Ruby: Pieces and Parts

I have about 5500  words written of Ruby's story.  It has lots of gaps and areas that need filling, but here is a little taste of what I have.

...Chapter…

Waking before dawn after a fitful night of sleep Ruby quietly dressed in the dark.  She was careful not to wake her roommates  as she slipped her journal from the drawer and went to find a quiet spot  where she could write and think.  She chose a comfortable chair that faced a large window in the lounge, sat down, pulled her feet up underneath her, and opened her journal.  She looked at the blank page before her unsure of what to write.  She raised her eyes to the dark window.  Her dim reflection looked back at her.  She didn’t see a battle ready warrior, she saw a frightened child, one who knew how to hide much better than she knew how to be seen and one who knew even less on how to fight the scratching and clawing she felt within her. She sighed at the dirty sad little girl that stared back at her.  It was she that had to die here.  It was she who held all the hurts and the sadness.  Ruby, put pen to paper.

November 2

I see you little girl.  I see you every time I look in the mirror or see my reflection.  I see your sad eyes, the way they hurt, and the fear within them.  I don’t want to see you anymore.  I can’t. You are ruining my life, you are keeping me from wanting to live.  All I can hear are your cries at night and all I can feel is your terror.  I don't know how to heal you and free you from the prison that you have built up within me.  I am here to rid myself of you.  I am so tired of hurting and not knowing how to stop it.  I don’t want to die.  I don’t.  But I don’t want to live with you anymore either.  It is you who I want to die.  But to kill you is to kill me.  I hate that you are a part of me.  I hate that you weren’t strong enough to protect yourself, to protect me, and now I live with your weakness and your oozing scars. You bring me shame.  You make me dirty.  When I look at you all I see is dirt.  I want you gone, but you have locked yourself up within me, behind a door I don’t know how to open.  A door I am afraid to open, because you locked all the monsters up in there with you.  I hear those monsters scratching at the door; scratch, scratch, scratching.  To open that door is to let all of you out and if I let you out I won’t know how to be me.  I will be you, lost in the memories I don’t want to remember, the emotions, the terror.  You with all your anger and your sadness will be loosed along with the monsters and I will be suffocated in the process.  I can feel it even as I write.  I can feel the splintering wood of that door you reside behind.  Pieces of you and them leaking through.  

Ruby stopped writing and closed her eyes.  The emotions that were rising up inside of her were threatening to take over.   She slowed her breathing, froze all movements and began to calm her racing heart.  She imagined a white nothingness surrounding her.  No corners for things to hide in, just white light that surrounded her until she disappeared within it.  The only sound was her breathing.  She emptied herself of all emotions, all thought, and buried herself in the white of her mind.  It stopped the rising flood…..for now.  She opened her eyes and looked out the window and let her mind go to that day not too long ago, the day that brought her to end up here.

She had gone looking for help, looking for someone to tell her that she was going to be okay.   She had asked what she should do if death’s call became too loud for her to ignore, where should she go, who could she call?  She knew that hospitals were supposed to be safe, but experience had told her that they weren’t.  Death would be better than being left sitting in a hallway alone with people staring.  Death would be better than being told you were wasting their time with your hurting.  The person she had asked told her that there were no guarantees of being treated well and with respect and practically begged Ruby to seek counseling.  The speaker had no idea how hard it was for her to put word on top of word when eyes were watching or how her heart sank with each passing moment.  She had gone there searching for a hero and for rescue, but instead she had found neither, only honest answers that left her feeling worse than when she had come.  She appreciated the honesty, but she needed more. She needed a refuge from herself, but instead left that meeting feeling more lonely, hurt, and desperate than she had ever felt before.

After she left the building she walked over to the rail that overlooked the ground several stories below. Holding the rail tightly in her hands she stared at the concrete, trees, and shrubs, it seemed as if they were speaking to her: “Jump into our arms,” they whispered, “we can bring you help.  We can silence the ache.”  Tears fell from her eyes as she gripped the rail tighter and stepped closer to it.  She had been so tempted to join them, to land in their prickly arms.  As she was about to begin her climb she saw a man below who stood looking up at her.  When their eyes met, he saw into her and she was truly seen, past the typical mirror looking back and into the window of her.  It was enough to quiet the whispers and she walked away that day and back into her life.

