Rage is a funny thing.
It can be constructive.
Even though society tells us it isn't.
Even though society tells us to tamp that thing down and hide it, suppress it, be good little citizens.
Even though many individuals who do act on their anger do so in a way that is violent and aggressive.
Anger can actually be an incredible force towards healing.
Especially if you grew up in a setting where people didn't want you to tell on them, or if you are currently in a situation now where people want you to be quiet about their actions towards you, or yourself and your children.
Imagine a scenario like this... what if you had something absolutely terrifying happen to you when you were a little kid...
Let's say your parent decided in anger, to kill you as a 5 year old and leave you for dead... but you actually in your resilience... LIVED through this nightmare....
And you know he wants you dead.
You know you have to live in the same house with this parent plotting to kill you again in some sneaky, nefarious way between then and the day you leave the house in your 20's.
You end up with a traumatic brain injury from the beating he leaves you with, and amnesia that spots your memory of the event.
Your memory after this is never clear, and becomes ever the more faded the older you become.
Your brain also simply will not allow you to remember because it is too terrifying for any child to process.
So you file it all away as a nightmare instead of reality.
You "forget" as completely as your murderer desires you to keep it a secret.
Because who wants to remember their parent is a murderer lurking behind every door?
Who wants to remember ocean of heartbreak that large?
Honestly, I've felt an ocean of sadness this large my whole life without knowing WHY I felt it.
Because I was murdered at age 5 in cold blood.
He walked away and left me there to die.
But I wasn't able to remember this happened to me until this year.
It's been buried in amnesia for 40 years.
And I've only started to process my feelings.
I grew up with my murderer, who is also my biological "f-a-t-h-e-r" side by side in the same house, day in and day out, and it was a big secret.
Shhhhhhhhh.
When I was dying, my mother wasn’t there to save me.
I intuited at my young age that the reason she wasn't there was on purpose... the evil thing he was doing... was definitely supposed to be a secret from her.
Shhhhhhh. She wasn't supposed to know.
So, as I was dying, I realized I shouldn't ever tell my mother what he was doing to me.
Shhhhhh. Don't tell!
Because if he was killing me, and keeping it a secret from her, would her knowing the secret mean he would kill her too?
In my child's brain, I did the math and decided instantly that a monster capable of killing their own daughter and hiding it from their wife would certainly be capable of killing the wife, too.
Especially a wife as kind, trusting, sweet, naive and gullible as my mom.
Especially if she knew the secret and decided to stand up for me?
In that split second of realization before my memory closed down and wiped out, I decided I had no choice.
I would save my mother from ever knowing he did it.
Even if it meant that NOT telling her meant SHE couldn't help ME get away from him.
Because I realized she had no power to ever get away from him, never did, never would, and my choice to remain silent meant I had no power to ever help her or me.
I realized right then and there that it was a loose-loose situation for both my mother and me.
All we could do was wait it out.
All I could do was let amnesia bury me forever.
All she could do was live with him until he died.
The secret was sealed in my memory which was mercifully now going, going, going, mercifully... gone.
My head hit the concrete, and all brain activity was gone, oh so mercifully gone.
All memory was wiped.
And I was glad.
I went through the tunnel of light.
I was in bliss.
Euphoria.
The place where you know you are dead, and you certainly don't want to go back to your body.
I remember how violently upset my "f-a-t-h-e-r" was to learn that I had lived after all, after he had left me to die when I was 5.
I remember how terrified and confused I was.
I remember having difficulties staying conscious, feeling like my brain was tormenting me, having problems breathing, trying to move my body but not able to move my arms or legs.
I remember him telling my mom that if I wasn't out of his sight by 8 pm, he would "finish me off" himself. I was out for a full day and a half after that. I don't know how I got in my bed.
I understand now why I was given no medical attention as a child.
It understand now it was on purpose.
I remember now how my "father" got pleasure by watching me suffer slowly.
I remember how I stopped breathing often, as is the case after severe traumatic brain injury.
I remember that my brain didn't tell my body to breath, so my body went into a state of crisis often. My brain simply didn't get enough oxygen. My body would send a red alert signal, but nothing would register. My body kept signaling, "Red alert, red alert!!!'
But my body did nothing.
I remember panic, uncontrollable movements, seizures, then paralysis, freezing of the chest and throat, inability to breath and not being able to move my body at all for an infinitely long, torturous amount of time. Hoping someone would come.
I remember going often into states where I knew I was out of my body and I was in bliss. I don't know if it was death or not. But I was in a state of no thinking and completely limp.
I remember how finally I would feel myself gasping violently for air, my body would start flailing, and I then would be crying, and no one was there watching or caring.
I remember growing up knowing that nobody cared about my life.
I also remember caring about myself immensely when I was little during states of euphoria that seizures would send me to, then forgetting about it instantly afterwards.
I remember going to states of euphoria where I experienced the afterlife... what love and bliss felt like.. I knew what it felt like to die.. and I preferred death to life... knowing that in death, real love and comfort existed beautifully with open arms for me always, but it was not there for me in what I experienced in "real" physical life in that house I was growing up in... that was painful, bizarre, scary, and terrible.
I remember having extremes of terror and bliss, and I alternated between them sharply, back and forth.
I remember never knowing where I lived, in the horror of my mind, in the horror of that house, in the bliss of my mind, or in the perfect little church fairy tale they said we lived in.
