I don’t know how many people go through life feeling like they belong, that they’re acceptable, lovable, worthy, ‘ok’. I’m 38 years old, ‘successful’ by society’s standards, you could say. But I have only experienced these feelings for short periods of time, and then only in the past 18 months or so, after almost 9 years of constant and dedicated healing.
The majority of the time, deep inside, in the place I hide from the world, I don’t feel worthy of much at all. In fact I feel like I have to make up for myself somehow, that I am so bad, I need to compensate just for being alive. That’s just one of the things I’m left with after a lifetime of being raped.
It started with my dad when I was 9 months old. It’s impossible to communicate the anguished, twisted, confused thinking that results from something so horrific being done to you when you can’t comprehend it, let alone stop it. The only thing you have to fall back on is that there must be something terribly wrong with you, for someone who ‘loves’ you to treat you that way.
As the years went on, I somehow knew in my heart that the other girls at school weren’t being hurt the way I was. Not only did my pain show – I was lonely, miserable, lost, angry and mean, even though I tried desperately not to be – but the knowledge that I was being singled out for the abuse only confirmed the truth of what I was being told (that it was my fault) and strengthened my belief within myself that it must be true. I can’t express the extent of my self hate, even at that age – 5 or 6 – I remember it being overwhelming. No one took an interest – no one. No one looked beyond the expression of my hurt and confusion to see what was inside. Instead, I was told that I was a mean, awful girl, and that if I didn’t learn to think before I spoke, I would never have any friends. Again – I was the one at fault. Not only for getting raped in the first place (I was a child!), but for the terrible effects that being raped was having on my ability to be a normal child. In the end, all this taught me was that I had to learn to hide my pain better, to become more controlled and more of a pretence. Which in turn only pushed the pain and self hate deeper.
And so my miserable life went on. Until not long after my 30th birthday, someone introduced me to Matthew Meinck. Matthew is the only person who has ever looked closely enough to see that this incredible pain and hurt was (is) hiding inside of me, and who has taken the time to help me start to heal. It was with his help that I first experienced the intensely sweet relief of realising that I wasn’t just a mean awful girl, something I believed to my core to be true, but that I had been grossly, devastatingly and crushingly hurt, over and over and over again, and that the damage from that treatment had warped me, twisted me up and filled me completely until the only thing that could ever come out of my mouth or actions was an expression of pain. How else could I have possibly turned out?
That realisation was the start of my healing. It seems almost easy now to say that I would be dead if it wasn’t for Matthew’s help – I would have killed myself many years ago. But staying alive is the easy part. The hard part is healing the pain. It goes so deep and it’s through every single cell in your body. There is no part of me that hasn’t been affected by what has been done to me, or by what I have believed about myself in reaction to what was done to me. And it’s a mire. There’s no way I could get through the confusion of my twisted thought patterns, attitudes, beliefs and self criticisms on my own, no way, they’re just too good. Look at the horror they had to justify – that’s what brought them into being after all – what hope do I have trying to apply some nice thoughts to myself or trying to counter the destructive thoughts when there’s a lifetime of hurt and self hate propping them up and driving them on? But with Matthew’s help, the past 9 years has been a constant breaking down of those thought patterns, one by one, as they expose themselves.
I’ve lost count of the number of counsellors and psychologists I saw before Matthew, trying to work out what on earth was wrong with me, not one of them came even remotely close to the truth. Not one of them was interested enough to. Not one of them was even capable of trying it. The evidence is there – I saw those guys, but nothing changed, my life carried on no differently. Then I started seeing Matthew, and my life started changing. Big time. It couldn’t be more different now to 9 years ago.
I know it’s cost Matthew a lot to help me and others in the way he does. And I am overwhelmingly, eternally grateful to him for it. To be able to live times in my life when I truly like who I am, and don’t judge myself for the hurt that’s still inside me and that still causes trouble. I’ve lived most of my life believing I would never experience that. Never experience the simple acceptance of myself. In one way, it’s devastating to be 38 and feeling like I am only just now starting to live, starting to come out of the dreadful darkness that’s been all I’ve known, starting to see life more clearly, as it really is, but on the other hand it’s the sweetest, most precious and priceless thing – had it not been for that chance introduction to Matthew, with his unique understanding of how complicated and messy pain is and his incredible ability to get through that pain, to help to loosen its hold so it can start to unwind and release, his deep compassion for the hurt and confusion that I was (am) in, and his generosity to be there to help me from day one, I know I would never have experienced it at all.
