Dealing With The Darkness

I’m knackered. Beyond that. Multiply that up 100 times and then you’re starting to get there. Knackered to the power of 100. I can’t sleep. Those brief moments I do fall into unconsciousness I’m beset by nightmares of the worst variety. When I awaken there’s no respite, no relief, no ‘oh well it was just a bad dream’ because it wasn’t. These nightmares revolve around actual life events.

My mind and my body are completely out of sync. When the body’s exhausted, the head’s racing. When I’m detached and my mind’s set at empty, resting out there on the ether, the body’s locked in, fully functioning and awake. One rests and the other works, or else they both race together, driven by an insane energy. Their periods of rest have ceased to coincide.

I’m dealing with some really heavy shit in therapy. This is the stuff I’d not planned on telling anybody – myself included. I’d put it in the deepest, darkest, furthest corner of my mind with a great big fuck off ‘DANGER’ sign lest I forget. The mind, like a flight recorder, took it in – took it all in – the beatings, the violence, the pimping, the rapes. My boundaries broken one by one, humiliated, treated like an animal, savaged and increasingly savage. Of course, I did my best to minimize, to forget about it, to deny it, just to survive. I didn’t allow words like ‘rape’ or ‘pimping’ in my vocabulary. The drink and drugs helped and the head injuries too.

But this stuff, these memories, fractured as they are, would simply not be obliterated. Nor will they now, despite my best efforts. That’s 5 years of trying to ignore them, 5 years unable to face them. I’ve been in therapy for maybe six months now and you know what, it takes time. I find trust incredibly, painfully difficult. When people have used and abused you, done things you didn’t even know it was possible to do to another human being without them dying – and then brought you back so they could do it again – it’s hard to have faith in people. When the hand that soothed you was also the hand that hit you, it becomes confused. Safer, surely, to trust no one.

It’s massive that I’m beginning to even try and talk about this stuff.

In terms of sheer volume, this ain’t going to be quick. But things move on as they do and voila! I’ve hit the really heavy shit now. Talking through the other stuff, painful and difficult in itself, I could feel it all around the edges of my consciousness, a foreboding darkness with little darts of movement, closing in. The occasional snapshot of something, like a subliminal message in a movie – there one second but gone so quick you’re not even sure it happened at all. A lingering feeling of deep unease, an inability to concentrate, head and body starting to pull in different directions. Unnamed and unacknowledged as it has been, this stuff has a slippery, nightmare quality. Struggling to look at it directly in my waking moments, small wonder it should be invading my sleep, such as it is.

This is stuff I couldn’t say aloud – even alone - couldn’t bear to think about. I’d do the psychic equivalent of going ‘lalala not listening’ yet it remained, patiently, waiting for a moment of stillness, of quiet, to re-emerge. Bedtime is an ideal spot, hence the insomnia. I don’t want to name it, or even acknowledge it. Too real, too painful, too scary. But it is there and it is real, whether I talk about it or not. It happened. Speaking about it is the only way. When I walled this stuff in and turned my back on it I didn’t realize I’d walled myself in with it, turned my back on myself. It has remained, a threat to my recovery, an unhealed wound thinly covered over.

Head and body are mashed with it all. When I’m sat opposite the therapist I can see him, see his reactions, and I trust him. It feels safe. Comparatively. Afterwards, at home, it’s not so clear. The trust thing kicks in – my ex taught me well not to trust by both his words and his actions. I face the horror of the reality of what I have managed to say and the fear of the rest of it – all the other stuff that I haven’t said. How am I to say it? I can’t. I must! And on. No rest! When I talk, I feel as if I’ve said too much. I oscillate between this feeling, this certainty, and knowing that I haven’t said enough. I feel this massive pressure, this crushing weight of all the horror and degradation just lining up to be spoken, to be heard. My body hurts with PTSD – leg pains! Abdo pains! Wrist pains! Jaw pains! Pains, pains everywhere, and my head hurts too, full as it is with images, feelings, thoughts, emotions. The feelings are so intense, how I felt when that stuff was being done to me, how I still feel, that words seem inadequate. I grope for vocabulary but there is none. And yet words are all I have.

