I want to write about how feeling stronger is allowing me to see the pain I was in for most of my life.\u00a0 I had no idea.\u00a0 I thought I was \u201ctoo sensitive,\u201d defective in some way, a coward that I couldn\u2019t deal better with difficulties.\u00a0 That I was hurt by being teased and couldn\u2019t follow Mother\u2019s advice to \u201cignore them.\u201d\u00a0 That imagining I was struggling with something really big instead of trivial details was \u201cmaking myself look important.\u201d\u00a0 But the truth is, I wasn\u2019t struggling with ordinary fear and sadness, I was facing severe depression and terror.<\/p>\n
When I was writing the story of self-mutilation for my Journey monologue, I had real trouble feeling and understanding my motivation.\u00a0 I know I was in a lot of pain, that I felt I was wrong to be in.\u00a0 It was my fault I hurt so much, Daddy even told me I \u201cwanted to be miserable,\u201d there was no reason or excuse for my pain, so cutting myself at least gave me a real reason for hurting.\u00a0 I also hated myself and wanted to hurt myself.<\/p>\n
My role model for cutting myself was Deborah Blau in \u201cI Never Promised You a Rose Garden.<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 The first time I read it I couldn\u2019t put it down.\u00a0 I was amazed that here was someone that felt like I did.\u00a0 Deborah cut and burned herself many times.\u00a0 I was surprised when it hurt to cut myself, because Deborah had never said it hurt.\u00a0 There was a time, when she was healing, she tried to burn herself and a reflex pulled her hand away.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t understand at the time, but of course she was dissociated when she cut herself without pain.\u00a0 I read that book over and over again.\u00a0 In my copy there are many passages that are underlined, and some splashes of blood.<\/p>\n The first time Deborah cut herself, she did it at home and let the blood run into a basin.\u00a0 Her horrified parents took her to psychiatrists and finally put her into a hospital.\u00a0 Her therapist told her mother that she was interested in the fact that Deborah kept the blood in a basin.\u00a0 \u201cShe didn\u2019t want to let it get too far away.\u201d\u00a0 Dr. Fried explained that cutting herself was not a failed suicide attempt, but a cry for help.<\/p>\n Another interesting thing, that I\u2019m seeing only now, is that Deborah\u2019s story happens during World War II.\u00a0 At one point she concludes that she must be the enemy they were fighting, and she steps on some broken glass to embody her identity as \u201cthe enemy.\u201d\u00a0 I did not put together the fact that during the time I was cutting myself the Vietnam War was going on.\u00a0 I put them together in my monologue for Journey.\u00a0 I knew that I identified with the soldiers, especially the ones with PTSD, but of course that was just me trying to make myself important, asking for special treatment.\u00a0 It never occurred to me that cutting myself might be the wound I suffered in a dirty war, where the older generation sent the younger out to fight for no good reason, and failed to give them the support they needed.\u00a0 They came back to people who were not glad to see them but uncomfortable.\u00a0 It still makes me angry that soldiers come back from war and don\u2019t have adequate help for either their physical wounds or their psychological ones.\u00a0 I remember one time thinking that soldiers were awarded the \u201cPurple Heart\u201d when they had been wounded in foreign wars.\u00a0 I thought there should be a medal for those of us who were wounded in domestic wars: the war of men against women, and the war of parents against children.<\/p>\n I never talked about cutting myself to a therapist before I did Journey into Courage because I was ashamed.\u00a0 Then I read, in The Courage to Heal<\/a>, that self-mutilation was one consequence of sexual abuse.\u00a0 That made me feel like it was an honorable wound, not a stupid one.\u00a0 It allowed me to be part of Journey.\u00a0 And it inspired me to start working on the sexual abuse issue.\u00a0 That never got anywhere, and it wasn\u2019t until I stopped denying that I had been traumatized, that I was able to finally get down to the real issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I want to write about how feeling stronger is allowing me to see the pain I was in for most of my life.\u00a0 I had no idea.\u00a0 I thought I was \u201ctoo sensitive,\u201d defective in some way, a coward that … Continue reading