Click here to tell a Friend about Love@Home™

Make Love@Home™
your home page

By Bernadine Sevy

Often in life we are faced with challenges that we have no control over. Children being molested, a cheating spouse, disease, chemical imbalance etc. and we are left with an enormous amount of anger and, what seems like, uncontrollable rage. We lash out, sometimes hurting others and then, feeling guilty, we beat ourselves. No need to have anyone else do it for us, we do a fine job destroying our own self-esteem. The spiral of self doubt and loathing is so drowning and devastating that crawling out of the pit of destruction seems impossible.

I have lived this nightmare, gone through periods of such depression that have prayed for death because I felt like I couldn’t endure the pain inside one more second.

As a three year old, I was molested for the first time, and then it started again when I was nine. An uncle was my worst molester and he convinced me that my parents would never believe me. Another uncle decided that I was fair game when I was about twelve and then as promiscuity developed I hurt myself, taking responsibility for every case of molestation, truly believing that I had "asked for it". I asked why God had allowed this to happen to me, and in my twisted pain, I convinced myself that he didn’t want me and was punishing me. I tried to commit suicide believing that the only end to the suffering was to end my life, giving him his wish. I hated being alive. Sometimes I was so angry that I literally couldn’t stand to be around myself. Jim, on more than one occasion, knelt with me in the back of a closet, as I cried curled into a ball. I didn’t understand. I tried counseling, and enjoyed breakthroughs as something would make sense but the rage was still out of control. I became very suspicious of counselors, because one I was seeing, used False Memory Syndrome techniques that almost tore my family apart.

During one particularly bad day I wrote the following:

Twisted anger fills my chest
Cork screwing scars
Till my body deforms in pain.
My words are dyslexic
My feelings squeezed into the spiral
Fresh blood oozes from the folds
And I wish the chunk of anger
Would rip away, like a scab.
But it is a huge part of me
Without it I would die
Bleed to death.
With it I die slowly,
Soon no good will remain
Scar upon scar is all.

In my journal, I wrote:

"I’m addicted to anger, to hurting, to controlling and I know who I’m like and I know who I want to be like."

Another day:

"It is horrible to be in me."

I had tried medication and counseling and I needed something to happen. I was at the very edge of my understanding. So one night, after one of the worst days of my life, I found myself in the orchard on my knees praying, begging for understanding and to feel God’s love. I needed to feel love desperately, to know once and for all if he even wanted me. It came! Waves upon waves of it. I found an article written about abuse and in it the author said that he believed that sometimes God put valiant individuals in the path of abuse to end the cycle. I began to find peace. Inch by inch I felt my soul begin to warm, to respond to love. I began to feel that I was allowed to be loved even when I was ornery or not perfect. The rage began to subside. I was a child of God and he loved me and wanted me and he wanted me to feel joy. Joy was wonderful, to notice beauty in a flower, fall and my children. To approach them and not see the expectation of attack in their eyes. We all began to heal.

Finally I was able to write the following:

Where do I start,
To carve a new river?
When the gullies are so deep
That the walls are bone dry.
Where do I start
To channel pure water?
When the rock is in my path
Thick, unyielding, so high.

Years of engraving,
Marking a channel
Hiding who I’ve become.
Despising and seeking
New places to cower
Fear is the fuel
That has taught me to run.

A mighty change
I need in my heart
I crave it with all my soul.
Where do I find the faith that I need
To help me feel well and whole.

I’ve controlled this river
It’s estuaries.
Each stream that has added
To it’s powerful surge.
Dug ever deeper
Creating the canyons
Dragging new water
With each new merge.

Now all I can see
Are the walls around me
Feeling the sun,
Sucking me dry.
Prison walls
High, hot and unyielding
No tears left
With which to cry.

Tiny streams
Sought me for protection
Wanted to be
Part of my channeling power
Instead I’ve dwindled
To mud in a canyon
Filled with nothing for nurturing
Hour after hour.

So I look to the Source
And I pray for a storm
Fill the gullies and channels anew.
Give me the gift
I need at this hour.
To replenish my current
I’m praying to you.

A new path I seek
The faith is small
But You said it would be enough.
It won’t be easy
To carve it over
But this path was equally rough.

Add new water
So the mud will settle
I’ll carve walls
In the rock on the way
So that the beauty will smile
On the river that follows
Giving courage to each new day.

Show me the way
A mighty change I seek
For a bleeding heart.
I return to the Source
for which I’ve searched
Of whom I am a part.

Following this poem I wrote the following in my journal:

"I hope that my family can give me the forgiveness I seek. Only with their love and understanding and courage will we channel anew. This time the path God wants us to follow, I’m so sorry."

It has been a long, hard road. I do still have a bad day but they are far and few between. There are still days when a movement, a word or an action will roll in huge waves of doubt and self-loathing but they are easier to manage and once I see I can halt or repair quickly. Control is still an issue for me. I hate to feel out of control, disorderly, or have someone try to control me. When I get angry I have to backtrack and find the trigger before it envelopes me. But that is the horror of abuse, an individual that has lived through scarring will forever have a scar in one form or another. What we do with it, remaining a victim by not taking responsibility for the rest of our lives, or clawing our way methodically out of it is up to us.

I give credit to a number of things and people for the healing that I have so far enjoyed:

• My God
• My Children
• My Parents
• My gratitude journal and my scriptures.

Because eventually there is only one way to heal and it is through faith, and we need so little to begin, only the desire. It is enough.