Tonight, I will take the pain in my body, in my heart and mind, and stab it into this paper
with words.
Words that I hope you will share publicly.
I am a survivor of father-daughter incest.
I have healed to the point where I am no longer a fragmented self. I finally feel real on a regular basis.
For me, this is a new reality. And It took me over twenty years to get here.
It is like regaining my sight and hearing, after years of living in silent darkness.
This has been my theraputic goal for years, and I have finally arrived at this place.
And It is something to celebrate.
It's a great accomplishment, after so many years of living in a fragmented fog, wondering whether a person, a child named Genendy ever really existed.
I thought integration would be a beautiful and happy occasion.
But it is not so simple.
It's overrated in some ways, integration.
Being real and present in my life, in my body hurts so bad I want to die.
It's sensory overload.
How do people who don't dissociate deal with the pain?
How do they deal with knowing, feeling,all of the parts of who they are, and how they were hurt as children, with no defense? No escape?
How do you get away, take a break from the trauma, when you are no longer fragmented and dissociated and can no longer pretend it didn't happen?
Please tell me, if you have been here, help me understand how you re-adjust your life, and go on?
I need to know.
I want to stab myself, to kill the pain, the reality but I won't.
I can't.
I have too much to live for.
Instead I am taking my pencil and stabbing this paper with its sharp point,
..Like the sharp point of the needle I used to stab my hand with, when I was two-years-old.
I was self harming at two.
I was trying to fix myself.
My mother fixed holes with a needle and thread,
so why couldn't I fix the holes in me that shouldn't be there?
The holes that my Tatty stabbed into me.
With something sharp.
My mother told me the story many times.
I tried to yank the needle out, it broke and I had to be taken to the hospital to have the other half of the needle removed.
I got stitches in my hand.
I was so cute.
I commented that the nurse's hat was too small.
The doctor told me to shut my mouth and stop crying, so I cried with my mouth shut.
Adorable.
What kind of a family do I come from, where it was normal for a two-year-old to try to sew herself?
I have worked with young children for years.
I have never yet, met another child who tried to sew herself.
I was creative then.
And I am creative now.
I will use my creativity to survive this theraputic victory, this being real and whole.
I no longer have hope that I will wake up from this nightmare of having a father who raped me repeatedly when I was so small, who allowed others to abuse me as well,
and who allows an entire family and community to turn their backs and walk away...
Because they too wish I was not, and never had been real.
Because real, I now know first hand, is just too painful.
I can't get away from their cruel, painful messages...
Words I grew up with.
Words sent to me as annonymous comments on my blog four years ago, when I first started it to try to protect children from my father.
I couldn't post them then, because they were too hurtful.
I was too traumatized.
"...Your story is always changing. Your story never stays the same. You are sick and evil. You are a liar. You do have a personality disorder. You told me so. I think you need to tell people about yourself so they can decide if you are believable. Us old time friends of yours who you turned your back on because we know the truth have a job to expose you. We will figure out a way. Not because we are vicious, rather to even the playing field. Your family won't stoop to answering you. We will."
And this. Another gem:
"Oh Genendy you have had such a tough life. The saddest thing is, you did it to yourself. I told you not to when you spoke to me about it. People got into your head, and made you feel good. It is so sad that you chose this path. You told me you were making things up because "it is the only answer to whats happening to me." I am sure by now you believe yourself, but it may help to remind yourself that you were convinced by others, about what "had to have happened" I hope I have jogged your memory. I daven for you always. I also think it's important to publisize that your family misses you very much. You did not give them a choice. You treated them like animals, and tried to manipulate them to help your agenda. May Hashem grant you a Refuah Shleaima.
I wonder at the reality of the world I live in. How did I become such a threat simply for speaking my truth?
I am known as a kind, loving, truthful, compasionate person to those who know me. Yet, my existance is so scary to my family and the Baltimore community that they want me dead. They take the very damage caused by sexual abuse, that I have worked so hard for so many years in therapy to heal and repair,and use it to try to hurt and discredit me.
Incest casues damage.
Mental, psychological disorders, addictions, suicide.
It breaks up families as it did mine.
Today, I no longer have a dissociative disorder, to help me survive.
I can no longer numb my mind, my body, and my heart from my family and my reality.
I can no longer float away in my mind, and imagine I am dreaming and will soon awake and find it is all just a horrible nightmare. That someone in my family actually cares about what was done to me and what is still being done to me.
I always was, and I still am dead to them.
To them my pain was, and is, never real.
It is a wonder, a miracle that I survived and continue to survive.
Something else is real and won't let me rest.
My father, is still working with children every day as the principal of Torah Institute in Baltimore. A staff member told me, as recently as last year, that my father was taking children off campus alone in his car. This same staff member shared with me that he witnessed a child taped to a chair in my father's office.
And these are the behaviors my father is not hiding.
This staff member will not come forward for fear of losing his job.
And, I don't want him to lose his job, because he cares, and he would never do what my father did, and he is keeping an eye on the children in Torah Institute.
Hashem please bring Mashiach TODAY and put an end to the world of suffering, pain, and confusion that we live in.
A world where we perpetrate evil on our children and call it love and truth.
A world where we kill someone off because they were sexually abused. And, we do it in Your Holy name and in the name of Torah.
Reveal your eternal Love and Truth openly and save us from our greatest enemy.
Our inability to take an honest look at ourselves.
