"Bring on the Evidence of My Life"

What A Day, a song by Greg Laswell, sung for a Grey's Anatomy episode, are the lyrics to my day. The rest of my yuck memory surfaced during my therapy session. I'm grateful that my mind can be out of that level of distress by surgery next week. The answer is always something humane people cannot possibly imagine. I can't imagine having survived what I remember from many memories. Today was particularly gruesome. Sometimes I wish I hadn't survived to remember them.

There was a time having a memory like this would have disabled me for weeks. I'm now at a point where I recognize when a memory is coming, do what I can on my own, recognize what needs to happen when I can hear reassuring words from my therapist. I suspected my older sister was also a victim but it never came up in my system as a direct message. I had alter names that were similar to hers. In my dreams she is always helping me. She was a nice big sister. I have conscious memory of her teaching me to tie my shoes. Part of the message was both my sisters were victims of my father. My younger sister was in my memories as a baby/toddler. I grew up terrified of her without any conscious reason.

I had also read that sometimes one child of a perp will not be hurt. I figured my older sister had been spared. But her husband came up as a perp. Strange family history with him. My father and his previous generations came up. He had the perfect parental combination to be a sadist. Am sure he tortured and killed animals as a child.

For the first 2-3 years of my healing, I thought all of my abusers were connected to my father and far from home. A boy who was with me through my abuse from birth to age 11 appeared to have been killed in a horrific manner in my presence. My family moved overseas the summer I was 11. I had a very twisted history of "Mikey". Later in healing I learned "Mikey" had been my cousin who was still alive and well. We were born a month apart. That was a stunning answer. Shook up my life all over again. Mikey was the son of my father's sister. My favorite aunt. Her husband was evil personified. If I had to choose between that uncle (now deceased) and my father as a child, I would have chosen my father even though I was always afraid of him. Another trick, lie, to cause me great distress in my dissociated life. My cousin has not had a good life. Very troubled since high school. I saw him only a few times at family gatherings prior to the late 90s from the time we returned from that overseas assignment.

Another relative who was the biggest shock, was an uncle...on my mother's side. How was that possible unless all family and all relations were either perps and/or dissociative. The "ideal" dysfunctional multi-generational family? I can't say much about my uncle other than that his name and his particular world surfaced. Yet I have no distress surrounding him except for generalized fear of family. I recall always wanting to be close to him consciously. No fear. Even at the last family gathering. I would have thought he was the most gentle being on the planet. That is how the rest of the world views him...that and being brilliant. I still reel from this knowledge. I hope my memory is wrong. But I trust it sufficiently to maintain my distance.

Using Tyler as an example, the child featured on Believe the Children, names of his young cousins were used by abusers for other children being hurt with him which makes the report unbelievable. My memories have had proof of their reality...at least locations. Precise details. Understanding the dynamics of families with organized pedophiles, it makes sense that abuse would have come from both sides. It's still mind boggling. I still hold out hope my uncle is safe. Not all has been processed.

What a day to be alive
What a day to realize I'm not dead

I'm glad to feel the relief of having the answer that needed to come forward. It's never easy to know any detail of horror. My being was literally shattered with this memory. It created the little boy alters who could answer honestly to "Are you a girl?" It wasn't okay for me to be a girl coming into this world. The only way to instill such a belief in a 4- or 5-year-old girl was to create huge trauma and cause a breakdown that would result in a division where a female child could be consciously a girl and subconsciously believe she was a male. It's a lot to process. Evil genius if you think like a perp, I guess. It's sad to have to know how to think like a perp to truly understand or make any sense of the "why".

Ever hear the terms on television shows...like Alias? People are always referred to as assets. Depersonalize. What a day to be human.