Breaking down the breakdown of the trauma timeline of 2017

When trauma therapy goes wrong: a candid insight from the tapes of intensive individual trauma therapy: a personal and professional development guide.  

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Context: I was at the tail end of a counselling diploma, which I was referred into by this therapist (so I’m a trained counsellor). I was also 1.5 yrs into my bachelor of psychology & about to enrol into a double degree of psychology/counselling to continue my study (will still do this bc academia is eternal). But at the moment I was young, and I felt it was then or there or never (my early 20s). 

I had just started a horrible flooding from severe developmental trauma coinciding with my counselling course which required a lot of self reflection for professional development. My therapist had given me an exercise off the back of my confidence to finally ask him about his moral alignment with the pedophile alignment of Hillsong church, a problem I had felt but struggled to articulate for months. At the time the royal commission into institutional child sexual abuse was happening, which Hillsong church was a part of, and Frank Houston, the founder, had been investigated for his role in covering up the sexual abuse of children historically. 

In February 2017 I brought up if Peter was able to be trusted due to his alignment to Frank Houston’s living son, Brian, who is the main target for the coverup of his fathers crimes, of sexual abuse. Brian was a pastor at the Norwest Hillsong church, and a prolific personality in the church. Brian has since been cleared of complicity of being aligned to his covering up his fathers sexual abuse crimes, however Brian Houston is a very wealthy man.  Regardless , religion aside, my care is aligned to pedophile cover ups and not religious belief. I wanted to know how he felt about Brian being investigated by the royal commission, I am open to other people and their religious belief.  I cannot trust a therapist who is aligned to a pastor who complicity covered up childhood sexual abuse for his father. It comes back to to values & principles. 

The response was: no Brian and Frank are innocent! They are not being investigated at all. It’s not true. (Denial.) he then deflected and told me to write a trauma timeline like my psychiatrist had asked for my medication & psychiatrist history in a document format.. I had earlier shared this exercise with him. 

This medical exercise she asked me to do was based on quantitative (medications I was on, diagnosis and doctors I’ve seen over the years since age 9). Not deep trauma secrets I’ve kept hidden from my childhood. It was for insurance reasons, had a higher purpose, and she emailed me back after receiving it. 

He did not respond. This set my trauma off worse, because I knew I was “left out to die, dry, kill or be killed” lacked containment, safety or any sense of integral therapeutic alliance. 

In a effective trauma therapy, a therapy alliance that is built on: safety with the client is core to maintaining a supportive, secure, stable therapeutic alliance.  

Alliance building : acknowledge your client email, ask them to bring the document with them to session next time. 

 

Ok our conversation: 

Me: no ! you said how many are false memories 

Him: no I didn’t ! 

Me: you basically implicated it via an open question … 

Me: you have to remember I am an actual tape recorder (me using his NLP method back on him, I used it to drop the hint I was recording the sessions) 

Me: I remember EVERYTHING people tell me, so I have all these questions pressing on my mind, and I went to my other therapist with the questions I had from our last session that you mentioned about false memories and told him what you said 

Him : of course if you mentioned false memories he would …

Me : cuts him off “no what am I supposed to say” what would you think of someone like me is told no,

Him : what do you mean if you say no? 

Me: well if you tell me no I’ll do the opposite , so when I wanted to know about my family history when I was studying that cultural diversity unit at uni last year and you told me not to look into my family history, I was going to do the opposite, you knew I was like that in my character, you told me to study this course, of course I’m

Going to look into my family history, even if you told me not too 

Him: why would you put trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma? 

Me: I was just curious 

Him: ok, the thing with you is you are so intelligent 

Me no I’m not that intelligent though: 

Him: no. stop. Just stop. 

Me: laughs, half dies 

Him : the problem with you is.. you are so intelligent 

“How many do you think are false memories” 

That’s what the therapist said about my deepest childhood secrets (nothing Vs what I later remembered) I can’t believe I sat there and was able to be submissive or calm without the anger and hurt I felt listening to that again today. 

