Emotions Dark and Light

September 11, 2001 marked a terrible day in the history of this country and the world.  It was also the day I recognized that I cut myself off from all emotion, all fear, all terror, all sadness, all compassion, all happiness, all joy.  I learned that I could not feel, zip, nothing, nada.  I knew at some level of my conscious mind that this ability was not common.  I was in a room full of people horrified, angry, and scared people as they watched the horrible events unfold. I looked on with hardly any curiosity.  It took me a week to feel anything.  I blamed it on my fear of cancer.  I later learned that it was the tip of the iceberg.    About 2 years later, I finally ended up in counseling with KavinCoach.  I told him I wanted to learn how to communicate with my husband better.  He started commonly accepted ways of building  better couple communication.  The results came back totally not what he expected.  After several completely failed assignments, he asked me about my childhood.  I replied cheerfully, "It was a great childhood.  We went to the park and we went to the zoo."  He was skeptical with good reason.  He pushed, "Tell me an average day?"  Of course I couldn't because my memories before high school were completely gone and the ones in high school were very sketchy.  So began the odyssey into my mind.

 

Darkness covered much of my thoughts.  To try to get some idea KavinCoach had me read other people's stories.  Book one was a Child Called It.  He asked me what I thought about it.  With no emotional reaction, I responded that bad things happen, what do you want me to learn from it?  The next book was about a more severe case of child abuse, still no emotional reaction.  The third book still no reaction.  The forth book was Victor Hinkl's book on the Holocaust, Man's Search for Meaning.  I told KavinCoach, "What do you want me to learn from this, is the wrong answer."  What KavinCoach learned was how completely I had turned off all access to my emotions.  Slowly he tread the precarious journey into the dark-side of my mind.  Unleashing of the emotions starts with the darkest most terrifying ones.  Terror increased.  (Isn't counseling supposed to make you feel better?  Not at first.)  Memories started leaking through the awesome barrier that kept them at bay.  Fear trickled through.  Guilt like a noxious gas.  Pulling down the barriers in my mind revealed a seething mass of emotion raging to be turned loose.  KavinCoach tightened up the counseling sessions to allow only a small amount at a time to leak through to help give me coping skills and time to process the sludge boiling over from my past.  Then came Black Christmas.  No Christmas tree.  I refused to sing a single Christmas Carole.  No decorations.  Bah Humbug would have been a cheery greeting that dark terrible Christmas when echo voices in my mind said all this horror was my fault.  The pain washed over me in waves.  KavinCoach threw me life line after life line keeping me barely afloat.  One of the valuable lines was the information that part of an abusers method of attack is to convince the victim that all these horrible things happening to them is their fault.  The abuser justifies their heinous crimes and gloats as the victim suffers both in body and mind.  Time and time again I repeated to myself, "I did not deserve what happened to me.  I did NOT deserve what happened to me."  I didn't not believe it that first dark Christmas.  Slowly with time and continuing healing I finally believe that I did not deserve what happened to me.  Then yesterday I spent with family and friends sharing advice with my daughter who will be giving birth to her little boy next month.  The joy I felt in sharing the love I feel about being a mother and the challenges involved and my belief that her becoming a parent is a wonderful thing.  I now know the light and beautiful side of these things called emotions.  I am now thankful that KavinCoach taught me to unlock my dark world.  Like Pandora's box, if I had closed the box too soon I would have missed out the hope that was in the box too.  I know how hard it is to believe in light when the darkness is so thick.  However, the smallest pinprick of light pushes back the darkness.