I do not want to confuse you, although I feel you may feel disoriented from my discourse as it meanders through time in a non- chronological path. At the beginning of a session I once asked my therapist "where should I begin ?" and her response was "Wherever you would like, it makes no difference"
I was not happy with that response and I felt annoyed because I desperately wanted all my memories thoughts and feelings to fit in a neatly packaged list, in proper order, from which I could access at will.
It did not work that way however, instead, the memories and feelings would arise at the most inopportune moments and even worse was that they were so scattered as they would flow through different times and dates.
I got used to it and I began to realize that many memories would appear due to present outside triggers, and that I had no control over how my memories appeared. The only control I did have to some extent was the way I dealt with each and every one.
My blog seems to be faring a similar fate. I begin to write about one subject and then in the interim something comes up, and my focus changes.
This Shabbos I was reading through some old writings of mine and I came across essays that I would like to share due to the powerful feelings they invoked in me as I read.
I felt sad reading the words I had written but a few years ago, and at the same time I felt hopeful and grateful to Hashem that the intensity of my emotions has diminished tremendously, and the feelings no longer hold me captive the way they once did.
I want to finish my account of Sheppard Pratt, and I will, just give me a little time.
I wrote the following on Tuesday October 31st, 2006.
It describes the first encounter with my ex husband before we were married. After this I went to a Rabbi to ask what I should do about this relationship. I was scared and had no one to confide in. The Rabbi asked me one question.; "Did he touch you?"
I responded in the affirmative.
"You need to marry him then", he said.
And I did.
December 1998
The days go on and on, the hours move slowly and the minutes are endless. I am entrenched in a blackness so deep, I know I will never get out.
I am lost.
Part of me has disspaeared.
From the moment he pushed me up against the stone wall and reached under my skirt my being was destroyed.
There is no treturn.
I have sunk into the depths of my own despair.
Nothing matters anymore except to continue plodding forward, putting one foot in front of the other.
My shame knows no bounds.
I cannot look anyone in the eye lest they see for themselves the ugliness embedded deep within my soul.
I trudge home.
In the dark.
One foot in front of the other. That is all I know how to do. I have forgotten how to breathe, how to talk and even how to think. All I can remember is how to move. One step and another. I keep on moving so that the world will not crumble at my feet.
I enter the house where I live with my parents. I am 18 years old and I have just finished seminary.
Yet I have no direction.
No future.
Only a dark past.
I feel sick and my stomach turns.
I cannot look at anyone because I know that they know.
They know that he has pulled up my skirt and touched me, and they know too that I have allowed it.
I am deeply ashamed.
I want to die but I have no idea how to do it.
I crawl into bed. I cover my head with the cool cotton of my blanket.
I need something to happen, but I dont know what.
I lie in bed waiting.
Waiting for what?
I do not know.
Waiting to die?
I dont know anything about being dead.
How does it happen?
I wish I knew the answers
After that my life becomes one dark maze.
He tells me to go to him, and I go.
He tells me to lie on the grass in a park, and I lie.
He touches my skin, and I allow it.
And inside I am dead.
He pushes and pulls, and sticks things into my body and inside I become deader and deader.
Soon I no longer feel the pain of his touch.
Every day I plod along like an old horse.
Come to the park? Yes. And I trudge to the park.
To the half built empty house where he first raped me? Yes. And I follow him back to the shell of a house.
Behind the benches? On the bus? In the car? Yes. Yes. Yes. I go to all those places.
And afterwards I walk home with my head down, suffocating in a syrup of ebony.
He wont stop.
I wonder when he will have had his fill.
And then one day in the dead of the night, he takes me for a tour of his workplace, where he works the night-shift in a nursing home.
I follow slowly behind him when suddenly he pushes me through two giant swing doors.
I follow blindly.
I enter the room and the doors swish softly closed behind me.
I am engulfed in darkness.
As my eyes adjust, I notice that we are standing in a cavernous room filled with tables.
The smell of old food hangs in the air.
Darkness all aroiund.
He stands beside me for a moment and then without warning, I find myself being flung onto one of the tables.
He pushes me onto my back, and yanks my skirt over my head.
I struggle.
I try to scream but no sound comes forth.
He is strong and he succeeds in pulling my underwear around my ankles.
I lie there on the dirty table.
Exposed.
His strong arms holding me down and the smell of rotting cabbage in my nostrils.
All of a sudden we both hear a noise.
In a flash he pulls my skirt back over my body and yanks me off the table.
I scramble to pull up my underwear.
Light floods into the room as he opens the huge doors.
We walk out into the bright harshnes of the corridor.
Once again I am dead.
Each time I become more dead than the last.
Is it possible to keep on dying? I wonder.
We head back to his office. He sits on a chair while I sit on the couch in the corner. We sit and talk as though nothing out of the ordinary has occurred.
The moon shines through the window.
The night folds into itself on and on never ending.
Morning arrives.
The sun rises flaming red and with its appearance I am safe.
The morning staff arrives, and we are free to leave.
We walk out hand in hand into the warm sunshine. We wait together for the bus. On the bus he picks the seat all the way at the rear end.
I sit next to him.
He places his bag on my lap, slips his hand under the bag and into the top of my skirt. His fingers fumble for a moment until he finds the warm wetness hes looking for.
