Me: Hello Micha, it’s been a long time since we talked. There have been many changes inside of me since then. Still, I have a question or two. You said I only needed to think of the rowboat and that I would remember. I still do not remember. What can you tell me?
Micha: It is long ago and very painful, perhaps it is now so far away from your memories that you cannot ever remember. Things were very ugly. If I had told you there had been two men, what would you have said?
Me: What about the drawings, are they for real?
Micha: Yes and no.
Me: That does not help. I want to know. Please give me an answer.
Once upon a time there was a pretty little girl who was three-anda-half years old. She lived alone with her mother and was happy, even if her mother was not very motherly. There were books, crayons, beautiful colouring books, and some very nice toys.
Then her mom decided to go away on a trip with her lover, and she brought Micha to her grandmother, who lived in the country. Her grandmother was unwell and spent her days reading in bed, so Micha was often left to look after herself.
Her grandfather was very angry at Micha. He hated her because she was a bastard child. One day, he decided to take Micha to his workshop. That was his own special place and his wife never went there.
This is where he took Micha, pretending he would make her a special toy. So Micha went with him into the shop behind the house.
The first thing her grandfather did was put Micha inside a large wooden crate and lift an anvil onto the lid, while he thought through what he wanted to do. In the evening, he took her out of the crate. To weaken and subdue the child, he had not given her any food all day.
Micha simply stared at him, terrified, unable to understand what was happening. He then showed her the round saw, which he turned on and then proceeded to take her right wrist and hold it very close to the saw, as if he was going to cut her hand off. He did the same with the other hand, making her believe that if she said anything, she would lose her hands. There was no doubt in Micha’s mind that he would do just that. So, secure in the knowledge that Micha would not talk, he proceeded to torture her.
In the middle of the ceiling, a large, rusted metal hook had been twisted into a beam. A large chain hung from it. This is where he tied Micha with an old leather belt. He buckled the belt onto her wrist and hung her other hand from the chain. First, he beat her with his special leather belt, the one he’d used to beat his children when they were little. He knew exactly how to whip the belt so that the skin would swell, and then he would lick the little drops of blood as they broke through the skin.
Micha screamed at first, but the more she screamed, the more violent he got. She soon fainted. He then took advantage of that situation to sodomize Micha. Unfortunately, Micha woke up during his best moments and her bowels released. Very angry, he picked up the feces and smeared them all over Micha and put some in her mouth.
He was spent, but still furious. He put Micha back inside the wooden crate and replaced the anvil on top of the lid.
Micha’s grandmother knew that her husband had taken the little girl, but she did not intervene. Was she afraid of being beaten? Was praying to her God all she could do?
The following day, one of their adopted sons came to visit. He was as perverted as the older man. He picked Micha up out of the crate and took her upstairs to bathe her. Standing in the bathtub, she let her uncle scrub her clean with strong soap and cold water, without saying a word. He did not bother with hot water, he just cleaned the child as quickly as possible. He even washed her hair. Then, wrapped in a clean towel, shivering with cold and terrified beyond words, Micha was taken back to the workshop and her grandfather.
It was autumn and cold in the shop. Hands bound behind her back, completely naked, she was laid on her stomach on top of a small bench.
One forced her mouth open with his penis while the other sodomized her. They were playing see-saw. When the two men were finally satisfied, she was put back in the wooden crate. Micha spent another night inside the crate. She could only use part of the box for a toilet and she was very hungry.
The next day, when the younger man had gone, her grandfather tied her up again, producing more welts and licking them, and playing with parts of her anatomy she knew nothing about. He would whis-per vile words to her, calling her his little whore and saying things like, “You like that don’t you?” “You’re such a little whore.” Micha hurt everywhere and parts of her body felt on fire. She fainted again.
When she came to, she was back inside the wooden crate. She heard some voices and, as the lid lifted, she saw another uncle. This one took Micha upstairs, gave her a warm bath and put her to bed in a clean bed, in clean clothes. She had a little bed inside the solarium, where a balcony used to be, but it had been closed in. She developed a high fever and a very bad cough, which was what saved her, really.
Her mother came back and the doctor was called. However, a week had passed, very little remained to show what had been going on, and Micha made certain that she would not say a word about the ordeal.
