INCEST: PART ONE

The dignity of survivors: Telling the truth

There’s dishes to be washed. Laundry on the floor. I haven’t been going to the gym. There’s work stuff I’m procrastinating on. I feel like there’s a lot to do and not a lot of will to do it with.

Underground, things are happening. I have to pay attention to the thoughts behind the thoughts, the flickers of images and sensations that rise and reveal themselves between the muddle of what I consider to be my “real” life and my “real” priorities.

In an ayahuasca ceremony I met the part of me who holds the wounding from incest and child abuse, and I promised to always protect her dignity, to live my life in reverence and respect of her.

She is speaking now and the sound of her voice is my body not wanting to get up in the morning. The sound of her voice is this pressure, this strange, unidentifiable sense that something is wrong.

I think if I get everything crossed off my to-do list I’ll feel better. I think I’m just going through it. I need to rest. Or I need to do something. I’m forgetting to listen to what she’s saying but she’s persistent and when I slow down enough I can feel what she is trying to say.

I am still split at the centre with the two stories of my childhood and my family of origin. There’s the story that I know to be true, the story that crawled its way out of oblivion through rituals of razor blades and weed smoke and endless bottles. The story that I had to keep looking at because even when I looked right at it, it would shimmer and disappear.

Then there’s the story my mother tells. It’s a different story. And if I press her on it, I get attacked. I have found that the only way to remain in relationship with my parents is to pretend like their story is true.

There are things I have never written about.