This Is Why

[Guest]

THIS IS WHY U AND I ARE SOULMATES PUT ON THIS EARTH FOR EACH OTHER - WE WERE MEANT TO WALK TOGETHER AND BECOME THE ONES WE TRULY ARE. IF I COULD HOLD U AND HAVE U LET EVERYTHING OUT I WOULD DIE TO DO SO

 

 

Life-Changing Question.

That Is Exactly What Happened To Me.

 

IT TOOK ME twenty-five years before I felt safe enough to utter one word to another living soul concerning the sexual abuse I experienced as a little girl.

 

"Denise, were you ever sexually abused?"

 

Only when our counselor asked me such a direct question did I dare consider the possibility of actually sharing the experiences I endured with someone else. (I almost informed a trusted teacher about the sexual abuse early one afternoon, but I could not muster up the courage to complete the sentence.) The thought of putting it into spoken words was still very frightening to me that day in the doctor's office, twenty-five years after-the-fact of the first sexual molestation.

 

Upon hearing the question, and in my immediate panic, I quickly denied it to the doctor and my husband (who was also present), but the words of my emphatic denial did not match my cracking voice or my suddenly inhibited and tense posture.

 

After the appointment with our counselor concluded, I had to drive Mike back to work. Instead of dropping him off at the front door as usual, I turned off the ignition in the parking lot of the store. I nervously and quietly turned to him and said, "It's true. That is exactly what happened to me."

 

He was not surprised and automatically knew who had been the main perpetrator of the sexual abuse.

 

That single question began my decade-long roller coaster ride through the recovery and restoration process from the aftereffect of the abuse. A wise man finally asked me the right question. And that one question changed my life.

 

A Bumpy Ride.

The Embarrassment, Helplessness, & Shame.

 

AT TIMES, IT has been the typical roller coaster ride experience in dealing with the residual effect of the sexual abuse. I was sexually abused by several individuals in my early childhood. My first cognizant exposure to this crime occurred around the age of two.

 

Even though I was merely a toddler, my body has never forgotten that touch. My heart was shattered. My mind has never forgotten the confusion or the panic or the inability to stop the actual molestation. My soul was bruised.

 

My frantic attempt to ward off the initial assault was fruitless. The inner turmoil and shock caused by this violation were emotionally paralyzing. Being so young, I could not even articulate, much less, fully comprehend, what had happened to me. I just had an innate sense it was wrong.

 

I was extremely young, but I have never forgotten the embarrassment or the helplessness. Or the shame.

 

In her twenty years as a clinical psychologist, Annie Rogers has learned to understand the silent language of girls who will not - who cannot - speak about devastating sexual trauma. Abuse too painful to put into words does have a language, though, a language of coded signs and symptoms that conventional therapy fails to understand. In this luminous, deeply moving book, Rogers reveals how she has helped many girls find expression and healing for the sexual trauma that has shattered their childhoods.

 

Rogers opens with a harrowing account of her own emotional collapse in childhood and goes on to illustrate its significance to how she hears and understands trauma in her clinical work. Years after her breakdown, when she discovered the brilliant work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Rogers at last had the key she needed to unlock the secrets of the unsayable. With Lacan's theory of language and its layered associations as her guide, Rogers was able to make startling connections with seemingly unreachable girls who had lost years of childhood, who had endured the unspeakable in silence.

 

 

 

A wedding was supposed to be the happiest moment of a girl's life, the day she dreams of since her first bridal Barbie. But that August morning, nothing was turning out right. The sky was a noxious shade of gray-green, and the clouds rumbled with thunder as an electrical storm brewed. A makeup artist caked my face with alabaster foundation, painted my lips crimson, and applied a thick coat of black liquid liner to my lids. I looked like a geisha

 

Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging, A Million Little Pieces is a story of drug and alcohol abuse and rehabilitation as it has never been told before. Recounted in visceral, kinetic prose, and crafted with a forthrightness that rejects piety, cynicism, and self-pity, it brings us face-to-face with a provocative new understanding of the nature of addiction and the meaning of recovery.

 

By the time he entered a drug and alcohol treatment facility, James Frey had taken his addictions to near-deadly extremes. He had so thoroughly ravaged his body that the facilityís doctors were shocked he was still alive. The ensuing torments of detoxification and withdrawal, and the never-ending urge to use chemicals, are captured with a vitality and directness that recalls the seminal eye-opening power of William Burroughsís Junky.

 

By turns wistful, mischievous, angry, and witty, Bauby bears witness to his determination to live as fully in his mind as he had been able to do in his body. He explains the joy, and deep sadness, of seeing his children and of hearing his aged father's voice on the phone. In magical sequences, he imagines traveling to other places and times and of lying next to the woman he loves. Fed only intravenously, he imagines preparing and tasting the full flavor of delectable dishes. Again and again he returns to an "inexhaustible reservoir of sensations," keeping in touch with himself and the life around him.