If I can feel this pain, then I know I’m alive…
Because the pain, IS what actually feeds my desire to want to live, so that I can witness myself- coming back from a kind of death, again and again”
My dad broke down my spirit, only to build it back up again- in his image. He created the one person who would understand his pain the most. The one who would suffer as much as he did as a child.
The day I broke up with my dad for good, was the day he told me that, one of the reasons he sexually abused me as a child- was to get back at women. It wasn’t until just last week, 20 years after escaping him, that I finally realized a layer to this thought process of his. He was using me to get back at HIS MOTHER for not protecting him as a child. I was the one “woman” or female in his life, that he could have 100% complete control over. He could quite literally transfer all of his anguish and suffering from not being protected by his mother, on to my body. On to a female body that he basically owned. He said he wanted to get back at women. But it wasn’t women. It was his own mother he wanted to take down. The irony is, after he was outed by me, and I pressed charges against him, at 23 years old. And after he was convicted of molesting me all those 17+ years. His mother, ended up being the only one who supported him, unconditionally. She was the only one to offer grace and compassion to him at that time. I’m hoping he finally got what he wanted from the outset. Which was her love and protection from the truth of what he caused ME. A lifetime of turmoil and shame, that he initiated. The shame for me began with severe manipulation and brainwashing…
Lapis Lazuli was everywhere, spiritual books, conversations about past life’s. When I was 11 or 12, is when he started brain washing me to believe we were lovers in a past life, and we found each other again in this one, and if only there was a way we could run away together. But since we couldn’t, because society would “break us apart” we will keep this a secret. Because truly no one would ever be able to understand our love. It is not allowed in our society. They say it’s illegal. But they are only trying to destroy our pure love. Our love is pure because we are father and daughter. And it’s the society of today that is wrong. If we were living way way way back hundreds of years, we would be able to be together- but since we’re not, we had to hide it. We had to keep it just between us. So the abuse started around 3 to 4 years old- but sometime around 10-12 is when he started saying these kinds of things to me, because I was beginning to feel there was a difference between my dad and I and my girl friends and their dads. So in these conversations with him, began the real deep deep brain washing and manipulation. To the point where I STILL believe in parts of my body, that I was complicit and in a relationship with my father. Im honesty not sure there will ever be a part of me that doesn’t to some degree truly believe this. It’s so engrained in me- that I’ve had nightmares for the last 20 years almost EVERY SINGLE NIGHT that I’m “stuck” and “hiding” in a relationship with my dad. At my current age now- in the dreams. That I cant Get out. That I’m having sexual relations with him, and that I can’t escape. The guilt and shame I feel in the dreams cannot be accurately conveyed. BUT it wasn’t until I became aware of these trapped parts that felt such shame, that the nightmares started to become less frequent. The trapped parts began to feel that I see them now. They feel my compassion for them, and so they no longer need to act out and play out in my dreams. They’ve begun to loosen their grip of trying to survive the hell they were in. They are starting to realize they aren’t stuck there anymore in the relationship with their dad. He didn’t win.
And boy did he want to keep me as his lover let me tell you. He was absolutely obsessed with me. He was in awe of the strength I had in dealing with his abuse towards me. I know he was really fucking impressed with my strength. It’s like he wanted to be me. He couldn’t believe the pain I could take from him. He was in awe of me. And it only made him want to go deeper and deeper with me in his sick fantasy. To see just how far, he could take us. Because…I was, picture perfect on the outside. Doing so well in school, singing with his band. Being a little Doris Day canary big bad singing star. Doing all the musicals in school, having a grounded sense of who I was. It’s like I became his mentor in a way. I surpassed the abilities he possessed to cope with his own pain. I was better at it than him- and he knew it. He abused me far worse than he was abused and it made him fall in love with me even more. I almost became a sort of guru for him. And part of his own identity, because I was the flesh of his flesh. His own daughter. And he felt empowered in that way. That he could “create” something as strong, indestructible and resilient as me. And he wasn’t about to let go of that. No way. He couldn’t ever loose me. And let me tell you. The courage it took for me to get out of the grips of this man’s obsession for me, cannot be described in words. I try to get near its summation, and fall painfully short. It can only be experienced through my energy and presence.
But I’m committed to finding language for it. It’s one of my purposes here in this life. To create the language for some of the experiences I had with my dad. Because the language only exists through my survival of it. And I believe, as incest survivors, we haven’t let any of these experiences we lived through out of the closet enough to form the adequate descriptions. I want to change that. SO DESPERATELY. So I can save lives. And so I can continue to witness more fully, the power of my own rebirth, again and again…
