Fourth Grade (continued)

That was not to be my last brush with dirty old men who like to touch little girls. It was a rough journey through the next years, including a couple of decades keeping my psychopathic step-father at bay. That was stressful.

I don’t really have any wonderful imagery or tales today, but didn’t want to leave you with the impression that everything was swell …that being molested is something a child gets over just like that. I can’t even imagine how others–men and women–survive much, much worse at the hands of uncles and fathers and brothers and sisters and step-fathers and cousins and yes, even mothers. I’ve known three women who were victims of maternal/sororal incest and two men who can’t even admit yet how deeply their mother damaged them.

At the time I didn’t know where healthy boundaries were, didn’t know keeping my mother’s boyfriends’ hands off my body wasn’t solely my cross to bear. It added a lot of stress and self-esteem crushing toxic shit to my already pretty f-d up childhood.

But it was years before I could come to terms with it all, grapple with my feelings about it. I eventually found my indignation. I found my healthy anger. To this day I can’t smell his nasty cheap aftershave without wanting to vomit. Even after all the journaling and hours with talented, skilled counsellors, I was still having flashbacks until 10 years ago… flashbacks to the date rapes and sick relationships that contaminated my teen years and early adulthood.

After the promiscuous years, I couldn’t let a man touch me, not even one I loved dearly. Oh, yes, I have issues. For seven years I was married to an imprisoned man who couldn’t share my bed. Coincidence? Of course not. Did I realize it at the time? No.

More therapy. More sick relationships. Marriage to a man who can’t move anything below his collar bone. Coincidence? Of course not.

There are the healthy boundaries to learn to set down around myself. There’s the self-esteem to cultivate. There’s learning not to sexualize everything all the time with everyone. Whew. Recovering from toxic bullshit is years of frikking hard work. Journal, journal, journal. Learn to extinguish an oncoming panic attack by reciting affirmations while thumping your clavicle. Oh, the karate chop! That’s a useful one. There’s active imagination, role playing. Writing letters you’ll never mail. Painting mandalas. Prayer! Crying and screaming and beating pillows with fury in the sleepless wee hours of the morning, barely able to breathe for all the snot.

It’s been an amazing journey. Along the way I’ve met and befriended a persona who came along to save me from those men, the many men I let treat me like I somehow expected to be treated on such deeply rooted levels of my damaged psyche. I used to call one particular coping mechanism “S” for Seductress. I ended up with HUGE control issues when all was said and done. Perfectionism. OCD.

What a tangle! But the nice thing about Jungian work, which I discovered in my 41st year, is that you don’t have to know what caused this and what caused that. Was it being abandoned at age 5 by my dying father? Was it being molested? Was it having no STRONG woman role model? Was it inheriting my mother’s negative animus? Martyr complex? Was I born shy and easily battered down? Would I have had serotonin imbalance related problems anyway, even with a perfect childhood? Does it all run in my family? It doesn’t matter!

Jungian work has turned my psychic funhouse on its head. For this stuff to work, you don’t have to figure out the causes and effects. You don’t have to map out a healing path. You don’t need a goal or a plan, really. Your psyche already knows the direction of the light, like a flower on a windowsill. Turn it, it will reach back for the light. Block it, it will grow twisted trying to go around. All you have to do is learn the language of your dreams. Then listen to what you hear. Then follow the wisdom and guidance that arises from within.

Nowadays, three years past my fortieth birthday and big turning point, I am able to live every day with so much joy, awareness and humour. Most of the time I remember not to take myself or life too seriously. I can laugh at myself and make it easy for those around me to laugh at me, too.

I leave you now with a picture I call OCD repair kit:
Item one: a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor
Item two: a level for straightening pictures in doctor’s offices and in your living room when you’re in the kitchen making our tea (shhhhhh)
Item three: a red sharpie for correcting bad grammar and misspellings on public signage

In parting, just remember what Stuart Smalley always said: You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you!