The only after-effects appeared to be whooping cough and the vomiting Micha did several times a day. She said nothing. She did not want to lose her hands.
There, Michelle; there is the story. As for what went on in the rowboat, it is just as bad. This is enough for today.
May 31, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt…What is my head trying to tell me? I see images, terrifying images, bad images, yet there is no emotion. It seems I can’t have both. If there is lots of pain, there is no picture; if there are pictures, there is no pain, no emotion, just a feeling of revulsion.
Everything is burning: my neck, my head, my upper back. It’s like being hit with a four-by-four. That would cause about the same degree of pain. I am not as nauseous, but I am quite dizzy.
It is amazing how just the one adjustment last Friday got the ball rolling again. I feel as if I am in Phase II. Phase I was getting over the incredulity, the denial, the fear. Now, I no longer fear or disbelieve.
Well, a little bit. To arrive at the kind of memory I want is, for me, the only way I will truly believe this. But I am ‘reparenting’ myself.
That is good for now, but the process goes on, whether I care to pay attention to it or not. I am here again, but even if it is the same space, it is somehow different.
June 3, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt…Not much to say. My upper back hurt. Same old, same old. Otherwise, I’m good.
June 9, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt…Wow! Thank you! Too much for words.
June 10, 2000 (Computer Journal)
Ugly is me!
I have been feeling so good lately. I’ve lost a bit of weight, I exercise a little three times a week. After two years of averaging three hours of sleep a night, I now sleep like a baby. And the stress, the mountain of stress from work, from Micha, from my mother, from Jos., has all fallen away.
The month of April has come and gone and, lo and behold, my salary was not slashed. Working as a simple clerk is turning out to be fun, challenging and creative, although not necessarily in that order.
Eddy is repairing the damage that was done to him by both his dad and me. I am finally able to stand back and watch him struggle out
of his cocoon, while he develops strong wings that will enable him to fly as high as his journey takes him.
Seeing Dr. Sheppard and working with my core beliefs is helping me sort out why I can’t let go of Jos., and why I am so angry at him and at my mother. With Hell, I seem to have concluded one level of the adventure and started another. I do not know how many bosses there are, or when I will arrive at the final big monstrous boss; however, I feel strong at this stage and am very willing to explore this new territory and battle the enemy, no matter how many unexpected vil-lains there might be. Right now I look at my sword and it is shining brightly, made stronger by the magic of my first victory. So, when I visited Hell yesterday, I was in top form.
I have learned in the past year or so that it is always a good idea to pay attention to Hell when he speaks. It has been my experience that listening to his gentle coaching takes me into surprising areas of the journey, and his unobtrusive words hint at strategies for the battle.
So it was yesterday.
The clearing brought me into a space where I was crying a lot. Not from the pain of Micha, but from a different pain, it seemed. I joked about being a crybaby. I always feel so foolish and stupid when the crying comes. Hell asked if I wanted to explore this further or shut it down. I had tried to stop the crying but in doing so I had awakened that familiar pain in the pit of my stomach. I thought I should follow his suggestion.
I laid back down on the table, quieted everything inside of me and had one long look at it. I saw it so clearly. Already, in the preceding few days, I had experienced the feeling of wanting to pull something out of my stomach, through my mouth or even the top of my head, just as a magician would pull out a long braid of handkerchiefs. The difference here is that my braid was not brightly coloured reds and yellows and greens, and certainly not made of silk. Rather, I could see a long coil of dirty rags, all linked together and woven into a grey-brown rope. I wanted to pull it out, but Hell suggested that I might want, instead, to ask it what it wanted to do. I followed his instructions.
When I stopped trying to pull it out and instead tried to give it the space and attention it wanted, it seemed to change from soft, tightly
woven rags into a rope made of glass shards — black and dangerously sharp. I was afraid it would hurt me terribly.
Again, under Hell’s coaching, I listened to the words and repeated them. “I am giving you space. I acknowledge you. Please feel free to express yourself in any manner you may choose.” I was terrified. I did not want to stop the process, but I was shaking hard, a horrified witness to what it was doing.
