The Caves

When I was in labor with my first child, I 'crawled' inside my caves that are 'near' the inside of my right stomach hip area. I distanced myself from the pain. I made no sounds. I heard the other women screaming and wondered why they couldn't do this. When the nurse would examine me, I could obey her request to open my legs, but remained in a kind of hypnotic state.

Twelve years later, in labor with my third, I felt panic that this time I couldn't do that. I wasn't as good distancing myself. The nurse came in, picked up my arm, that was hanging limply as I concentrated on remaining away. She remarked that it's too bad more women can't do this.

During transition in that labor, when pain is the worst, I panicked thinking I couldn't go thru this again. Internally a child's arm reached out and held my hand, and comforted me during the remaining labor. I thought it was my new baby's arm.

Seven years later I'm having my breakdown. Internally I'm talking to myself as a 7 year old. Eventually I tell her that my children are coming home tomorrow and we have to get ourselves together. She's furious now. I'm terrified I've made a terrible mistake. She ran into the 'caves'. I went in after her automatically and, startled, I remember this is where I went when I was in labor. I remembered my doodling in junior hi - startled I realized it was always a map of my caves. I found her 'near' the inside of my right stomach hip area. A neighbor laughed loudly and crazily. It frightened her. I held her and we fell deeply, deeply, immediately asleep.

I woke up at 1am with her voice, "I HAVEN'T BEEN HEARD IN 28 YEARS....!!!!" and it was as tho a 4th of July fireworks went off in my head. It was magical. It was frightening. I recognized that 'spirit'. It was the child's arm that reached out to me when I was in labor.

My therapist later told me it was a regression. I lay on the bed for awhile in shock and awe. My adult self was in the back of my head observing. I got out of bed walking awkwardly, as tho I hadn't been walking in years. My adult self thought, "Right now I couldn't even work a calculator," remembering my fast and furious fingers. My 7 year old asked, "What's that?" and in our head we imagined a calculator and she stuck out one finger poking at it. I thought to myself, "Right now, I couldn't drive a car."

I walked slowly out to the kitchen. My husband had fallen asleep curled up in a fetal position on the hallway floor, listening to me behind the closed bedroom door talking to myself thru the night. He woke up watching my seven year old curiously examining everything in the living room. She was thinking, "I'm not afraid of corners anymore." We looked into a mirror in the living room that gives a slightly warped reflection back. She thought, "I'm not afraid of that anymore." I remembered flinching for a second whenever I looked into that mirror. She said, "I'm hungry." and we were. Hungry like we hadn't eaten for several days. and we hadn't.

She ate the leftover Bar-B-Q marveling at the taste of Bar-B-Q and corn on the cob.

We finished eating and suddenly from head flowing down to my toes a wonderful warm relaxed utter sleep came over us. We barely made it back to bed.

We slept. That morning @6am I woke up, walked out, she wants me to get a kitchen knife and clean spots between the kitchen tiles. I'm puzzled but I agree. I tell her, "See, I'll do what you want me to." She tells me of the first rape and the blood on the floor. Mother cleaned it up.  There was a few spots of blood on the floor when I came back in the room.

I lay on the floor and in my head destroy my father's penis in a meat grinder. She feels safer. I repeat a mantra of, "I will love you with a real mommy's love, not like that evil mommy's love. I will love you fiercely like a wolf loves her cubs." and repeat it hundreds of times as I feel the relief, warmth, and feeling of safety spread from the top of my head to my toes. My husband wakes up and finds me on the floor with a knife beside me. In horror he walks towards me, "Oh, honey!" and I yell at him, "Don't touch me, I'm doing something important!" as I finish the mantra until the belief reaches to my toes.

I get up. My head feels like it's 3 times as large and separated from my body. But we are one again. My breakdown is over. I am convalescing.

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it."
Helen Keller

After that incident I didn’t tell my husband what I had been doing inside my head. I had sex with him. *chuckle* I wouldn’t call it making love. I was out to prove something to myself. I was determined that what I’d remembered would not harm the very satisfying sexual relationship I experienced with Phil, my ex-husband.

That afternoon was my first appointment with a psychiatrist to get anti-depressants. He asked me when the last time was that I enjoyed something. I answered, "I enjoyed having sex with him," pointing to my husband. Lol, my husband, a Vietnam Vet built like Hoss Cartwright, turned beet red.

I was on minimal anti-depressants evenings for 3 months to help me get to sleep at night.

A couple of years later I saw a former Miss America being interviewed about her husband returning from Vietnam terribly burned from head to toe. She went into his hospital room. The stench was terrible. But for her it was now or never. With determination she made love with her husband there on the hospital bed. They’ve since been married for years, and raised a couple of beautiful daughters. I understood her determination.

The worst of my breakdown started with me huddling in a corner of my bedroom, my husband watching and listening from the other side. I wouldn’t let him near me. I was near the door. At first in sheer, sheer terror, I screamed about how much trouble I was going to be in, suddenly I started pounding on the wall, repeating over and over in a deep, determined voice, "You will never have me again!"

I visualized to the right above my head my policeman nephew-in-laws and the Vietnam Vet from Phil’s work (I hadn’t even met him. I just felt safe with him because Phil told him what I was remembering, and he’d pounded his fist exclaiming his anger) about 3 inches tall beating to a pulp my 3 inch tall father. They threw the pulp in a wastebasket. I stopped to look down at the full size wastebasket imagined in my head. It was the wastebasket from my childhood home. I thought, "OMG, it’s true" and sobbed.

Suddenly my body wasn’t under my control. It was like being in the exorcist. My body fell to the ground, the left side of my face planted to the floor, my butt in the air, crawling across the floor slowly towards Phil, screaming over and over again, "You will never have to go through this again," and demanding Phil repeat the words after me. He did, sobbing. In my head I was thinking I will never go through a rape again, and I will never have to do this remembering again. My body reached Phil, sat and squirmed in his lap to touch his body with my face, my body, my hands, my arms, my legs. I absorbed from head to toe the feeling of safety - his smell, his body, his hands.

Now I stood up wringing my hands, sobbing, "Ok, now I’ve got the hang of it. He’s still here!!!" My husband got the hang of it. He helped me pantomime using the chemicals from the diamond plating business we used to have to completely destroy the pulp that was my father in the wastebasket, until the wastebasket was dissolved. I could still see the charcoal black on my hands to my elbows from my imagination. I washed them vigorously many times over and over until it was all gone.

Three days and nights continued like that.

My therapist said, "You are so lucky to be able to do that." I didn't feel lucky.  I didn't understand what she meant til years later. I think she meant many do not find creative ways to release the rage, grief, and terror.