The ME's: The Wound Inside the Quynns
The Reason
A memory hits – BANG! It’s a punch in the gut and we curl up into a ball. The horror is too much. Thank god Lance is with us at the time. We must be feeling safe. That’s when you let the memories come. When you know you are enclosed in a blanket of now, when the abuse is over, and it will not happen again. Then you are ready.
And so ... diving into the middle of ourself, into the sweetness and the haunting. Spiralling down into a core part, into the depths of emotion. Like a Celtic knot, no beginning, no end, woven in and out of things. We are drawn in, pulled in, a sweet hypnotic drug and bliss. This is where we go, to leave behind one reality. This is inside Tir (1). This is inside us. What would she have been like if there never was an us? She would not have been called Tir first of all. There would have been no need. What might she have been capable of? What dreams might she have fulfilled?
This is the Remembering. Peeled back layers, stripping us to that core. For all the pain that remembering brings, it leaves us a little more naked each time. This is a journey that needs to be taken, suffering that has to take place. We must be brave and hold on. Tir is the wolf that howls, that beckons us to her. She is the reason.
She comes out with Graham, talks softly to him. She is shy with him but it is obvious she likes him. She is not his mother. Ariel (1) says Graham is so gentle with her, as if she were a child. Yes, he got that right. Tir is innocence although her knowledge goes deep. She doesn’t assimilate everything she knows. She has not grown up completely, about 10 years younger than our biological age. She asks Graham to show her how to play a video game on computer then they watch a video of Sarah McLachlan together. Sometimes she comes out of her own world.
Lance says some child keeps laughing at night when he sleeps with us and puts his hand on us.
And more memories come. Yet I know we only skim the surface. Not one of us touches the whole thing completely. It threatens to send us over the brink. I’m not even sure I can identify pain anymore. Pain is what you feel when you are no longer numb. Pain is what you keep pushing away. Pain is what pushes back. It seems pure sensation. Simply. With despair and dis-illusionment. Disappointment. Dreams never fulfilled. Is this what pain is? I know I would like to weep for a very long time. To shed and release something. On the worst days, we switch so much. Then the next day I don’t remember anything. Someone says “oh it was a bad day yesterday.” I ask “Oh. What happened?” Is that pain? I think that when pain is with you constantly you can no longer define it as pain. It becomes an integral part of you. You become the pain. You are the pain.
I feel angry at Lance because I can’t get enough of him. I am angry at him because he won’t rescue us.
Black Widow (3) says whats-his-face always, always makes her feel like a little shitty turd to be stepped on. She means David, Graham’s dad. Conversations with him sometimes upset ones Inside. He is still getting used to “us”. We feel abandoned by him. Patience (1) says eventually he will come around. We know she’s right. He will.
Another support group to attend. The YWCA will be running one for survivors of sexual abuse. We will cut back our sessions with Lyn while we attend.
The Cocoon. We are all in there. Black Widow is ranting and raving in one of the rooms. Others are with her, just listening, allowing her and supporting her to do this. To release some of that anger. Meanwhile, Ariel offers to move in with me, into my room. She sees I get lonely for the others sometimes. Yes, let’s share a room and comfort each other. I need to feel someone beside me, with me. We can sit in the window nook and read old, dusty books on rainy afternoons. Whatever we want in here. Here we have control and it is delicious.
Still more memories, this time from Tir. Quick images and flashes. She writes about it in our journal. Her child-like scrawling. Later, the after-effects are still vibrating along the strands of the Web. I feel like I have just come out of surgery. Slowly waking up.
Black Widow remembers some of the same event as Tir. She was there for part of it. She was told to do it. No wonder she hates herself. You feel less helpless when you blame yourself. You possess that illusion that you had a choice. It’s a wonderful thing to hold and yet it is the monster you fear. It was my fault. Sorry. How old do you have to be to make choices like that? Where is the line that is drawn between innocence and guilt? At what age are you supposed to take responsibility? Yet age really has nothing to do with it. When it is ingrained in you what will happen if you don’t obey, your mind cannot conceive of choice. No such word exists. It was never given to you. Every child deserves choice ... except us. We did not deserve it. It was our fault.
