Embracing RAGE

WARNING! This post is graphic and potentially triggering. 

I dedicate this essay to all survivors who were sexually abused by a religious person they trusted. I would not be religious today if I hadn't written it.
Embrace your rage!  
Don't be afraid of it! 
The spiritual abuse, and damage we suffered is profound, but it IS possible to heal.  
Writing this essay helped me heal my relationship with the Torah and with my dead grandfather. I am surprised to be able to say, that I am no longer angry with him. Although he died many years ago, I feel him with me, encouraging and supporting me in my work.

I was seven. My sister was eight. We went to the yeshiva for shacharis with Tatty. Zaidy liked it when we came. After davening, he took us into his office. He put his hands under my clothes. His finger hurt me and I looked at him shocked.

“Don't look at me.” he said. “Look at the sefarim.”

I looked at the glass doors, behind them rows of meshnayos, shas, some of them too heavy to lift. I made my mind leave the rosh yeshiva's office so I wouldn't feel or know about his finger.

If I would have looked into his eyes, would he have seen my terror, my pain?

Would I have seen any shame or guilt in his?

But I was taught to listen, and so I looked at the sefarim, not at Zaidy. 

After he was done he asked,

“Do I need to get married again?”
He told us that he loved one of us more than the other. I knew it was my sister he loved more. 

Then, he took us to the toy store and told me to pick out a toy. Any toy.

My sister doesn't remember any of this.

She is the lucky one.

Black waves of rage

engulf me in a flood of intense fury,

crushing me,

drowning me.

I scream

a silent cry of despair

fists clenched

mind inflamed

a tense helpless agony

burns inside.

I know I can not escape it.

Instinctively

I dive head first

into the raging violence

shouting

screaming

against the terrible pressure

I pound, kick and

fight my way

down

  down

     down

through the terrifying anger

to the feelings beneath.

I lie exhausted

still

at the bottom.

My face is wet and

I'm shaking

and feeling

pain,grief, sadness, and hurt,

I had so carefully buried

deep under this turbulent sea of anger

I finally found the courage

to embrace.

I am an adult now.  
My grandfather is long dead. 

 It's time to face the anger that keeps me separated from my community.  I love, hate, and fear the community I grew up in, all at the same time.

Evil and holiness intertwined in my childhood in a knot almost too difficult to unravel.

As a child I couldn’t fight back, and I buried the rage. Now, an adult, I take myself back in time, feel the feelings, and to heal myself.

I never have to go far to find the parts of me that were hurt.  They are right behind my eyes,stuck at the age the abuse happened.

I visualize taking the younger part of me by the hand, and bringing her back to the yeshiva, into the office full of sefarim.  Back into the holy territory where she was violated.
She is not scared, because I'm with her.
She is enraged.
Zaidy sits on his rocking chair. A sefer Torah wrapped in a talis is on the shelf behind him. My young self opens one of the glass doors and takes out a tome of shas. She staggers under it's weight. It is Meseches Makos.

She is not scared. She knows I am now an adult, and I will protect her. She knows that he can not hurt her anymore.

She lifts the book and smashes the glass in the shelves. She snatches the sefarim throws them at Zaidy and onto the floor. She is furious. She opens the holy books and rips out the pages, crumples them up and throws them, stamps on them, stuffs them into his open shocked mouth.

Glass fragments and aleph bais rain down.  

I let her do this. 

She needs to do this.

She uses a sefer as a rock to smash his head again and again. He sits clutching the arms of the rocker.
We are both awed by the depth of her rage.

She takes a broken piece of glass and uses it like a knife to cut off the finger that hurt her. He starts to rise. I warn him with my eyes.

Touch her and you're finished. 

He sits back down.

She pulls down the sefer Torah wrapped in a talis on top of the shelf behind him. She unwraps it and pulls it open. Using a piece of broken glass as a knife she cuts a long piece; Long as an adult scarf.

Holding Parshas Vayerah she climbs up on his chair, wraps the Torah portion around Zaidy’s neck and squeezes it tightly. As tightly as she can.
Forgive me Hashem; please understand me. 

 I have to let her do this.

Zaidy’s face turns blue, scared eyes popping out on top of the words, “Sedom.” He stares pop-eyed at the words hanging down in front of his face. He stops breathing to Parshas Vayerah. 

 Strangled by the Torah and the child who he violated together in his office.

She looks at me.

“Are you done?”

Almost.

She goes over to his shtender and pushes it over. It falls onto his face knocking out his front teeth.
We survey the damage in silence.

The blood. The broken glass. The torn sefarim.  The wounded Torah. The dead rosh yeshiva.

We are satisfied. 

I take her hand and we leave together.

We both needed to do this.