Ruby looked out the window where the sky was turning from black to gray and went back to her writing.

It was you he saw at the rail that day little girl, it was you that had me standing there. It is you who leaves me feeling weak and needy.  I need help killing you.  I am sure that I will be told that I can’t kill you, that I need to learn how to blend you and I - the me I would be without you - together, so that I can become one whole person instead of two separate beings.

 Dawn was approaching.  She watched as the light revealed the beauty on the other side of the window.  Beauty that had been hidden in the dark shadows of night.  The sun crept over the manicured lawns, walking paths, pond, and fountains.  There was a large oak tree that stood tall and ancient.  It had stood its ground long before any of these buildings.  It had watched many nights come and go and still stood waiting for the dawn of each new day.  

……………………………Chapter…………………………

  

Warm water washed over her body as she stood underneath the shower head.  She stood there watching the dirt swirl down the drain and disappear. No matter how hard she stared at the drain her memories wouldn’t mix with the dirt, they just kept swirling through her mind, and as the last bit of dirt swirled away her ability to avoid the emotions that went with the memories went down the drain with it.  The emotions washed over her and she sank down into the bathtub.  Every negative emotion that one could feel pelted her along with the water: sadness, anger, fear, terror, heartache, loneliness, want, hurt, pain, and more.  She could not hold them down any longer.  She had held them for far too long.  The voice in her head emulated that of Dr. Robins, “Can you name them?  You cannot fight nor embrace that which doesn’t have a name. Giving them a name gives you the power, not them.  Find your power, Ruby.  Name them.”

Ruby rubbed the snot, tears, and water from her face and pushed the hair out of her eyes, a spark of fight beginning to gleam in them.

“FEAR”  she whispered. “I am taking my power back. I acknowledge you, but you will no longer control me and make me run.” She thought of the motivational poster she had seen on a wall. “No longer will I try to Forget Everything And Run. I will allow myself to Feel Everything And Rise.”

As she went through the list of emotions coursing through her and naming each of them her voice and the belief in the words she was saying became stronger causing their hold on her to grow weaker.  

Then she rose. 

If her experience under the willow tree had been the death of who she had been then this was her resurrection—a baptism— a parting of her old ways of merely surviving into a rising up to a new life of thriving.  She was ready to name the reality of what her past had been.  Ready to name it and fight what needed fighting and to embrace what needed embracing.  When Ruby turned the water on that evening she was a casualty of the war that raged within her.  Now as she turned the water off she was emerging as a warrior ready to battle.

It's Not Your Fault

I know you saw his face the other night.  You didn't expect it. You definitely didn't want to. But there it was when and where you least expected it. You went out to have fun and suddenly your night was ruined.  Your heart and mind sent into the past, into the hurts, into the confusion.

I am sorry.  I am sorry that someone else's selfish desires were more important to them than your innocence.  Your rights.

I am here. You are not alone. I know it feels like it when the tears come streaming and the pain can't be shoved down.  

I know the confusion that swirls around the events. The way your mind twists what happened making you question your part in it.  It wasn't you.  It wasn't right.  He was wrong.  Not you.  I will shout that over and over for you to hear above the shame that you somehow think is yours to bear.

IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT!

IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT!

IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT!

I can see you trying to piece together the shattered image of who you were before. I can see you feeling broken and unsure of who you are now and your place in this world. I will whisper over the doubts for you.

YOUARE NOT A REFLECTION OF HIS ACTIONS!

YOU ARE NOT A REFLECTION OF HIS ACTIONS!

YOU ARE NOT A REFLECTION OF HIS ACTIONS!

You don't have to be strong alone.  

I am here. 

When the voices rise up to lie to you about what happened. 

I am here. 

When shame and doubt blur the lines between the way he treated you and who you think you are. 

I am here.

I am here to be the words you need to hear until you can say them for yourself.