Then it moved! But it moved below my navel, not up toward my throat or my head, as I had been trying so hard to make it do since the beginning of this healing journey. Again, Hell suggested I acknowledge its move and give it the space it wanted. I saw it change from a tightly coiled rope made of black glass shards into a soft snake with smooth, bright orange skin and black rings. It slithered down toward my groin. As I struggled to give it space, I saw the space of my lower abdomen as a large, square grey box. The snake moved to each corner, pushing at the angles, as if stretching the space available to make still more room.
Then Hell said something that I was not so sure I wanted to do. He mentioned that I might want to have a conversation with this beast.
Maybe, Hell suggested, I could ask for its name. Maybe I could listen to what it had to say. Talk with this beast? Ask for its name? Listen to what it had to say? Why would I want to do that? I hated it! I saw now only a dark grey mass. It took up all the space, filling all of it and yet straining at the limits, pushing against the walls. It had no form or shape. Just this dirty grey stuff, like the dust bunnies in the bag of a vacuum cleaner.
I told Hell: “It’s ugly. I call it Ugly.”
When I named it, it sang! Not that I can tell the song or the music it was singing to, or even that I could call it singing, but for certain it talked to me; if not in words, in a language that my soul is very familiar with. As I listened to its song, Ugly revealed itself to me and I recognized it. Ugly was more than all that hate I had ever had toward myself. Ugly was me! Whoa! All my life I had hated Ugly. I had ignored it. Each time it had wanted to make itself known to me, I had shoved it down further in the hidden corners of my being. Yet there it was, covered in layers and layers of denial. Strangely, it seemed not to hate me.
Ugly is the real me. The Michelle I know today is only a veneer I have put on, layers and layers of it. Ugly is the real piece of art, but all I have ever presented to myself and the world is coating after coating of veneer. I think I meant well. Maybe I thought this true self I called Ugly needed to be embellished with veneer. However, as I added each coat, the self became darker and darker, to the point that I forgot what the original masterpiece looked like. I even forgot that I had added all that veneer. The Michelle thus created is a grotesque disfigurement of the original creation that I AM. I suddenly understood that. Ugly is the Me I created, not that it created. This is the real original — Me, not Ugly. I think in that instant I grew up.
I remember, at the beginning of my journey into healing, I wanted to quit (something I wanted to do a lot at one time), and Hell had asked the question, “Don’t you want to be all that you can be?” I was angry (I was angry a lot in those days), and I thought, why would I want to be more of this miserable self that I am? Now that I understand, maybe, just maybe, I can start being who I really am. I have a feeling, though, that the process of stripping all that veneer might be painful and very likely something that will take me still further into this journey of darkness and light.
Being all that I can be? Now that I have a shot at it, I am certainly willing to give it a try.
June 14, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt…I had lots of things going on while Hell was working on my lower back. Then it was in between my shoulder blades that I felt everything. Very hot. Burning. I was hot. The music from the CD
player sent me into a sort of dream. I dreamt or saw a big stone wall.
First it was huge, as if I was way too close or had become very tiny.
It was all grey at first, then I saw that it was made of fieldstones with mortar in between. Then I, or it, receded and I saw it was a wall, very common in the country. It separated two big fields. Nothing was cul-tivated, just lots of green grass and flowers. The stone wall went east and west. It was at least two feet thick, but no more than waist high.
I did not know if I should turn right or left or jump over the wall.
Then, with the sitting-down adjustment, all became different. My neck suddenly felt ice cold and wet. This lasted for quite a while. I had
to check with my hands to make sure it wasn’t really wet. Face down again on the table I felt as if I were swimming, with my arms flailing.
But something was holding me back, like a strap or a belt, and someone yanked me out of the water. Then came the desire to vomit.
June 23, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt totally exhausted. The kind of exhaustion you get from pushing your body to the limit. Like a marathon, or swimming across the lake, or racing. I am completely spent. I was there. The bad smell. The image of my grandfather’s groin. The ejaculate. The smell.
The stuff in my mouth. I was there. Now I can honestly say I have a memory of that happening in my past. Only one, and I find it difficult to deal with. Now that one image will not go away. Unlike the drawing, this memory brings with it all the feelings of taste and smell, of being forced. It is difficult to look at. But now that it is there, it will not go away. But at least I am in the right place to deal with this.
