Amnesia

What would you do if you just learned you had amnesia for 40 years?

Get mad? Get upset? Get excited? Tell everyone?

Well, guess what?!

It's 2023, and I just realized I've had amnesia for most of my life.

The photo above is from this fall as I'm in the thick of realizing this for the first time. 

But SHHHHH, we can't tell anyone?

It's a big SECRET?

Because they would become extremely upset.

And then, there is the murder of an innocent child involved. 

And then, they would cut me off. 

Again.

Well, they cut me off once before for being "too honest" with them, so I kind of know what to expect about being honest with them again.

And this amnesia thing... what I remember... well.

It isn't exactly pretty.

What I remember is... a nightmare.

Which is interesting, because previously if you would have asked what I remembered of my childhood, I would have told you my life was pretty much like a fairy tale.

I guess I had to tell myself pretty little stories to keep my sanity. Well, there is no "I guess" about it. I remember falling asleep every night as a child doing just that.

I wonder, did any of my siblings do the same?

It's not like I can talk about it with them.

I've tried, and most of my 5 siblings divert the topic, say that they don't know what I'm talking about.

I can hear it in their voice, they feel sorry for me, they think I'm crazy, deluded.

Some of them are still programmed to think what they were brainwashed to think about me.

That I have demons in me, that Satan has a hold of me, that I'm broken, stupid, simple, that I've never known what I'm talking about and never will, that I'm the one to over look. 

I know all of this is untrue. 

But it feels the same as when we were children, when I still knew, before the amnesia fully set in, before I forgot.

I still feel the shame, the ridicule, the concern masked as something else.

But I know their hearts are pure and good, as children.

They were just as a whole brainwashed as children to believe that I was evil and stupid. 

So every time I "slipped up" and accidentally remembered he killed me, which didn't happen very often, he had already taught them to believe I was the liar and he was the good father. So they didn't question him at all. 

They were terrified of him.

He taught them he was "God." 

In the cult we grew up in, the "father" was "God" and to question that was to be severely punished. 

He was the sociopath, and he got off on control.

And I was just a "simple" child who dared in my childish innocence to not take him seriously enough. 

I laughed, I danced, I sang. 

He hated that I didn't listen.

And one day he decided that he needed to "teach" me to fear him a little more. 

He let his rage get the better of him. 

I understand now.

I didn't understand then.

I understand now how my mom went into the relationship with him trustingly as a 14 year old when he was 16, seeing him as a broken individual who needed saving. 

He put a note in her locker when she was in middle school, and he was the only boy she ever dated. 

He was broken.

She only wanted to help him heal. She was an empath. She went in with a pure heart.

And he saw the goodnesses in her heart. And he flew to it like a moth to light, and has been sucking the light from her ever since. She chose to give him her all, bit by bit. Not all at once, and not by her own choice. 

He tricked her, cleverly, as in a game, and she never saw it coming.

He said, "Do you love me? Then you will do this for me."

And so she did. And in so doing, she was secretly blackmailed. 

But she didn't know. 

She was an innocent, naive girl who grew up on a farm, one of 14 children who was loved and protected and never knew harm. 

He drove a motorcycle, and he was a "bad boy." 

He knew how to love bomb.

She was smitten.

Years go by, and then came the day she wakes up and realizes she is backed into a corner from all angles, and can't get out. 

So she decides to pretend she doesn't want to get out, instead. 

But it's the day she realized she had no power at all.

The day she realized she had even lost the power to protect her own children, all six of them.

You see, he was a sadist.

He loved to slowly torture young, innocent children.

Then he told her that although he "loved" the children, SHE must remember that SHE was his number one.

And so she went to a secret place in her mind... she checked out.

Her life looked perfect on the outside. She had a garden that she escaped to, and a house in the country that she redecorated and made beautiful. It kept her busy.

"Don't think about it," was the advice she gave she liked to give when something terrible was happening to her children and they came to her.

I want to call my mom and tell her my amnesia of 4 decades has cleared.

But why would I?

Why would I ruin the perfectly constructed bubble that she has had to create in her mind to escape the nightmare of her inescapable prison of living with him?

She doesn't believe his blackmail can ever allow her to escape.

Her mind, her fairy tale, is her escape.

Despite my desire to finally talk with her about my memories, I'm not going to ruin her escape.

I love my mom.

I can't ruin her bubble.

It's her only safety from him.

She would go crazy if I broke her bubble.

I love her. 

I want to protect her.

She was my only protection from him, growing up.

For every single time I felt terrified of his presence and didn't understand why, every single time he left the room, I felt 100% safety in her presence alone.

Even though she couldn't protect me from him.

I knew that at least SHE was safe and kind. 

There is that.

And for that, I love her.

For that, I want to protect her.

For that, I am still willing to be her mother.

And for that, although I want so badly to tell her he killed me, I guess can't and won't?