The emotions take me right back. Like being sucked into a vortex, I leave this body and time behind, revisiting. It’s like I’m haunting myself. The body responds to what the mind’s telling it is happening – it hurts, freezes, sweats, shakes, becomes nauseous, becomes faint. I become lost, split between two places, not fully in either.

But one thing I do know – no matter how painful and scary looking at this stuff is, it is necessary. There are no other options. It’s move forward and deal with it with help as best I can or sink with it. Sink or swim. It’s rough and it’s going to be a whole lot rougher before we’re done but I got in some little practice at surviving. My ex set out to break me and break me he did, but he could not determine the lines along which I broke. For in with the fear and the pain and the weakness there grew a cast iron will to survive. Terrified as I feel with this stuff, he has yet to beat me. Survival is itself a form of defiance. I will pull through this, somehow I will pull through it. What better ‘fuck you’ could I hope for?

Silence Isn't Always Golden

I would sit in therapy, when things were starting to go wrong with my ex (later my pimp), in silence. An hour would pass by and I’d be still as a statue. It wasn’t stubbornness on my part. It was simply that I couldn’t put words to what was happening to me. My head was a tangled mess of unidentified, partially formed emotions and disjointed fact that rendered vocabulary useless. The images and sounds of the increasing violence in my life replayed in my head and body, knotting and weaving together into a great unfathomable web with me trapped in the centre. My body, so overloaded, froze, like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

I continued to go to counselling though. I took comfort in the presence of this man. He was caring, he never shouted at me, and he was very, very patient. I wasn’t used to the gentleness and I needed it. So I’d sit for an hour with the stuffed bear he kept on the sofa held on my lap, mute but at least physically safe. It was my time, my hour, with somebody concerned with me. It contrasted sharply with my life outside of counselling, in which my partner's moods and fancies dictated everything from what I wore to what I ate to whether I got knocked about or 'made love to' (I use the term loosely - there was never any choice). In a world in which there were no rules to play by to stay safe and no consistency except insofar as my isolation and confusion increased, an hour with someone who gave a shit, who worked within boundaries, was a Godsend.

In early recovery I sat in therapy, a different town, a different therapist, and I found myself again too often in silence. I knew I needed to talk but found myself mute. Everything was still jumbled, everything still confused. Sobriety prevented the added confusion of daily blackouts but my past remained fragmented – images, sounds, smells, body memories – lacking in chronology and largely unspeakable. I still lacked the language. I didn’t know how I felt or what I thought and was trying to get my head around, to make sense of, what the hell had gone on. Fear and shame did little to aid my ability to articulate years of violence and degradation.

When something awful and traumatic happens, you go through phases: shock, numbness, sadness, anger, relief… When trauma occurs everyday, when you are subjected to daily violence, to daily taunts and threats, to being sold to man after man, reduced to scavenging for food, to crawling through, you don’t have the chance to process. There is no safety in which to process, in which to heal. To soften is to weaken, to acknowledge the pain is too much: it’s simply a case of survival, day by day, hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute. Alert to where the next danger is coming from, or else out on the other side of fear – detached, mind wandering nowhere in particular. You find yourself doing little things unconsciously – repeating mantras as a distraction, picking out the third letter of every word when he’s shouting in your face because you don’t want to hear what he’s saying: the words becoming simply a string of letters, something you observe. You try not to let things touch you – you don’t want things to touch you. You wouldn’t survive if you felt everything they said and did to you. The mind splits, to protect you, the mind detaches, the body takes the brunt of their actions. You exist in a nightmare because you have to, and this nightmare is your life.

Articulate in my everyday life, the seeming impossibility of voicing this stuff was simply terrifying. It ate away at me like a cancer. I feared I would remain trapped alone with the horror of the past, consigned to madness, forever unknown and misunderstood. This fear was fuelled by the fact that, from an outsider’s perspective, I was highly competent. People saw that I wasn’t moving forward but couldn’t understand it, and so they judged me. That judgment in turn made trust impossible and any attempt at communication laughable.

