A Troubled Child

A Troubled Child

After the sexual abuse came out I had a social worker come out and visit me twice. It had a lasting impression on me. It gave me some quite negative ideas about myself and unfortunately social workers too.

I can only record my own experience rather than those heroic souls who see the fragile beauty in all children.

She was short (though tall to me) with a sharp long black bob hair cut and small mouth which was emphasized by her bright red lipstick and severe black eyebrows. I was sat crosslegged on the swirling coloured carpets (unusually) watching television when she entered the room. She didn't speak to me she just stood there and glared at me.

I felt this glare keenly, deep to my bones. She looked at me and she saw there was something very, very "wrong" with me. That glare was like ice, like a piece of steel in my me. Much of how I have developed over the years, much of my adult fears in truth come back to that moment. That women who name I never knew the taste of looking at me like I was something to scrape off her high heeled patent shoes.

I knew that something bad had happened to me before that. I had known that. I had known something not right and icky had come to pass but until then it had been something done to me. From then on, it was something I had caused or courted. It was something wrong, broken, wicked in me. Barely 8 years old and I wanted to die. I tried a few times, sitting with my legs hanging from my bed room window feeling like I wanted to erase myself from the world. When I found I couldn't do it, I felt even worse about myself. I was too much of a failure to even die. I wanted to jump into oblivion.

My mother made light of this deep self loathing and suicidal feeling by calling me a "drama queen" who needed to just be "ignored".

After I found I couldn't erase myself I started on my quest to "fix" myself. To be "unbroken". To be right instead of wrong.

Meditation was certainly part of that and learning how to "not be" and essentially not exist for a limited time was beneficial in more ways than one.

You can imagine my delight in having to deal with not one, but two such women in my home this week. I would like to say I dealt with it gracefully but I swung between Mother Wolf's fury, uptight and insincere politeness and one one or two occasions soul racking fear I was terrible and didn't deserve my own wonderful life, family and daughter.

It has been two days and I woke up still in "it".

So I had to pick at the scab of it. Find the barb still in their deep from one look, one woman gave me nearly thirty years ago. Realise that, it her problem, you view of me that was wrong. That it was her, bad day, her need of new glasses, or inability to see me that was her problem, not mine. That how she looked at me was far, far about her than it was about me.

I do not know if that thorn is completely removed, I just know it doesn't hurt as deeply. That I feel more calm and relaxed than I have in about a week.

It's a full moon tonight, E and I have been talking about all this and she suggested I draw of this woman and burn the picture. My daughter is so wise.

I feel I could sleep in a way I haven't for a while, the restful kind of dreamlessness. 

The Art of Constant Cleansing is what I call this process. Where you find what is really hurting and draw it out, look at it. Washing, cleanse it and let it go. Target your daily practice to help heal that wound.