“You are so intelligent, you are so well read okay, in regards to trauma, therapy and everything psychology theories that it is starting to convolute and make it difficult for you” 

Me : what do you mean 

“This theory and that theory - you are grabbing at everything “  

Me: what am I supposed to do ? 

I’ve always been like this I used to read encyclopaedias as a child just to find out what is wrong with me 

Him: I think it’s given you an obscure view, it’s changing your way of how you view your trauma 

Me: what do you mean ? 

Him:You are grabbing at everything!  

Him: it’s changing your way of dealing with your trauma. It’s giving you an obscure view. Changing the way your dealing with your trauma 

Don’t keep looking for more information. The more you look for it, the more you will (voice fades out). 

Me : well I’ve always been like this

Him:”give yourself a break, you need to STOP LOOKING FOR INFORMATION ON YOUR TRAUMA OR AROUND YOUR TRAUMA” 

Me : “what am I supposed to do, what would you do in my situation? You are obviously intelligent too, what would you do in my situation? ”  

Him: what do i, why did i? 

Me: mmmm 

Him; why did I feel like that or why did I do that, I don’t go information hunting for evidence on it 

Me: I don’t mean to keep finding things out , it’s not like I want this 

Him: you have too much information; take a break 

Me: I don’t mean too

Him: you need to stop looking for new information 

Me: what would you do in my situation? 

Him: why did I feel like that, why do I feel like that? 

I dont go looking or searching for new clues I look at myself 

Me: I DO THAT. I just find this stuff on the side

Me: what if you have multiple aspects of things that contradict each other, that’s what I have,

I honestly do this; I scrapbook and I honestly TRY I AM DOING THIS, 

Him: but you come out what about this, theory, what about that modality, what does this mean in context to that framework, and you shouldn’t do that, because you are being harmed by this 

Me: but as part of our counselling diploma we are doing professional

Reflection and have to do reflection on what we learnt in our developmental psychology subjects last year ? How am I supposed to NOT do this ? Along with therapy ? It’s part of being a competent clinician ? To be incompetent would be to not look into my trauma. 

Him: but is it helping you or is it hindering you ? 

Me: I don’t know, I have a grasp now but I barely read on trauma 

Him: is it hindering you or helping you? 

Me: I don’t know you tell me doctor (lol ) 

Him: I don’t know you tell

me (he reverse uno back to me) 

Me: I don’t know.: why would people go to psychology unless they wanted to resolve their issues and help others 

Him: is it helping you or hindering you? 

Me: what do you mean? 

I believe I’m better you tell me, somethings are better but others are worse. My awareness is better but it’s a hinderance. It was activated by dbt way back in 2013.

Nothing to do with this trauma now. 

Me: I think I’m better than I was before DBT a when my life was in a perpetual chaotic, melodramatic, toxic, self destructive, suicidal state and the worst issue along those lines I have now is a few adhd spending habits. So it’s calmer now but I have crippling self awareness. 

Him: what would you rather? That or that? 

Me: This. I have a compass in life now. I had nothing to guide my life back then. 

Me: why did you become a psychologist ? 

Me: unless people have issues to resolve and want to help others they would not be studying psychology and counselling. 

Him: when you went to class were you there to learn, did you go to class to learn or were you like that me? 

Me: what class ? It really depended what class I went into and what we learnt developmental psychology HELL NO And not trauma and mental health either because I was having a mental health and trauma breakdown by the end. Trails off 

Him: what are you thinking

Me: about uni , how much I miss it and I cannot wait to go back , you know I graduate soon.. yay I completed something else. 

Him: and then what ? 

Me: well I said I have to movie out because I cannot do developmental psychology living at my parents house anymore , so I need to move out next, then I have to keep studying .. I’m really confused about my study path now, this woman zorica has confused me because social science is so fascinating and you are telling me to stop now 

Him: you need to seperate yourself 

Me: I’m going to studying digital media maybe ‘ (what the fuck) 

Him: yep 

Me: to balance things out so I don’t get too overwhelmed and I get it’s a different field 

But it will stop me being overwhelmed but it’s only 25k off my HECS debt if I study the digital media diploma oh well, 

Me: I’m only at 20k so I can afford another 25 k before I have to pay it back

Him: oh I don’t even worry about my hecs debt anymore because it’s so much, over 200k 

Me: yeah yours must be huge now 

Him: I don’t even worry about it at the end of the year, it comes out of my tax 

Him: my accountant says if you pay it off you could have a better estate 

Him: my son is going to pay it back that’s how much it is (lol poor kid) 

Me: Omg what about him , don’t you think about his generation and how messed up they are going to be with the debt situation 

Me: I see my sister and it’s a whole alien thing with their tech now 

 

Him: more irrelevant convo

I leave and it ends. 

