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my name is...

Mood April 28, 2008 3:26pm

;      " curse the darkness, light a candle"
                                                              .......anonymous

there is, in the end, the letting go. febuary, 1999. i am given up on by the medical profession. i am not expected to live. indeed, i know this and i embace the thought of it welcome it as only the dying can. nine years pass. febuary 29, 2008. i am alive. there is no sudden revelation, a complete and tidy esplanation for why this has happened, or why the dying ends, or why the who and what i was yesterday is not the who and why i am today. tomorrow i will accept my 60 day chip. this will not be my first one. no, indeed, not. but i believe in my heart of hearts it will be my last one. i am a survivor, you see, and yet i never knew this until recently. i wore the cloak of victim hood for so long. i hear one old timer say "you can live without food for a good long while, you can live without water for a while, but you can never live without hope." i smile as he says this because the streets he walked on must have been so very different than the bare ones i stumbled upon. i lived without hope for so many years. i often wondered how it was i kept on breathing. i found it astonishing. my life came in bits and pieces, and i stitched the parts together wherever it fit, and when i was done i held myself up, and still there are holes and i am a rag doll, invented, imperfect. and yet i am all that i have, so i must be enough. there is no other way. last year i posted what is written below . i post it again lest i forget where i came from. this is for you too who edge up against your pain and give it a name. i honor the woman i was . i honor the woman i am. tomorrow i will stand up and accept my chip. i accept it not just for me, i accept it for you who grace my life and touch me in such a profound way with your own struggles. know this: hope is as God is as we are. let us from this day forward light our candles. my family. my hope.

i want all of you struggling to remember- we are not born cookie cutter cut-outs. some of us inherit a mood disorder that proceeds alcoholism. some of us inherit a legacy of abuse that encompasses all abuse and, somehow we learn to cease to exist. for me, it was an imaginary world and as i grew older, the delusion i needed to stay alive persisted. some part of me knew it was fiction but when you are unacceptable to the world you are born into; the only thing that makes sense is to keep up the pretense. my God, how hard for a human being to know she has no one who truly knows her. how incredibly painful to feel that way and, still, feel that way.it was as if "unacceptable" was stamped on my forehead and everyone sees it. but there was a time i felt different. i felt strong. i must remember that out there-in the world- i can be honest and not just a bit player in life. i wrote this in a battered woman's shelter-had been raped and left for dead and my own mom said "you reap what you sow."and then,too, my baby girl was gone and i had no one, no one. this is what i wrote in the shelter where i felt loved for the first time in my life. acceptable.and not just that, but an integral part of that society. love- knew nothing about it except i wasn't loved- until my child who my family took away from me.perhaps, if i had been believed in childhood about "everything" it would have been different. i was not and so life went on secretive and shameful. for the women-like me- this is for you.
                                          Welcome to my World
It is September 21st of the year 2000. I am a woman who laughs no more, who dreams no more. i am a battered woman. I am the face of addiction. I wear my eating disorder on an 85 pound frame and I am 5'6 inches tall. I have not yet found God though it will be clear in time, within these walls, this holy place, God will find me. The heat of this month is thick and heavy much like the circumstances bringing me to shelter. i step out of the taxi and glance back a few times before stepping into my new life.I see the flowers; they are the most trusting things, they with their throats always open, there petals searching and fearless and in touch with the world. Nothing bad happens to them; the sun doesn't rape them; they don't gag on the rain.
I am afraid of my abuser, of my rapists, of my addictions, and the subsequent unemployability. of my past, of my future, my very humanity, myself most of all.I guess, myself. Ultimately, life no longer stands for much unless we are loved unconditionally and can love unconditionally. And so it is with this despair I walk inside.
All of us carry around bags of dusty knickknacks dated from childhood: collected resentments, long lists of wounds of greater or lesser significance, glorified memories, absolute certainties that later turn out to be wrong.humans are emotional pack rats. These bags define us. My baggage made me someone I did not want to be: a cringing beaten animal, a sensitive plant, and a needy, greedy sort of thing.I did not want to be me underneath. That fact haunted my days and nights. When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been motivation behind your behavior for many years, you cannot possiblyimagine another human being loving you "as is."But in this house, I am loved back to health. Not just in a physical way, but also in an emotional and spiritual sense. I was told I did not ever have to live the way i lived again. I was told I had the right to be happy, joyous,and free.I was told I have a right to be here. Imagine that.
Many months pass. I attend the support groups-become part of the living.I become teachable. Even when I used poor judgment, the staff continued to believe in my abilities to grow, and showed me as family still. The steady acceptance has had an impact, teaching me slowly over the period of months how to see something salvageable in myself., Bless these people, for they are a part of my faith's firmness.
There comes a moment when recovery is religious, when the person says, "All right.I will have faith. I will lay down my weapons for the war is over. I will see what the world works in me." I have learned my body is not a molotov cocktail that must be detonated and destroyed. Letting down my guard, opening my mouth as well as my heart, does not bring about the ruin, the rape I feared. I find safety. Sanctuary. A home. My home.
As I put words on paper, I reflect on my past. How frail I was,the hospitalizations over the years for depression, suicide attempts,hepatitus B from the rapes, malnutrition, detox, and accidental overdoses.The prognosis on most of the psychiatrict reports predicted my recovery as to be poor or extremely guarded. It has been six months and I have returned to my career and am doing well. With the love and nuturing from a 12 step group support group, I have remained drug and alcohol free since walking in these doors. My eating disorder has been replaced with the conviction that food is fuel,the weakness that makes us want it our greatest strength. My brain, now nourished through the meals prepared in this kitchen, thinks in colors and not in calories.
The woman I am now likes to watch the world. I embrace the natural cycle of things. Cliche' as it may be, this is what continues to save me. I have found some way into recovery, but before I could focus on higher-level needs-which include as core components emotional insight, love and connections to others- I had to be free first from hunger,thirst, and illness, and then from
threats that endangered either psychological or physiological survival. It goes without saying I found in this house the tools I needed to rebuild my life. Why have I managed somehow to leave behind at least for now what looks like wreckage, and shape something solid from my life? My prognosis was very poor. I believe I have an answer of sorts. For while I recall with clarity the terror of abuse, I also recall the kindness of thosde who were once strangers. An unsolicited hug injecting me with love-stroking away my fears.Bless, bless those who helped and who loved me when I did not know it could be possible to love oneself.
This house, built of love and brick witl niches and culverts, I search to discover,where the rain pings on a solid roof and out in the yard rabbits and racoons abound.I watch through my window, the same window I have claimed as my window since beginning the journey and a new emotion resembling hope,resembling joy comes now and touches me. Bless the nights here,the hallway light on they leave on for me so I know they are ever vigilant "for me". Me. a woman of no special visibility or significance.That night, a soft burning yellow wedge that I turn into a wing, a woman, an entire army of angels who, I have learned to imagine, know just the right words to sing me to sleep.
                                                               Devonh written 3/7/01
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