CHAPTER 1
Why Now?
"Hello darkness, my old friend; I've come to talk with you again; because a vision softly creeping; Left its seeds while I was sleeping. And the vision that was planted in my brain; still remains within the sound of silence ... and no one dared disturb the silence" The Sound of Silence by Paul Simon
This is my story of life after incest and how not only the experience itself blocked my emotional growth, but how the silencing of incest has created as much turmoil as the experience itself. It was my quest for personal growth that created my need for this exploration. What heightened my frustration was that because most people found this very act of incest repugnant and that it is considered, "a crime too cruel for mind and memory to face the victim remains silent, ashamed and unable to explain the ripple effects of living with a violation of self that no one is really comfortable talking about" (E. S. Blume). By denying my experience, internally I became repugnant.
Why now?
Because the history of incest has been secrecy and silence, and this silence does not teach us how to grow through the emotions, only to conceal and move on.
Because being silent has forced incest to define me. It has kept me a prisoner.
Because being silent has kept me scared and it has controlled my inner life. It has prevented me from living fully, from feeling, from being free enough to answer simple questions like "tell me about you" without panic and fear. Not only did I not have the skills to talk about myself, I didn't want to for fear I would slip and say something that would be considered unspeakable.
Because the embarrassment I felt showed every time someone said something to me that I thought might lead to a real conversation.
Because forgetting was no longer useful.
Because denial controlled my inner life; the denial had such a hold on me, I denied my childhood existence. I had no pictures. No stories. No connection to who I was, except for what I held inside.
Because I was unhappy living someone else's rules, shame and guilt that were not mine.
Because I was tired.
Because I was angry; I was safe and had been for a long time, but I was more afraid than ever.
Because it was time for me to be honest to myself about myself.
Because it has prevented me from being able to love clearly.
Because there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not living with incest.
Because there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about healing, about feeling better.
CHAPTER 2
Denial
"Until you heal the wounds of your past, you are going to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex; but eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories and make peace with them." (Iyanla Vanzant)
Pinpointing how the abuse affected me has been difficult; and it has permeated everything – intimate relationships, sexuality, parenting, and work. I was tired of people asking me what was wrong because of my lack of expression. I was irritated. I was tired of living as if I didn't have a childhood. No sharing of memories of my childhood with my children. That part of my life was unreachable, stuffed away. I was invisible. I played roles, I identified with these roles, but had they become mine, or were they defined around other people's values, expectations? As my roles and responsibilities broadened, the person I was inside was still hiding; still living a life of fear that my cover, my secret would be uncovered and I would rather die than be held accountable for this humiliation. Through all of my accomplishments, I was unable to articulate how I felt about anything and that kept me restless. The numbness was too strong. The fear engulfed me. With every passing year, I felt this uncontrollable downward spiral of darkness that only I would be able to figure out. My coping skills were entrenched, but falling apart. I had managed to minimize the incest to such a degree that I minimized or pushed down everything good that may have been a part of me. When I started asking questions, the denial got stronger. Fear of facing the truth became alive, as real as if my life was in danger. For me there really wasn't a difference. I did not want to believe the horror and trauma in my life. I knew that if I said the word, I would die which isn't really that farfetched, a part of me did die with each layer I unraveled.
The year, 2000 ... It was when my life was finally in order and all of the excuses for despair, the forgetfulness, the distractions, the work, had been used up, that I could no longer deny the aloneness that I felt inside. I managed to create this perfect external world, yet I felt like I was falling apart.
My emotional state was fragile. What made all of this so hard was that I had three healthy children, a decent marriage, a good education, a nice house, and my first counseling job. On the outside, everything was great. But something was boiling inside, a stirring that I had been familiar with, but the anxiety it was creating was bigger than I had ever experienced. Because of this unraveling, and no language developed to articulate the emptiness, I started looking for answers. I discovered The Courage to Heal Guide for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. The first thing I noted was that I was about 14 when this book was written and that it was written by two women. It was never mentioned in any of my psychology classes and neither was the topic of incest. This is where the questions started to form. It was safe, as long as no one saw me reading it. It validated that the coping skills that I developed as a child were essential because "a child could not afford to feel the full extent of the terror, pain, rage. The agony would have been devastating. I could not have done my arithmetic with other 2nd graders had I known the depth of my sorrow; and, I could not go anywhere or run, because I relied on my parents to take care of me" (39). While reading the Courage to Heal, I could no longer deny that the word victim pissed me off and that kept me silent. I had minimized the experience so much that being a victim seemed weak. I was not weak, ever! I was beginning to sort through the feelings, the coping strategies, and the usefulness of this information. I had feelings, but I did not have the words to describe them. One thing I needed to admit before any changes could be made was that keeping silent was weakening my resolve. The fear of sharing my story, even in a private journal,...