It took a lot of emotional energy just to go over this last bit, but I have to do this for my personal & emotional & professional healing. It’s irrevocably damaged me for years, let me just say if these were false memories would’ve all my meticulously planned goals and ambitions been hijacker’s so I could HEAL AND INTEGRATE all the trauma from my early childhood ? 

Not to mention the very fact it took me literally 5-6 years to step back into another therapists office after walking out of his. after using COMPLETE and utter faith in the profession I had given my life towards. 

Heart and soul breaking. 

I cannot underestimate the damage this caused me, ineffective trauma therapy kills, and is a reminder for practioner to be delicate in working with complex trauma clients, you never know how delicate peoples childhood memories and secrets can be. You never know the courage and strength it may take someone to disclose the secrets and shame of sexual abuse and to finally give this to a therapist after years not doing that (I only told him because my mentor Maxine said the best therapists are integrated and healed from their trauma) I thought doing this would help me better at my work as a therapist. I was not only rejected, left to flood, be traumatised by further memories of my childhood and reality of my 25 years of trauma already, and facing to these horrible things I’d dissociated from, but when I faced up to the therapist I had the courage to tell my secrets too, he was questioning the validity and authenticity of my childhood memories. He then challenged the coping I had adopted from the academic course he had referred me to study a year and a half before, and now he was gaslighting other trauma therapy modalities (and what I learnt YEARS LATER ON MY OWN LEFT WITH NOTHING BUT THE LITERATURE AND MY OWN DEVICES, from the pioneers of trauma therapy research like Daniel Siegel, Janina Fisher, Bessel Van Der Volk), was actually standard practice. 

Psychoeducation is key for trauma treatment, he told me repeatedly to stop doing that. 

Luckily I had found an amazing trauma therapist. who saved my life and introduced me to the trauma modality of treatment. Introducing me to great work such as “the body keeps the score” and the interpersonal neurobiology & work of Daniel Siegel. Years later these were my “light home” and helped save me, as I saved myself, through my self work, applied into rigorous self work. 

I’ve also been blessed with a patient & dedicated psychiatrist who has been treating me since 2012 and has been a blessing. She warned me before, and validated me after, about this therapist, so I wasn’t without warning of the risks of potential fallout. I didn’t think it would be this bad. 

My take home is going forward into my professional journey, which I thought would cure it all. Is noting it won’t, because it’s just picking up the place it left off. My current therapist and I are currently working through EMDR on what happened with my last therapist (imagine needing therapy for bad therapy).

I will continue to work towards my professional and personal goals as I have had for years now to pursue my career as a mental health professional, i don’t think clinical psychologist needs to be the end goal, because of the changing scope of the field.  

But social policy researcher, psychotherapist, having a masters degree & being a mental health clinician, trauma informed, yoga teacher (in Australia) & musician are some of my overarching aims. 

I will never put my clients through the same things people have caused me personally or professionally, but in the capacity of therapist to client, in the context of trauma treatment, I will never engage how I was hurt because I know how much that hurts. 

Sharing your darkest secrets from the depths of childhood to have them invalidated, dismissed & their authenticity challenged is the reason I kept “seeking” answers, for proof or lack of proof, what came was more evidence my mind or brain could handle, so without the coping skills to handle it, I was retraumatised by the reality of being in reality. 

It hurts my soul to know I had worked so hard to be hurt so much, then hurt so much after working so hard with such a genuine intent at my core. 

