This episode is quite striking, disturbing for me.
It touches on my feeling of guilt, of responsibility for what I have experienced.
Understand me well, me, the adult Leelah, I KNOW that I was not guilty and at fault of anything!
But the murderous sentences of my rapists run through my veins, their venom, their ambiguous relationship, their emotional blackmail has been integrated into me. Some of my parts have learned to bow to their twisted mind and perversion. Some of my dissociative parts have taken the injunctions of my rapists as their role of protection and internal survival. They observed them all my childhood and thus tried to anticipate, predict their twisted blows, their next action, their next abuse ... so that when they would, I would be less shocked, less traumatized ... and therefore that I survive.
When a child is born, he has emotional, nutritional, security, emotional needs, listening, attention ... This everyone knows now.
And in the appearance of dissociative disorders these deficiencies in the developmental needs of the child play a preponderant role.
When all your safety, your well-being, the food, the shelter, the human warmth you need depend on the goodwill of one person, you have no real choice. You must make sure that this person is not angry with you, not upset him, not to oppose, not to provoke ... and that he does not decide to deprive us of our safety, well-being. ..
The perversion of rapists goes so far as to make us believe that they love us, that their sexual violence is for our good. As said in this podcast, we feel like "we are the chosen one". The affection and care that we sorely lack turns into the currency of blackmail. I give you a little affection and tenderness, if you want it, you must give me your body in exchange ... One does not go without the other. But on the other hand, the guru did everything so that my parents were exhausted, did not have time to give me, do not listen to me ... He created this lack, this deficiency, this absence and presented himself as the only one who can fill it.
To be "the chosen one", that was the impression I had. And it is very painful for me!
First, there are his attentions, his emphasis, his flattery in front of others, his praise, his little privileges that make us go from an invisible, denied, forgotten person to someone from 'exceptional, in the light. We are loved! He tells us.
I grew up in a sect where everything was restricted, controlled, forbidden ... The slightest little favor was an incredible gift! The sect forced us to share and redistribute our birthday gifts given by our grandparents, any possession was meticulously criticized, weighed ... So when you were allowed to have a musical instrument of your own, a pet , a gem ... it was wonderful, unexpected! My father was a man obsessed with the poor, saving the poor ... Me, his daughter, I didn't exist, he didn't see me. The guru said that I was "his adopted daughter", I finally had a "father who loved me".
I finally understood that I was just a "piece of meat" the day he gave me to his son. That day, I no longer had a confession with him, no more face to face, no more dialogue ... As a child, of course he raped me in abominable and violent ways but this aspect of my "relationship with him" was hidden to some of my parts. I had everything compartmentalized to survive. My parts that knew the sweet, kind man who complimented, encouraged, gave gifts, straight passes, listened, understood, questioned ... and other parts that I was unaware of who lived the moments with the violent man, the one who tortures and rapes, the one who sells to strangers, the one who threatens ... It was as if I lived 2 lives on 2 different planets.
With my father, when the rapes took place (most of the time at noon), he was not threatening at the time. He was soft, tender, whispered sweet words to me, caressed me ... But his violence was there, in the evening when I came home from school. He was violent at the table with my mother the night before I went to bed. He insulted her, called her a whore, he said that he had needs and that she did not meet them, accused her of cheating ... It was violence directed against my mother but also against me . He showed me that he was all powerful, that he could condemn my mother, I saw that she said nothing, did not defend herself. To protect my mother, I had to "satisfy her needs" where the violence against my mother would be even more virulent ... I thought that I had to protect her, my mother so fragile, so vulnerable, so gentle ... My mother whom I 'liked.
Everything is dirty, perverted. The notion of loving and being loved is perverted. The relation to the other is perverted. As this podcast says, we come out of rape, incest the body, the mind in ruins.
Things are dead within us, possibilities that we will never be, will never live. Time wasted fighting, rebuilding, healing. Studies screwed up because they are busy surviving. A relationship with others that will always be marked by a shadow that will hover over us ...
Hope is there, healing is possible, I know it, I believe in it. But what a fight!
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