Ah. Fear. The way fear manifests inside of us... and gets all tangled up on the way through our brain on the voyage to being able to say and know someone will hear: I'm scared. It's funny-odd how we never really talked directly about fear in therapy. Yet each session was a gentle opening and straightening the kinks out in that pathway... until there was an experience of being with a person to whom I could trust to hear me and care that: I am/was afraid...
Fear is the primal reason I had for not trusting my own self, I think. And that broken trust was at the core of my self-care, habit change, communication issues with hubs even... difficulties; obstacles. Pardon my "french" - but I was a fucking long way from OK, no matter what I said just to get my Nmom to leave me alone. And it came out in all these self-sabotaging... self-harm... ways. And it even, in some cases became part of "who I am"... because the fear can create a "taboo", an "I can't", or even an "I'm bad if I _________." I learned early on to not trust my parents to take care of me -- not even the basics -- because the war they were in with each other was all-consuming... other people weren't like them, but I had no reason to trust them either - to really mean what they said, or promised.... and so the opportunity to "learn by example" ... to internalize that into a general characteristic about myself ("I can be trusted; I can trust myself") turned into some convoluted, double-bind-like, bugaboo. On the one hand, because I was an insatiable reader, I learned that trustworthiness was held as a positive virtue. I saw it over & over & over in popular media as well. The cavalry ALWAYS rode in to save the day; it would be possible to "go on" even after the worst possible experiences... but I didn't experience much of that, growing up. And poor Twiggy's SHTF day... was the absolute "end" of a lot of things. It simply wasn't possible to go on from that point, and in fact it went downhill from there - in reality.
44 years later:
I've finally gotten something of Twiggy - and what she lost - back. And the "poison arrow" that dripped fear in my sense of self for so long has proved the explanation of "FEAR" that I learned from a tai chi master, correct. He turned it into an acronym: "Fantasized Experience Appearing Real". It always made sense - intellectually. But it took a long time for that to slowly work through my brain's twisted mess into how I felt.
My T explained, in the process of prepping me to continue healing on my own, that the most difficult thing to resolve, or let go, or get past, would be the dissociation I experienced during the rape/assault. Because of those gaps in my memory - my mom was successful in planting the fear-button (for control) that she could use as she liked in me. To the point that I even questioned what bits of memory were REAL versus my mom's blanket denial that any of it was real. I was more successful at piecing together a chronology; documenting facts; than I'd initially hoped. It didn't do a damn thing to budge the old fear that my mom planted - that like some programmed time-bomb - I could "go off" and not remember later on, what I'd done.
Along with the fear, was her prohibition of any and all expressions of anger - except for herself. No one else was entitled to that. And to this day, she firmly believes in the "way of the victim" - that this is always and in every circumstance complying with the biblical admonition to "turn the other cheek" and to eschew completely - violence. Violence was defined in the extreme - as anyone's beliefs or wishes that contradicted hers, too. "I don't like you" = violence. She completely knew that I disagreed with her, before I was silenced and turned inward. I believed that it wasn't fair to only draft young men - there was absolutely nothing about women that would get in the way of women being good soldiers. I didn't believe that it was fair, to give them a pass - being they could bear children. Kinda need men around to complete that process and protect the vulnerable ones, ya know since they are physically stronger, in general, ya know? (not that I personally wanted to experience combat and could fully understand why any woman wouldn't; but they COULD and did in Switzerland, Isreal...) That was her absolute hate of all men, showing - peeking out from her holier than thou hem and her belief that all women, everywhere were powerless victims of the evil men and crazy, powerful, independent women too.
To stop dancing around - my mom believed that I was capable of great violence; even murder because the first part of Twiggy's SHTF day. Because there were sequential details that I just didn't have anywhere in my memory... I had no "proof" to refute her "big lie" of denial about what happened. I had no "body" to prove that I'd been attacked, raped, shot at during the struggle... and the brass casings I found later were easy to claim as my Dad's. He didn't own a gun of that caliber and he definitely didn't shoot that near the house. And I was afraid - because of the inability to remember absolutely what happened as jerk-rapist and me, the skinny 12 yr old, struggled over where he was pointing the gun - when it went off. So, all these years, I've been afraid of the WHAT IF... what if my mom was right? what if there is some awful thing inside me that can be unleashed in a life/death situation? did that make me as bad as any other murderer? SIGH. I was a pretty difficult teenager, having to deal with that - all stuffed into my sub and un-conscious. And I really didn't do myself any favors after that, either. It's no wonder that anxiety attacks I had were severe enough to get me referred to a T, huh?