It took me years to pick up these pieces off the floor and stop these new memories that weren’t included in the original timeline flooding, from finding the real places and spaces in real life with real evidence of memories that were far more heinous than the innocuous things that were in that original trauma document. To question the validity of things I never forgot, when I first I poured my honest truth into is hurtful in a way I cannot express.

nor do I not wish upon any other survivor of complex trauma.   I remember I kept these secrets locked inside me for decades because of the sickness and shame they were laced inside me with, but to finally summon the courage for the greater good of my counselling degree and the sacrifice of being a better therapist with the “hope” revealing my truth to this therapist would make me a better clinician was a perfectionist mistake. 

I was a month into this document, and on the tail end of submitting assessments so I sent the email after days of deliberating. My heart and soul knew I couldn’t trust him. My mind tried to explain the rationalisation of “but all the therapy before helped so this should do the same, take the risk”. 

The next morning as I waited for my bus to uni, in the pouring march rain, I knew i would never live to see the end of the regret I felt. My brain, alive, but dying, at the same time, as it pulsated, with sensations, images, flashes, burning, hot, freezing, cold, a rush, unending, pouring, descending, into my frontal lobe consciousness after I woke up full of new elements of context from my life. The puzzle fitting together, the blanks that were blurred out becoming clear, parts erased becoming vivid, and I suddenly had my sight back. It wasn’t gone but only hazed. It was a waterfall but it was out of control, by the end of the day, I felt like I was going insane and broke down after class, two weeks later, I was sure neurosis was coming for me, after a month, I was physically unwell from the intense duration of non stop never ending memories flooding into my consciousness at every waking, sleeping and dreaming moment. I had to go through my childhood documents to confirm, or deny that would more often than not confirm things, which created long piles of evidence, because I found a lot of documents, photos and paperwork from my childhood, which lead me to memories, leading to evidence finding, leading to me hopping in a car and driving to follow a memory or spur of the moment childhood flashback that was revealed. 

You want to know how many “dreams” turned out to be real places that were behind churches or the orphanage or hospital next to my childhood home? Did that reoccurring nightmare ever happen when I followed it ? Would’ve it even happened if I had of send that trauma timeline to him, or had a therapist work with me in a safe way? 

Probably not. Needless to say It was a real place I had nightmares about my whole life, right next door to my childhood home, and now it’s been discovered and I’ve found it, I haven’t had any nightmares since. I follow the trail left by my memory, originated by the trauma therapy, if the therapist did the work he could’ve stopped me going to the place to start with but because he left me to be alone with this in the months after I emailed it to him, I was forced to take matters into a “detective style” coping skill. 

I ended up learning that my childhood was a lot darker, more twisted and macabre than my conscious memory can recall and I’m grateful we are amnesiac for things like this. For if I could remember this I wouldn’t be able to cope, that’s the extent of how much I’ll talk about some of the depths of finding out real life crime scenes from the sites I found following my memory. 

Knowing nothing can be better than knowing at all, but now I know, I see my context in clarity. I don’t need to ruminate about why I have periods of blank or amnesia or why I am x y z. I know why, I don’t need to be shameful about hiding ritualistic or organisational child sexual abuse anymore. I have had multiple professionals acknowledge and validate the reality of what happened to me, and denying that only further harms me and other survivors. 

It happens, it happened, it still happens, it doesn’t need to be satanic ritual abuse to be ritual abuse so don’t even start. Ritual abuse is ritualistic abuse. Let’s lose the stigma and the shame and the false memory association with ritual abuse and sexual abuse. Do you know Elizabeth Loftus is now debunked ? Her studies were based on adults for one. I’ll go into the problems with the false memory hypothesis and sexual abuse discrediting in the psychological profession in another post. 

I’d just like to thank all the brave testimonies from other Australian survivors (or the advocates) like Fiona Barnett, Gabby Chong, Dale Holmes & Rachel Vaughn. Keep talking. There are others. I hear you. I see you and I appreciate you. 

“Uncle Bearheart” for being the first core reason I survived any of this at all. 

Juxtaposed, Michael Aquino, for validating this happened at all, because knowing it was happening is better than having a therapist who isn’t saying anything (I’d rather know about the 2005 ATS forums at that point I was digging for anything). 

