“Dialectic or dialectics, also known as the dialectical method, is at base a discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasoned arguments.” Wikipedia

In this case it is two opposing views in me so think of me as two people.

Janeen #1 must totally accept me as I am with all my history and memories, all I have said and done for better or worse along with what has been said and done to me. This is not an easy task on many levels. First, I spent many years trying to deny the truth of child sexual abuse. On the one hand I come from a fine family who would never… -VS- an incestuous family that did… Especially with my father a battle raged inside of me for years between “Shame on you, your father would never hurt you” and “What did I do wrong to make him do that to me?”

Second, I have scorch marks where memories have come to me of things I did and said to others, my children in particular. Somehow I must accept my part in the estrangement of my children and grandchildren.

I must own and take responsibility for myself entirely; I must accept all of me and therein lies the dilemma. Once I accept that I am who I am I must further accept the idea of change, for mere acceptance would be my undoing. I literally could not live with myself

I am in the throws of acceptance and change and it is at times mentally and emotionally exhausting. It is also frightening, like when I decided to face reality without alcohol, I needed my denial, my blaming, and my rose colored glasses to stay alive.

I am learning much about me: at times it is too much to take in and I must embrace change and acceptance in each breath to keep moving forward. It is an improbable task, so I settle for acceptance and change in whatever forward motion that comes to me. Sometimes it is with tears and petulance, but more often it is with reading, searching, reflecting, and savoring the good moments and the good days as well as the good in me.

My hands are tied not with rope or chain or tape but by mind, emotion, and old tapes that secure me against writing my book. A physical impediment would be clear to see and to feel and to find a way around. But it is my mind, and the mind can lie, cheat, and wrap me in denial, excuses, justifications, and reasons to do it tomorrow.

Tomorrow does not come but drifts along a day at a time until there is no tomorrow to look to. But I see it now. From an early age my mind has been conditioned to believe I cannot do, am incompetent, and there is no use trying. I will fail.

With DBT therapy I am recognizing what makes me tick and finding ways to turn my mind to my benefit. I am learning that just because I think a certain thing does not make it true. I am glad to know I am fallible. It opens my mind to change. And what I must change is my mind.

I write in fits and starts. I charge into it, I back into it, I write cautiously, deliberately, intermittently. I say I must have a starting point, a beginning sentence that intrigues, and a good reason to go through the sheer pain of writing it. My mind says I am not smart enough, the old tape from Ma that asks “Just who do you think you are” putting me back in my place, a loser, a nobody, a person who will “mess this up just like you have everything else.”

It is my job to replace the old with new tapes. It is my job to pat myself on the back each time I accomplish something, or at least see it through to the end. It is my job. Standing up to my mother 19 years after her death.

It’s all in my mind. It is true. The mind is where I will find my way out of the ties that bind me. Today, not tomorrow.

I was wrapped snugly with my arms at my side like a new baby. It was for the purpose of protecting me from lashing out at the lights and instruments coming at my eye in the operating room. A necessary part of the procedure, but it had a side effect; a feeling of security, a feeling of nurture and protection.

The clearest thing I remember was not wanting to be unwrapped when it was over. It has brought me to a new insight about myself. I have always wanted to be protected, cared for, nurtured and yes, mothered.

I have not liked being out in the big, bad world without life skills, social skills or safety net. I have not liked doing battle with my mind and emotions, the old negative tapes that play unbidden, and realities that reached out and slapped me up-side the head whenever the mood struck.

Growing up didn’t happen to me, just growing older. Born to a mother who bragged about never having to hold her babies, in a family where nurture had no meaning and the sister-mamas were needed elsewhere and left the farm, and me, as soon as earthly possible, I likened childhood to being hatched and set out to pasture. But most animals nurture their young.

Of course there was incest, domestic abuse, the cold war between my parents, all of which had to be coped with, navigated through and never spoken of. I do not know when I would have learned positive life skills to carry into the big wide world. What I carried with me the day I left home was a sack of coping skills that were limited to surviving childhood and the sureness that the outside world was somehow kinder than my family home. There was Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, and Father Knows Best out in the real world after all.

It has taken many decades for me to admit my toolbox was empty. It has taken decades to admit I have never known how to fill it up. It has taken decades to admit to never knowing what I never knew and that I am in need of a good overhaul in my thinking, but lying there all swaddled in blankets in the operating room I got a better feeling of where to begin. I begin at the beginning.