A lone tear falls from my eye.
Tell me G-d,
How many times can one die?
I was not happy with that response and I felt annoyed because I desperately wanted all my memories thoughts and feelings to fit in a neatly packaged list, in proper order, from which I could access at will.
It did not work that way however, instead, the memories and feelings would arise at the most inopportune moments and even worse was that they were so scattered as they would flow through different times and dates.
I got used to it and I began to realize that many memories would appear due to present outside triggers, and that I had no control over how my memories appeared. The only control I did have to some extent was the way I dealt with each and every one.
My blog seems to be faring a similar fate. I begin to write about one subject and then in the interim something comes up, and my focus changes.
This Shabbos I was reading through some old writings of mine and I came across essays that I would like to share due to the powerful feelings they invoked in me as I read.
I felt sad reading the words I had written but a few years ago, and at the same time I felt hopeful and grateful to Hashem that the intensity of my emotions has diminished tremendously, and the feelings no longer hold me captive the way they once did.
I want to finish my account of Sheppard Pratt, and I will, just give me a little time.
I wrote the following on Tuesday October 31st, 2006.
It describes the first encounter with my ex husband before we were married. After this I went to a Rabbi to ask what I should do about this relationship. I was scared and had no one to confide in. The Rabbi asked me one question.; "Did he touch you?"
I responded in the affirmative.
"You need to marry him then", he said.
And I did.
December 1998
The days go on and on, the hours move slowly and the minutes are endless. I am entrenched in a blackness so deep, I know I will never get out.
I am lost.
Part of me has disspaeared.
From the moment he pushed me up against the stone wall and reached under my skirt my being was destroyed.
There is no treturn.
I have sunk into the depths of my own despair.
Nothing matters anymore except to continue plodding forward, putting one foot in front of the other.
My shame knows no bounds.
I cannot look anyone in the eye lest they see for themselves the ugliness embedded deep within my soul.
I trudge home.
In the dark.
One foot in front of the other. That is all I know how to do. I have forgotten how to breathe, how to talk and even how to think. All I can remember is how to move. One step and another. I keep on moving so that the world will not crumble at my feet.
I enter the house where I live with my parents. I am 18 years old and I have just finished seminary.
Yet I have no direction.
No future.
Only a dark past.
I feel sick and my stomach turns.
I cannot look at anyone because I know that they know.
They know that he has pulled up my skirt and touched me, and they know too that I have allowed it.
I am deeply ashamed.
I want to die but I have no idea how to do it.
I crawl into bed. I cover my head with the cool cotton of my blanket.
I need something to happen, but I dont know what.
I lie in bed waiting.
Waiting for what?
I do not know.
Waiting to die?
I dont know anything about being dead.
How does it happen?
I wish I knew the answers
After that my life becomes one dark maze.
He tells me to go to him, and I go.
He tells me to lie on the grass in a park, and I lie.
He touches my skin, and I allow it.
And inside I am dead.
He pushes and pulls, and sticks things into my body and inside I become deader and deader.
Soon I no longer feel the pain of his touch.
Every day I plod along like an old horse.
Come to the park? Yes. And I trudge to the park.
To the half built empty house where he first raped me? Yes. And I follow him back to the shell of a house.
Behind the benches? On the bus? In the car? Yes. Yes. Yes. I go to all those places.
And afterwards I walk home with my head down, suffocating in a syrup of ebony.
He wont stop.
I wonder when he will have had his fill.
And then one day in the dead of the night, he takes me for a tour of his workplace, where he works the night-shift in a nursing home.
I follow slowly behind him when suddenly he pushes me through two giant swing doors.
I follow blindly.
I enter the room and the doors swish softly closed behind me.
I am engulfed in darkness.
As my eyes adjust, I notice that we are standing in a cavernous room filled with tables.
The smell of old food hangs in the air.
Darkness all aroiund.
He stands beside me for a moment and then without warning, I find myself being flung onto one of the tables.
He pushes me onto my back, and yanks my skirt over my head.
I struggle.
I try to scream but no sound comes forth.
He is strong and he succeeds in pulling my underwear around my ankles.
I lie there on the dirty table.
Exposed.
His strong arms holding me down and the smell of rotting cabbage in my nostrils.
All of a sudden we both hear a noise.
In a flash he pulls my skirt back over my body and yanks me off the table.
I scramble to pull up my underwear.
Light floods into the room as he opens the huge doors.
We walk out into the bright harshnes of the corridor.
Once again I am dead.
Each time I become more dead than the last.
Is it possible to keep on dying? I wonder.
We head back to his office. He sits on a chair while I sit on the couch in the corner. We sit and talk as though nothing out of the ordinary has occurred.
The moon shines through the window.
The night folds into itself on and on never ending.
Morning arrives.
The sun rises flaming red and with its appearance I am safe.
The morning staff arrives, and we are free to leave.
We walk out hand in hand into the warm sunshine. We wait together for the bus. On the bus he picks the seat all the way at the rear end.
I sit next to him.
He places his bag on my lap, slips his hand under the bag and into the top of my skirt. His fingers fumble for a moment until he finds the warm wetness hes looking for.
A lone tear falls from my eye.
Tell me G-d,
How many times can one die?
RSS Feed