Maxine Rosenfield for being a pinnacle for my transformation into healing. 

Steve stokes. 

Janina fisher. 

Bessel van der kolk. 

Daniel Siegel. 

Anomalous trauma and the UFO/MILAB community (James Bartley , eve Logan) it always helped me to listen to ufo related things when I was having flashbacks, because I could focus on aliens 

My ancestors and spirit guides 

The Loa & 21 commissions of spirits 

My sentinel spirit 

Santa Marta la Dominadora

St Rosa of Lima (rosita Legba) 

St George 

St Michael the Archangel 

Many others. 

Prime creator : papa bon dios : or god

My higher self, my true will & my great work. 

My birds & my will to persevere. I was on the edge of my seat ready to give up so many times. I didn’t, I have a reason to be here. To help others. 

I will never be this clinician, never. 

Please believe your clients if they disclose secrets from trauma especially if it’s childhood memories they haven’t told anyone before. It can be harmful and deeply destructive to deny them their deepest shameful secrets and question the veracity. I cannot emphasise the level of pain, shame and further suffering it causes to be diminished by being told your darkest secrets are false memories. 

It’s a betrayal and wound that I don’t think I can ever heal, but I will NEVER inflict on anyone LET ALONE a client. 

Secret/shame/sick

 I am alive.

Hour by hour I slice my cognition against the current of time. From dusk until dawn. Reverse. Cycles ticking like an atomic bomb ready to decimate. Biology recalls the twenty-four years that have now passed since the initial violation. My body has matured and evolved into a voluptuous woman whose body attracts the lust filled gazes of adults.

The process of integration.

The womanly body I now inhabit was a process that took me a decade to accustom to.

Puberty:

I recall the stark disappointment at age ten or eleven, the blossoming peak of puberty approaching in full fury. My nipples aching as they budded and grazed awkwardly against the edge of my fourth-grade desk. I was too ashamed to ask for a training bra. So I learnt to hunch my shoulders and wear baggy shirts to conceal the evidence. I obsessed over the sight of pubic hair, and each evening in the bath I would investigate for sprouts of those wiry black hairs that would signal the end of prying hands, dirty old men, and the stomach-churning secrets that fondled me in the most abrasive way, a tickling momentum that infused my body with a venomous and wicked mix of delight, and a nauseating terror.  I anxiously awaited the day I would become an adult, because at eight or nine years old, sitting on the stairs in the Saturday sun, at the rental brown brick house, I would sneak into my parents bottom drawer to read the puberty book they had hidden to one day give to me. I would sneak secretive glimpses of the developmental phases, and long for that day I became a woman. In the year 2000, when I was on the edge of puberty. That day as day signalled the end of a childhood that was infested with an endless stream of spider spindles disguised as fingers, and slithering serpents that oozed slime, and spurred droplets of thick goo.

In retrospect, I guess the inexplicable visions of a thick, fat, green snake getting split open by a rake and oozing white goo, is easier to take than a wrinkled, hairy man’s penis penetrating your tiny six-year-old mouth.

Pubic hair, the monthly blood of despair and breasts to feed any children I may bare, would surely ward off these monsters who preyed, and slipped their hungry fingers up past my four year old knee, the forbidden momentum of a arousing a child could not be denied as the old man slid his hands onto my thigh.

Not only once, but over and over. Five, six and seven. A short absence until age eleven. Each year I knew the secret, the sick sadomasochistic game was signalling it’s beginning.

But I was unable to move, or run away, I pretended to play but would be dazed by the confusing feelings and my refusal to object.

Frozen, locked in that moment of penetration. A slice of my soul was stolen as body split from brain.

The inferno of bile burning my throat, my stomach churning as my body froze. That’s the last conscious fragment that can be exposed.

After the disconnection, I could sense my heart racing, my mind full of regret, a shame so vile I can taste it, but unable to resolve the dichotomy of splitting sensation that had sent shockwaves up my spine.

Disconnecting my heart, separating my mind.