June 26, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt empowered. Like in video games, it seemed I was stor-ing up energy that I could then hurl at my grandfather. “You son of a bitch! You can’t do that to me! Take this and take that and hurt! You can’t do this anymore! I simply won’t let you!” And I would throw a ball of fire at him. Zap! Zap! I felt terrific. All that energy. I loved it.
Then the clearing was over and I moved something in my neck.
Lots and lots of pain. Overwhelming pain, and I cried. It seemed to me that I was grieving for last Friday — there had been no time to grieve the memory flashback. Places to go. People to see. The party at work. I would not have gone, but three people depended on me to take them there. I think that sometimes I need two clearing sessions in the same day. In spite of all that stuff going on, I feel things are going well and there is healing.
June 28, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt…Someone was pushing on my head and holding it under water. I was struggling, trying to fight and get my head out of the water. I swallowed a lot of water. I was wearing a light orange
bathing suit. I was very little, maybe three-and-a-half. I promised. I told him I would not tell, but he still continued. Then I was so cold, so very cold.
June 30, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt as if the snake from the other day was trying to move up my spine, but could not get past my neck, where I saw a gelati-nous substance blocking the way. Lots and lots of it. The snake was trying to move the stuff with its mouth. It would grab a lot of the stuff in its mouth and try to move it away from my neck, but without success. It was just shifting the stuff, but not dissolving it. I think it tried to swallow some but there was too much of it to do any good. I tried breathing into my neck, and then I saw metal teeth, like those from a circular saw. It was tearing into the tissues. Lots of blood and sinews and stuff, but I did not find it gory. Then the teeth changed into scales on the back of a reptile. Hard scales were jutting out of my neck. There they got stuck. I was unable to change or soften the scales. Now it is still like that; I think I am influenced by the Epstein book Hell lent me. I must be stuck in a perspective again.
I can see myself going up the stairs. I am dressed in a little dress, but am still damp from the lake. I come in the kitchen to sit down for supper. My grandfather is already there. My grandmother puts a plate in front of me. We are all silent. Not a word is said. I AM SO
ANGRY!
July 5, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt…I know why my wrist hurts when it does, but I could not figure out why my upper arm hurts. I think it is anger. So much of it. But I am so afraid of anger. Anger is destructive. I can easily hurt myself if I let go, or hurt someone else. I am confused about anger.
Not supposed to have any. Supposed to suffer in silence and offer pain to Jesus, that’s what I’ve been taught. Only those who suffer go to heaven, etc., but at this stage of my journey and adventure with Hell, I am so angry. So angry, yet afraid, yet confused, and my arm hurts.
So do my ears. I feel my ears will pop from the pressure.
July 10, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt…He’s going to kill me. Even now it feels as if he has that power.
Aug. 2, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt…I like it when the adjustment puts me in a half-dream, where I am not sure if I am dozing or not. This time it felt like something was different. Instead of just having sudden movements up and down my spine, it felt as if, from time to time, I was rolling to the side. It felt nice. Sometimes too, my whole lower body seemed to move down on its own. Not so tense.
Aug. 18, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt…The same rhythm. Something akin to the kind of singsong four-year-olds like to sing as they jump on one foot and then the other. Hum, hum. Hum, hum. Hum. Hum. Hum, hum.
Aug. 21, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt…The dream asked, “Where is your nightmare, Michelle?”
I answered, “I don’t know. It was so long ago. I think I misplaced it.”
The dream asked, “Do you think you could find it again?”
I answered, “I don’t know. I think I misplaced it somewhere.” I searched for my nightmare.
“Dear Dream, I really don’t know where I could have put it. I think I put it away in some drawer there in the back. But I don’t remember where.” I opened a drawer or two, but it wasn’t there.
Then I remembered I had put it in a wooden box with a single leaf motif on top. The box is inside a red pouch. It is red velvet with gold strings. But where did I put the box? I couldn’t find it.
The dream said, “It’s okay, because when you do find the box, it will open of its own accord. You just have to press on the leaf and wait.” So I think, okay, maybe next time. Seems there’s no rush for this.
Aug. 23, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt…Today is bad. But maybe it will get better soon.
Sept. 13, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt great. I found out I am NOT a victim. Micha fought the bastard, tooth and nail. Also, today I bit the beast in my right side, the way Conan bit the vultures. I saw blood ooze out. It squealed, and its little bitty eyes filled with fear. I tore it to pieces with my teeth.