Now I sit in therapy, some years later, and still I find myself tonight sitting in silence. My mouth simply won't open: something triggers me and it locks shut. Not safe here! Let nothing in and nothing out. So many things affect my ability to talk! Years of abuse, of having unpleasant things forced into my mouth. And my ability to trust, fragile at the best of times, evaporates as I find my past re-playing, head full, body hurting. Old threats about what would happen if I ever told anyone (and they’ll never believe a fuck up like you, anyway), resurface. I find myself still grasping for language to try to convey stuff that goes beyond words. What is it like to be raped and beaten and threatened on a daily basis? You use words like ‘fear’ and ‘pain’ and ‘horrific’ but they seem inadequate, fall woefully short. Language is all I have at my disposal to convey in therapy what was done to me, what it was like to be me, is still like to be me re-experiencing all this stuff through PTSD. Sometimes even an approximation feels futile. The old powerlessness courses through me and I sit, trapped and alone, my past my present.

Things are changing, though, even if it feels to me frustratingly at times like they’re not. I’m not always silent in therapy – these days it’s the exception rather than the rule. We both acknowledge the inadequacy of language in talking about this stuff, and acknowledging that makes talking possible. It's a tentative process - it's just finding a way. If one thing doesn't work maybe another will. And in recovery, I have time. If I can’t talk today, I may be able to talk tomorrow. 90% of communication may be non verbal, but when that 10% has been out of my reach for so long, much as I struggle with words and with opening my mouth to say them, I appreciate them all the more. Inadequate as they may be at times, there is a power in words.

A Hand to Help or to Hit?

Someone asked me the other day how to talk to an old friend of theirs who had been working as a prostitute. They had lost touch for a period but now, with contact re-established, she seems distant, unable to accept love and kindness. She seems to be in denial about what happened to her as a prostitute.

In some ways I am well placed to give an insight into this, yet in other ways I am quite lost. I identify with the woman in question, but I don't always know what I need, what would help me to move on. Sometimes it's hard to know when someone reaches out a hand if they're going to help you or hit you, particularly when past experience of reaching out for help has met with more of the latter.

I can still be very mistrustful of people, men in particular, who profess any affection for me, more so if it is romantically inclined. You get used to the johns giving you lines for their own ends. My first thought can still be, you ain't getting anything from me, fucker. Obviously, it's not an attitude that's conducive to great relationships, so it can be pretty lonely. Sometimes, when things are going well, I can make a conscious effort to avoid thinking like this. But inevitably if I'm tired, or scared, or hurting, its my default. The defences go up.

Being vulnerable with someone is an incredibly brave act, particularly if people have hurt you in the past and preyed on your weaknesses. Positively dangerous. Better, always better, to appear hard and uncaring and unmoved. Opening up, and being honest, requires safety, reassurance, and time. I saw my counsellor for 6 months before I began to open up to him. I had to be as sure as I could be that he wouldn't hurt me, of his integrity, his professionalism, his caring. I tested him for any hints of judgment or assumptions about me for a long long time, and even after all that time, and in that setting, I still doubted, and I still felt unsafe. The fact that his attitude towards me remained consistent both before I opened up and as I let small fragments out allowed me to continue. There's nothing more off putting than someone really pushing you to talk before you feel ready, nor than someone shutting you up or misunderstanding if you do talk. It's something of a tightrope walk.

I couldn't have rushed talking about my past, in part because getting my feelings back after trying to switch them off in prostitution and addiction has been a slow process. And then having the words and saying them out loud are 2 different things. I was afraid that by saying these things, it would somehow make them real. I would have to acknowledge that these painful and frightening things had really happened, and then deal with not only his reaction, but with mine too.

