Part 2 - CRYING & MOVING THROUGH THE FEAR:I don't think I've cried enough this week (or this year)

THE WATER runs down my face, over the folds, around my nose and slips into my mouth. It's salty, and I'm shaking. I'm stiff and rubbing my legs. My breathing, at first is shallow, then becomes deep. I want to curl up into a ball and wrap my arms around my legs in a fetile position. This is me at 11 after an afternoon of humiliation and terror at the hands of brother.

This is also me in my counsellor's office at 27. Right now there are voices in my head that are saying: what are you doing writing this down? Are you crazy? Someone's gonna see. Then I remind myself, someone needs to see...

So please: SEE! SEE! SEE!

I see my counsellor once a week - an intense, grounding and healing experience where I can just.. be. I never thought I would ever get to the point with a counsellor that I would be okay to have emotional release with one.

The first counsellor I had was unemotional. I know this sounds strange, but you have to understand, I had wasn't really in touch with myself, and darkdaughta, who had been encouraging me for some time to see someone, was glad I was talking to a person about my stuff - besides, well, her.

At first seeing her worked out ok. She in the very least, made me ask questions of myself, andbecause of her own confusion and discomfort with who I am, and what it actually didi to her world view- made me articulate on an ongoing basis my life choices, my feelings about the world, and my justification for my choices. She got me to talk about who I am not because she was really interested, but more because of she didn't fully understand me as a complex, multi-layered person.

Sessions with her also felt like a real client/practitioner relationship, and I didn't feel any connection with her. This is in great contrast to my current counsellor. I see now that the unemotional way of being of my first counsellor was at the core of why we didn't establish a real connection, and was crucial to why I never opened myself up to her.

In one of my recent sessions I was speaking to my inner child.

I see him.

He was about 11, and he had just been thrown to the floor and beaten up by his older brother. The little boy doesn't move. He is just frozen in the corner, humiliated, defeated, and terrified.
I don't call out to him because he is already self conscious and or embarrassed at having been slapped around like a rag doll, and thrown to the ground like trash waiting to be taken out to the dump.

But am I just playing out a role here? Do I just leave him, cause that is what I understand in terms of boys/men and healing.

Something feels off.

I offer my inner child an extension. Not a physical one, but a voice. I talk in my session about what he is feeling, and thinking as a lies there, on the kitchen floor.

'Can someone help me?', he’s saying in his head. He knows no one is in the house.

He is waiting and wondering what will happen next. He not sure if he should move. Maybe if I’m still… I’ll vanish or blend into the surroundings.

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

My inner child hears the heavy feet of my abuser walk up the stairs of the family home. Sound thundering creeks and stomps are upstairs, as shivers roll up my spine.

Then,

STOMP, STOMP, STOMP, STOMP.

Down the stairs he comes and approaches. I sit, still in front of a cupboard that he wants access to. He proceeds to open the drawer as though I am not there, banging my head against the drawer until I move. He does not speak.

But I do.

I remember these lines well:
'You fu*king piece of sh*t, you want me to be scared of you, I'm not scared of you, I feel sorry for you' he shouts/ I shout at his/my brother. Everyone in this family hates you, you’re weak, that’s why you bully me, and I hope you roast in hell..’

These biting words were meant to sting like the physical trauma he caused. I was scared, but I wasn’t going to let me have all of me.

He glared at me, eyes open in shock. He went back upstairs yelling at me, ‘Shut-up! Shut-up! SHUT up!’

Presentday- Here, I break down. An uncontrollable stream of tears and sounds pour out of me.

Good, I re-assure myself, the supportive voices of my intentional family/community, counsellor and men's group in my head.

I take a deep breath.