It may not be dead yet, but it cannot be as strong. We will see where this leads.
Oct. 3, 2000 (letter)
Dear Valerie:
What I am about to write is very difficult for me, only in part because I have been very sick with pneumonia and bronchitis for the last four weeks. In fact, my entire respiratory system is down. Some helpful people tell me this is something emerging from the past. I tell them that’s nonsense but, deep down, I know they are right.
When I went to Peru, I had no definite idea why I was going, or why it seemed that I was called there, but in Machu Picchu there was incredible meditation and healing, having to do with a past life.
That afternoon in Lima, you talked of child abuse, and I mentioned that I was experiencing what might be repressed memories, and that I felt I had been abused by my grandfather when I was a little girl.
Although I have never been able to say more than that before, the past has finally become clear enough in my mind that I can tell you
— and, in a way, myself — the rest of the story.
This past year has been very difficult, with incredible stress at work.
I think my being sick is partly because I was given a new, but lesser, job and was unable to take a vacation, even though I was totally exhausted.
More wearing still was the work I was doing in therapy, with two different doctors. One, a doctor of chiropractic, uses a method of healing called Network. If you don’t already know about it, you can find information on the Internet; if not under Network Spinal Analysis, then try the name of the founder of the technique, Donald M. Epstein.
He wrote a book about this called The Twelve Stages of Healing. I have followed these stages for the past year. Every adjustment brings about some sort of response from the nervous system. Sometimes I cry as my emotions overflow, sometimes nothing seems to happen.
Some people find themselves laughing, while others experience anger.
In the past two years there has been much healing, I think, but there has also been much anguish and pain, connected to me as a little girl.
When I was little, I was called Micha.
The other doctor I was seeing practices EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing). Again, if you feel you have some time, which you probably don’t, with two kids and a job, you can look it up.
To this day, my struggle is about whether or not the memories are real and not invented, as in False Memory Syndrome. The images and strong feelings started to come as a result of Network. There, the chiropractor does not talk, so cannot implant false memories. As for EMDR, I am not so sure, but I started this kind of therapy only about a year ago when I was already having many so-called memories, so I think this doctor could not have implanted false memories, either.
However, what I remember is so grotesque, so unbelievable, and so painful that I constantly struggle with whether or not the memories are real or invented. Did it happen? That is my problem. Let me tell you the story of Micha as I now ‘remember’ it or, more appropri-ately, as I wove the threads of memories as they surfaced willy-nilly, not in sequence.
One summer day, Micha was making sandcastles in the sand, next to her grandfather’s huge rowboat, beached on the shore of the lake.
The house where her grandparents lived was just a little way up the street. He was a carpenter and had a workshop at the back of the house.
Micha loved swimming in the lake and outings in the rowboat.
That day she was wearing a bathing suit, orange with white daisies. It had frills along the chest and around the legs. She felt very pretty in it, and she played in the sand with her tin sand bucket. It was painted bright blue and decorated with yellow flowers, and she had a little shovel to scoop the sand.
Her grandfather asked if she wanted to go fishing with him on the lake, and she gladly agreed. But there, in the middle of the lake, out of sight and far from shore, he did something terrible. Micha was screaming but nobody heard. Before he rowed back to the beach, her grandfather made it very clear that if she said anything to anyone, he
would drown her — which he proceeded to illustrate by throwing her overboard and pushing her head down under the water while holding onto a belt around one of her arms. Terrified, Micha promised never to tell. When they got back to the house, her grandmother was setting the table for supper. Micha said nothing.
After that, when he could not take her ‘fishing,’ her grandfather would take her to the workshop and do terrible things to her there. In the shop, there was a huge table with a circular saw on it. Every time he finished with what he called ‘playing,’ he would turn the saw on full power and terrorize the child by bringing her hands close to the blade, saying he would saw off her hands if she said a word.
Micha finally returned home when the summer was over. She felt safe again, but she remembered the warnings well and didn’t even tell her mother about the things that had happened.
Late that fall, her mother, who liked to go away with her lover, brought Micha back to her grandparents’ house and left her with them again.
Because her grandfather knew she was an illegitimate child, he hated her. He thought she was ‘dirty.’ He called her a whore. What else could she be? She was a bastard. Now that he was sure Micha would not tell (where was Grandmother?), he vented all his hatred on her.
