I wrote the entry for the book today about a first time trauma – one of the most significant repeated traumas of my childhood. It is amazing how it all comes back so fresh and painful. You might think that after decades of living and even decades of therapy the sharpness of the memories would be diminished. I had believed it to be so; but right in this moment it is as sharp as it was that night. Of course, that night I could not have imagined how long the trauma would endure or the impact it would have on so many areas of my life. Then I only knew that I was  experiencing the worst pain I had ever known, and it was a pain that went far deeper than any physical discomfort, though the physical part of the pain was intense all by itself. I don’t think I could have defined the word “violated” if someone were to have asked me for it; but that night I became intimately aware of it’s meaning.

Now, while the tears drip off my face and my heart feels pierced in two, I find that I want to blame many others – the perpetrator, my parents, those who violated my perpetrator transferring their perversion to him. All together they stole my innocence and plunged me into a world I had not known existed. No child should ever know such violation, though I know that there are little ones all around the world who suffer it every day. Tomorrow I will cry and ache for them. Tonight I am still aching for me – for the many of me who desperately needed to escape to a place that was safe. Thank God, I did learn how to escape. I stared at the cracks in the wall, turning them into animals who would hide me as I sank deep to the underside of the wall. It’s funny, even now as I recall the experience of escape, my tears dry and the ache is but a dull throbbing deep inside of me. Even now I can escape.

The thing that is encouraging in all this experience tonight is that tonight I can blame “them” – not me. I do not feel the self-loathing and self-betrayal that have always been part of remembering those days gone by. I know it’s the work of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy which we have been doing for several years now. It has been a hope, a goal; but now it is a reality. Thank You, God!! It’s amazing how hope can sneak up on us in even our most down moments.