Contains graphic imagery
Between the ages of 15 and 28 I dissociated a lot. I also depersonalised and derealised but had no idea what was going on. I wonder sometimes, especially after watching United States of Tara, whether I have D.I.D. I had clearly defined personalities that appeared like a second skin depending on my situation. Some of these personalities or facades, I was completely conscious and aware of the fact I was wearing this “skin” and observed it like watching an actor in a play. With other personalities, I lost time, sometimes huge chunks, like months, but I always put it down to a poor memory, which I definitely have. For example, I can’t remember anything bar two or three moments from my high school years. It’s almost as bad for the better part of my 20s.
One thing I do remember, is when I was 19, I was diagnosed with Stage 2 cancer that rapidly moved to Stage 3. The cancer was all over my uterus and cervix. The Doctor that took my pap smear abused me, rubbing my clitoris, labia minora and majora and fingered me in a sexual way. It would not surprise someone who has been abused before that I did not realise at first, my mind was on the horrible freezing cold metal speculum still inserted and that he eventually wound up way too wide. I never said anything to him or anyone else about this. Why would I? At this stage, I had consciously accepted that there was something about me that made people do things and it was therefore my fault that they did them. If at all possible, I should give it away, before they could take it, though this was not the case with the doctor. I thought you were safe with doctors.
Between the ages of 19-23, I was in and out of hospital. I had several colposcopies, biopsies, a treatment where they used a hot metal rod like a soldering iron to burn away the bad cells, drugs and I think chemoradiotherapy. It is all a big blur really except for one vivid memory. To set this up, I had met my oncologist at the hospital for an update. At this point no treatment was working and some even seemed to accelerate it so they started talking about doing a hysterectomy. I didn’t really care. At that time, children were the last thing I wanted. Being a mother conjured up nightmare images for me and there was nothing about it that appealed. I stayed in the hospital that night and had an extremely bizarre experience which I will try to explain.
I laid in bed watching TV then my vision slightly changed almost like the lights were turned up a lot brighter. From inside of me, my stomach and lungs I could feel a vibration like I had swallowed a ringing mobile phone. It wasn’t unpleasant and slowly over an hour or two it got slightly stronger but covered my entire body. I lay on the bed feeling this way for what can only be described as “forever and one second at the same time”. The only change in this stage was a burst of intensity in the light and the vibration at one point but I don’t know how long it went for at all. It was after this burst that I finally went to sleep.
The next morning, I had another colposcopy so they could determine when I should get booked in for the hysterectomy. Instead, they discovered, using a tiny camera projected on a TV screen, that the cancerous area had dramatically reduced, like by a third. I was left in the examination room for an hour while they checked back on previous records to verify the change. It was real. No one knew why. They told me to come back in a week, it had halved again and within 6 weeks it was completely gone.
At this time, I did not remember that weird vibration experience, or link it with the disappearance of the cancer until many years later. I have my own opinion about what happened there, and no one else has a better explanation, so one day I might write about that in more detail, and more openness.
I do know that the experience of having a wholly toxic reproductive system (as a result, at least in part, for its malicious and devastating treatment) and its inexplicable, freakish and possibly theurgic transformation into one that could create life had a deep subconscious effect on me. I had been getting counselling since I was 18 to help me heal my past. I’d had CBT, ACT, scream therapy, laughter therapy, kinesiology, past life regression, shiatsu, acupuncture. I worked as a corporate bitch in I.T., was a professional musician (something I equally loved and hated but didn’t know why), and did a Diploma in Energetic and Spiritual Healing where I studied religions from all over the world and their medical and healing modalities.
I absorbed information, ticked boxes and more importantly I think, I created a list of questions a mile long. At that stage, I did have something of a framework that I built from slices of everything I had currently learned. It was super complicated and beyond my ability to verbalise, but I felt it and I Knew it and it gave me a path to walk along. I had most of the pieces Geppetto would have needed to create a realistic marionette. My strings were pulled by everything I had learned, including the trauma, but now I held a big, fat, shiny pair of scissors. It became my project to self-actualise. And the best thing about that was, it did not feel like a selfish act.
Read Part 4: Riding the Tidal Waves of Trauma
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