I am not the creator of this. I relate to the image as I once kept myself in a dark cave, safe from unintended shards of pain from the world of people.

I did not belong. I could neither cope with my mind and emotions or ward off incoming perceived blows. For two decades I tested the light outside my cave and recoiled in agony from the insanity of me clashing with a bewildering world. Eventually I managed to endure the light of day, then travel through it leaving my dark abode a hazy memory to be longed for in times of crisis.

I have evolved. I linger at a crossroads with signs like “The Old Familiar” and “Freedom Road” and “Bypass.” The easy ways out of my present turmoil are tempting. Go back to familiar yet uncomfortable anguish, leap out of my comfort zone to bask in the pure light of freedom from the past, or go the circuitous route missing all the little nuances of recovery, all are tempting but I know the effective path. Walk, however trembling, however uncertain straight through the jumble of uncomfortable thought and emotion.

There is no easy work around, no denial or burial that works to our benefit. There is only the often tedious path of opening our eyes and minds to reality. I lived too much of my life out of reality, time to be real, be me, be true and sound and brave.

I will make mistakes, sometimes fall back on old thinking, sometimes feel the sharp sword of perceived failure but my path is clear.

I must walk through my fear.

I purposely urged myself to get off the bed (in a motel, you see) and sit at this little table with the purpose of writing.

I feel disjointed. My mind is healing slowly. My body follows according to how many cups of veggies I consume daily. Some days I get out of bed raring to go and looking in the obligatory mirror as in every bathroom I suddenly want to dive under cover again.

I can’t think about that now. I must write my book. I have as many starts as I have doubts. I doubt my ability, my determination, and my fortitude against all naysayers whose messages to me I have created from old tapes as familiar and cutting as ever. Family of origin tapes never wear out. They wear on the nerves, they wear down your body, and they appear wearing ghastly balloons to warn me when I speak.

I must speak. It is all I have left of me. My truth is all that stands between the dark colors I paint myself and the bright glow of vindication. I want to set me free as much as I wish to offer freedom to others who came before and follow after on the abuse recovery journey.

I will offer it to my children. Perhaps they will hear me, it is their choice. Freedom for them is my goal, to undo the perceptions of who I was and am. My actions will always tower over me with fingers wagging and a smirk wide as an ocean. I will not excuse or stave off accusations, but if I can make the correlation between early childhood sex abuse and the person who plowed through peoples lives at a whim then I am somewhat redeemed.

Perhaps I am at a crossroads where mind and heart and body vie for a leadership position to carry me forward. Perhaps I secretly wish to return to my smashed state shirking entirely my responsibility for myself. I don’t know where I am on my path. I know I am not trash by the side of the road as I once believed. When you are trash by the roadside it follows that you will sit in self pity waiting for the next kick in the head.

How do I mark the journey and what is the destination? Who will I be when I get to say who I am instead of some agenda driven cretin?

I do not have answers and indeed, there may be none. I know in my head and heart I am a better person today than I ever dreamed I could be. I am glad that in 1988 when my head and my heart were agreed on suicide and my body begged for peace other options came from that teensy thing called hope.

Hope is what I hold now. If you need some, take some. If you have extra, spread it about like Dandelion fuzz in a stiff breeze.

When all have judged me wanting and gone their way I have stood in judgement of myself. Judge, jury, and executioner, a hundred times a day I hold me accountable for actions and failures real or perceived in my skewed mind. My thoughts and emotions also stand for judgement. Old tapes play unbidden. My mother, now dead and gone 19 years, still calls me worthless. My first husband, very much alive still holds me accountable for his mistakes. I am the guilt sponge and the family scapegoat of more ills than I have been alive for.

DBT and I are altering that calamity of errors. I am learning to dismiss and even refrain from judgement of my thoughts and feelings. Aware of the should and shouldn’t judgements, I call them out for what they are, ineffective crap.

I alone am responsible for my actions. I am continually humbled by those memories. I am sorry.

Living with my past is like going to court everyday to be re-judged for my actions, choices, and emotions. DBT is helping me to curb the flow of guilt wreaking havoc through my days. DBT is helping me separate the earned guilt from the perceived and the guilt laid on me from the guilt I lay upon myself.

