153. Forgiveness (1996)

"Angela's Secrets"

Angela anchored in her secrets

Locks our mouth

Drawers shut tight

But she leaves us a map

to find them

Secrets connected to all of us

(Warning: some things might be triggering)

MEA (8) have now become part of The Weavers. This is progress for sure.

These are the only words that want to be spoken here. The gap in time the jump but not aware until later that the time went missing. Shell’s (1, 2) time gone and she doesn’t even know. She’s been thinking all this time that it’s not true. Now she has been rudely awakened.

In the BFL group tonight – Donna says let’s talk about the anger we wrote down about for homework. Then here I am crying, just all of a sudden and Donna saying do I want to go next. I shake my head no. Not till break time Donna says that Shell and one other woman in the group still to talk. Do we want to do it before or after. And stupid me-Shell sitting there going – well what about these other 2 women who haven’t spoken yet. But they have spoken and somehow I missed it all. I don’t understand. Big pieces missing. How did I get to the crying? It came out of me, ejected, spurted out and suddenly I feel as if I had been hit. “my god this is real! This isn’t a game! I don’t understand why I’m crying but I know I’m freaking out. As if the truth was sinking in on me. Plunk! And into place. Shock.

Even now trying to write this I am confused. I can’t get it straight what happened. We were going to talk about the hopes and fears list in the group. We mentioned 1 thing we didn’t think had been talked about. Someone said it was in the material we got ... oh. I’m missing more and more.

Suddenly the words on the page are garbled. I can’t understand them. I can’t speak. My mouth has slammed shut and the mind has put away the mechanisms that enable me to understand what is being read, or said. It’s hard to sit and listen to people in the group. Someone Inside is fidgeting and so uncomfortable. I want to go home now! No! I want to scream now!!

Warning: this might be triggering

Easter. In the bath, looking down at my body it looks foreign, corpse-like, only a cover for my soul. It feels alien and I want to get out of it. It is as if a prison, a cage around me. Then another image comes and a sensation of broken bones, bones in the wrong places, bones jutting out in the wrong directions. I don’t think these are my bones though. Only an empathic sort of remembering. Of witnessing. But the pain and the creepiness of it. Then I see my wrists, tied, a memory passing over quickly like a dark cloud pushed by the wind. Someone freezes the body in place, and it becomes rigid, back and neck arched. Who is this that remembers this?

But nothing clear. Only hazy.

Angéla (5) upset. Expects Lyn’s help right now. She does not like the stains on her hands and is afraid of leaving handprints and fingerprints everywhere, evidence of her guilt.

MEA stays quiet. Takes the deed and protects the children.

Flash (3) keeps signalling his warning sign. With his fingers. Pay attention you guys!

I think many times survivors think their body betrayed them during the abuse. But that is not true is it. it is an understandable feeling and thought but our body was the thing betrayed. Even so it tells us now what is needed. Illness, pain, rashes, welts, nausea, shakiness, spasms, fatigue, shallow breathing, bruises, cuts all tell us we are hurting. Our body sends its messages to us. It says please take care of me. No one did before. Please do so now.

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Harder and harder. And even more pain. The group. This week’s exercise is indeed difficult but not just for us Webers, for the other women in the group too. The exercise – to write on little pieces of paper “I’d be ashamed if you knew...”. as many little pieces as we want. Each paper with one item only. Then we pass around a box with the little papers folded. Each one of us to pick one to read to the group. As each is read we shut down more and more, withdraw inward and MEA moves outward to protect us. It is hard for me to stay present but I try. Donna, the facilitator, notices everyone in the group is withdrawing, trying not to connect to each other’s pain. Patience (1) helps us. She comes out so that we can look at the other women, see them, feel their pain too. After this exercise Donna has each of us turn to the next person and say something they appreciate about them and also acknowledge the hard work they have done here tonight. The woman next to us tells us we are very giving to others. This surprises me. I feel as if we have been so very selfish in this group, and very focused on ourself and not much on the other women. Maybe some of us have been more giving. Maybe Patience and Old Self (2), Empath (1), Rebecca (1). These are ones who are the least selfish of us, the most giving, the most compassionate. Thank goodness we have them.

Donna makes a comment about getting the “sheets” to someone in the group, referring to sheets of paper. But Cinderella (4) hears something else. Sheets on a bed. One of the things she had to clean up after abuse. And that made someone else Inside awfully angry.

Some of the anger is yours Shell. Your Miss Angry (1). You hear things and don’t like hearing them.

Oh. I didn’t realize I was angry but now that someone has written it here it’s true. I never know where our feelings are coming from. I can’t tell if they are mine or belong to others Inside.

After the exercise I don’t feel anything. Or maybe I simply feel numb. Shut down. Emotionless. I would like to cry but someone won’t let us. The tears are stuck inside our throat. It hurts my heart.

MOVE UP AND INTO THE LIGHT.

Old Self (2) takes Angéla out to the ocean (Inside) and washes the stains upon her hands away. Gone with the waves. Purged and cleansed. Angéla wraps her arms around Old Self, asks her “it wasn’t my fault was it? I did the right thing creating those three didn’t I?” She means MEA. Yes, Old Self, says. You did the right thing and the abuse was not your fault. You helped us survive.

There is forgiveness within here now. We forgive those three, MEA, for their acts, for their loyalty, for their need of specialness and power, for screwing my mind up royally, and Tir’s (1) .

Then an integration of some sort. MEA inside Angéla. A blending of the four.  Angéla sits on Old Self’s lap, now sitting by a fire with the rest of us around in a circle. This is the Release, Old Self says.