Once, when he took her to the workshop, he kept her there for several days. What he did there, of which I have ‘memories,’ I will not relate. To write the words, or say them, would be to give power again to what happened. He even had a friend come and ‘play’ with him. Then some sort of miracle happened — Micha got very sick with whooping cough, so sick that her mother had to come back for her, and a doctor came to the house and gave her medicine. Finally, Micha was told to sleep, sleep and forget. And that is what she did.
So, there it is. I was three-and-a-half years old. The year was 1947.
Is it true? That is my problem. How true are these so called memories? I have made several drawings. Words fail to describe what happened.
This is what I have been struggling with during this last year. Then something weird happened, four weeks ago. I was home with pneumonia, yet this was the first week and I did not feel very ill. I went
for a Network adjustment, which seemed to take me back into that horrid place, but this time I could see myself scratching and biting him. For the first time, I knew that Micha was a feisty little girl and had fought back.
That same morning, I’d had a strange dream about a wheel, something like a medicine wheel, but composed of three elements and two animals. I think medicine wheels are supposed to have either all elements or all animals. Still, it seemed worthwhile to draw it and try to make some sense out of its design. To the north was a bird that I thought was a crow (a mystical bird that used to speak with mankind), to the east was a turtle. I knew that the turtle represented me. That is who I am, slowly progressing in life but plodding on, no matter what.
To the south was water; to the west, a sun. The setting sun maybe (as in something that is over?). For the middle, I’d woken up that morning with a feeling of some sort of cluster, so now I thought grapes, but that didn’t make sense, even as the ‘grapes of wrath.’ Then I thought, no, they’re mountains. Then I realized, no, it is my little crystal that happens to be a cluster. It’s nothing much to look at, but I was told in Machu Picchu, it is what it is.
When I left the chiropractor’s office, I was thinking of the medicine wheel. I stopped at the local mall looking for a turtle. I had the bird (a brooch from Phoenix, very beautiful, with a stylized eagle perched in the sun). I had the water. The week before, I had been to a wedding where they gave the guests little vials of soapy water to blow bubbles at the couple instead of throwing rice. There at the mall, I found a bead with a happy sun face handpainted on it, but I found no turtle, at least not for a price that made sense, like maybe $1.50.
On impulse, I bought a toy soldier (sort of a Star Wars toy made of cheap plastic, painted red). I thought it represented my grandfather very well.
When I arrived home, again on impulse, I sat down and wrote a letter to my grandfather. Not a nasty letter filled with angry words and self pity, but a letter with words of power. I thought also that I had received some insight into karma as I told my grandfather that what he had done had nothing to do with any kind of past life where I might have been a terrible person. (I had thought, over and over again, what an evil being I must have been in some past life to deserve the
pain he inflicted on me.) I told him that I had been an innocent child
— he chose to vent the evil in his soul by sexually abusing a child. I was innocent. I was not bad. I was not dirty. I was not a slut. I was an innocent child. It was his decision to inflict such pain. It was his hate. It was his dirty mind and filthy soul, not mine.
But I also told him that I felt that it was while writing this letter to him that I was moving into my own karma and, hopefully, paying some sort of debt by the choice I was making now to claim back my power. I told him I was claiming my past, and my past’s future, and I was claiming this present, where I told him that he could never, ever again hurt me.
I made up my mind to go to a special place beside the river that runs through the conservation area near here. I planned to step on the soldier to destroy him, as a symbol of destroying the past, then put it and the letter in a tin and burn them both, for purification. Then I would burn some of the incense I bought in Machu Picchu, do the medicine wheel, and say a prayer. I packed my little green diary of the past year’s struggle through two different kinds of therapy, because I wanted to sit down at the park and use the few remaining pages to write what I was feeling right then. It seemed to me that, this way, I could achieve closure. But I still had no turtle.
The next morning was a dreary, rainy day. When I woke up, I remembered pictures of turtles in an encyclopedia made of beautiful picture cards, so now I had my turtle. I decided to go to work that afternoon, as I was feeling pretty good for someone with pneumonia.