You are loved. You are seen.  You are not alone. It's not your fault.

My Heart doesn't operate in the scientific: The operating table

This is the third installment of  this series.       My heart Part One     My heart Part Two

"You went in for an operation, but you got up off of the table before it was done."

That is what he had said to me, my pastor, at our meeting.  I wasn't sure I agreed.  If I had gone in for an operation it felt like I had chosen the wrong hospital. That weekend had very definitely left me torn wide open and had left me in need of some sutures at the very least.

I went home and I bled.  I didn't know where to find a doctor to close me up.  I sent a letter to my old counselor in Washington asking for some direction.  I also started looking online for help; reading articles and buying books.  I was desperately trying to find the right sutures to stop the bleeding.

I found this book and ordered it off of Amazon.  When it came I read 100 pages of it that first night.  I was holding in my hands what may as well have been titled "Understanding Karmen", because it was 400 pages of everything I had ever felt, thought, acted on, and didn't feel.  I was not some crazy, bad, mis-created person.  I was a violated person left damaged by the violation.  Everything I think, feel, and don't feel is common!

I always knew that to some extent, but to see it written down in black in white was freeing.  It was like finally having a diagnosis for my emotional ailment.

With the exception of the pre-pubescent abuse that I suffered at the hands of my friends father I never had clear memories of what had happened to me.  I always knew something had happened because of who I was, but without the memories to go along with it part of me felt as though I was making more out of it than needed to be made.

Sometimes, before a wound can be healed you have to open it up and get the infection out.

The weekend retreat had opened up that wound deep, and now that I look back I hadn't gone to the wrong hospital, that weekend was just the first step to prepare me for the surgery that I needed.  The infection had to be removed before the healing could take place.  And that infection continued to ooze out as I have written about in the last two posts.   Oozing validations that something most definitely had happened to me in my childhood that were justifying the diagnosis I held in my hands.

As comforting as that was I was still left bleeding and oozing. The infected memories were frightening and I was not in control of what seeped out of the wound or when.

In His complete mercy, God gave me a name, a diagnosis, for that black slimy blob I was holding in my hand; that cancerous slime called childhood sexual abuse.  But His mercy did not stop there.  He also gave me a diagnosis to hold in my other hand, papillary carcinoma of the thyroid.  It may not be the diagnosis to answer the three+ years of medical mysteries that I have gone through, but it was a validation that listening to my body is important.  (The story of how this diagnosis came about verges on the miraculous, but it will have to wait for another day).  I had decided that my body was just a big fat liar who liked to create pain and mayhem and this diagnosis let me know that at least sometimes my body was telling the truth.

He was answering my angry prayer from the few months before.  He was letting me hold the answers in my hands to show me that when He healed me it would not be from my own overwhelming defectiveness.  He was giving me reasons, tangible ones, and He was continuing to say, "Trust me."

(To be cont.)

Bone weary: slipping through that crack between forgotten and remembered

**A Warning that this could be a trigger for those who suffered from abuse**

I am tired.  All the time.  It is the kind of tired that makes my bones want to dissolve into the bed when I lay down.  It is more than just a physical tired, it is an emotional tired.  This subconscious leaking into conscious is exhausting.  It is like living in an internal fog where you walk and you walk and you never know what you are walking into until you run smack dab into it.  

It is loading the dishwasher and having a half formed memory slip through that crack between forgotten and remembered, causing you to lean heavy into the sink sobbing.  It is the kind of tired that comes from being 38 in body, but 4 or 5 emotionally and all you know is sadness and fear and you don't have a clear understanding of why or what or who.  You know enough to know that it is something, but not enough to work through the story.  You can feel the weight of it like chains that bind you; but you can't see them or touch them - feel them under your fingertips.

It is waking up from a sound sleep with hands clawed and battle ready, your legs kicking hard.  It is knowing that it wasn't a dream that brought out this fight, but a memory that still hides in shadow.  It is telling yourself where you are, reminding yourself of the present so you can drift back to sleep only to wake up fighting off the memory that is as dark as the night you are thrashing in.

