That Day

During my 'dark night of the soul' the very worst time was one Tuesday. I had awoken in agony. In every way. I physically was very ill and emotionally I was dying. I was very afraid. I could barely walk. I felt I was going to die. Explode. I could feel this 'thing' inside of me, buried in my gut and I felt like this monster was going to burst through my solar plexus. Just like in that film Alien. I have never before, nor since, felt as near to disappearing as I did that day.

I found myself in my bedroom, rolling around on the floor, clutching my guts, crying out in a voice that seemed foreign and animal like. (Just writing this makes me want to cry again.) I felt like I was at the end. This was it. I was finally losing my mind. At last, the very thing I feared all my life, though all the abuse, was about to happen. Colin was going to disappear. He would blow into a million pieces and never ever be able to put me back together again. He was about to cross that line. He was about to enter the place from which there was no return.

I cried out: 'If you f***ing well love me, then show me NOW!!!!'

A calm came upon me. My breathing slowed, my heart stopped racing, the animal noises stopped, the pain stopped. I reached for the phone and I called my friend of 30 years. She answered immediately.

Without explanation, she knew who it was and she spoke to me as if I were a child. Then the thing I was so afraid of happened, but it wasn't what I expected. What burst forth from my gut was all the pain I had felt and crushed down inside me. Every blow, every cruel word, every humiliation, every fear, every drop of shame, all my desolation, all my grief, all of it, all that muck and grime and filth, all of it came pouring out. And it hurt. It hurt worse than I thought was possible to survive. I cried more than I thought was possible to cry and live. (I understood later why healing does not happen all at once.) The 'alien' inside me, in my gut, my solar plexus, was the pain I had carried all those years. The pain I swallowed and did not show or feel. How could I? I had no one to comfort me then, to help me then. I was alone. I had no choice.

Through all of this, my friend spoke soothing words to me, she comforted me as if I were still that desolate afraid child. She told him how much he was loved and how he had not deserved any of that and how it was not his fault and how he was now safe and could let it all go.

Now, several months later, I am free of that weight. I am not free of my past. I am what my past has made me. I am happy with that. I am happy with me. I am not afraid of my past. I am not the monster I feared I was. I am not unlovable. I am not to blame. I am free. FREE. I still have the ways of coping to deal with, even though I no longer need them. OCD behaviours, food issues, have not disappeared. How could they? The difference is I now have the wherewithal, the strength, the understanding to resist the urge to self harm in any of the multitude of ways I had of coping. I also do not have all that pent up pain fuelling my every waking moment.

My sleep is pretty much peaceful, free from night terrors, free from action replays of my past. My mind is not exhausted from the effort of repression and suppression. My body is better without the physical weight but is still diseased. I could not expect anything else. My body has been through an awful lot. It is a wonder I still have one.

My mind is clearer and freer. I have learned to be gentle with myself. To stop running. I will never be as if I hadn't had the life I had. I will always have to take care of me, will always have to be aware of stress and how easily stressed I become. I will always be fragile yet strong.

My compassion and understanding of others, including those who abused me, has grown. I am much more aware of the pain of others, including those who abused me. I do not excuse those who abused me. Nor do I say it is okay or understandable or that it doesn't matter. It matters. It took 50 years of my life. However, I understand that they too suffer and suffered. I also understand that I don't need to hold them to account-that is too heavy a burden for me. One day they will come face to face with themselves. I am happy to leave it at that.

During the few months that I was going through this clear out, I went to church much more often that I normally did. Every time I went, the medium always spoke to me. Many times the message they gave was one of love and regret from my mother. They were accurate in their detail. Not one of them ever once said that my mother had been a kind and gentle soul. They knew the score and said so. But they spoke of her deep regret at her inability to love me, how it was her inability to love me and not me that was unlovable. She gave details of where she was from, how she died and of her treatment of me. I also had communications from other people I knew who have passed over. Each of them all referred to the anguish I was in, all told me how much I was loved, and that I would survive this agony. I kept receiving the same words over and over and over from different people who knew me not. Eventually I realised that those on the other side truly did know me which is why they kept saying the same thing over and over. They understood I did not trust and they were patient. They loved me. They KNEW me and they knew where I had been.

During this time I was convinced I had cancer. The constant discomfort and sometimes pain my gut was awful. I was too afraid to say so to my Dr. The communications I had kept telling me I was alright, that i was not as ill as I thought, but I was still afraid. One of the mediums even asked me if I knew what IBS was. I said no. Later I was diagnosed with it, and realised I had had it for years, and now I take Colofac for it and end of problem.

NONE of the people who gave communication knew who I was or anything about me. Their words were accurate, detailed and would have been comforting had I been in a different mind frame at the time. But that is precisely why I got all those communications! Because they, meaning Spirit, knew the agony I was in and they showed me that they did exist, that they did care and they did understand.