A reader
responds to the answer to her own question . . .
 am the one who had asked you several
months ago about the feeling of cupability and rape and you had generously
written back through your website. Needless to say, I dismissed your commentary
by saying that there was no way anyone could just give the pain back to
God.
Well, if you don’t
mind taking a few minutes of your hectic schedule and allow me to let you
know of a few developments that have taken place since then:
I finally succumbed
to the fact that I needed therapy, and Providentially, I found a Catholic
psychologist here in my town. It took me a few months to actually get into
the swing of things of therapy because I would start and then back off, only
to eventually realize that every time I backed off, it was my defensive way
of trying to deal with a pivotal moment in therapy in regards to whether
or not I could trust my therapist.
Up until fairly recently,
I had difficulty understanding the nature of psychotherapy—what I call
the psycho-blah-blah-blah (what I dub as: “Freudian
judgments.”)
I believe that, Providentially, my therapist was able to see a deeper dimension
of my own be-ing and he approached me with the possibility of approaching
my issues on the realm of my spirituality. . . . Aside from that, a Priest
friend had mentioned to me at the time that this whole eradication of my
suppressed sexual abuse had begun to formulate, he said that I was experiencing
the Dark Night of the Soul—which I quickly dubbed the Dark
Sahara.
It took a while to
finally succumb to being in my Dark Sahara. And by not violently resisting
this Dark Sahara entity and not falling into temptation of taking the fastest
camel out of there, I have come to recognize some sort of pragmatic Peace
from within. Though the journey remains to be VERY VERY long and arduous,
I over all feel okay about being in the Dark Sahara.
What’s really
intriguing about this journey is the discovery of the abyss that lies separate
from my sexual abuse incidences. It goes back to my years of being physically,
emotionally, and mentally oppressed the first 4 years of my life in an orphanage
& how those crucial and vital “life
developmental” years “did me
in”
to subconsciously learning to survive life by means of living in fear. Fear
of trust. Fear of being loved. Fear of being capable to love.
Recognizing all that
has allowed me to realize why I have always had a great self-antagonizing
fear of Mary, the Mother of God. (I had Priests tell me that it isn’t
truly about Mary, but rather Christ himself--which of course, I agree—but
I was always haunted by the essence of Mary, and no clergy could break through
why I had such a big hang-up on this.) But it goes beyond the
“maternal
loss”
in the reality form of my birth mother; but being robbed for my first 4 years
of something nutritious to eat, being robbed of physical hugs possibly in
the orphanage, etc. (Perhaps, you need to understand, that by the time I
was adopted, I was just shy of 4 years old but had the developmental capacity
of an infant: couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t eat right,
etc.)
Anyhow, perhaps being
in my Dark Sahara will lead me to a new discovery that I no longer have to
fend for my life out of true fear, that I can break down the fortress that
I have built out of a plethora of walls.
In regards to my
sexual abuse, it’s not so much feeling culpable anymore, but rather
dealing with sexuality in general—because I am married . . . and I have
always felt repulsed by sexuality since the beginning of my marriage. But
again, the whole essence of all that sexuality stuff goes deeper into trusting
and allowing myself to be loved by a spouse, and allowing myself to love
freely . . . if I want it; which is something I need to decide on. And when
it comes right down to it, I don’t think I ever would have had kids,
let alone be married—but my soul was lost in a the abyss of confusion
and to recover from my sexual abuse, I suppose I abused the essence of sex
as a means of trying to recover from the abuse....
But I suppose I’m
writing to you because July 6th is the Feast day of St. Maria Goretti—of
whom you wrote about in your answer . . . to me on your website. And with
this Feast Day on our hands, it’s hard to NOT think about what you wrote,
even though I was quick to disregard your commentary because it was my defense
mechanism to fighting back my pain. Though I could sit here and ask you to
forgive me for dismissing your commentary in a heartbeat, I could also sit
here and tell you that it did affect me—it just took several months
later to recognize and admit it.
Again, my journey
in my Dark Sahara remains to be extremely long and arduous and I can thank
our Triune God that I have a Triune God to allow me to experience the Dark
Sahara—even though it’s not any fun by all means!
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