There is outer space and there is inner space. Are they equal? No matter what we tell each other, no matter how much some of us knows, we don’t know it all. About us, about this person, Caer Weber. No matter how many of us there are, there are still more questions that don’t get answered, won’t get answered. There are things we do and we do not understand why we do them. Even those that know, that say they know, don’t know. Are human minds bigger than outer space? Do we keep getting recreated every time something new happens?
Premature. Patience says this is the perfect word for when we ask questions about us that shouldn’t be answered yet because we can’t handle it. We are not ready. So if we ask a question and Patience doesn’t’ wish to answer she will use that word. Premature.
“Ritual ... a way of using the upper levels of the mind to reach the lower” (“Falconer” by John Park in Tesseracts 4)
We hate breathing. Especially deep breathing. In the new support group, at the YWCA, we are asked to do some deep breathing. We feel resentful already. When we arrived we felt good, energetic. But all that deep breathing brings us down to seriousness and a place of sadness. It stays all evening. Do you see why we hate breathing? It’s like meditating, sitting with yourself. There is no place to run to. We cannot take flight like we could from our abusers. We cannot escape ourself anymore. Of course we want to. Who wouldn’t? Yet we are drawn to our innermost secrets. Push, pull. Torn.
There is a display of objects on the table for each of us in the group to choose from. We pick a Buddha-like goddess. She is very solid. This is the spiritual side of our journey. Although spirituality can take you up to the heavens, it pins you to the ground as well. It takes you beyond yourself, encompassing the world of sentient beings, and yet connects you deeper to your own self. It is a very special thing to experience. When you honour the sacred, you feel respect for all things. You feel humbled. In this place you find meaning and connection. It is what all human beings need. Survivors of abuse need it even more.
We are not a “control freak” but we need to feel a certain amount of control in our life. And in our home. When Graham brings his friends over it’s often very difficult for us. We feel invaded and we feel guilty about it. After all this is his home too. He should be able to have his friends visit. We wish we were the kind of mom who says “Sure, come on over”. Bake them cookies or something. Welcome them with open arms. Love them. But we can’t. Their presence means a restriction for us. Some who cannot come out. A loss of control over our environment. It is so threatening, so triggering. Growing up, our home felt very restricting. When we visit there, we feel those walls again, pushing towards us, enclosing us in a smaller and smaller space. Suffocating us. Confined to our own room for any sense of freedom, for any room to breathe. But to get to our room, we must pass through our parents’ bedroom first. Don’t breathe too deeply.
We feel so guilty about everything.
A quiet Sunday morning with the sounds of spring not far off. Memories of snow turning to puddles of slush and melting, exposing the sidewalk again. The sound of shiny new black patent leather shoes on the cement, daffodils and crocuses emerging, and going to church. We hate spring. Spring was stolen from us. It is supposed to be a time for celebration, for life returning after such a long time of being buried. Instead it is a thing we dread. This is the time of year it gets worse, more horrible things begin to happen. Easter not far away. Crosses and thoughts of suicide. A way out of this.
Guilt stretches further. We live in a housing co-op. We are supposed to go to meetings. But for us, meetings are loaded with guilt. We are supposed to do more. We are not doing enough, not carrying our weight. Obligations and expectations fill us with dread. The same suffocation as the world we grew up in. There have been times when we have felt free of them, times when we have felt enthusiastic and wanting to do things. But not now. Now that we are beginning to know this internal world and understand more the stuff we are made of, we begin to withdraw. Leave us alone please. We have too much responsibility Inside. We have children to take care of. We don’t mean Graham. We mean the ones Inside, the ones who are hurting so much. It is a huge responsibility. One we cannot shirk if we are to do more than just survive.
We go to a workshop and meet a tiny Asian woman who is so vulnerable, so wounded. Our heart reaches out to her, feels her need. Although we too are wounded and not yet healed, we offer our help to her. She looks up at us. Yes, please. We give her our phone number. She is the first of a few. This is the beginning step of another kind of journey, one of helping others. It is not new though. When we were young, school age, we always found the children who were quiet and shy, the ones who needed someone. We befriended them. We wanted to protect them even when we had little protection for ourself. I think we are drawn to this because in some way it helps us, empower us. How else were we able to do this when we were still being abused? Where did we find the room for someone else? Someone Inside says it was always there. Built in. Part of our DNA. Our fingerprint. Or maybe it came from our mother.
