Healing - What a Process!

For almost forty years, I lived a split life. Somewhere inside my mind was another person who had the memory of all that I experienced as a child and the reasons behind most of my choices in life. To this day, she has only shared glimpses with me and those were quite disturbing. I may never recover these memories. It may not be necessary for me to recover them either. The fact that I know about them might be enough. I wouldn’t want to be haunted by the graphic nature or the emotional intensity of these memories, as I am certain, they would resurface with the same magnitude as I experienced them at the time. The fact that I cannot remember them, I learnt, is due to a phenomenon called dissociation.

Dissociation is a mental process that severs a connection to a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity. Dissociation is a normal response to trauma, and allows the mind to distance itself from experiences that are too much for the psyche to process at that time. It occurs when unable to remove herself physically from the abuse; a creative child victim finds other ways to leave. Many incest survivors refer to this separation as "splitting", others as creating a “twin” who shares the same body while living a life of its own.

During my work with John, an image kept coming back to mind over and over again, the one of two small children holding hands. They were motionless, expressionless; they were no more than black pictograms, black holes devoid of depth. They were standing by the wardrobe door where I used to hide, in the basement of my mother’s house.

I felt like they were holding me back that I could not escape them and move on with my life. Yet, I felt terrible at the perspective of leaving them behind. I was stuck, but I needed to know. I could not figure out who they were and why there were two of them. Two children without identity, without real existence, silent and scared. That’s what I felt about them. I knew instinctively that there was something more, something hidden. This was not a random vision, they meant something. After much brainstorming, I came up with twice, as in twice as much, as in twice as scared. That was it! It was the explanation or so I thought at the time. I was on the right path though. I was so scared that I lost all substance. My fear was so terrible that it duplicated itself. I was so scared that I became completely paralyzed by fear. Sadly enough, all that was true. But what my mind was really telling me was that I was so scared that I became two distinct people with separate memories and experiences. And I understood that only the day I could join them up could I truly reclaim my life. Through much, much more work with John, the story slowly revealed itself and with it, the extent of the devastation and the amount of work ahead.

The obsession of a lifetime was drawing to a close though. My path of revelation was to be the path of dreams – dreams triggered by physical shock. After the events of my past finally resurfaced, I went through a year of extreme confusion. There was so much to understand and to absorb. I was on a constant emotional rollercoaster. I believe that many unexpected deaths occur when a person finishes one phase of life and must become a different sort of person to continue. And nothing or nobody ever dies without one last fight. I needed a chance to heal, to be free. I’ve earned that right. Forty years is long enough for the working out of any curse.

Fortunately, I could feel changes were coming my way, and coming fast.