A few weeks after I finished over 800 handwritten pages of childhood memory, my first comprehension of how my abused childhood has influenced me, I finally was able to feel. When I say understand I mean finally connected I found words for what I feel. For over 43 years I reacted instinctively without knowing why. My action and reaction was mechanically.
Through my writing I removed the blockage that had shutdown my brain at the time of abuse, and froze the memory in time and space. The moment I became conscious I observed how my brain self generated sleeked healing after years of repressing pain.
My husband out of the house most often the day, he was still working for state of California, I could divide my time between writing and remembering. Slowly and not aware of I retrieved from daily activities. First I was not aware that I’ve been disinterested in my everyday life.
About three months later my handwritten pages were typed and revised them again shortened chapters and take out material I found not very enlightened at the moment. Finally, in 1993, single scenes of each memory were lined up and the first draft of my manuscript was ready. A newly found friend help me with the translation from German to English.
Every time I worked on the manuscript the scenes repeated like in a movie, and me playing the key part. When alone I felt hopeless, I struggled with the pain, and start sleeping sometimes for hours throughout the day. I had to switch quickly when my present life had a need on me, after all I was newly merit.
Being trained in childhood to perform, act normal, fulfill my duties, on a daily base I ignored the symptoms and neglected the longing for peace and quiet. As the childhood ingrained pattern commanded me, I continued with what my daily chores and ignored the overwhelming feeling to be left alone. I began to visualize the house with a ten foot wall around the property far outside away from people and noise.
When the pain became unbearable throughout the day I locked all doors and retrieved in my bed. I had no problem falling asleep although I was woken up shortly after by my own screaming. This was beginning of vivid nightmares related to my childhood which continued often in a weakening stage.
It was a Friday evening when my husband came home from work and shortly after dinner left again for choir rehearsal when I felt for the first time the enormous power my brain had over my body. I only remember from this time on that when Alex, my husband, left at 6:00 PM I stood in the kitchen behind the counter. He told me later that I was still standing at the same place when he returned at eleven PM . Concerned he brought me upstairs to the bedroom.
My brain, like a dam, had released emotions poisoned by early trauma. Thoughts and emotion flow joined like water into the finally opened channels and the vital energy like water nourished the emotionless dessert in my brain. Now, the progressive energy awakens more and different areas of thinking and feeling and in a vital movement my brain connected the loose ends. The right and the left hemisphere finally connected. For some reason I know that was a self healing process, although the memory was overwhelming and the related pain of abuse seams unbearable, but it was not.
My already trauma overloaded brain had shut down, but not to die. Instead this incredible organ regenerate, defragmented und defrosted the layers of years old unconnected feelings and pain. I saw in lively pictures how loose ends of neurons searching and found finally their matching plug-in and came alive. With every connection they made automatically another gate opened to new channels with many more desolate areas of lifeless were brain cells withering like plants in the desert.
The feeling of becoming whole came like a message and the wish that it will not stop until my mental desert was blooming again, like I know it was before the abuse destroyed it.
In this cosmic brain movement of recovering I’ve found validation for original feelings, past and present reality, and saw the origin of the wounds and how they were inflicted by abuse. I felt the fear of terror, the pain of helplessness, while I realized it is a part of a whole picture, a whole person,- me.
I don’t remember anything about what has happen on this weekend. All I know Monday I found myself sitting at the psychologists office hearing my husband telling the therapist that I would not like to eat nor like to leave the bed. When I asked her, my husband said, if she would like to get up my answer was, “let me be, let me die here.” I understood his concern but I was very upset that he had interrupted a very important healing process that was going on in my brain on over the weekend. Now weaken, feeling mentally and physically over powered by the two people sitting in the same room. Defenseless I accepted their solutions to see right away a psychiatrist for my own good and protection. I didn’t need this kind of help, I didn’t won’t their interpretation of healing, but I was not asked. It was better for me to become NORMAL again, so I was told, otherwise I would hurt myself. What an irony I thought. It was not me who is hurting my self, it was years of childhood abuse who damaged my life and now my healing is prevented by antidepressant. Remembering the psychologist words, “I would feel saver if she would take this medication,” as he told my husband ignoring my presents, as if I was not competent. Yes he had done his duty, saved his position and released himself from further responsibility by drugging me, instead of helping me healing. This was the year another part of my life began this time in emotional numbness inflicted by antidepressants and violently interrupted the self healing process in my brain. I decided in 1999 to feel again and get of the poison medication that altered my life in another way.
Frequent active dreams have replaced now the intense experience of this recovery and healing. I never again had such close encounter and inside of a phenomenal. What would have happened if the healing process would have not been interrupted, -we don’t know. Sure the possibility of a beginning schizophrenia was given at the time. Nevertheless was it not my life and my desission how I live it. Which power authorizes another human being to influence or dictate how I must continue a live?
What is the perception of normal? How and why can Society regulate how a human must act, life, think and feel. Was it the regulation that empowering the medical profession and allows them to feel above human race, powerful and superior enough to admit medication with out regarding the individual’s needs and wish?
Was it not the little knowledge we possess that limits us and our understanding how healing could take place if we allow it to happen, instead of condition humans into our limitation? Is it not a deep fear of failure, that we interrupt a healing process we know very little of? Was it not the illness in reality this psychologist has saved instead of me, and hindered my recovery from a traumatized past?