I hear it all the time now, but it is stronger at night. It seems all I have to do is lie down and close my eyes and the feelings are intensified. Help! Mommy! Help!
I first heard the screaming inside my head about a year ago, and I wanted to stop it. I did not want to go where the pain is. I told Dr.
Sheppard about it and, with EMDR, it seemed to go away for awhile.
At the last clear day, I screamed it out loud. Again, it went away for a while. But now it is back and it seems that it will not go away again.
I cannot stop this anymore. I cannot stop myself from going for an adjustment. If I tried to do so, or tried to stop the screaming, I think I would do myself serious injury. The repressed memories seem to have a life of their own. Pandora’s box is wide open. The images are still a blurred mess, but they are coming more into focus.
After an adjustment, I need to sit on the floor (lying down on the table to let the process do its work is impossible). I need to sit in the dark. I need to make myself as little as possible. I need to rock myself.
I feel stupid when Hell and Paula come to soothe me. I am fifty-six years old, for goodness sake! Yet the warmth of their hugs fills a terrible void. They bring some sort of light that does not quite take away the black night, but it helps me to cry, or I should say grieve. It allows me to breathe out all that bad stuff inside of me. When I finally get up, I think that’s enough with the self-pity already.
I hate myself when I cry so much. It seems to me that it is okay to cry softly, so that no one can hear, or to just let the tears roll down my cheeks, but to sob loudly seems unacceptable for someone my age. I am no longer four years old and I keep telling myself to stop it! What a crybaby.
Last Wednesday was a bad day, to say the least. Making a fool of myself by being hysterical is unacceptable behaviour. There were so many things going on inside my head, I was a complete emotional wreck. What if I had behaved that way when Jos. and I separated? Or each time Eddy was in the hospital? Or when I was demoted? I close my eyes and shudder. I will see Hell on Monday for an adjustment (I cannot stop this) but to attend his next workshop…? I know I should, but to face these people and have them look at me, thinking what an idiot I am and how disruptive my behaviour is, I don’t know.
Besides, can I attend and pretend to do the exercise in the garden and say how everything is beautiful and lovely, and lie? I hate that exercise. The garden I have been visualizing is made of stone and concrete; there’s nothing alive in it. Worse still, there is no ‘sacred self.’
How can there be? I am dead. That space inside of me is all black and my attempt to colour it gave me the grey garden.
When we had the first workshop and I saw the garden, I thought okay, so tonight I cannot visualize more than this, but surely it will be better next time. Only it wasn’t and I had to leave — what was I going to say to the others about my garden?
Each June, I love to go to the Botanical Gardens in Montreal and sit in the garden of roses, for hours at a time, admiring them. The gardens have so many kinds of roses and they are so beautiful. You would think I could find one rose bush in my own garden. I came home that night to find that Eddy had rented What Dreams May Come.
A strange coincidence. In the movie, Annie’s inner space is like that.
She says her most precious paintings are missing, that her roses used to be so handsome, but now there is no water pressure, no electricity.
That’s what my inner world looks like. There are no beautiful roses and I possess no precious thing. Worse, there is no benevolent loving creature to bring light and colour to my garden. I have told Hell and Dr. Sheppard that I am dead inside, but they do not seem to know what I’m talking about.
Something else is happening too. Whether it is good or bad I do not know. When Paula asked me those questions, the other day, I was surprised at my answers. The Micha story is so strange. My story is strange. I am aware how unbelievable it is — I don’t believe it myself.
But I find that, when asked by someone I trust, I will answer as hon-
estly as I can. I will also tell the person that I have no way of knowing how true the story is, or how much distortion there is. All I know, all I can honour, is what goes on during a clearing. I cannot deny the memories of my body. Those memories cannot lie, but the ones in my head may. I wait, too. I wait for whoever is listening to call me a liar, or tell me to shut up, or to grow up. I wait for them to tell me to stop the drama, to move on. When I am talking about Micha, I think someone should have me thrown into one of those padded rooms.
I’m also a bit confused, because sometimes I will tell about Micha and feel nothing, while other times strong emotions rise to my throat.
Why? Why is it that I do not always react to the story the same way?
The words are the same. I do not change the story. So why is it that sometimes I find it difficult to tell the story, while at other times I am totally numb, and speak as if I were speaking about some stranger in a sorry little story that would be better ignored than told?
And now I think I have to hurry and get this over with. If it is as I feel, and the momentum I am experiencing is unstoppable, what will I do if Hell ever decides to move away? I suppose I can always see Dr. Sheppard more often, or find some other sort of therapy, because it seems to me that no matter what I do, I always end up in the same place. Talk about being stuck in a perspective. Dr. Epstein, I hate it when people put me in a box.
Feb. 17, 2001 (Dream)
Where is my purse?
Outside, playing ball with a man. He throws a soccer ball to me and I retrieve it and throw it back. Or, as it seems to be most of the time, children chase it and throw it back to him until he isn’t there anymore, and I throw a much smaller ball, the size of a tennis ball, which I throw at a woman, but she refuses to play.
A young man on a bicycle. He is from some sort of organization that polices the area. I get on his bicycle to hitch a ride back to my hotel, but fall off. I realize I’ve lost my purse and go looking for it and am filled with anguish.
I find my purse on the grass. It is white (the small white one I have for summer). I can tell it has been opened because the shoulder strap is tucked into the outside zipper.
Back with the young man, I dump the contents of my purse on some sort of table outside the building. There is a bottle of something (looks like water) that I empty on the grass. I see (dream within a dream) other such bottles that are empty, that I have scattered around the house, like I do with empty perfume bottles.
Walking inside a huge building, I am trying to get back to where I left my purse. I think my credit cards might be stolen. Ahead of me, in the corridor where I’m walking, but far enough away for me to not be able to distinguish faces, a young woman in a grey robe over a white gown and a nun dressed all in white are walking away from me.
I mostly see their backs. The sister is helping the young woman, who tells her that she feels she will not heal. After all, she is a whore, how could she heal? The nun tells her that GC loves her very much (‘GC’
I understood to stand for ‘God the Creator’). The nun was gentle and loving. I wanted to believe her.
I then sought a door to leave the building, but the one I found I did not use, because it opened into some sort of hall entrance and there were several men sitting on the floor. I did not want them to see me, so I looked for another door. I found a huge metal door to my right.
It had enormous hinges and was at least twelve feet high. I pushed on the hinges and the door opened easily.
I found myself in a concrete courtyard and cars were coming from behind me, which puzzled me because I had just come out of the building. There was a man walking with a little girl, about four. I asked him directions to get to where I thought I had left my purse.
I think it is now dark and the man, now older and fatter, stops a car to ask the couple for directions. He instructs them to pray and, while their eyes are closed, he steals some sort of leather case. When he unzips it, I notice it contains leather gloves, ordinary winter brown leather gloves. I chase him to give the gloves back to the lady, but I cannot get close to him. I do see him pick up a nasty looking gun. It had been left by a previous robber.
Then I see a young woman, slim, salt-and-pepper hair, pale. She’s a detective or a cop or something, and she too picks up a gun, one that is lying on the floor. I tell her she’s stupid to pick up the gun.