I have struggled with this start from the beginning. Do I recap? Do I go back and explain what you may have missed?
After Broken, I experienced the shattering of my fantasy and delusion. It was like I was living in a fantasy world invented by my abusers to give them the least resistance.
In fact, that is a something that would take me 7 years to realize. All trauma recovery is, is the departure from your abuser’s forced perspectives back into your own.
And this journey is long. This journey is hard. This journey has never been recorded live before. I wanted to show people as it happens, what it looks like.
I believe this method will provide so much information going forward… To show you the chaos, the pain, the struggles, the ugly, and the breaking through from those layers.
A lot happens inside our minds. Things that not even we can see. So much that goes unknown. But I am a writer. And I am a Trauma Survivor. I am a philosopher. And I have Multiple Personality Disorder. And… I can paint pictures with words and show you. Take you into my mind and show you my journey from insanity to sane.
I have to do this. This is my calling.
I always wanted to be a philosopher.
Working, living, and dedicating my mind to thought.
The idea of just taking in knowledge, dissecting theory, and using story to communicate all I’ve learned… This is my joy.
Living inside my Trauma was surreal. It was like, from birth, I lived and walked inside a Dali painting. While everyone around me went about their day never questioning the horror and gore, I was aware.
“This is wrong.” Those words stayed with me always.
“There is something better. There has to be.”
I could not let this go. This would become what I would later call “A Hope Thread.” In my Darkest hell, at my lowest state, I held onto those words.
“There is something better.”
And I lived every day for the day when I would find it.
I took up books at 15, believing that education would be my way out. I noticed that those around me were not intelligent or educated. They were not self-aware.
I believed that education was the answer. But philosophy and questions were banned. I would be alone in this. I was already alone.
But… I had one obstacle at that time.
I had a god.
I had been taught to believe that…
Taught to Believe…
I had been taught to believe that questions and philosophy would shake my faith and pull me away from god.
“Is their faith so weak that they believe a simple curiosity would end their belief in god?”
I spoke to god just then.
I am not so weak. I believe that, whatever I see… wherever I may go, my faith will come back to god.
6 months later, I was an Atheist.
Being inside my mind at this point felt like I was trapped in a Jeannie’s bottle. My room was my sanctuary, and the reality and perspective forced on me and around me was my prison.
I didn’t know it then.
I just had this gut feeling, this instinct that the reality I was given, the reality they shoved down my throat, just wasn’t real. I doubted their perspective.
That’s all I needed.
Being in that place was a war.
Not a war of me vs them.
But a war, a conflict of my perspective vs. THEIR perspective. And never, not once, did I doubt my perspective.
Never, not once, did I believe their lies. And that was the difference between staying in hell and repeating the cycle, and getting the fuck out.
I studied theology, Jung, Socrates, plato. I studied existentialism, formal argument and logic, ethics. I studied psychology and sociology. I studied Rome and the development of the Christian Church. It gave me perspectives that I catalogued in my mind while I survived, waited, watched, observed.
I passed from theory and thought to application theory where I used formal argument to try and out-argue the man I now call Owner. He did own me. He decided when I showered. When I slept. When I ate. What I ate. How I ate. He decided where I lived. Who I visited. What I studied, what I read. He made all of my choices for me. And he punished me with rape if ever I made a choice on my own.
It was he who I had to beat in a logical argument. He who I had to out-argue. Every argument I threw at him, he overturned.
For five years, I fought him with words. I didn’t know it then. I know it now.
I was really fighting against Stockholm Syndrome and Psychological Entrapment. I was really fighting against the perspectives he and so many others had forced into my mind. Their perspectives and their truths greatly conflicted with my ethics. And every fiber of my being screamed, “This is wrong!” “This is insane!” “This isn’t right!”
I couldn’t over come this. I couldn’t suppress it. My ability to determine right and wrong was solid.
It was 6 January 2002. I was in the middle of another argument with my Owner. He was presenting his usual argument.
I broke it down. Analyzed it. Processed it. I saw his pattern and it was text book.
Listen. Observe. Accumulate the information. Throw it back in my face… Rinse and repeat.
But something was different.
This time, I saw the difference. I saw the pieces move. Like a massive chess board in front of me, playing out the game as he spoke. And saw the plays he made, and I realized one single truth that trumped all of his lies.
That all we know, each one of us, is only ever data collected from five little senses. Sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound. And what each one of us sees, what each one of us smells and tastes… what we feel through touch and what we hear, this information changes from person to person because not all ears work the same. Not all taste buds work the same. Not all eyes work the same. Not our noses and not our skin.
Which means that all we know through our experiences is just our opinion.
And all I know about my life is just my opinion.
And what you know about your life is just your opinion.
Which means that a perspective is just ever an opinion.
And what makes your opinion any better or worse than mine?
I told him this. I listened to him scream and sputter and shout. And I watched his words and rage fall on my silent shield.
In that instant, I felt the shackles and chains from the Psychological Entrapment slide from my wrists. I felt the Stockholm Syndrome instantly shed from my mind. I stood solid, unwavering, independent, and free.
In that moment, as my perspective shifted from defense to solid truth, that his opinion was no better than mine, I was free.
***
I took that information that day and held onto it. I thought often on that moment. I broke it down and analyzed it. Studied it. I obsessed over it.
I thought, if all it took was a perception shift to free my mind from his abuse and prison, if all it took was a perception shift to change how I looked at him and my life, then why couldn’t I do it again and change my perception shift again? And again? And again and again?
Trauma Recovery isn’t done in vast strides. It’s done with shuffled steps, slowly, and gradually over time. And shifting one’s perspective… if it could change so much as it did that day, then what else could I change?