In the Beginning: Part 3 - Getting Through It

(The following is a continuation from "In the Beginning: Part 2 - Revelations)

Getting through it has been no easy task. In fact, although I'm made considerable progress, I can't say I'm done - just that I'm farther along the path.

It started out with hatred. Without any proof, I had an intense hatred toward my grandfather and an almost worse hatred toward my grandmother. It's like I held her responsible for enabling my grandfather's alcoholic behavior. When he was sober, she harped at him about his drinking. But when he got drunk, she babied him, nursing him until he was sober. What could you expect? To me it seems like the drunken state got him more sympathy.

Add that to the fact that my grandmother was extremely manipulative and I guess I can understand my feelings. But what I couldn't understand is why I had such feelings against my grandparents when all my cousins adored them. To say the least, it just made me feel more broken - and obviously wrong.

So what changed to help me get through it? The one thing I've learned is that hating only hurts one person: me. By nature, I am a person that can't hold a grudge. I know - doesn't sound much like an incest survivor. But think about it. Usually we blame ourselves for everything - not anyone else, so it makes a perverse kind of sense. But mainly it is because I really believe in God as our Heavenly Father and in all humanity as my brothers and sisters. And no matter what else has happened in my life, I have been blessed with a mother and father and brother and sisters that love and support me: not knowing the private hell I was going through, and more recently, discovering the depth of my darkness. Still they love me and accept me and stand by me in my struggle. So holding a grudge doesn't come to me naturally. Well, that and the fact my memory is SO bad, I can't remember to hold a grudge.

But the one grudge I held was against my grandparents. I've often said that I believe in the death penalty for child molesters. I didn't exempt my grandfather from that statement. They murder the spirits of children - they deserve as harsh a penalty as someone who kills the body.

It has only been in the last year that my healing has begun. And it started with the realization that these grandparents raised my father and my uncles and my aunt. That was a startling blow to me. You have to understand, although my father is gone now, a victim of cancer, he was one of the most gentle, loving men I have ever known. I may never be able to have a normal relationship, but it will not have been because of his example. He and my mother were lovers throughout their lives. He died 31 years before my mother and, though she lived a happy life and took joy in her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, she missed my father for all those years. And when we lost her recently, our sadness was countered by the joy of knowing that she was reunited with my father, who loved her so much.

Daddy believed in helping people. He was often awakened in the middle of the night to help someone with a broken washing machine, to give a blessing to a quadriplegic, to care for the sick. And he never complained. Don't get me wrong. Sometimes as a child, I felt he expected too much from me, like going to school every day, even when I didn't feel like it. (Mean old dad!) But when a shattered glass accidentally cut a vein in my hand, it was my dad who rode with me in the ambulance, telling me jokes to keep me from going into shock and sat with me as they sewed up my hand.

And my alcoholic grandfather and manipulative grandmother were responsible for raising that man. And my uncles and aunt were like my dad. Suddenly I had to admit that there was something good within my grandparents - something for which I owed them a great debt - something that actually brought tears to my eyes. And I thought about my father, who had died so many years before, and how sad he would be if my grandfather were punished eternally for something I'm still not even sure happened.

That realization shattered me. Even more, I realized that I didn't want my grandfather to suffer. That one shocked me. Perhaps through the addiction recovery program that I was attending, I was beginning to realize the fight my grandfather had suffered. Perhaps I was finally, after half a century, ready to forgive.

I think that was what my therapists over the years had been trying to prepare me for: not the horror of finally remembering, but the shock of finally forgiving.

(Continued in "In the Beginning: Part 4 - Addiction Recovery Program")

In the Beginning: Part 2 - Revelations

(The following is a continuation from "In The Beginning: Part 1")

Although the 12-Step Program was written for alcoholics and drug addicts, my church has adapted it for use with other addictions, for which I am eternally grateful. Alcohol and drugs aren't the only things that can destroy lives.

Honesty is the first step in the 12-step program. But before you can admit you are powerless, you have to recognize you have a problem. Ah - that's where a lot of people have problems. In my case, I knew I had a problem - I just thought it was insanity.

I was away at school when all hell broke loose. I ended up going in for counseling, a little afraid the counselor would have me committed. Luckily she didn't think I was quite a crazy as I did. Foolish woman!

I still don't know the truth of what came out of the counseling, and therapists (good therapists) that I've had since have convinced me that I don't need to know. I just have to deal with the consequences.