Coming, going, going, coming.
Nightmare, bliss, sanity, reality.
I remember it wasn't safe to think.
Check out.
I remember I was always, always checked out.
I remember my "f-a-t-h-e-r" abusing me sexually over the years a little girl, but thinking it was just "a game," as he called it.
I remember the constant possibility that every day, my "f-a-t-h-e-r" might try to take my life again. Would he put poison in my cup? Why did the chicken for dinner taste weird? Was there something odd in my sandwich at lunch? Would he give me a push when I wasn’t watching? What was that gun shot I just heard? Why was everything making me jump? Why was I was in constant fight or flight?
I remember day of my life, every minute for the 19 years I lived there after age 5, being out of my body.
I remember being too fragile as a child to process the nightmare of living in that nightmare, and processing absolutely none of it.
I remember my brain immediately placing every event as it happened into amnesia, day after day, minute after minute, automatically without me knowing it.
I remember living in a completely out of touch state in order to survive.
I know that if I told my mother today that he murdered me at age 5, she would instantly turn from me and cut me off.
Just like she cut me off in a rage ten years age, when I told her he sexually abused me when I was a kid.
Just like she never would have been able to stand up for me when I was a child.
Just like she never has been able to stand up to him.
He is "God," you see.
He is the Patriarchy.
He is the leader of a secretive religious cult, and all six of his children were the undercover members, hidden away from the world until we grew up and left.
And she is his only loyal member now.
But I can't be completely mad at her.
Because she was the one solid, beautiful light in my life in my childhood that always shone steady and bright.
Even though I couldn't trust her to get me medical care, help relieve my pain, or protect me from him, at least I knew she never caused me pain while I was in her presence.
In her presence alone, I was safe.
And in the nightmare of that house, she was an angel.
For that, I will always love her.
For that, I want to protect her from him.
Even though she thinks he's safe with him.
She's not.
She just knows how to play her role very well in order to "stay" safe.
He used to make her life hell if she didn't vacuum the entire car within an inch properly once a week.
What would he do if she actually ACCUSED him of something?
Like trying to kill me?
She NEVER EVER speaks up to him.
She has never ever raised her voice to him or any of us in our entire lives.
She is terrified of him.
She knows her role in life, and how to act accordingly, meekly, sweetly, calmly, submissively.
She knows how to play it safe.
I won't endanger her.
But I am mad because I know I can't tell her any kind of truth.
I am mad because I want to get close to her as my mother, but I can't even be her friend and write to her, as he monitors and limits it.
I am seething with anger and sadness now.
I am paralyzed with complicated emotions that feel like they have no place to go.
It's all new, like it just happened to me as a child right now.
New folds of the amnesia are opening up slowly each day to process anew.
Even after 4 decades of “growing up,” some days, I still feel too fragile to process what’s happened.
Most days, I want to go to back to a state of complete amnesia all over again.
Most days, I want to go into a cocoon and never get back out.
I don't think I was supposed to remember.
But for some reason or another, oh I remember now.
I guess that the fact that the amnesia finally lifted after 4 decades is... I guess... my assurance that surely, I am strong enough to remember?
I guess I can do this.
I guess that the most difficult part of this amnesia business has been that SO much of my sadness has felt like it has...
Nowhere to go?
Most times, when someone has amnesia, they can share what they have remembered immediately with others, and it is exciting!
But in my case, much has been incredibly sad, depressing, horrible and heart crushing.
For myself
For my "family."
It's something that's slow and sad for me to process and talk about.
It's something my siblings absolutely refuse to talk with me about.
It's something my mother absolutely refuses to talk about with me, and cut me off for starting to talk about 10 years ago.
Its something my "f-a-t-h-e-r" absolutely refuses to acknowledge, and wants me to go to my grave keeping a secret.
It's something that's been bottlenecked and choked up for a couple years now.
By my family's refusal to listen.
And by my not knowing who I can share it with.
But guess what?
It doesn't matter that my "family" won't or can't listen.
I can write about it.
Here.
The very minute I confided in a friend that I had decided to write in order to release the sadness and anger, it all completely evaporated.
For a full day.
Then it came back.
But I know that there is power in telling your story.
There is power in letting it out.
So that's exactly what I'm going to do.
Some days, I feel like I can rip down huge buildings with my bare hands and teeth.
Rawwwwwwwrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!
Because I know it's not just 4 decades of unprocessed RAGE for what was done to the child's heart, spirit, soul and body I lived in.
But it's also the 4 decades of unprocessed, swallowed down, mysterious SADNESS that I swam in, unable to express.
Sadness swallowed down,
hidden, un-allowed to be expressed...
I've internalized as rage.
But once I've begun to acknowledge and express my sadness,
the rage has also allowed itself to dissipate...
both have started to dissipate little by little...
And I think healing has started to begin.
That's the thing about anger.
Anger is a funny thing.
Rage is a funny thing.
It can be constructive.
It can be a force towards healing.
It can dissipate by sharing your story.
Don't let ANYONE tell you not to be angry.
Don't let ANYONE tell you not to tell your story.
Don't let ANYONE tell you not to be sad.
Don't let ANYONE tell you to bottle up your sadness.
Don't let ANYONE take away this amazing power of yours!!!
Tell your story!!!
Q: How have you used the dynamic, healing power of anger to propel you forward in your life?
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