I wasn't sure I could handle it. Taking a proper, sober look at what had happened to me was a terrifying prospect. My mind and the drugs and alcohol had managed to numb me enough while it was happening to get through, just. I managed to distance myself from my body to the point that it didn't feel in any meaningful way to be me. Now looking back at my past, I could feel it. My body varied from numbness to shaking and aching with the flashbacks and memories. Muscles tensed and wobbled. At times I would physically vomit.

I felt that if I spoke, the feelings might overwhelm me and somehow I couldn't cope, wouldn't cope. I'd do something stupid and fuck my life up again. I felt I couldn't look another human being in the eye and say those truths, incredibly hard truths, aloud. I thought he'd hate me. I certainly hated myself. I thought he would judge me, and say that I'd liked it, like the abusers did. I think worst of all for me was the idea that in this man's head I was painting images of myself, horrific images in which I was naked and helpless and humiliated and being used as pure entertainment. I felt as if he could see it for real. Because I felt like I was really back there, it was hard to think he wasn't watching alongside the other men. I also worried at bottom that he wouldn't believe me. My ex constantly put that fear into my head, and it can still rattle around there if I'm not careful.

Denial's a tricky one. To survive as a prostitute, it is necessary to construct a network of lies, even to yourself. If you don't say it'll be different tomorrow, tell yourself that you don't care, that this doesn't matter, doesn't touch you, maybe even that you chose it, then how can you get up in the morning and face the johns all over again. To survive being sold and poked and prodded and fucked and told and made to do disgusting, demeaning things by punters, you have to change the experience, and if you can't change what's happening to you physically, you try to change your perception of it in your head, distance yourself, separate off. Your body's being fucked but you reach for the denial - I'm not really here, this isn't actually happening, they can do what they like to that body but it's not me. Trying to merge the fragmented parts of myself in recovery continues to be a slow and painful process, because it means accepting that the unacceptable happened to me, hurt me.

4 years on and I still at times find myself drained of all positivity and warmth, all connection. I feel separate from myself and from other people, cold, malicious and capable of complete self annihilation. There is a strong pull to self destruct and destroy everything that has meant anything to me along the way. It feels like someone has poured ice into my veins and unplugged my heart. I want to push people away, 'though I know when this passes I'll regret it.

These episodes occur when something triggers me and puts me back into my past. I think that underneath this savageness is a whole world of hurt and pain and more loss and sadness than I could have imagined possible before I experienced violence and prostitution.

I hope that there will always be people who will take the time and have the patience to get beyond the damage to the woman inside. I feel privileged that someone asked my advice. Sometimes it's hard to know what would help, or if you're in the position of trying to help someone who's exited prostitution, how to help them. I guess I'd just say that a little love and patience go a long way.

Lonely in Company

I find myself silent, often, in therapy. It's as if I'm still gagged. Silent then, and silent now. Show no emotion. Some behaviours are hard to break. Watching the therapist, who I like, who I trust, in as far as I trust anyone, I feel like screaming. Such torment and frustration! He's only a few feet away but it might as well be a million miles.

How to reach out across that distance, to bridge it, with words, to paint a picture of pain and suffering, to say the unsayable, here in this bland middle class setting with its table and box of tissues for clients to dab their eyes with, with this kindly middle class man. I feel like I'm pure darkness, pure evil, a toxic entity polluting this place, this man's mind. If some of the images, the memories, of what was done to me torment me and make me feel repulsed by myself, what will he think, this man with his textbooks and his stable life and stable job and clean and tidy appearance.

His kindness touches me, his presence soothes me, knowing that he won't hit me or touch me or shout at me. I know it's just his job, all part of the deal, for him, I'm just another client. But it means so much more to me than that. A man who doesn't want anything from me, is there to listen, encourages me to talk, speaks softly to me. I don't want to lose that feeling of companionship, can't bear to think that he might see my damage and my darkness and leave me.
I've been alone for so long I don't want to lose this. And so I sit silent and will him to see into my mind, to understand, to see my pain and fear, to know and understand and accept me as I am, because I can't say this stuff.

Loneliness in company. Together but apart.