Innocence Revisited

by Cathy Kezelman

  We are finally accepting those parts of which we were ashamed, because now we understand that they were brave and only did what they had to do under duress. They were heroes who saved us all. On one level we’re all heroes because we survived things which many people don’t survive. Not only have we survived, but we have grown and developed and now we have a world which is waiting for us…a world in which there is a lot to embrace, not just Growly!

  It’s late and all of the others are asleep but not Growly and me. We’re getting to know each other and we’re getting to be close. We’re even talking about joining together, because after we get back together, Grownup-Cathy will be able to go back to being just Cathy like she was meant to be before all of those bad things happened to her. And before any of us had to be born…

  Innocence.

  I wish I was a fairy princess with gold hair and a pink lacy dress and sparkly wings, because when I am a fairy princess I can live right up in the sky in fairy floss clouds. And fairy floss clouds go higher up than I can reach when I stand on my tippy-toes and stretch my arms up as high as they will go and further. When I’m inside my fairy floss clouds I don’t get scared, not ever because there are no monsters and no evil witch mothers in fairy floss clouds.

  That’s because fairy floss clouds let go when evil witch mothers lie down on them and when the clouds let go, the evil witch mothers fall down to the ground and they hurt themselves, and then they can’t fly and hurt anybody like me ever again. And when I brush my gold hair with my magic fairy princess brush, I can make it go long and grow down to the ground. And fairy princesses who are getting hurt by baddies can grab onto my hair and they can climb up to the fairy floss clouds and the fairy floss clouds keep them safe. But if any baddies climb up, my hair breaks off and the baddies fall down and hurt themselves.

  I want to stay in the fairy floss clouds with the other fairy princesses forever and ever.

  I never was a fairy princess; nor were fairy floss clouds a feature of my childhood.

  Over the last ten years I didn’t recover many happy memories and none that I’d describe as magical. I haven’t had any new memories for a year now and hope that there won’t be any more. This moratorium has allowed me to enter a new era in which the past no longer dominates my everyday existence. That’s not to say that I’m over my abuse; I don’t believe that anyone ever fully ‘heals’ from childhood trauma. However I do believe that eventually you can reach a degree of acceptance, contentment and inner calm and a genuine sense of hope and wellbeing.

  I still confront aspects of what happened to me, regularly. When I least expect it, a random trigger can re-ignite feelings or sensations from my childhood and the frightened little girl emerges afresh. But now I know almost instantly what’s happening and can reassure that little girl and care for her as she so richly deserves. And when I do, the feelings don’t last for long and I can soon return to enjoying my day.

  I will never be able to fill all of the gaps of those ten forgotten childhood years. It took me a long time to accept that; I railed against it, against the fact of it and the injustice of it. It’s difficult to accept that aspects of your life will remain a mystery forever. While the concept of ‘forgotten’ memories and their subsequent recall is inaccessible to some, evidence for this phenomenon is mounting. More research studies in relation to ‘memory’, repression and dissociation are being conducted all the time and these are adding to the knowledge base in this area.

  For a long time I searched for irrefutable validation for my memories, grabbing snippets of evidence which, although initially reassuring, invariably fell short. I eventually relinquished my search for concrete proof and accepted that Kate’s bearing witness to my experiences in sessions provided validation in itself. I also stopped searching for validation from the people whose own defence mechanisms would never allow them to provide any.

  To me the process of ‘repression’ or the ‘pushing down’ of horrid feelings and thoughts into the subconscious mind makes perfect sense. What better internal protection could there be for a child’s psyche than to ‘remove’ noxious threats from conscious memory? How ingenious! Of course I not only repressed my memories, but I also ‘dissociated’ or ‘disconnected’ experiences, feelings and sensations from one another.

  While we know that the processes involved in acquiring and storing memory are complex our comprehension of these processes is in its infancy. What we do know, is that all memory is subject to distortion. Interestingly, studies show that recovered memory is no more at risk of distortion than memory which has always been accessible to recall.

  My memory has undoubtedly been affected by the passage of time, like anyone else’s; some of the events I described might not have happened as depicted. In particular those retrieved from a young age are open to question as they are the interpretations of a child and a terrified child at that. In addition I was undoubtedly subjected to the ‘brain washing’ and manipulatory techniques of a sophisticated cult. Much of what the Cloaks did was designed to confuse, destabilise and control its child victims. I suspect I was drugged and intentionally duped and my narrative is my interpretation of horrors from within that state of mind, horrors for which no child even has the language. Some of the story may represent a metaphor for events rather than an accurate depiction of them. Similarly others could be representations of activities or conglomerates of several acts, superimposed onto each another.

  I do not; however, believe that the thrust of my story relies on the specifics of what did and didn’t happen. Mine is a complex story, featuring an array of experiences which support the veracity of one another by their very nature. Whether every one of the events described happened, or didn’t happen, as a child, I fully believed them and the feelings and sensations they evoked were intense and real. They are consistent in their tone and when considered in context, collectively explain my patterns of behaviour and the moods and outlook on life which accompanied them.