A sensory slither of latent energy which launched my soul into space, meanwhile back on earth my stomach was chained to the hull of a wooden old ship, tossed in violent stormy waves, between the deafening howling of the deep sea breeze that chokes a funnel of cyclonic wind up my throat, a signal of the sudden violent projectile spewing.

A splatter of undigested food that spills from mouth, to the bathroom tiles. Jupiter swirls mixed with blood come in a series of painful heaves after midnight.

Coating the room in multicoloured stomach juice. Violent retching, the acidic burn of yesterday’s meals, unable to understand why the sickness never ends. My mouth is sour, but the taste cannot be forgotten.

The image of a bathroom dripping with vomit. a scene that provokes my seven year old body into a trembling mess of uncontrollable sobs unable to workout why I have been so lost, dazed, dizzy, delirious and disconnected from the reality of being in bed with my pink bunny and bear, but the six year soul tells me she was flying through solar systems while an old man misplaced his spindles that mimicked fingers.

Molested, maimed, so damaged and dazed  I can’t even vomit into a sink.

Conflicted, I told myself it was me who would elicit this turmoil, by freezing when my knee would be stroked.

I am molten lava. I am on fire, beyond a flame.

A river of burning orange rushing down a rumbling volcano.

The game begins when he kneels down and puts down his hand, the bile forms a comet, the orange jet propulsion of a rocket is sending shockwaves through my six-year-old stomach.

His voice is hypnotic, but I cannot listen. The factoids are puzzles for my brain. Fragments of forgotten moments I was tarnished by sin.

For I am so fixated on his hand, caressing the flesh as he crawls up my leg. I cannot speak, for my throat is ready to launch a river of lava, if I move, I’ll create tsunamis and earthquakes.

To avoid the momentum I slip inside myself.

Outside he is telling me random factoids, genetics and magnetic forces, his voice is obliterated by the oscillated vibrations that simmer like fire, but my weakness is evident each inch of his caress.  That orange comet inside my chest burns hotter. I am full of lava.

Forbidden sensations of pleasure laced with the most venomous shame. A knowing deep inside that reminds me of how his hands will burn me alive, and I’ll be riddled with black ashes before I turn five.

Each moment he rests on my flesh, tells of centuries passing, locked out of paradise as even before I turn five. At three years old, I bear the burden of a tarnished soul. I’m already a wicked, seductress, a temptress, branded with the hell, flame and fury that incinerate, driving holes through my spirit; his hands relay the eternal condemnation of eternal torment as my soul burns in flames.

How a child's innocence is corrupted by the wickedness of pedophilia

2017, Flooding with memories dissociation and fragmentation:

She understood by that age her parents intention was to wean her out of the habit of cowering on her parents’ bedroom floor whenever the creatures would crawl from the shadows and out of the walls. 
 
They didn’t know her only refuge was when they played with her, or read her stories, or gave her affection. She loved when they would answer her questions. But two babies came along. The eldest child was quickly shunned, for their second and third sons were much easier to raise. 
 
They were peaceful babies, without any night-terrors or yelling into the early morning for their parents attention. They never screamed, rarely had tantrums, and abided by rules. Her parents invested all their energy, on their sons, who they felt were less damaged, their hypersensitive daughter could sense they had love for her siblings that they couldn’t give to her, and over her school years, as her behaviour became more bizarre, their disfigured daughter was forgotten, swept under the rug. 
 
Not only did she feel alone at home, but she was shunned by her peers and they called her ‘weird”. She would wander the playground alone, looking for someone who didn’t slice a knife through her chest when she asked them if she could play with them that day, another no, and she was afraid tears would roll down her face; “crybaby, crybaby, what a baby!” and leer, the boys in her class would tease her, so she hid her face in disgrace. The out of bounds toilets and library a refuge, an escape. 
Books were her friend, her final solution. She remembers a girl calling her a “grub”, for dropping a spoonful of yoghurt down her school jacket. 
This deemed her unworthy of being allowed to play with these girls. Again. Alone. It was painful, and she cried all lunch, and could not get past it. 
 