Yesterday I described an emotional and hectic day without judging my thoughts and actions. I cut off short the I shouldn’t haves and I’m not worthies. I am proud of myself. I am the old dog learning new tricks. I am discarding the mantle of guilt that has weighed down my shoulders for more years than I care to remember laid there by so many people who could not carry their own guilt.

Each of us has our own responsibility for our own actions. None of us can bear the added burden of others actions, nor should we.

The journey forward lays riddled with potholes, pratfalls, boogeymen/women. and the persistent call to retreat to the comfort zone, for at least the pain is known. There is no set of rules-fit-all, there is no number of therapy sessions, no magic number of tumbles you must overcome. I have one rule which cannot be broken: I must get up one more time than the number of times I fall.

If I were to chart my progress it would resemble the drawings of a 3 year old and present no clear picture even to my own eyes. Recovery is one step forward then three steps back or two, or one step back and just when you thought you had it you find yourself somehow back to the beginning.

You are not weak or ignorant, you have not failed. Leave off judgements of your progress and celebrate how far you have come. I try to be better than the day before. I am my sole competition. And sometimes there is no notable progress, sometimes I fall into old thinking, old tapes that refuse purging. And some days I immerse my mind in Mahjong or comedy reruns to escape me. It is a distraction only, and solutions will present once I am able to open my mind again.

The one rule is to never quit. Never give up on you.

I have been my own worst enemy for most of my life. It did not begin that way. Somewhere beyond the trauma of sexual, verbal, and physical abuse I was this other person. I barely remember her but I dare to think I am more like her now than any time since the blue skies fell down upon me. I suspect I am not alone in this discovery at the nearing end to the treacherous struggle that is recovery.

There have been many times I have thought “Why bother” or “What use is recovery now that I am old?” I think it is called coming full circle. I am finding the me that was rent in two by sexual use at 3 1/2 years old. Buried for so many decades under the guise of someone created by others, I very nearly didn’t recognize her.

No matter how hard the struggle, recovery is worth every moment. Just to feel the sun warm my heart, real spontaneous laughter part my lips, and a comfort with who I am that never for a moment I thought I could achieve, I stand in awe of the process.

No, I am not finished. There is more to do. Thankfully I rise to meet the challenge, often reluctantly, but nonetheless I rise.

Broken children through no fault of their own often remain broken into adulthood. They learn to cover over their inner and outer bruising with band-aid after band-aid while scars continue to fester and rule from the shadows.

I am not alone. Neither are you. Our damage may come from different circumstances but the result is pretty similar. I think of the migrant children taken from their parent and put in cages, there to be mocked, frightened, abused or sexually used. They will look back on broken childhood as surely as you or I.

What binds us is the emotional toll the abuse takes, the terror of abandonment, feeling worthless, feeling often as though the sky is falling and you don’t know exactly why. In AA I often heard the advice to compare the feelings, not the actual events. Though we all have different tales to tell of abuse or events that took us down, emotions are universal; sad is sad everywhere.

I alone can tell my story. I am the only one who knows it by heart. I am the only one who has lived with my past one day at a time for all my years. Fortunately, I am not the only person who may benefit. Each person can touch the heart and hold a hand by telling their own recovery. I might not have recovery now if not for the women in AA, and some men, who told of their own sexual abuse and recovery. And the healing continues each time a stranger comments “thank you for speaking” because it reminds me that I am not alone, others share my path.

Each generation passes down to the next inadvertently whatever ails them. In my case I remained a broken child long after I gave birth to four children. I was full of fear, neediness, and depression. I suffered from paranoia after a childhood watching my back for danger. I suffered from suicidal ideation and rages at the unnameable evil that was sexual assault as well as verbal and physical. I had no identity of my own, no opinions but those I adopted from other people only to change when convenient. My family of origin had defined me, my first husband defined me, and I lived as their definition of who I was. I was a train wreck. Then I brought babies into the picture.

Let it be said, my partner in this crime, my husband, was also immature, and a little bit of a narcissist. He was all he was concerned with. And his repeated abandonment was all about what he needed and his weakness.

But I am not telling his story. For my children, though I cannot begin to tell or even know all they lived through, life was surely unpredictable because in the ten years their father and I were together we lived in twenty different locals counting times when moving in on relatives. We were forever packing, unpacking, settling in, being uprooted, painting yet one more apartment. My eldest daughter went to four different kindergartens in three different states.