  For a long time I sought to deny my memories because many of them seemed too far-fetched to accept. But the more I tried to deny their existence, the more they hounded me and the worse I felt. I’ve not written this book to shock or scare people. Nor have I tried to sensationalise the abuse I experienced. A lot of what I’ve written is difficult to read and I’ve omitted a lot of the graphic detail for that reason. There are some memories which I haven’t even committed to paper; they were not worthy of being acknowledged as writing them would give them an authenticity that they do not deserve.

  I’m aware of how hard it is to imagine that such things can and do happen in our community and especially in our homes. However, I want to make the point that victims such as myself have not only heard about such acts, but withstood them; as young innocent children.

  Stories of abuse are so confronting that some people would rather discount them than countenance their possibility. Many people would rather pretend that shocking abuses and torturous betrayals don’t occur and that if they do, then never in our society.

  The sad reality is that many children continue to suffer serious abuse and neglect in secret under our very noses.

  The more people who accept the harsh realities of abuse, the more chance we, as communities and as a society, have to prevent it. If I’ve achieved anything in telling my story, it is to chip away at the ignorance, resistance and denial which foster the conditions in which abuse flourishes. All one needs to do is step into the shoes of a young child of three, or four, or five, a child who’s too young to understand what rape, sexual assault or domestic violence are. A child who is alone and scared, who is told constantly how stupid and worthless they are, who is starved and beaten, ignored and humiliated and who has no-one to turn to for help, support or succour.

  As each of us grows and develops we internalise our childhood experiences and the lessons those experiences bring. When we’ve been abused we internalise a sense of worthlessness. We feel unsafe and alone, exposed and unprotected, betrayed and helpless. Abus
e can affect every aspect of a child’s development and severely impact the adult that child becomes. My childhood prevented me from being the person I would have otherwise become. I spent a lot of my childhood struggling to survive a cruel world ruled by fear and harm. I unconsciously adopted a set of defences which proved ingenious enough to save me. However in so doing, they sabotaged my natural personality and imposed on it a set of defences which were not as constructive for an adult as they were for an abused child.

  I had to learn to change my reactions to better suit my adult life, and let many of those defence mechanisms go. But first I had to let myself be vulnerable. The process gained momentum and soon I became so vulnerable that I ‘broke down’ completely. Once broken, I was forced to acknowledge the mask I’d been presenting to the world and dismantle it. In the process I was obliged to identify all of the internal parts of myself and accept them. Once I’d accepted them I could gather the fragments of my ‘true self ‘ together and reconstruct a ‘new self’ from what remained.

  I’m fortunate that I didn’t turn to drugs or alcohol or intentionally cause myself any lasting damage. For those who haven’t experienced any desire to self-harm, the concept of hurting oneself is repellent. Self harm is never to be condoned; however, the drive to practice it can be understood. The act of being abused forces a person to relinquish all control over their own being. Hurting yourself, can make you feel back in control, albeit temporarily and by default.

  I was lucky that when I was at risk, I had a therapist with the skill, patience and determination to stand alongside me and help me contain my angst. Kate’s belief in me and the relationship of trust she fostered, were crucial to my survival. She kept me safe against all odds and her non-judgmental empathy allowed me to work through the shame which conspired to sabotage my sense of self worth.

  I still see Kate every week, though not nearly as often as I once did. These days I’m rarely in crisis mode, recovering memories or dissociated when I see her. Rather than exploring the past, we discuss issues of the here and now and analyse ways in which I might best approach them. As a child I rarely had access to a ‘thinking adult’ as Kate puts it, a person who could help me interpret and process the things which were impacting me. I spent a lot of my childhood anxiously anticipating what would happen next, without being able to influence those events or the ways they affected me.

  It took me a long time to trust Kate. I’d been badly betrayed from a young age by the very people I should have been able to trust the most. In the first few years of therapy the moment I left Kate’s office I’d lose all connection with her; I couldn’t keep her in mind as I had no model for doing so from my own life. My mother had never been able to keep me in mind; she’d always chosen to look after herself instead. My mother couldn’t give me the unconditional love every human being deserves. I’m sad about that; she never was, nor could be, the mother I wished for and eventually I simply had to stop hoping that things could be different.

  In reflecting on my mother’s patterns, I have thought about her decision to return to her Jewish roots in Sydney after my father died. She didn’t consider how confusing our new identity might be for Simon and me, especially without the grounding to go with it! My religious upbringing had always been unconventional to say the least. As a young child in Queensland I was sent to Baptist Sunday school and Christian summer camp, the teachings of which were mocked by my mother on my return home. My father was an atheist in direct contrast to my grandmother, an ardent Presbyterian. And then when I was fourteen, my mother declared the family to be Jewish and expected us to embrace our new identity; though never publicly. She, like some Holocaust survivors, feared that celebrating one’s Judaism might attract untoward attention and a repetition of the sort of anti-Semitic feeling that had cost her, her family.

