Today as Dr. Dragonfly and I started talking, she asked me, as always, if I had given any thought to what we had talked about the week before. I actually had. Self (my little mouse) had noticed a change in his environment and decided to wander out of his little safety zone to check things out for himself. He went to the gaping chasm where resentment, rage and anger were and found that they had, for the moment, gone away. He still felt them, but they were not there. They had been replaced by pity, disgust and disgrace (desgracia-better meaning in Spanish). He knew the other three would eventually return, but he was trying to figure out why these three had come to take their places, even for a little while.
As best as he could figure, it was a direct reaction to his father personally. It was a direct reaction to how pitiful and disgusting of a man you would have to be to prove your masculinity or your manhood/control by abusing a child or a woman who were unable to defend themselves. The feeling of disgrace and disdain he must see coming from us every time he abuses us must fuel his rage. His anger, hatred, control, rage-whatever it is, must always communicated to me that you are not wanted. You were never wanted. I obviously don’t understand what’s happening, but I’m sure my expressions gave my emotions away. Disgraceful, disgusting, pitiful.
I’m sure I showed them to my mom too when she would try to console me. On one hand, in some corner of my young mind, I knew she was being abused too. I also knew she was supposed to protect me from this. She either didn’t or couldn’t or a combination of both. Either way, it too communicated the ‘you’re not wanted’ and ‘you’re not worth anything’ just as effectively. I wasn’t to be protected. I was to be blamed for everything; everything I did and everything my brother did. The only protectors I had were my grandparents. They were the only ones who could make my dad leave me alone and shame my mom for not protecting me.
In the session, we went back to one of the many beat down session from my 5-6 year old self. We had talked about an escape route, but this time, there was none. She asked what would normally happen when I made him wait too long. I told her he’d come into the closet, take all of the toys out of the little chest they were in, where I was hiding, pull me out, pull my pants down and beat my ass with either a belt or those hot wheels race tracks. She asked how my body felt. It felt as if it were straining to get away. It was trying to squirm away, push up and down away, just trying to get away. (Take a moment and notice that feeling-{helplessness/powerlessness}) What ultimately happened? She asked. Finally, I just went numb. I was tired and exhausted and I stopped fighting. I couldn’t take it anymore. And? she pressed. He started beating me harder bc I wasn’t fighting back. Eventually, he stopped, I supposed bc it wasn’t as much fun for him bc I wasn’t squirming around anymore. I knew it would happen again, so why bother. It always happened again. What did you do afterwards? she asked. I would cry myself to sleep, run downstairs and outside to hide and play for hours, hide in the big bathroom closet all the way at the back on the second shelf where he couldn’t get to me. Things like that just to stay out of his way. It didn’t really matter what I did. I could blow my nose too loudly and he’d beat the shit out of me. I was always a good kid and didn’t cause any trouble, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t understand. Everything was my fault. It was a horrible existence. You knew it was coming, you just didn’t know when or how bad it was going to be the next time.
The bright spot was letting the body’s memory of the event go. In this ‘escape’ scenario, as he was beating me, my 5 year old self got up enough energy to become some sort of superhuman child and scream ‘get the fuck off of me!!!’ and with a huge monumental push, I sent him flying off of me, through the wall and window of my room, shooting out over the lawn and into the muddy and cow poo laden pasture (it had rained the night before). Not only was he out there, the force had knocked his shoes and socks off and the crazy, and I do mean crazy, bull we had at the time was in the pasture with him. He couldn’t get out and the bull just ran him around the pasture goring him at will as I watched in amusement from the hole in my wall, completely satisfied by the consequence.
cazandoconejos 