On her school worksheets she would call herself “Emily”, and her teachers called her parents to ask why their daughter didn’t write her real name. Her parents perplexed at why their child was deviating from what they had taught her at home. The inner shame endured before age 5 was to blame for her inner pain. 
Never wanting to write it down on pieces of paper or books. She hated her name, because she felt she was to blame for hands creeping into areas where it gave her shame so virulent, it would make her retch and heavy. Her heart was heavy, full of trepidation and fear. 
 
She would lie, mislead, and could not comprehend the instructions given.  So she’d spend class head in hands, sobbing in her books because she felt stupid, for being unable to craft a woollen pom-pom, or finger-knit, or do cross-stitch. She would be unable to even loop a needle through a thread, and apparently this made her stupid, ill-equipped and unfit for normality. Rejected by society, she retreated in rebellion and secrecy. Breaking rules was always something that made her happy, because she gave up following them as she couldn’t get it right. It just seemed easier for everyone if she lived up to her “stupid” “bad” “naughty” “dirty” girl mentality. 
She was really good at stealing at school, and made it a habit to take books from her teachers, once she hit second grade she learnt to remove the barcode from library books and sneak them into her library bag to smuggle home. Slowly collecting a collaboration of free things, her self-esteem had grown for each successful gain.
 She would steal from kids bags who had been mean, and when the teacher confronted the class about it she would sit there silent, refusing to confess, letting other kids get the blame. Why should she suffer when they caused her pain? She would never be accused, because she had never been known to be one of the disruptive ones. She slipped by quietly in the back ground, until grade 4. 
This was the beginning of a life of being outside, looking in, trying to disguise her true self and fit in with the rest of the kids. She never managed to get a grip, on her place in her peer group. 
Kids can be cruel, but their words stung like hell. She had no sense of self to comfort her when she was laying in the dark, at night alone. All she knew was to imagine zooming out, imaging zooming above her house, above her neighbourhood, city, state, country and earth. 
Into the universe she rose, trying to escape the evil on earth. She understood weather, clouds, planets, and the human body. She loved her computer when she got it, and learnt how to play sim city from scratch aged 7. She read books every night, and loved learning new facts. But she couldn’t get the knack of being like the rest of the pack. 
 
Her first year of school, they said she was stupid because she couldn’t hold her pencil like the rest of the students. She learnt to read age 3, but never had the chance in school to read books for longer than 10 minutes, what happened at school, she will never actually know.  She only liked reading, and when she had friends. 
 
Sometimes her friends would ignore her for weeks on end and she would have to pretend she didn’t wander the playground without a companion. 
 
She only remembers menial craft, sewing, barn-dancing, and repetitive songs in the quadrangle, boy girl dancing, and two straight lines holding hands. She also remembers inappropriate sexual conversations with the boy she sat next too, and her sleepovers with female friends always turned into orgies. 

Scrapbooking helped me integrate through flooding 

She thought it was normal, it was only after these parties, when her friends disappeared, she became overwhelmed with shame, and blamed herself for their departure. 

Carnal knowledge was her only friend, the only companion from beginning to end. 
 
Where is the peace, where is the security? 

The carefree bliss of childhood? 

Flashbacks

As a child I would wish for the shadows shrouded by darkness to swallow my corpse.

I hoped if I lay still enough 
For long enough 
I would disappear 
Or cease 
Slip away into the void 
Vanish
Simply cease existence 
Fade into darkness. 

No hay Banda, silencio.

Devoured by the cloaked rhythm and silent whispers of nocturnal prowess. 

Lights ruptured the panic attacks and dissassocation attacks I would endure at night as I grew older.

Light solidified the demons circling my mind and made them real.

Proving this wasn’t all in my head, this was in fact a very real experience. But I was determined to flee my body at all costs. 

If I was caught up in an episode, pacing beneath moonlight as a war waged inside my mind, dread and fear and an array of complete panic and raw anxiety throbbing through my soul. The light would bring my awareness back into semilucidity.

But the truth was always too hard to stomach.
The constast and switch to abrubt light would bring me back to reality. 