  In moving to Sydney and severing all ties with our past, my mother was reliving her childhood and casting off one identity to adopt another. However the process was destabilising for Simon and me; we didn’t have the tools or support to deal with it. Simon tried to join a Jewish clique at Uni but was ostracised and excluded and for him that was one trauma too many given recent events. He acted out using alcohol, drugs and adrenaline-charged oblivion; self-destructive behaviours which dominated his late teens and much of his twenties. Even now in his late fifties he lives an unconventional life, which allows him to run from his pain and avoid dealing with it, in a more deliberate way.

  I have chosen a different path of psychotherapeutic exploration. Although my journey was never focussed on recovering memories, the memories I did recover provided the framework for my therapeutic journey. As I joined the dots of my past and accepted the reasons for certain reactions and behaviours, I felt more remote from my brother. Our paths continue to diverge and that saddens me. He lives for the moment, eschewing past experiences and often denying the future as well. The loss of the potential for our relationship is another tragic legacy we are each obliged to endure. Although I understand the reasons for the rift between us, I wish it could be different; I fear though, that it may never be.

  My brother sees my mother a few times a year and keeps in touch with her by phone. I can’t see her, but I don’t discourage my kids from maintaining contact; she is their grandmother and she loves them in her own way. My children have observed the relationships within their extended family deteriorate, and for a long time they couldn’t understand the reasons. I couldn’t explain what was happening to them until I had processed it myself. This book, although devastating for them to read, along with the discussions our family has had about it, has given them a lot of insight. But it hasn’t been easy. In some ways, my story has left my children in an invidious position. Within a family of divided loyalties, conflicted emotions and ambivalent feelings, each of my children needs to reach their own conclusions as best they can.

  For the first seven years of my therapy I was unaware that my mind was split into parts. I realised that I spaced out, but didn’t appreciate the extent of it. Yet even after I became aware of myparts I struggled to deal with the intense and often aversive feelings they carried. The tension between the parts inside my mind as well as the parts’ intolerance of one another’s experiences took several years to fathom. All the parts were fearful and suffering and yet the disparate manifestations of their experiences kept them at odds for a long time. Sometimes the pain they felt drove me to The Gap. I wanted to be free of it, of Little-Cathy’s pain and that of Sensible and Long-Suffering and even that of Growly.

  For a long time my pain blocked my ability to enjoy myself and prevented me from being able to hold onto any of the positive feelings I did experience. And with the pain came an explosive anger, born of suffering and of helplessness, of powerlessness and isolation and of innocence cruelly snatched away. That anger drove me to The Gap time and again and forced Kate to reiterate repeatedly how jumping would not solve anything. She stressed that if I tried to get rid of one part, that all of the parts would perish with me along with it. I didn’t really want to die and I definitely didn’t want Little-Cathy to die. Everything I’d ever done was to protect Little-Cathy as I wished I’d been protected.

  I can sit back now and reflect on the process of integration, but at the time I was split into distinct parts, the thought of integration terrified me. The parts inside me reeled against losing their individual identities through joining together. At first they felt as though they were being annihilated, but over time they accepted that their reason for being, protecting Little-Cathy, no longer existed. She was finally safe.

  Many of the different parts have since joined together and become part of me. They have accepted their differences and accepted one another, even the parts which at first seemed the scariest.

  The scariest parts were the ones which were forced to perpetrate the most horrible of the acts. As I re-experienced each act I struggled to believe that I was only five, six, seven and eight when I was subjected to them. A part of me believed that I should have be
en able to fight back against the Cloaks and resist their commands. Kate instructed me to observe young children at play to help me acknowledge how little they are. She asked me whether I honestly felt they would be able to stop a group of sadistic adults from abusing and torturing them. On the one hand I knew how absurd I was to judge myself so harshly, but on the other it took me a long time to forgive myself for not having fought back against my assailants.

  The Cloaks had made all of the parts inside me believe that they were bad and I internalised those feelings and felt unworthy and bad. I was also terrified of talking about the things I’d done. I had been brainwashed to believe that if I (or any of my parts) ever revealed what had happened in the cave, that the Cloaks somehow would know about it and would punish me for it. After all, my parts had learnt first-hand how Cloaks punished people and that knowledge ensured that none of us would betray the Cloaks easily. No-one wanted to get chopped up like their friend Jenny.

  I was petrified when my memories of the Cloaks started emerging. The cult had used an array of techniques to ensure my compliance within the cult as well as my silence, outside of it. Some cults actively train children to dissociate. I don’t know whether I was trained or not, or how many of the acts I believed had been fabricated.

  There were also occasions during my recovery in which I imagined that Kate was one of the Cloaks, or indeed working for them. The messages the Cloaks had made me believe as a young child caused me to be so paranoid, even years later, that I stopped trusting the very person I trusted the most. On occasion during those months the phone would ring or the buzzer would sound and I’d be convinced that one of the Cloaks was coming to get me. Such was the degree to which they had controlled, terrified and disempowered me. Their ingrained messages guaranteed my silence for decades.