When I wrote Broken, I saw the Dome. I saw the players and pieces in my head. I sat at the kitchen table in my Irish cottage, talking to William and Bergen.
Here, writing this… it’s just you and me. I guess, in a way, I don’t need the exchange and theatrics anymore.
The day I told my then-husband that I needed a doctor, I was taken to the ER. Everything was black. Everything had this black outline and hue to it. Everything. In my memory, thinking back, all I can see is the black.
And the more I healed, the more I made my way out of the Darkness, the less black outlined my memories. The less black discolored my vision.
Don Quixote’s mirror of reality was undeniable. The windmills and dreams had been shattered. I had no choice, but to go forward. The fantasy and the delusion no longer worked for me.
Many people hypothesized that “Broken” implied that I was broken. Others assured me that “Broken” referred to society.
“You’re not broken, Anna. Society is.”
In truth, “Broken” referred to the breaking of my delusion, the fantasy, the dissociation. My undeniable truth that I was not healthy. That I was not “okay.” Writing Broken was the process of me breaking my own fantasy on purpose.
Everything came crashing down.
And I got to see just how crazy I was. How insane I was. How sick their abuse had made me.
That was the second time that my perception shift was successful. And it took writing Broken and seeing all of my past to see just how warped the abusers and owners had twisted my mind to fit their needs.
There was a period of complete fear. Fear of everything. I no longer had my security blanket of fantasy to cling to. I no longer had the Dome in my head or the dissociation to escape to. In fact, I was terrified of the voices in my head. No. I made it to this side of reality, and I was terrified I would go back to my head and get trapped in there again.
I think… that is really what I was up against. My mind had been my own prison for 32 years. It was the place where I could go and be safe. It was the shelter, the sanctuary, the calm in my storm. And I had lost that security.
But I had gained truth. And freedom.
My abusers had turned my own mind against me. Imprisoned me with my mind. Used my own emotions against me. And, after writing Broken, I was shown the sunlight for the first time in 2015, and it was enough for me to realize that my own mental illness WAS my prison.
And I was desperate to not ever go back. But this is just the Awakening. It isn’t even the Recovery yet. It was just the Transition stage between Imprisoned trauma Victim/Psychological Entrapment, and Awareness to a fraction of my reality. I didn’t know it then, but just then, I couldn’t even see all of the truth. Just enough to know that I didn’t want it.
It was like… all my life, my wrists hurt. My neck hurt. I fidgeted and whined. I complained. “My back hurts.”
“Shut up!” my mother would say. “It’s just growing pains!”
“Shut up!” my owner would say. “It’s not hurting you. You’re being dramatic!”
But that day, on my Awareness Day, I looked down at my wrists and I finally saw why they hurt… I had been wearing chains that bound me. My skin was raw from the metal on flesh. I could see the slave collar on my neck. I could see the slave brand on my back. The cuts in my flesh where they marked me.
Awakening is when you realize that you are a prisoner. That is the day you realize that you have got to fight and get free. That is the day you realize you aren’t free. You never have been. That is the day you realize just how much they had to maime your mind just to get you to obey and listen.
That is the day you see exactly what it is they have done to you.
That is they day you realize that they were breaking you.