The solution, of course, is to fix ourselves before bringing new lives into the world to be tainted by our shortcomings. But not only is there still some stigma against asking for help, there are so many ineffective platitudes to tell us we should be stronger, smarter, have faith. It is said we cannot blame our parents or the people who damaged us, but then how do we know where to begin to see the problem?

My children have my permission, though it pains me deeply that I have been a part of this, to tell the truth as they know it, to ask me what they do not know, and to heal in the best way they are able. I know where my troubles began, and from there I know what is possible for me to recover. Our children have the same right.

Blame sounds so nasty, but there is another word I like, accountability. Reason is also a good word. The reason I was a train-wreck is … and now I am in charge of fixing it.

The strong pecked at the meek with their razor sharp teeth while their soothing voices cajoled and white washed and made one feel guilty for crying. I learned to watch, wait, and listen. It was never quite enough.

Two of my brothers and a couple of my sisters had cruelty running through their veins as much a part of them as the blood it ran in. I would say to myself now “Just get over it” but it is not about that. I do not hate or hold grudges. There is not enough energy or time. What there is is me still struggling to resurrect the me I may have been had the environment on the farm been less cruel.

Secrets were everywhere. They lived in the walls, in the air, and in the din of hushed voices far above my toddler head as well as in my head.

Danger…watch out for…pregnant…hit-and-run…slut…tramp…her fault…her fault…her fault…the hole in the blackberry grove is for her… It entered my mind and never left. But I had my own secret to keep and live in spite of.

When I left home to escape my Dad’s groping hands and two brothers I feared I took my paranoia with me. I peeked out windows, I hid from the ringing of the phone, dreaded a knock on the door, and thought any moment I will be found out, kicked out, put in my place.

I lived with my boyfriend whom I never shared my weird thoughts with. He had already let me know my “regular” thinking was “silly” dumb, and ignorant, and I tried desperately to hide my ills from him. Try as I did there was no remedy for my emotional leftovers spilling out all over an otherwise serene world. My childhood hell lived inside of me and when I tried to sort it out verbally the result was always the same. My boyfriend would say all the phrases that made me feel stupid, weak, and inept. “Just get over it.” “Be happy now.” “Put it behind you.” “Move on.” “Whatever happened, it doesn’t matter now.”

People still say some of these things to me. They do not get that being sexually used from the age of three and a half by three older siblings, a nephew and my Dad, spending my youth watching my back instead of being a child, learning from a very early age that girls were bad, boys were good and that I was guilty, guilty, guilty of anything and everything forms a terribly warped mind.

Sometimes I feel anger at spending vast amounts of time still recovering from who I became and how other people see me due to things I have done as a result of the mess I was when I left home. But crying “unfair” does no good and it is up to me to do what I can to fix me.

The alternative would be to still allow the crap inside my head drive me crazier by “burying” it where it can keep on popping out of me like an alien from my gut. There is no easy answer, but I am grateful to have made the journey through years of suicidal ideation to a place where I can see a real light ahead.

Most of my sisters and brothers have never stepped into the bright light of freedom from the secrets, the paranoia, and the shedding of old tapes that keep them reeling. I am an anomaly. I strayed from the norm of protecting family honor in favor of taking care of me. Besides, my family had and has little honor. They both fear and hate me for speaking the truth. That is not my problem. It is theirs. I must be more outspoken.

Being me is difficult in the glaring light of first awakening. As though my dreams/nightmares were a road trip I am, in an instant, returned to the body that is my prison. I cannot escape me. I rise and continue on my journey.

I balk at opportunities to move myself forward, not because I do not want to go but because I fear the unknown. I show up every week for therapy vowing to be more diligent with my homework. I feel the surge of resolve and energy flowing freely in my veins. “I can do this!” I proclaim with pride and hope and joy roiling inside of me. I go home and procrastinate. “I’ll do it later.” “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

I have lived on an emotional roller-coaster for about 90% of my life. I crash and burn, get to my feet and repeat. Am I capable of change? Who will I be then? All my learned behaviors and coping skills that kept me above ground will become excess baggage to be discarded.

I believe DBT will be a game-changer. I now must believe in me.