Us and "Graham"
(WARNING: some descriptions of abuse)
There are jagged edges and raw nerve ends dangling out here and picking up everything. It hurts to think certain thoughts, the ones that are connected to memories. Inside squeezing tight and trying to make at least one of us cry it out, release what hurts somehow. Otherwise it stays there, festering away, until gangrene sets in. Infected and poisoned is what we are. Black poison ejected from the Beast Without, our stepfather and injected into us, The Beast Within.
I know I am in here somewhere but it’s very crowded tonight. My brain is beginning to short circuit with so many of us forward. Thoughts go unfinished and drift away, unreachable, irretrievable, lost. Yet they leave a residue behind. Sludge.
I can’t stay present with this any longer so I drift away into some kind of rest.
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On the bus, The Little Ones come out to see where we are travelling to. They’re not really supposed to be out but what the hell. No one on the bus knows and they are all strangers to us anyway so who cares what we do. My brain is still short circuiting. I see two people carrying someone on a stretcher but look again and see they are simply carrying grocery bags. We are sandwiched between people so we pull our book in closer, create a bubble around us, using our tunnel vision to see only the words on the page. We send up shields all around us to keep everyone out. Why are we so afraid of their touch?
I wish we could curl up on Sarah’s floor like we used to, have her comfort us. Please hold me, I feel so little and scared.
WARNING: Memory (please skip if you might get triggered)
In a session with Lyn. A young man, lying on his side, naked, beckoning us to lie with him. Someone pushes us from behind. Don’t want to. A big piece of cold steel behind our knees pushing upwards and things pushed inside us. The hurt is an aching so deep so far inside of us.
Shana (4) tells Lyn she wants to go home. Lyn offers a hug. Shana gets upset because Lyn is not hugging her tight enough, tells her she always does that, doesn’t hug us hard enough. Shana thinks that a tighter hug will make the memories go away.
So much crying. Coming from Una (4), the babies (4) and Shana.
Lance is away for 4 days. Scared we won’t make it through without him.
Othel (1) wonders about thoughts that hurt. We hear the sounds of the world outside our window. They are familiar. Cars, birds, children, lawnmowers. Those sounds were there during the abuse too. Maybe these sounds now remind us and connect to what happened then. Quite possible.
Evil Eye/I (4) is a black hole and an opening into something else, to The Truths (4). Through the Hole in the Fence we get to the Truths. That is what Una calls them. The babies. I’m not sure I understand, at least not intellectually, logically. But my gut tells me what it is. From there I can understand.
Someone says “babies” and spells it backwards. “SeibaBs”. Why backward, I don’t know. Patience (1) says – in time.
Othel pushes to keep us immersed in our work at the college. He wants to bury us in it so that it becomes a dark curtain drawn against the sun. By the end of the day I can barely see straight. I think Othel is pushing too hard.
We cry hard at the thought, at the question, why didn’t our mother see what was happening? How could she not see? Maybe she did, and did nothing, kept silent. Even so, believe it or not, we don’t blame her yet we are so angry at her. Both can exist. We know that now. Maybe she learned how not to see. Maybe she was dissociative like us. And maybe she wasn’t really abused as a child, but we think she was at least badgered by an alcoholic stepfather. She told us about his drinking one time. But then another time she said he was so good to her. Where have I heard this before? The illusion of a loving stepfather. We will never know what happened to her. Our desire to know is gone now. We will not ask her anymore.
Our mother does not know who we are. She has no idea. We have hidden ourself from her for a very long time. Maybe since she married our stepfather. We were 7 years old. It may have started then.
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Work is becoming stressful for us. Too many deadlines. We don’t do stress very well. It makes us leak strange thoughts and memories. We go to the bathroom often, to cry. One time Othel says something funny while we are in the bathroom, and it gets us laughing really hard. We switch back and forth between crying and laughing. Hysterical. Everything right on the surface making us so shaky, vulnerable and fragile.
