WooHoo! Back from my second trip to Kauai this year. Pardon the title. I'm really going to write about Fumbles today and not frolics. Frolicking comes next post!
To pick up where I left off in May, my summer and fall have been yummy - busy and wonderful. I've been working my little patutty off in the garden, and delving deep and deeper into my psyche. I felt this would have made boring copy, not to mention offend certain people as I went through my blaming stage. I am still on my journey to make women friends. Most women gravitate toward women! WHY do I have such difficulty? There is a perfectly good reason. I've been turning every key I have found in my inner psyche to uncover what seminal experience could have instilled such prejudice about women in me. Most of the keys have opened vaults with insight goodies inside. I got lucky. A new key fell into my hands. I turned this key on the enchanted Island of Kauai, and, oh-oh... it opened to a very real flashback.
I felt, from no safe distance, the recoil of an animal struck, then pinned down, as someone who was supposed to protect me violated me instead. Every cell in my body recoiled. This wasn't about a man. Violations happen sometimes between little girls and their Dad. This was between a little girl and a woman, or maybe little girls. Maybe it wasn't my Mom. It sure as heck was female. This happened before my little brain could create meaning or memories, so how sexual could it have been? Yet, with that bodily certainty that flashbacks offer, I knew that safe feelings of protection were ripped from me. I was violated by a woman. Not a man. A woman.
"Otherwise, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?". I promise, I'll get to cheerier subjects about my enchanting trip to Kauai and my summer. This is my blog, so bear with me. This flashback was my personal pivot point. Woohoo! My power is in the telling.
So, what triggered my flashback?
A tribal ceremony.
The other women and man really got into it. Empowerment! Play! Giggles!
ARGH! Not me! It's not because I don't like playing with mud and painting bodies. I love that; I'm a gardener and artist. If the man had painted me, I would have relaxed and giggled along with the rest of them. But women were touching and painting me. I was freaking out with my flashback. Feeling like an animal cornered and pinned, marked and painted for slaughter. I didn't stop it, because I gently told myself "That was then, and this is now. There is nothing to be afraid of."
The marks two women put on me, independent of each other, were the symbols you see here.
LOL. The life script gets a rewrite. My mother, or whatever woman violated me, doesn't have the last word now, does she?
WOW! Your mind is opening up to mysterious rememberings. BTW--I wouldn't let ANYONE paint on the bare parts of my body.
ReplyDeleteI have been throwing skepticism aside and opening to all sorts of aid to break through to a new appreciation of life. I was in Kauai (again) to continue work with the woman who led me into such great revelations the first time.
DeleteYou've never been to a make-up counter and had the woman put foundation, blush and eye shadow on? This was just the full body version LOL
Is there anyone who can verify your memory of childhood abuse? Sometimes people search so hard for logical answers that they have flashes of things that happened on TV or in a movie. I had a similar flashback involving being sexual abused as a toddler. Fortunately, my brother caught the guy in the act and the whole thing was in the newspaper files because the guy went to trial and prison so I could read about it 30+ years after the fact. If I hadn't asked around in the family, I'd never have know it it was real or a false memory. Either way something that happen so long ago doesn't have to effect your relationships going forward. Just remember that.
ReplyDeleteHonesty, I don't believe "most women gravitate toward women." I think most women in their 20s through their 50s look at other women as competition to get and keep a man. That changes as women get more confident and trusting n their relationship with men.
I spoke with my sister last night, after posting, and she has had a similar unsettling flashback, though she doesn't know its source. What she does have are clear-as-a-bell memories of repeated sexual abuse from her music teacher. She instinctively knew she couldn't go to our parents for help. Where'd she get that 'knowing'? The music teacher was eventually exposed by some child who could feel safe telling her parents.
DeleteI think the key in your memory not scarring you, was your brother catching the guy in the act and stopping the abuse. Having someone protect you makes all the difference. One experience I had...At age 19, in the big city of Boston, I was attacked, with attempted rape. But because I called out and someone came to my rescue, the guy ran off. I felt safe again, empowered, too. Hence, no scars : -)
I lived without a sheltering sense of safety in my childhood home. There was no one to turn to who would help; though I told outsiders, none came to my aid.
Very sad when children don't feel safe or even know enough to speak up.
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