Beauty in hell
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 8:16PM 
Yesterday, I've visited hell. I happened to find it beautiful. I happened to be 2. Yesterday, in my craniosacral therapy, I had another flash of memory, from when I was 2 years old. I was hoping my abuse started when I was 5. I was wrong. Like my therapists told me - I'm peeling layers of the onion, one at a time. As I experienced the memory, my hair stood on end from understanding the psychology of such a small child, being raped. I didn't understand what was happening to me, and I saw things as curious and beautiful as opposed to vulgar and disturbing. I was surprised and disoriented from the pain that it caused me. I looked for people to pay attention to my pain, but nobody was available. Here is what I remembered.
I remembered an image of a penis. From the side, hanging. Its tip red. Shiny. From blood? I might never know. Just because it was red as in "anatomical red"? I won't know the answer. Did it look strange? No, it didn't. I thought it was a cherry, and I thought it looked pretty. I liked how it was shiny. I thought of how cherries grew on trees and were hanging just like this, in the sun. I thought it looked different from the other penis I remembered - I realized it must be my grandfather's - and facts confirm it. When I was one and a half, I returned from Germany back to Russia to live with my mom, and my dad stayed in Germany for another 3 years. My step-grandfather was an alcoholic and living in with us on occasion, every once in a while on a weekend or a holiday. My mom largely tried to escape him, ever since my grandmother remarried. She escaped him when she had me, but she didn't take me with her, unfortunately.
I remembered an image of my grandfather's striped shirt. It had long stripes, three in a row, then white space, then three in a row again. The stripe in the middle was bold, the other two - thin, flanking it on both sides. The fabric came down into a cuff, the cuff turned up. I loved the pattern, I thought it was pretty. I was curious at how such pretty fabric covered such big hand. The big hand sticking out of the sleeve.
I saw myself naked (an out of body experience). I didn't feel ashamed, I only felt a bit cold. My clothes were on the floor next to my feet. I thought I am seeing a doctor, I thought it's what doctors do, and I waited patiently for what would come next.
Then I remembered the pain. The pain overwhelmed me, it tore my insides out, it burned everything there ever was between my little legs, and today all day, since morning, I have had to re-experience it all over again - it returned gradually as I woke up - the burning, the cutting, the stretching and tearing, the pain urinating, the constant urge to go to the restroom. It has been so bad today, that if I didn't know what was happening to me, if I didn't understand that this was part of PTSD and I can only get rid of this through therapy and the best I can do was to breathe, I would have gone into ER. This was worse than last year, when my bladder pain has started. This was so unbearable that I cried all morning, thinking how I wouldn't be able to ever function again.
I didn't know that hell was supposed to be ugly. From the height of my innocence I made it beautiful, and ever since then, I always found beauty in the most gory disturbing things. I think I know why - it helped me survive. When everything around me was ugly, I had to hold on to something to want to live. To look at something pretty. It made me happy. It still does.
Will my pain ever go away? I don't know, but I know that writing it out helped a little.
Photo by Ernst Vikne.
Reader Comments (4)
I will never understand how anyone could ever look at a child and see a reason to have sex.
*HUGS*
Well, it is not about sex, it is about power. A child is helpless, and is a perfect victim, a perfect place to shed insecurities. It's just so happens that the male organ in this case is the weapon - as would be a knife or a gun. It is all about domination. When a man is weak, when he can't dominate a woman, he can dominate a girl and get satisfaction out of it.
This is so poignant...that "little girl you" made hell beautiful because you didn't know it wasn't supposed to be...when I was going through my first reliving of hell, My little girl me, eyes slammed shut, 'saw' herself in a green garden (because I didn't know hell wasn't supposed to be beautiful), and 'saw' her guts, through the hole which he punched in her, and she was so sleepy.
Anyway, I wanted to finally share what courage you have, putting this out there for the hordes of us, the silent. Thank you for being silent no longer.
Sara, thank you - yes. I will keep writing, to never ever be silent again, to speak, to unite all of our voices and be heard, to make a change.