Dazed. In a stupor. In a trance. Sleepwalking. But awake. Disassociating, often I would wander the streets in my pajamas barefoot, and be seen by neighbours who called my parents who were oblivious to my nightly roadside adventures. This started when I was around ten years old.

Light transports me to being split open and having my insides pried apart. Since I was unable to form words. The lightbulb has haunted me.

My legs spread. 

The lightbulb. 

That unrelenting flash bestowed by the lightbulb? 

If you stare at the lightbulb long enough it will make an imprint in your vision, and then if you blink really quickly you can make the lightbulb move around the room.

The light was blinding. It stained and stung my vision. But It resonated. 
That flashing halo was a welcome distraction to the unrelenting prying between legs spread, painstaking and through examination and violation of a toddlers genitalia is not exactly a normal practice little girls should endure. But I thought I was evil for feeling a perverse sense of pleasure from those silent and bewildering examinations. I liked the attention. Maybe. But in my heart and beyond it made my soul feel filthy and sticky. It was a chunky maggot of sick and guilt to swallow but I couldn’t resist because the pleasure was immense. It felt good and I was too young to know it was wrong so I complied. Maybe I wanted to. Or Maybe I didn’t know better. In retrospect the subsequent degradation following a ruptured hymen and the abuse of sexual pleasure by a trusted adult almost a decade before the onset of puberty was a violation of a basic human right. 

Such a minor violation of my orifice has fucked me up profoundly into my adult life. 

But how does a child know any better ? The child is trusting. Gullible. And susceptible to predatory adults who want to fondle the genitals of the cute, pure and untainted, innocent, sexually oblivious toddler. The toddler is confused because obviously this can feel pleasurable. But the toddler knows instinctively there is something full of revulsion and fear beneath these transient moments of pleasure. It made the bile burn the back of my throat. Sick with perversion and pleasure and pain..It felt so good but so wrong. It hurt. It felt pleasant. It was confusing. But now I see I was exploited. Used. By a trusted adult who was delegated by my parents to protect me. Not fondle me.

Why *anyone* can find pleasure in such a predatory and demoralizing act is beyond my comprehension. This question will plague my psyche for the remainder of days.

To take advantage of an innocent creature. 
To corrupt it into a world of sex and violence long before puberty hits? Why? It’s illogical. How selfish must one be to even begin to entertain such nauseating notions, let alone to actually inflict them. 
Child sex offenders and paedophiles are the epitome of damaged and defunct humans. The gene must be eradicated. 
Child sexual abuse is truly an evil deed for one human to commit upon another. To exploit a biologically immature and unprepared minor is horrific. How can you? How could you?

I could never bring myself to inflict an unwanted sex act on another adult. Let alone a child who is curious but vulnerable and ultimately INNOCENT. How do these people think? How does it even get to the stage of occupying a sexual urge for something that is not sexually mature? It makes no sense scientifically. Children exploring sexuality with other children of their own age is one thing. When an adult uses a child for sexual gratification, this is truly an atrocious act of exploitation and a hideous abuse of power. 

It hurt to use the bathroom for many years, the stinging of urinating was akin to a nefarious tentacle wound from a venomous sea creature. Bath time and shower time became dreaded events bestowed by fear of undressing. 

I thought it was normal for a four year old to never let herself be seen without clothes. For a seven year old to lock the door when she showered and scream and sob loudly and hysterically if anyone accidentally opened the door as I showered. Or even tried. 

I guess it was normal for me. My genitals always hurt. They itched. They burnt. I would cry in agony from the pain. Trying to hide it. Nauseous and sick and full of self hate and regret. Never reminding myself of its origin. I was long gone by this time.

Instead of using a toilet normally I would hold on and avoid using the toilet for days and days. I would tell myself intricate stories to urinate. 
The pain of urinating was too immense for full awareness. I’d rather my bladder burst. Or die. 

When it was dark it went away. Sometimes. Sometimes it just made the sick secret carried like a stone in my stomach easier to swallow. 

When it was dark, at least we could fabricate a comfortable illusion. Fantasize, imagine another world desperate to avoid the painful and confusing truth instilled by sexual abuse. 

Thus the inclination towards darkness. My love of night and shadows.