I put all my objects in the little pouch I bought in Cuzco. I now had the sun, the bird, the turtle, the little water bottle, my crystal, a tin, the letter I had written the day before, some matches, the toy soldier, my diary, and finally some little stones to make the circle for the medicine wheel. I thought I would drop by the conservation area after work to perform my little ritual. If it rained (I planned to be there for sunset), then at least I was assured of not having any witnesses.
I put on my coat, picked up my purse and put the little pouch across my shoulder. On my way to the elevator, I dropped some garbage down the chute. Downstairs, I opened my mail box and glanced at a letter, then moved on to the garage, just a few steps away. When I went to put the pouch in the back of the car, I no longer had it with
me. I retraced my steps to the mailbox. I hadn’t been gone more than a minute, but the pouch wasn’t there. I thought maybe it had dropped down the chute when I threw out the garbage. In a panic, I asked the janitor to check the dumpster. It had been emptied recently and there were only a few bags in the box. There was no sign of the pouch.
I was devastated. My diary was gone. There were many drawings of Micha in pain, there were big bold words of self-hate and confusion in a wrenched soul searching for truth. Someone, somewhere, was reading these words and having the time of their life. So went my thoughts, over and over again, but the worst of it was that I had been denied the special little ritual, where I felt I was going to take back my power and get closure. In my diary, as in my daily thoughts, I kept saying over and over again that I needed proof. I have been constantly struggling through both therapies with the thought that Micha’s story was invention on my part. It did not help to hear both doctors tell me that even if I had invented the story, it was obvious that it was something I needed to do. This only reinforced my desire to know the truth: what kind of sick mind do I have?
The only person I could ask about this is my mother. I keep struggling with my thoughts on this. Did she know? Did she care? My grandfather was a terrible man. She often told me how he beat her up. Maybe he did worse, too; she was the youngest of four daughters.
My mom drank heavily all of her life, maybe for good reason. I simply feel that at seventy-eight, she deserves the happiness she has now, and I refuse to trouble her with these memories. As well, my mother has lied to me all my life, so no matter how she might answer, I would still have trouble believing anything she said.
Today, I am convinced that losing the pouch and being denied my ceremony is the proof I wanted so badly. However, it also tells me that I invented the whole thing. I finally have the proof I have been asking for, except that I was looking for proof it did happen, not that I am a compulsive liar.
I have been sick these last four weeks with two kinds of pneumonia and an extremely bad cough. What is going on? Is this the whooping cough of the past? I have stopped all therapies. I now believe that I must be borderline schizophrenic and probably should be locked up.
Writing this letter has been difficult, but I’m glad I have finally told you openly about these things.
Others
Oct. 6, 2000 (NSA Journal after adjustment) Today I felt lots happening in my legs. Some trembling. It felt good for a change, but when it was over, I was exhausted. It seemed it had been hard work.
Oct. 9, 2000 (Letter)
Dear Mag,
I wanted to thank you again for The Seat of the Soul. That was in April, and I had put it away for a while, even though there was only the last chapter left to read.
Last week, someone mentioned Gary Zukav and said I should read a book by him. I was thinking that I am forever reading these kinds of books, but obviously had gained nothing from them, or I would not be so sick. I had tried to apply all the metaphysical stuff that I have learned. It seemed to me I’d been let down. Nevertheless, the next morning I felt that I should find The Seat of the Soul. It wasn’t far; all I had to do was reach out my hand and take it from the shelf by my bed.
The name of the last chapter is Power. Its sub-chapters are Psychology (of the soul), Illusion, Power and Trust. That morning, I read that final chapter even before I got up for a cup of coffee.
What I read amazed me. This was exactly what I had been struggling with these last two years. I have read many books, trying to understand Spiritual Psychology (not the same as modern psychology). For months I had been trying to find the Illusion (core belief) that is in my life, in the hope that I could finally shatter it and gain Power. As for Trust in the Universe, in God, or in All That Is, whatever the name may be, well, I am so much better at telling Him what I expect of Him instead of the other way around.
If I’d read this last chapter when you first gave me the book, it would have meant little to me at that time, but when I became ill, I
felt I would never gain the power I was seeking so badly. In fact, I was convinced that I had lost my power, a power I’d reached for so many times, only to lose it over and over again. Reading about authenticated power finally set me straight.
Thank you for buying this book for me when you did.
Oct. 14, 2000 (Dream)