We must remember this. There are places we are good and goodness makes you smarter.
We learned too. from Sarah, Lyn, Anna. They have goodness too. Patience says there is goodness everywhere. We will find it.
Our dreams often leave me wondering who my mother is. What do the others know of her, that I don’t and what of Tir’s saying that we have to go back, we have to return?
I can feel a change happening Inside. Something new coming.
We hurry home after the second session of the support group. We have a lot to write down. It was an interesting, uncomfortable, painful and insightful afternoon. At some point it became clear to us that we did not want to talk in the group, did not want to be seen. Black Widow wants us to keep well hidden, keep our dark secrets away from the world. Tir wants to be seen and not seen, torn between the two. She longs for people to notice her existence yet is terrified of what they might find out about her, of what they might think of her. Sometimes I want to tell people that I made it all up. My desire to hide.
The most important part of the afternoon. We are asked to draw a picture of our healing process, our journey. We have to show some kind of movement, put ourself in the picture and any other important people who are, or were, a part of the process. We draw Kereth but with only 2 gates, not 4. The gate at the bottom of the picture is the one to enter. We draw our path up the middle, with us as little black charcoal smudges, all connected, moving along. A black widow spider is in the very center. It is interesting that we put Black Widow there, if that is her, rather than Tir. Is Black Widow the real reason?
There are branches off the main path. It feels as if we have branched off from our path sometimes. Usually to deal with situations, such as issues with Graham. But we always come back to the path. Eventually. The beginning of our journey, an area just inside Kereth, is dark with confusion and mystery, many unknowns, and darkest in our feelings of pain – going to hospital, suicide attempts, threats to Outsiders. What is missing? The rabbit dolls, John, Tir’s horse Anachie, The Cocoon and Dead Center. The branches also show Lance, Lyn and Sarah. Graham is outside the walls of the city because he doesn’t know the details but he is still a very important part of our journey. We draw him as a “sun”. Very clever.
All of us show our pictures and talk about them. One thing stands out for us. The other women used up the whole sheet of paper for their picture. We did not. We used only about 1/3, in the center. Is this representative of our desire to hide, to make ourself small and almost invisible? Are we trying to hide our multiplexity?
We have to go to the bathroom so many times during the group. Anxiety all afternoon.
At home the shift begins. It is monumental. An opening within.
How do I accept all of this? How do I begin to believe? What happens when I do believe? Will I somehow die? What will happen to the others? I have already agreed to let it go, to not deny. I have promised to listen to the others, to not argue with them, and not deny them. But that’s not the same as accepting and believing.
A dream of my mom. She has another daughter. Her name is Colette (4) and she is a light in my mother’s life.
Colette.
Tir is forward and we are co-present with each other. I am disoriented by her presence. Can hardly function.
The Mute (3) writes things I don’t want to read. It is too difficult to bear. I am sitting on an edge. And the beacon tracks our thoughts.
More of a memory surfaces and the volcano erupts. More details. Black Widow is intensely caught up with it all. She is the hot lava that flows over everything. It feels like she enjoys it too. She scares us. as well, The Observers (1) come out when there is memory. I know their purpose is to cover for us but it seems more chaotic when they are present. There are too many voices then and it is pure confusion. Still we manage to tell Lance and Sarah parts of the memory. We know they can handle it. And it is important for us to tell, to strip these events of their power over us.
In the midst of this memory work we are becoming more dysfunctional. It almost cripples us. Lance takes us out for supper but we can hardly eat. It is so difficult to swallow, like the memory. We have to push the food down our throat but panic becomes more acute with each mouthful. It gets harder to breathe much less talk. I am afraid we will start screaming soon and it won’t matter where we are. We have to go home .... now!
I feel so badly that Lance has to keep taking care of us. Wishing our life didn’t have to affect him like this. Asking so much of him to be here. Patience reminds us that he is not our responsibility and that he can take care of himself. He knows his own limits.
Flash (3) is also scared of our telling, “flashes” his hand signal over and over.
We have our first “client”. The tiny Asian woman wants to work with us. We offer her support for her healing process, just like Sarah does for us. This time we will listen to someone else’s story of pain. We are both excited and scared to do this work. This is obligation and expectation. Can we handle it?
Our rage is close at hand.
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