Because I can't hurt her?

Although SHE HURT ME by NOT PROTECTING ME!

AND IT MAKES ME MAD!

But I understand her. 

I know that HE tricked HER, initially, when she was young. 

I see too many insights, I understand too much.

I just can't hurt her. 

I will be patient. 

I have a feeling she is going to outlive him, and someday she will be free.

And someday, when she's ready, maybe I can tell her what my child self has wanted to say for a long time, but has kept buried in amnesia:

Mom, he killed me when I was 5. And I wanted to tell you, so you and me could run away from him. And be safe together. 

But I thought if I did, he would kill you. 

So I kept quiet. 

So he wouldn't kill you.

Because I love you.

But I've been terrified he was going to poison me or kill me my entire childhood, teens, young adulthood, middle age and present day. 

I've been terrified he was going to get rid of me so I wouldn't tell anyone about him murdering me. 

I've been terrified of him my whole entire life. 

I have nightmares he is coming to slaughter me in my sleep. 

I'm sorry you have been held prisoner by such a person as him. 

I know you didn't mean for any of this to happen. 

I know you didn't know he was who he is before you met him. 

Why do the most depraved of pyscopathic narcissists repeat the cycle with their children. Sexual abuse, pedofilia, rape, physical trauma, sadistic beatings, and murder, generation after generation?

Somehow, at age 5, when the beating began, when the force of his rage hit me with a shovel on my spine and and shoulder while I was on my trike just riding down our sidewalk... I knew the answer to that question.

He was hurt as a child, and it enraged him.

He was a victim who chose to victimize others to feel better.

I was simply a very innocent and a very easy target.

He had also been sexually molesting me for years, and my mom had just caught him in the act a couple months earlier.

She told him to make it right and do the right thing.

His version of the right thing was taking all his bottled up rage, and swinging it with as much hate, speed and force as he could with the blunt edge of that shovel onto my tiny body.

As is reverbrated through every nerve, tendon, and muscle of my tender, young body, I began to jerk and seize.

I was innocence, but he wanted revenge.

Electricity coursed through me as if in slow motion.

He wanted to see me break, but I'm moving as if in liquid, out of body.

Lightning pulses in my veins, animates me and emanates from my soul as I'm moving in a blissful, underwater sea of neon light as music of a strange and ethereal glow pulses in my soul.

I am innocence, and his rage can not touch me.

I see clearly, from the all knowing bliss of half death where my spirit swirls, that his rage is not personal.

I get knocked out several more times, cussed out in long tirades of vicious hate, I'm kicked in my private areas, all over my body, I have more seizures.

And each time, through the searing pain, I try my best to hold on to the knowing that he's not doing it to me because he hates me, but because he feels hated by his mom, who was hated by his father, in a string of generational hate and abuse.

It stops with me, right now, I vow in my little child's heart.

If I live, I won't become mean like you, you can't make me. 

And if I do become mean like you, which my heart says I can't, but the pain screams I definitely will, I won't have kids and repeat the cycle.

And if I do become mean, which my heart says I can't, but the pain screams I definitely will, I will get therapy and help and I will heal. 

These things I swear on my five year old heart.

And the lights swirl around me, flickering electricity whirling, and I am not in a body.

I am floating in liquid dark, with electricity coursing beautifully through me.

As happy and joyful as the laughter of a million oceans of laughing fireflies, all flickering their glowing electric bodies on and off gleefully at once.

And there in the dark, with the electricity coursing through and around me so beautifully, I am given a choice.

"Do you want to stay or go?"

I know I am dead.

And I love it.

I feel euphoria.

I don't want to come back.

I know this bliss is where my spirit has come from.

This is my true home.

This is where I will go to when my body is done it's mission here on earth.

But now is not the time.

I know I have a story on earth, and strangely enough, it can only unfold if I'm brave enough to go back into my body and live in that house for 19 more years with that monster who may or may not kill me again.

Am I brave enough?

I am.

Today and most days, I do not feel equipped or brave at all.

But when I was 5, at that moment, I was brave.

I knew my spirit wanted to go back and be in her body, to live her life.

And for her, I will continue being brave.

It's been almost 10 years since I've written here last in my blog.

A lot has happened since then.

I'm going to keep writing here as insights unfold. 

I'm glad you're here!

Being a human here on this planet means that YOU are incredibly brave, and YOUR heart is incredibly brave and beautiful.

Everyone is going through something. 

We are all brave.

Because you are in human skin right now, YOU are INCREDIBLY BRAVE.

And if no one has told you that, then let me tell you.

YOU ARE BRAVE! 

Much love to you.

*Photo of a path I hiked on this summer, here in the Pacific North West. The dreaminess of the cottonwood drift reminded me of the deja vu feeling of amnesia. 

Q: Have you ever remembered something from your past that surprised you?______________________________________