Love. No Limits.

from Capital "V" Victim to Victorious Queen!

Only gray memories willingly surface of the person or persons who molested me in the bathroom when I was under the age of 5. But, my body remembers. There are delicate spaces, as liberated as I am, where I don’t want to be touched.

Twice, before the age of 7, I had to undergo adult gynecological exams because my body was maturing at such a fast pace. Precocious puberty, the medical records say. I was poked and prodded. Photographed under bright lights. Given popsicles to take the shame away.

In kindergarten, D.S. used to pin me down in the back seat of the school bus and french kiss me and touch me where he shouldn’t. I didn’t know how to make him stop.

By the time I was 6, I started feeling this current flow through my legs and arms and torso and between my legs. Electric energy. I couldn’t identify it. There was a lot of tumult in our home. I found that if I touched myself in a certain way that I would feel a surge of pleasure that would put me to sleep at night. It would comfort me. It would make me feel warm and safe. It would make me forget the yelling and the hair pulling and the uncertainty. I got addicted to touching myself at night.

As an older young girl, I felt ugly. I was taller than everyone else and thicker. I got my period well before the other girls my age. My baby sister was sick with leukemia. My parents were absent. I lived in an unfinished basement. I hid my period and used dirty rags instead of maxi pads which I would wash out in the shower and dry in my closet.

I was filled with rage. It had nowhere to go. When my sister died, I prayed for God to give me the courage to kill myself. I slept in a bed with rotten food and dirty laundry. Mice skittered through the basement. My episodes started then: hysterics and panic, self harm and delusions.

As I got older, the episodes continued, but I managed to stay alive. Make friends. Be successful at school. I started acting out sexually, but I held onto my virginity. I wanted true love. I wanted someone to look into my eyes and stroke my hair and love me very gently and create harmony and safety.

Just after my 18th birthday, I lost my virginity to rape.

My life since then has been, though there have been years or months of respite, a long road of promiscuity, drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, and self harm.

Yet, none of that applies now.

Miracle of miracles.

For 40 years, misfortune seemed to follow me. I was a perpetual victim. Always re-traumatizing.

Now, I am a victor!! A Warrior Queen!! Yet, it took me falling to the bottom of the social chasm– crack addicted and desperate enough to do anything for another hit– to look up and actually see the blue in the sky. When I started reaching toward God, started listening for His voice– and it didn’t matter that I was a dope fiend and a whore– He spoke.

All my precocious, brilliant, advanced, addicted little girl self wanted was love.

Now, I have it. All the time. With no cap.

And, with this Love, I have overcome.

I am able to be monogamous. I am able to have secure attachment. I am able to disagree without screaming or melting into an episode. I am able to love myself. I am able to be empathetic and compassionate. I am able to set boundaries. I am able to self soothe.

Last week, I was telling a therapist about some of the ways in which I hear from my spirit guides, and I said: “I don’t care if you believe me because it has no impact on what I know to be true for me.”

Her response was: “I believe you, actually. After all you have been through, there is some great reason you are here.”

I don’t believe a person must go into the depths of Earthly hell to experience God. I do believe, though, that you have to ask God into your heart and your life and you have to mean it. Many of us, perhaps, don’t mean it unless we are at our lowest point. I don’t know.

I know that after years upon years upon years of being lost, I am found.

And, I am grateful.

And, it is possible.

All that I ever wanted is mine now. My life isn’t perfect. Not by human standards. But, it is blessed.

I have all I need on any given day.

Love being the bulk of it.