“I know that pain has many layers”
There has been and continues to be some speculation that those who suffer with Fibromyalgia have lived through child abuse. As much speculation as rises about this, no one really seems to want to address it. For many reasons, I suppose. One being that child abuse is still considered a taboo subject. Who really wants to talk about the horrifying, destructive things that a parent can do to a child? Who wants to stigmatize that grown child even more? Who wants to stand up and publicly declare they were abused and that it has impacted their life?
My ex-husband often referred to me as ‘damaged’ by my childhood and I so resented that label. Yes, I lived through a horrible childhood, yes, it has impacted me in ways too numerous to list, yes, the lack of nurture made it difficult to flourish. Does that make me a damaged soul? I would tell you that, on the contrary, it has made me a soul filled with light and beauty. For sure, I am who I am partly because of the things that were done to me. As are you. Good or bad, our childhood stays with us forever. As do other traumatic events. Are we then to be considered as ‘less than’? I would say, that on the contrary, those of us who have survived, who have triumphed, are perhaps ‘more than’.
But labels mean nothing in the end. Who I am, who I know myself to be, who I have become, is not something that I or anyone else can label. Each of us has our own path to walk and whether or not we reach out for healing, for growth, for light and beauty is up to us, in the end.
Listening to my pain has brought healing to my heart, to my life and has helped me to focus those healing energies where they were and are the most needed.
Fibromyalgia first showed up in the area over my heart and was originally misdiagnosed as Costochrondritis, a condition, with no known cause, characterized by pain and inflammation. Sound familiar? Of course.
Knowing what I know now about the interconnectedness of our human system, I wonder what would have happened if someone had asked me “Why does your heart hurt?”. Would I have begun my healing journey sooner? Perhaps. Perhaps the question was not asked, not because no one knew to ask it, but because I was not yet ready to look at the answer to that.
Some things, truly are difficult to speak of and the laying of them out as a series of facts, of events, does not do justice to their impact. I will, instead, tell you a story.
She was born in shame. A young girl child, still within her mother’s womb, while those around saw the swollen belly and called her “that slut”. Born into a two parent world with a birth certificate that read “Father Unknown”. Family members, well those who hadn’t scampered into their cave of self-righteousness, raised their eyebrows at this unwanted, un-claimed child.
She grew, but did not thrive this child who never felt worthy of attention, much less of love. Could she be quiet enough, obedient enough, submissive enough to be acceptable? Was there a way to say the right thing, do the right thing, and receive a smile rather than a slap?
One day it was “yes you may” and the next “how dare you”. No security or boundaries that could be understood. No way to play by the rules. Uncertain, unacknowledged, she floundered. Always, she trembled on the edge of annihilation. Wondering why a mother would be so determined to break her child’s will. Oh, the will stayed strong and mostly unbeaten. The spirit, however, shrivelled up and buried itself within a compost heap of broken dreams, shredded feelings, and unspoken cries for help.
Yet still she tried to become the good child. She scrubbed and waxed the floors. She carried the laundry in big green garbage bags to the Laundromat and then came home and starched the shirts. By the age of eleven, she could serve up a fairly nutritious supper and with less than $20.00 a week feed all four members of the family. Family? Well, yes, all were related by blood but there was no sense of home, of hearth, of belonging to something.
This girl-child, she tried to stay in her own little corner but, at times, her exuberance, her child-likeness burst forth with giggling, with wiggling, with song even. Silly made up songs, silly made up games that she played by herself. Too ragged, too unclean, too much the strange kid in each new neighbourhood, to have playmates. She did try though. There were kids down the street, once, who had a new tricycle and she spent a good part of an afternoon pushing them along the sidewalk while they laughed with joy. She smiled that day as the happiness of just being soared through her whole body. Then came the open door and the call to come inside. The door shut behind her and before she had taken three steps she was thrown to the floor and beaten with a coiled extension cord. Who did she think she was to be playing with those kids’ bike? Broken, confused and bleeding, she wondered how being happy could have turned so quickly into a nightmare. Perhaps being happy was a bad thing, then? Maybe only some kids were allowed to be happy.
She learned to read, miraculously really, as no one helped or understood her dyslexia, and oh the joy of running away into the world of fiction. A world where children laughed and played, where the sun shone on parents who were kind and loving and even when bad things happened, somehow, by the end of the book there was love and hope to be found. A world where no one crept into your bedroom at night and touched you in ways that were unclean. A world where mothers sang lullabies and brushed your hair. A world that at the age of fourteen she reached out for. Gathering her strength and a thimble full of courage, she walked away and never went back.
Forty years later, she sits on her back porch swing, listening to the bullfrogs gossiping down by the pond. She found her grandmother’s old rosary in a forgotten treasure box today. The crucifix, at the end is long gone, lost like many things over the years, through too many moves, too many times of starting over. She thinks back to that fourteen year old girl who walked away with no sense of worth, no sense of belonging in a world that seemed so cruel, so uncaring and filled with monsters. She runs her fingers along the cut glass beads and she wonders that, even then, somehow she was able to hold on to a dream. A dream of a better life, a better way.
The stroking of her fingers brings warmth to the beads, all in a row, like diamonds of memories. Memories of those who came along and took that ragged, almost worn out string of a girl and with love, with kindness beyond measure and often unknown, strung a bead and then another and another. Until, now, her life, like the rosary, is filled with warmth, with beauty, with faith and inexpressible joy.
As she remembers, each gift of love, each person who appeared and then left or stayed, according to some Divine reasoning, she offers up a prayer of gratitude and grace. For the teacher who smiled as she handed back her essay with an A+. For the cousin’s wife who stroked her hair and hugged her after a bad nightmare. For the social worker who said “I’ll help you leave”. For the boyfriend who thought she was smart and pretty and told her so. For the best friend who has never let go. For the stranger who handed her a copy of the Serenity Prayer. For the girlfriend, who from day one has offered only acceptance. For the church lady who baked her a birthday cake for the first time when she turned sixteen.
Here they are, each one, on this lovely string of a rosary, sparkling and warm. How far she has come, this girl-child, conceived in shame, left to flounder and wander the streets of a world that seemed so scary for so many years. She sits, quietly now, contemplating the richness of her life, the love that she has found, the friendship of so many, the healing sent to her from those who could be strangers and yet appear as angels in her life.
Tucking the rosary away in her pocket, she rises, enters her home and curls up beside her beloved for sweet, safe, rest.
This story gives you a glimpse of my life and of who I am. I choose to speak of the horror of my childhood, always reclaiming my life as one who walks in beauty!
