I walked by the coffeehouse today on the way to an appointment. There, sitting at one of the outside tables was a young man with an adult pit bull at his side, tightly leashed. As I passed by I made eye contact with his dog. What I saw looking back at me was the manifestation of my inner child. The dog's body was shaking in a barely controlled state of abject fear. I wanted to bend down and gather him up in my arms. To Soothe him. Protect him. Love him. But I knew I couldn't.
He was a living breathing human being existing in a state of abject fear.
As I sit here rereading that story I can still see the dog's eyes. That look of fear, all consuming, all knowing, with not one single hint of it every abating. The power of abject fear.
I see that look every time I face a mirror. That power lingering on from my childhood experiences.
In the last 6 months I have hit yet a new bottom in my recovery. A place that I thought I could never go; but I have. And there are no signs of it abating anytime soon either. I do have times when it is not in the forefront like now, but when it's quiet, in the still of the morning or just as I am falling to sleep, that is when I feel it most. When there is nothing else to distract me from my pain.
The story about the dog continued;
That was my inner child's world while he was being abused. In some ways it still is. A place where anything can happen without warning, Horrific things, Painful things. Confusing things. I have a tremendous amount of compassion for my inner child. I often wonder why or better yet how he survived the things he did. As an adult I do not know how I survived it either. I have expended a phenomenal amount of energy running from the realization that I had been sexually abused. Now I expend that energy coping with the legacy of my abuse.
Not a lot has changed in the three years since I wrote that story. I still expend a great deal of energy coping with the aftereffects of my abuse.
I went to dinner with a friend of mine last week. We go together often. One of our joys is to stroll down Polk Street while we decide where we would like to eat. This night we decided to eat at Pesce. We sat at the bar as there were no tables available. We were having a great time eating wonderful food and chatting with the bartender when I got triggered. It was a certain movement of the bartenders arm as he shook a cocktail that did it; and that was all it took. It must have been a direct memory connection because within a a few seconds I retreated deep within myself. It took some twenty minutes before I was able to ground myself.
This is my life. A series of triggers that continue to happen even after 9 years of therapy, 6 of which have been directly focused on my abuse. My work does not stop. In all of that time I think I have only recovered maybe about 30 minutes of actual experiences, all in bits of 20-45 seconds, sometimes longer. The horrific nature of what happened to me limits my ability to recover anything more.
My latest bottom happened as most do, as a result of a convergence of many unrelated things that then merge into one. Through it I have realized that my inner child, like that dog, still exists in a state of abject fear. And that is not changing. When the worst of the abuse started I sequestered a huge part of myself in a sort of safe house; a place where nothing or no one had access. My inner child is still there. Worse, is that safe house is still has strong as it was when I created it much to the detriment of my life as it exists now. In many ways the creation of this place was the only thing that keep me sane and alive. But now it has become my prison, a prison that I can not get into nor can my inner child get out of even if he wants to. In many ways he still thinks that I am a child and that the abuse is ongoing.
He is still living in a state of abject fear and nothing I can say to him will convince him otherwise.
I have lost all hope that my recovery will change my life even though I continue to do hopeful things. And maybe that is all I can do right now nor expect myself to do. Maybe it is just about taking it one day at a time, one step at a time, one hopeful act at a time. Maybe that is what I am suppose to do. Maybe that is what this new bottom of mine is all about. Making me focus on now, this moment, the sound of the wind as it rustles the ferns in the grotto, the feel of my breath as it fills my lungs, the softness of my boys fur as I touch his body. Maybe that is the key here. To experience the inherent beauty of each and every moment within the spiritual nature of all that the Goddess has created. Maybe that is what this new bottom is all about.
