Living on the Fault Line

I usually blame it on being a Virgo, but I am one of those people who always look for someone or something to blame for anything which does not go to plan. I recognise this as a character fault but now as my therapy is removing my blinders from my eyes, I see that the actual root cause of this is lack of trust.

I find it very hard to trust. I’ve always just thought I was a sceptic (or a Virgo). But last night during my therapy session I had a moment of clarity. Actually it was all explained to me by the therapist, I don’t want to steal her thunder J

 Last night’s hypnotherapy took me to a place in my childhood which greatly troubled me but had pretty much been forgotten. As I ‘arrived’ there my heart started pounding and my breathing was difficult.

We had some goats when I was a child. I was taken back to a scene where one of the goats had been murdered. (is it murder if it is an animal, in this case I think so) I was standing on the periphery of the group of adults all surrounding the dead goat which was lying with its internal organs pulled out of it. I could remember the adults saying that the goat had been a victim of sexual abuse by the neighbour ‘boy’ who was in actuality a grown man, but his mental age was the age of a child. He terrified me as a child and I could not bear to be near him. He could not speak, he grunted and drooled and flapped his hands violently. To a small child this was incomprehensible. I can’t imagine the life his parents had, caring for him and protecting him from society’s lack of understanding.

From my current adult perspective I could not imagine letting my child see a goat which had been sodomised to death, or to discuss the details of this openly in front of my child. I do remember watching that same goat being born, it was a twin and the mother had the babies in one of our outhouses. That was not traumatic however, it was fascinating and natural despite being bloody and seeing my goat taking strain it was part of living in the country and having animals.

The two people who were revealed as needing me to ‘heal’ a trauma were my maternal aunt and my uncle. She is still alive, albeit in her 80s. She is an evil woman. And I mean the word – not just using it as a descriptive term – she had evil in her heart. She has since been diagnosed as being mentally ill – bipolar, psychotic, schizophrenic, she has a few errors in her system shall we say.

As I started talking ‘to her’ in my hypnotic state I started to think of all of the things she had done to me as a child. The filth she lived in and I hated to visit. I cannot imagine why my Mother would allow me to sleep in that hovel. There would be bugs, filthy dishes, dog hair and poop everywhere. They also would drag me and my cousin out of bed at 5 am and force us to help deliver newspapers. I hated the black ink that would stain my hands, the smell of the printed papers; I would be nauseous and shouted at if I complained I felt sick from it.

I remembered my aunt stroking my hair while she thought I was asleep and saying to me, ‘such a beautiful child. Just as well you are beautiful as you will be a whore like your Mama and it always helps to be a beautiful whore.’

When I was 13 she had me drive her to a bar. I had never driven a car in my life, only a tractor and I promptly had a crash. She lied to the police and we managed to get away with it.

I remember when I was a teenager she would give me barbiturates to take and arrange ‘dates’ for me which consisted of me going out with random guys, and waking up confused and disorientated later. God only knows what ‘deals’ she had made for me or what happened to me while I was out. Once I awoke, having been thrown into a shower fully dressed with 2 gay men who had found me lying in a crumpled catatonic heap at the bottom of the stairs in my aunt’s apartment building. At first, they thought I was dead, but then realised I had overdosed and carried me inside and put me into a cold shower to wake me up and forced me to vomit. I thank my guardian angels that it was gay men who found me, and that anyone found me at all before I did in fact die of an overdose.

As a child I had imagined it was my uncle who was the evil one. That he had encouraged or organised her evil escapades. But in my hyperconscious state I had clarity which revealed to me he was as much a victim of her twisted psychosis as the rest of the family. I remember when I was about 3 years old he taught me to read. He would patiently sit me with on their farm and tell me about all of the animals and teach me my letters and read to me.

I do not remember my mother or father ever reading to me, maybe that is because I learned to read so early on my own. Somehow I doubt that. But it makes me feel less sad to think that.

So it is no surprise that I find it hard to trust. I was raised in such dysfunction and chaos. I was taught at a very early age that no one can be trusted or relied on, that the world is a dangerous scary place. This mistrust has created dysfunction in my adult life. I have a huge need for control. If people do not see things my way, do things my way, react in the way I expect it throws me. I get fiercely angry over the most inconsequential things. That is the legacy of my dysfunction.

However with each foray into my past, with each level of purging and purification, with each person I manage to forgive and let go of the hurt they caused me, I find that my hip is getting stronger. My posture is improving; my overall levels of stress are lessening. My ability to see my own character defects, to accept them and try to overcome them – these are all getting stronger along with my physical strength.

It is no wonder that the pain in my hip restricts my ability to push my pelvis forward or to abduct my knee, both are movements associated to sexuality and all of my mental pain is rooted in the sexual dysfunction and shame associated to my bizarre childhood. It is almost as if my frozen hip joint is starting to thaw, I visualise a glacier, slowly chipping away, slowly melting…leading to complete mobility and hopefully an accompanying peace in my heart and lightness of being.