control me...But more than anything, I want to love and forgive myself for something I know that i had no control over at the ages of 7, 8 and at 17 (and maybe much earlier as I feel there is a blocked memory on the edge of my consciousness waiting to lunge at me) I did not make these men bad. I did not get abused because I was a bad girl... I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The session ends and I realize I have learned so much about myself...about that 7 year old girl who wanted only to be loved. I have always been so intent about pleasing others, so concerned with other peoples needs and not my own, that I would give other people control as long as they gave me "LOVE". I walked out of the office so cold and angry, but for the first time I was angry at my molester, my rapist and the men who have taken all the hope that there is good in me. I have started to forgive myself. I am fighting to gain back control to become a SURVIVOR not a victim.
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