It is lying on an exam table having your throat pressed on and in your mind you are child being choked, feeling as though you are going to pass out, breath quickening, lip quivering, praying for Jesus to come and rescue you from your mind, because He didn't come rescue your body when the choking was real.  

It is riding down the road wondering if you are losing your mind and a memory comes that isn't new, but this time it brings with it the taste of soap and cologne so strong in the back of your throat and on your lips every time you take a breath that you ask out loud what that smell is, but the other in the car can't smell it.  It is not wanting to acknowledge where that tasted smellmory is coming from and having to turn your head over and over again to make it finally go away. It is the nauseous clawing in your chest that is fear, sadness, and anger intermingled.

It is wondering if your mind is writing its own story, but it isn't one you want to read, so you tell it to stop, but it won't.

It is wanting to run away from everything that is internal and leave it behind, but you can't.  Running away from the depths of you is like trying to run from the color of your eyes -f impossible. You can avoid your reflection for a time, but eventually it is going to be there looking back at you.  You can try and hide it, mask it, but masks are only temporary, the reality never changes.  

It is being tired, so tired of the fight.  The fight to forget alternating with the fight to remember.  It is knowing that you need something, but never being able to figure out exactly what that something is.  

It is hearing that all you need to do is X,Y, or Z to be better, but you have no idea how to do X, Y, and Z and no one can give you the instructions they just expect you to do it.  

It is straining your ears hard to hear hope singing, because sometimes he is hidden deep in the fog.

It is the constant grinding friction of what you know to be truth in all those parts of you that are rational versus what you feel, see, and hear in all the other parts of you that are not so rational.  

All of this is what makes me bone weary and I just want some rest.

And the story grows

Somewhere along the way I must have left it behind.   It wasn't until someone mentioned  it in their writing  that I even noticed it was missing.  As I read their words I expected it to rise up and pull at the waters in my eyes and dig at my mind, but it wasn't there. 

I took a mental note of the year; there had been no clearly marked line, no parting of a sea where I walked through and it was left to wash away.  Never the less, it wasn't there.  Shame had left and I hadn't even noticed. 

I wrote last about how I don't have a word or a theme for this year.  I still don't, but as I was thinking over my last year I decided that if I were to put a word over it like an umbrella to cover all it contained then that word would have to be MOVING. 


Tonight during our Wednesday night service our Pastor started off by asking us to answer this question in groups of 4 -5 : Why did Jesus come to earth?

There are lots of answers to this question. 

Our group of 4 came up with these reasons: 1. To pay for our sins  2. To die on the cross 3.  To heal the sick, the hurting, and the lost 4. To show us God 5. To fulfill the prophesies.

I am sure that there are many more answers to that question.  The particular answer that the pastor preached on was that He came to heal the sick and the hurting.  His scripture reference was Luke 4: 18-19

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour." ESV

His  message when condensed down to its most basic form was that we are all broken, lost, and hurting people who need Jesus, because you don't go through this world unscathed. 

Since Adam and Eve ate the fruit way back in the beginning we have all been hurting and in need of a healing and a covering from God. 

When he talked about the nakedness of Adam and Eve it reminded me of a blog I wrote way back in the beginning of my blogging.  (If interested you can click on the Adam and Eve link above to read it.)  Remembering it made me go back and take a look at it, re-read it, re-ponder where I was when I wrote it and where I am now. 

I wrote in there about God's covering and how Christ's sacrifice covered me where I couldn't.  When I wrote those words I was in the deepest depression I had ever been in.  A depression so deep I wasn't sure I would make it out alive.  (This is not an exaggeration.)  After that depression eased with the help of medication I went from pondering God's provision to being a very prodigally prodigal child.

When I came to my own realization that God's provision was better than the pig slop I was feasting in I felt like the most mangerish manger person to ever return home.  

I had essentially said to God, "Forget your fancy coverings you have given me I am going to go get me some forbidden fruit! You aren't cutting it." 

Talk about feeling naked when I came walking back down that road to Him. 

I felt completely EXPOSED and fruit stained. 

