Psalm 139:5  You’ve gone into my future to prepare the way,
and in kindness you follow behind me
to spare me from the harm of my past.
With your hand of love upon my life,
you impart a blessing to me.

Tomorrow morning begins a new chapter of discovery and the coordinated plan for recovery from a lifetime of brain injury related events. As a reminder to myself and anyone who is following my journey, here is a brief description for better understanding.

As a young pre-teen, my swim coach raped me and then used me in sexual acts that are unspeakable. Boys and men were involved. At that time, only me and one other girl on the swim team were trafficked. How in the world did such despicable things happen? By threat and intimidation. I was just a child and thought as a child. He told me that he loved me and that these behaviors are how adults love girls my age. I remember hitting my head against the pool wall one evening while working out. It was probably the first coup-contra coup injury. I would cry in the water and beat it in response to what I was forced to do. I won a lot of races because of the deep pain I was already experiencing. I no longer had personal choices or was able to think as a child. Instead, I found comfort in going so deep inside of myself that I lost who I was. Psychology call it dissociation….if only they knew that it was the only way I could escape from the constant pain of being violated. Self-hatred had taken root. At the age of 15, I finally found enough courage to stop swimming for my abusive coach. A few years later, I was asked out on a date by a past swim team member. Within a few minutes of the beginning of the date, the guy told me that he had asked me out because we were going to a sex party at USC. I was shocked. I had him pull over to the side of the road. I was truly confused and hurt. He then said that he had asked me out because he remembered my reputation. I immediately exited his new shiny corvette and told him to go to hell. Yes, being trafficked is a curse that follows it’s victims.

Shortly after that soul wrenching experience, a girl who I was forced by family need to befriend introduced me to a neighbor of hers. He was four years older than I. His best friend was a guy that my friend wanted to date. (She eventually married the guy, raised a few kids, divorced and died in her early 50’s) The neighbor that she introduced to me took over where the swim coach had left off. On my 16th birthday, he gave me a birthday present that he said I would never forget. He raped me. That rape set up terror-filled decades of terrible pains. I was forced by gun point to do things that I assume only the darkest porn evidences. I was beaten, death threatened, and made to do terrible acts any time and as often as this terrible person perpetrated these acts on me. I had to pretend to “love” him or the knife came out and the loaded gun to my head. I am sure that those times that I got thrown down against hard surfaces harmed my brain too. One month before my 18th birthday, God sent a young Catholic priest to my rescue. I had so deeply left myself, I was prepared to end my life. Charlie is my God-sent angel who rescued me. He even punched the guy and proved to me that God had my best interest in mind when HE brought Father Charlie into my life. Father Charlie sat with my parents and told them that I was in need of their constant careful attention and to never allow that guy to ever return to our house or see me again. Charlie had a committment that he had to keep but he promised my parents that in two days he would return to further assist them in rescuing me from the deep despair I was in. Mom and Dad promised this Catholic priest that they would do as he requested. The first day was good for me. The second day began again in restoration but everything changed when I found that the evil guy was waiting for me to drive me home from high school. I was betrayed by my Mom. She apparently had a need that was greater that my life. The guy made it very clear to me that he was going to hurt me. He gave me his itinerary and I went deeper inside than I had ever gone. I no longer existed. Then something happened and I do not remember the events of since I still have amnesia regarding those events that led to my near-death. I believe that I was pushed out of his vehicle. Reports are that I was dragged by the vehicle and then by the driver’s efforts I flew from the vehicle landing on the right side of the back of my head. A neighbor had just returned from work and found me convulsing in the gutter. I was taken by ambulance to the hospital where I was placed in medically induced coma because of brain bleeds. I woke five days later to my Dad holding one hand and Father Charlie holding the other. I was blind, had multiple abrasions, a huge sutured area at the back of my skull and no understanding of what had happened. Charlie is the one who kept the guy from returning to the hospital while he was there at least.

Charlie helped my parents understand the extent of my emotional, physical and sexual pain. He told them again that they were not to allow the guy back into my life. So began my recovery from the first terrible brain injury. Mom only heard that I was sexual. Based on what I understand today, Mom had her own dark secrets that motivated her to do the most terrible thing she could have ever done to harm me. She conspired with the guy to marry me off. She wanted me out of her home and most likely out of her remembrance of the terrible event I had just suffered at the wrong choice she made. Yes, I found out that in two weeks I was going to be married in our family Catholic church, against my will and that my parents had no regard or concern for my future. How did I cope with this terrible realization that my life was disposable? I attempted suicide. What else was left for me to escape even the unsafe family I was raised in? My Dad found me hanging myself in my bedroom.

Through the wonderful help of Father Charlie and an amazingly talented Psychiatrist, I was on a journey looking for the road less traveled….it’s not one I ever walked! As I mentioned earlier, that guy continued to harass me and threaten my life and the lives of my husband and children from 1969 t0 December 1990. He stalked me. Every home we lived in, every grocery store I visited, every church we attended was captured by his presence. He even once stopped me in traffic with his gun at my temple. I lived in terror all of those years until his death to brain cancer. All that my inner person knows from age 12 to today is FEAR. I mentioned it in yesterday’s post.

I take the words of Father Christmas with Lucy to heart often.

In The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe we read:

“Why, sir?” said Lucy. “I think- I don’t know- but I think I could be brave enough.”
“That is not the point,” he said. “But battles are ugly when women fight.”

I fought, I fight, I will keep on fighting my way out of FEAR and into my Loving Father’s arms!

To be continued.

Hugs always,

Suzanne