Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Healing Crisis

11:19 PM by Christi Bowman

I was abused in a home daycare setting when I was very young. I never told anyone the extent of the abuse. I did not know how. I remember trying to convey to my mom that it was a mean place and that I did not like going...I was told repeatedly that my abusers loved me. When I brought this to my mother's attention several months ago she confided that she did remember my complaints but was under the assumption that I did not like discipline.

I do not talk about this much on here; truth be told I do not let it define me. Most of the time it does not even bother me.

I had repressed a lot of the abuse for many years...though not all of it. I have always had an extreme dislike for the family and whenever their name or that time period would come up I shuddered and hate would course through my entire body. I walked away with a few tangible memories. Later, those memories would solidify other experiences.

Several years back, when my oldest was a year old, my husband and I were in Arizona without her. We happened to be in our hotel room late at night watching a documentary on legal brothels in the United States. The content on the television along with the gnawing absence of my cute little girl led to my first "trigger" moment.

That night in our hotel room, for the first time in ages, my mind was forcefully yanked back to my youngest school aged years. I had a few very vivid memories of acting out abuse like scenarios on myself, my friends, and my little brother during sleep overs; there were a few times when my mom would walk in and catch me in the act red handed...those were the times that mothers were called and my friends were sent home. I was always lectured up one side and down the other after such events and told that good christian girls don't behave in that way. I did not know how to stop.

On one such occasion I made a tape with a friend as we acted out our drama in her room. Later, after I went home, my friend felt horribly guilty about what I made her do and played the tape for her mother. Her mom called my mom and wanted to come over and play the tape for her...I distinctly remember my friend's mom telling my mother that I knew way to much for someone my age. The tape mysteriously ended up destroyed and the meeting never happened. I often wonder now what might have happened had my mother heard the tape. At that point I feared for my life, and never thought myself so lucky as when the tape mysteriously disappeared, but now, as a mother myself, I often wonder if maybe, just maybe, had my mother been able to listen she would have realized that something was dreadfully wrong.

As I lay there frozen by my memories I began to put my little girl in my place and me in my mother's. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I had come up against all of my sexual exploits as my mother had mine and if the little girl that was participating in them belonged to me and not to her I would have ceased conveying that she was bad and that she should not behave in that manner...I would ask her what had happened and I would get help for her. I was mad at my mother for many years after I came to that conclusion because I could not talk to her about it. I felt very betrayed. I had indeed cried out for help and I was told that I was dirty. It was not until much later that I came to realize that as a mother in the twenty first century I had a lot more education on what to look for in an abuse victim than my mother ever had.

That hot Arizona night was the night this journey to uncover deeply buried secrets began and it has not ended. I find that moments like I had in Arizona come in waves and I am thankful that the cycles have distance between them. Once my mind is drug back to that place and time it takes a few weeks to recover, but I always emerge with more "evidence" than I had before. One night during an episode several years after the first, but still a few years back (my oldest was 4) I was so tired of being haunted by this that I begged God to help me get to the bottom of it or take the memories away completely. He was faithful to reveal the truth, although not right away. He had His work cut out for Him. He had to first get me to a place where I would allow Him to take the lead.

During the time after my little prayer my alcoholism grew steadily worse, as did other addictions, and the loathing of myself. It got so bad that I could not carry on a conversation with anyone without the "innocent" little cup of hidden booze. How I recovered from all of that is chronicled in this blog as my first post ever was the first time I confessed that I was an alcoholic and my journey goes on from there.

After only two months of sobriety I was flooded with another wave of memories brought on by the debriefing of an AIM psychologist after taking the Taylor Johnson test. I was aloud no numbing agent to ease the pain. At any other time I would have convinced my husband to buy a bottle of wine or two...he would have had half a glass and I would have drank the rest including whatever was left in his glass...I would have cried on his shoulder until I passed out. I would not have had the courage to do anything else. I was not in my right mind...I was scared.

Without the numbing agent I was in a lot of pain, but I was not scared. I was angry. I was ready to admit that the thoughts I was having were not something I had conjured up...they were real and I could not grow as a person until they were dealt with. I looked up my abuser with the help of Google and I stared at him for a very long time; that was the first time that doing anything like that occurred to me. Afterward I journaled like a mad woman until I was ready to confront my mother and the one thing that I refused to listen to anymore was that I was loved by my abuser. I needed her to know the full extent of what had happened and I needed her to acknowledge it. She did.

I am now a year later still dealing with the consequences of abuse. Just the other day I was reading a book "The Furious Longing of God" by Brennan Manning. I was caught of guard when a nun started telling her story of abuse in the book. My mind was once again yanked back to the past and the affirmation I received weighed on me like a ton of very heavy bricks.

I am in the midst of this healing crisis, it has not yet passed. I am not on the other side looking back at how much I have learned. I am moving out of the eye of the storm and although it is not quite so agonizing as the eye itself it is still a painful place to be. I know God is with me. I know He is healing me, and I know that sense will be made of all that has happened, if not in this life than the next...God has all of eternity.

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