(And here is a little something extra, a little something that God just showed me, cuz He is really cool like that: Even when I was feasting on pig slop and forbidden fruit God still had me covered..... because God will never leave me nor forsake me..... He loves me and covers me despite my anger and confusion, because He knows where and who I am.  This is not to advocate sin.  This is not to say once saved always saved, this is just to say that God is awesome and graceful and He knows His children and when they are lost and hurting He doesn't give up on them.)

I hid from humanity for a long while after that.  I felt so stained and dirty and unacceptable that even though I had God's covering I couldn't forgive myself and didn't see how anyone else would be able to accept me as well. 

Before moving to Groton I wrote about how  we were moving, but God was too  .  Little did I know then how much He was and how He was orchestrating this move to Groton to bring healing back into my life and draw me back into humanity and out of my shame. 

There is so much to this story that keeps unfolding and growing and deepening, but this is where it will end for now. 

An open letter to pastors

I wrote this letter to my new pastor.  Really it could have probably been written to any pastor anywhere about the deafening silence coming from the pulpit about sexual abuse and how it has a huge voice that needs listening to in discussions of sexual purity.

July 1, 2013

Dear Pastor .......,

                I sat through service yesterday and listened to you talk on purity.  At one point the room went hazy and it became hard for me to see, so I knew it was something I probably really needed to hear.  But the more I heard the angrier I became.  Angry, because for every time I have ever heard a sermon preached on purity not a single pastor, not one, has ever touched on the sexual sins that adults commit on children and how those sins fundamentally change those children.  Not one!  And so I wanted to stand up and point my finger and shout out:  “Okay, OKAY!  I HEAR what you are saying, but what about us?!  What about those of us who were used as others sexual dishrags before we had any say in the matter, or when we were in that in between stage of child and teenager and we were so confused by what happened and our reaction to it that we felt somehow to blame for it?  What about those of us who grew up thinking that our purpose in life, or worth, was nothing more than that dishrag we were used as, maybe even made to be?  You tell us to be pure, to control ourselves, but you never once touch on how to do that when someone else’s actions fundamentally has changed everything about whom God created us to be. It changes who we are, how we see ourselves, how we see the world around us. Pastors love to speak on how sex is a gift.  I have never known it that way, so I understood when you spoke of the man who asked for his sexual drive to be taken away.  To me sex is more like a poison.  It isn’t intimate, it isn’t holy, and it certainly has never felt like a gift.  It is and always has been a thorn: a deep piercing, infection producing thorn, so how about we as a church discuss that sometime.  Because I know that I am probably not the only one.  I am guessing that just about 75% of any congregation at any given time has been or will be sexually abused, maybe even more.  So where are the sermons on that?  Where are the sermons telling the adults to stop using children as rags for their desires?  Where are the sermons talking to those raggedy children turned adults addressing their shame, their guilt, because they had desires from the time that they could remember that the church says is impure and wrong.  Where are the sermons that will stop making them feel shamed and guilty and start helping them figure out how to change those desires, because shame and guilt sure aren’t getting the job done.  Where are the sermons that discuss how to move sex from the shame/guilt/ poisonous thorn in my side box to the intimacy gift box, because boy I would sure like to know how to do that?!  Are pastors afraid to discuss this?  They aren’t afraid to talk about homosexuality, adultery, pornography, etc., but I am pretty certain that in a large number of these issues if you did a little digging that you would find that the root of many of these sexual sins would be childhood sexual abuse.  So yes, I am pointing my finger, yes I am angry, because why don’t we as a church, as a people address the root of the weed instead of just pulling at what we see coming out of the ground.” 

Please understand that I am not really angry with you.  I am angry with the situation, the silence, the deafening silence from the church when it comes to sexual abuse.  Do people think it doesn’t happen in churches?  That Christians are immune from this plague?  Are pastors afraid to offend the abusers or is it just nicer in general to pretend they aren’t there?  Because trust me they are there, in your congregations, sitting in your pews, invisible, but there and so are we… the sopping wet or crusted over stained and used dishrags. 

Sincerely,

Karmen Madan