The Un-Crumpling Part 3

The Un-Crumpling Part 3

These posts are intended to inform, educate and hopefully help others. I have found my own sources of help that have led me to wholeness. My prayer is that other victims may find healing and wholeness as well.

I sat in my car with my motor idling in the park adjacent to the church. I had left work early to meet with my priest and on that day I had given myself extra time to settle. My life had gotten to a point where I could no longer keep the secret and my gut told me the best person to tell was my priest, but first I had to get the courage.

The events leading up to that day are a synchronistic maze of dysfunction and blessings. My family was sorting through a financial loss brought on by a business failure, my older son and I had surgeries within weeks of each other and my father in-law had been diagnosed with cancer. My family of origin was up to their same histrionic antics including alcoholism, a divorce, an affair and my mother’s predictable under reaction to my family’s plight while inflating her own ceaseless victimhood that apparently defines her life. All signs were pointing to an internal stop sign screaming at me to stop running from the truth.

As I got out of my car I was shaking and thought I might vomit as I walked into the church office. Terror doesn’t give it justice. In retrospect, I probably on some level knew once I opened the dark vault where I stored my experience of sexual abuse, I would never be the same and I wouldn’t be able to turn back. I would be placed on a trajectory of having to look deep inside myself and at the time it looked like a dark pool of nothingness. It is always awful to die to yourself.

It took me awhile sitting crumpled in that chair, my priest calmly across from me, to break the silence. I remember it being horrible. The shame and fear was like nothing I’ve experienced. The one thing that stands out is that I knew I had chosen well. He had said the right things and responded beautifully.

Then the work began.

A couple of weeks later I sat in a psychologist’s office. Again, taking my time to get to the point, I increasingly sank into his leather couch and thought I might run for the door. He finally asked why I was crumpled in the sofa with my face firmly buried in my palms. I couldn’t look up or sit up straight. I was a mess, a crumpled mess.

I am not entirely sure when it happened but at some point I started to drop my hands from my face and sit up straighter. It took me some time to share my story with Rob and my friends but with each person I told a small weight was lifted from me.

I started to un-crumple.