Suffice it to say, I display the symptoms of an incest victim. I'm terrified of the concept of sex, even intimacy. The boyfriends I've had in the past have slowly given up even trying to hold my hand. Friendships I could maintain, but trust was another matter all together. But while sex frightens and even repulses me, pornography of a painful nature seduces me. Bondage and torture pull me toward them as long as actual sex is not involved - just pain. And acting on those impulses to cause myself pain became a terrible secret that I hid from the world.

I also have almost no memory of my childhood, with only tiny glimpses - flashes really. It used to be my biggest frustration. People would walk up to me and talk to me like we were good friends - only I had no idea who they were and didn't share the memories they were discussing. I'd jump into my "actor" role, nodding my head, trying to pretend like we were actually in the same universe. We'd part with them thinking we'd relived fun times and me frustrated and perplexed by another trip to the Twilight Zone.

The only actual memories that have come back have to do with a grandfather. One was a strong sense of smell: alcohol and tobacco. He was an alcoholic. I understand now. When he was drunk, he did things - tried to molest my sister, tried to molest my mother, had an affair with his sister-in-law - things he would never try when he was sober. I hate alcohol.

The other memory was so upsetting and visceral that it made me physically sick. I don't want any more memories.

Finally, I've come to understand and believe that my memory problems are a gentle gift from my Heavenly Father. (For those of you in AA - my higher power.) I now believe He has taken those memories that I can't deal with and wrapped them in velvet darkness and hidden them away for my protection. I don't need them anymore. What I need is to get over them and get on with my life.

So my journal began many years ago with the first step of honesty - accepting that something happened, something that irrevocably changed me. But it has taken many years for me to get past that realization - to accept this one truth. It isn't in any handbook but it is become my focus in life.

It happened. Bad things happen all the time. It's done and can't be undone. It no longer matters. What matters now is what I choose to do now. Do I choose to pretend that what I am is all someone else's fault? Or do I accept responsibility for my life and make myself into the person I want to be.

I know, that doesn't sound like I'm listening to the first step: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable;" or my church's version of the step: "Admit that you, of yourself, are powerless to overcome your addictions and that your life has become unmanageable."

I guess it is my version, which I think is the same thing: I admit that of myself, without the help of God, I am powerless to take responsibility for my life and overcome my addictions. My life has become unmanageable, but with God nothing is impossible.

(Continued in "In the Beginning: Part 3 - Getting Through it")

In the Beginning: Part 1

I'm a very good actress. In ancient Greece, the term for an actor was hypokrites, the root for our word hypocrite. Addicts are good at that. And as I said, I am a very good actress. For years, everyone thought I was very in charge of my life - they even thought I was happy. To be honest: I was such a good actress, I even fooled myself a lot of the time.

The problem was the part of the time I couldn't fool myself. During that time, I lived in a black hole of absolute despair that I kept carefully hidden from the rest of the world - along with my addiction. And the awful part was: I couldn't understand why I was so broken, why I was... well... crazy. All I knew was that during those times, I felt like a razor blade was dissecting my heart from the inside. But when you are an actress, you can't let anyone know. So I didn't.

My addiction and I entered what I called my Spockonian period. If I didn't feel emotion, then I couldn't hurt. In fact, the only time I felt any emotion was when I was deep in my addiction. And then I felt guilt and shame, but at least I felt something, I guess.

Usually, when we self-medicate, we are trying to kill the pain. I guess I was trying to kill an emotional pain I hadn't discovered yet. But with my addiction, I was trying to do just the opposite: I was trying to create pain. My addiction started at a ridiculously young age and as I grew older, I tried more creative ways to hurt myself - not harm myself - there is a difference. But my desire for pain absolutely convinced me that there was something very wrong deep inside. All I knew was that, after I had given in, I hated myself with a passion - the limit of the emotion I would allow myself.

Some people would say this was just a choice, but they would be wrong. There was an agony deep in my soul and something dark that I felt a need to punish. And the guilt I felt caused a continual grief that eventually drove me into depression so deep that I finally had to seek help.

Most frustrating was that I had tried over and over and over to stop the behavior and I had won the victory over and over only to have my monster rear its head a year or two later, leaving me bleeding my soul out from my own betrayal and my weakness.

Still, I had no clue as to why I was so broken, why I was so weak. And I certainly didn't consider myself an addict! Depressed yes, addicted no.

So I began a new part of my life.

I started therapy and, for the first time, gained some insight into my downward spiraling life. It was not something I wanted to face, not something that can ever be proved, nor anything now that has to be proved. But it helped me to understand why my life had become a living hell, even though most people around me still thought I was the happy person they saw.

(Continued in "In the Beginning: Part 2 - Revelations)