A dream. We are singing a strange song called “Body Talks”. We sing it while walking around the house on James Street. We are looking at every detail of the house hoping to remember what happened there. Meanwhile our mom is talking to the landlady, Olive, inside the house.
Our use of “we” grows stronger as the barriers between us keep tumbling down. A sense of togetherness is growing. Strength in numbers, yes. We band together to fight our demons and dragons. An army.
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We are in labour and our memories push to be born. We cannot stop them from coming out. It’s as if they are a separate entity from all of us. Memories that belong to the SeibaBs.
Good Friday. A drawing in our journal of three crosses upside down. A rejection of Christianity? A spit in the face of those who believe? Only Letty (2) is Christian. The rest of us are not but we try to be respectful to those who are. The perpetrators were not though. They were disrespectful and mocking. Our nursery school teacher was also our Sunday school teacher. Talk about hypocrisy. I don’t know but, to me, that is what evil really is. It screws up a child’s mind. What is she supposed to believe? Confusion is their torture.
It seems clear right now who we focus on. Una and her brood, No Self (4), Shana, the SeibaBs, Little Ruby (4) and Evil Eye/I. They are the ones in the limelight.
Easter weekend and we get sick. This has happened before at this time of year. Our body trying to tell us, showing us the injuries. “Body talks”.
Babies. And a memory, a flick, a tiny piece. Just enough to hurt. One of Una’s Brood (4) tells Lyn we were forced to watch.
Annie Charlie (1) is upset and crying. She goes to Graham and asks him for something to eat. He makes her a sandwich and she sits down to eat it. Every so often, while eating, she bursts into tears again. At times it feels like there is more than just her crying. Others of the Little Ones. Graham holds Annie Charlie and promises he won’t let anything bad happen to her again, that he will protect her. My poor son. Having to deal with all of this. Will he be okay in the end or will there be collateral damage?
Una saved Tir’s (1) life more than anyone else of us Inside. She created so many to help. And she endured many assaults on her body.
This time it is Othel’s and Katy Ann’s (2). A memory of his body pressed down on us, smothering.
We get sick again. This time a flu. Three days in bed so far and unable to go to work again. Our illness feels a barrier between the past and the present. We are disconnected from “now” and totally immersed in “then”. Swallowed up in a fog to be lost forever.
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And then .... a respite. A sense of opening and creative ideas pouring out. The want, the need to follow through – to perform, write, dance. Those wings held back quiver with excitement, strain to open. Someday we might just fly.
The picture is called “Spirit Emerging, Spirit Rising. It is Una that rises from the flower while Empath (1) hovers over her, arms open to the universe, welcoming, receiving inspiration. Us growing. Una has always been creative and these urges are felt to be coming from deep within her. She is mother in so many ways.
I can see how all of this writing reflects our internal world. A mirroring of our restless thinking, switching, constant moving from one thing, one mind, to another. And all of it exists at the same time. It is not one then another. Othel says it is not really restlessness but rather an agitation. Thoughts we can’t hang onto. A railways car that keeps jumping from one track to another. I feel like I have to apologize for this to someone. Excuse us for being all over the map. Excuse us for focusing so intensely on our internal world. Sorry for missing the scenery out here in the Outside world.
May 29, 1995: Once Caer returned to work in early October we met on a weekly basis and tended to focus more on day to day issues in her life. She seemed to cope at work by taking breaks when she was upset. By the end of November she was consistently talking about feeling “overwhelmed”. She also began to episodically feel physically unwell, such as flues and colds, causing her to miss time at work. More memories began to surface and Caer was finding it difficult to balance work, memories surfacing, therapy and her creative outlets. She fluctuated markedly and unpredictably from day to day which was hard for her and was affecting her work performance.
We began to meet twice weekly again in February. The situation worsened such that she was missing more time at work due to illness. There was an episode of superficial wrist slashing and she had been suicidal. I recommended that she take a leave from work. Since taking the leave she has recovered physically. She is less depressed and more hopeful about her future but continues to despair that her mood is so variable. It is likely that she will not return to work.
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