Last installment, I mentioned my phobia of handguns. It was so severe, that even some movies would get the old adrenalin going pretty good... and the only thing that helped was pausing the movie and smoking... to help it level out. My dear sweet gentle hubby has quite the collection of guns, being a southern good ole boy. 12 years of marriage and he kept them locked up and never went shooting -- because of me. He's a damn good shot and really enjoys target shooting. He recently took a class and impressed the instructor/expert marksman with the level of his skills. Yesterday, it was my turn to take a class - the Basic Handgun orientation. When asked why I signed up, the closest I could get to the truth was that I wanted to make sure I was safe around hubs' guns -- that I wouldn't do something stupid out of ignorance; that if we needed to defend ourselves I could back him up -- reliably. The truth was I was trying to detect if there was anything valid to the old fear my mom planted in me... I imagined freezing up; dropping the gun; waving it around - loaded - like an idiot and taken off the line. I didn't sleep well, either. All of hubs' encouraging and instructive comments that morning almost brought on a full-fledged anxiety attack, so he quickly changed the subject when I asked him to.
But I was well-prepared for the class anyway. Over-compensation has been my way of coping with fear. I read a lot of stuff, started to learn how guns are designed and engineered - how they work. I asked as many "dumb" questions as I could. And as it turned out, I was the only student in this class. Just me and a certified instructor. So we got to the point, where it was time to lock & load. The gun jammed on the first shot. Hubs had warned me this particular gun had to be held firmly, the slide pulled quickly and with intention - and it took a lot of strength that I don't have that much of, in my hands and wrists. But we sorted that out, loaded the bullet and I actually hit the target on the first shot. (I do know how to aim.) Everything I'd learned in tai chi was also very, very helpful. My verbal response after that shot was that it really was loud. DUH... but inside, my response was: IT DIDN'T HAPPEN. Whatever crazy, what-if stuff I was afraid of... didn't happen. I followed instructions, kept shooting, tried his gun... and almost all my shots went into the paper plate, with a couple bullseyes. (at 15 ft... I'm not sure I see well enough to aim larger distances) It was 40 degrees with the wind chill - and the wind was 20-30 mph - so I only shot a dozen rounds before we were both ready to call it a day. Instructor said I shot better than some of the people in hubs' class (and they're supposedly more experienced). I told him in short, nutshell version about why I was afraid of handguns. And his wince was enough to tell me, that it's not the first time he's heard things like that. But he said several times, that I had the right attitude about learning. I guess he gets a lot of big-ego cowboys who talk better than they can shoot.
On the way home, I had a big stupid grin on my face. I'd confronted my fear - in a safe controlled environment and the big life-long fear that I was some closet, violent, crazy wacko was forever and F I N A L L Y GONE. I wish I'd been ready to do this years ago, but it's only been in the last few months that I felt I was ready. I even second-guessed it a couple times... and finally decided that I could stop at any point. I could shoot 1 and stop. I could even pay for the class and say I'd changed my mind. I gave myself every conceivable permission to back out, if I needed to. I needed that to "commit" to pulling the trigger that first time. It definitely got easier and even potentially (if I continue shooting) fun, after the first one. Target practice suits my perfectionistic bent... and since my ankle injury means I won't be able to run away in a dangerous situation and even limits what I can do in the tai chi form... and shooting requires that kind of meditative, proprieceptive, "in the flow" concentration... I might just continue. We'll see. I don't "have to"... but I'm no longer afraid of my own ignorance... or of becoming some awful person... simply because I know how to shoot a gun. I don't freak out anymore at the sight of one.
Finally confronting that one, sort of core fear about myself... feels like a complete new lease on life. Like a whole bunch of the other things I've been working on over the years... just got a coat of final polish. No self-limitations; no self-doubts; no "I can't"... no "I can't trust myself" anymore. I might've been ready sooner than 44 years after the fact; but I can accept that it took this long... all these other steps first. That's OK. It's finally over now.
