A Single Night

@ Fall, '96

I lay there awake, about 2:30 AM. When I went to bed It was beginning to come together, the years of voices saying unspeakably awful things in my mind, the images of molesting hands that plagued me, made me hate myself, made me crazy more than once, the years of looking inside and seeing myself as filthy and disgusting. These all began to make sense to me. Fear and despair and hatred had always overcome me whenever I faced these “thoughts”, but this time was different... this time I wasn’t afraid. This time I knew it was happening out of love. And this time these “thoughts” took shape as memories., I had been molested. It wasn’t me saying all those incredibly awful things, someone had said those things to me. It wasn’t that I was shit inside, someone had made me feel that way.
I lay there next to Beth, knowing I couldn’t tell her just yet. I had to let it congeal a bit more in my mind, let it become more real. Once, two years before, I had suggested to her that maybe I had been molested as a child, the idea had come up in a 12 step session that day. She said It was possible (she always says that when she thinks something is really off-the-wall) but unlikely since nothing had come out before now. I rarely thought of it again. Until now.
I don’t know how I fell asleep again. I’d been having trouble sleeping as I was in a manic phase; however difficult that was to admit. It was similar to others I’d had over the last seven years: spiritual euphoria, a feeling of prescience, difficulty in completing tasks, irritability among other things. This time was different somehow. For one thing I was in perhaps the best “place” of my adult life: more secure, more loved, more productive. And throughout this ”phase”, even before I recognized it as such, I had told myself I would do nothing out of fear but everything out of love. This did not mean I didn’t screw up,it just meant no one got hurt. I was able to work, quite effectively I thought; though, truly others noticed something wrong before I did.
I’d been increasingly unable to focus on specific repair projects. I worked for a rental maintenance contractor. What drew me was organizing and assigning people, putting the right person on the right job at the right time. We were growing at the time, or so I thought, and I threw myself into it, knowing they only wanted to pay me for the repair and all I cared about was the people. My current hotline to divine guidance stood me in good stead for this task and I used my prescient capabilities to the fullest. It wasn’t my fault management wouldn’t cooperate, they just didn’t realize I had my fingers on all the buttons, everything was going great. I could handle all of it and everybody, the guys all loved me and thats what counted. Those little things that kept falling through the cracks didn’t matter, trust me, I’ve got it all handled. By the time I realized I was in overdrive I’d probably laid the groundwork for getting eased out of my job later on.
All my guys were happy, though. Working conditions were the best they’d ever been and people were as productive as they could be considering they’re talent and temperment. When I started they couldn’t keep people, now they couldn’t get rid of them. Guys told me I was the best boss they’d ever had. But those cracks that things kept falling through seemed to be getting bigger. My short term memory got ridiculously short and then shorter and my already brief attention span became
fleeting.
It was the middle of a week in June when I admitted I was in trouble. When I told Beth I was manic she said, “Oh, really”, or words to that effect. she’d spotted some symptoms even though I’d tried to hide them from her even more than from myself. I slowed down at work and coasted into the weekend feeling shaky, conscious now of what was going on. In the past these episodes had been all about fear and ego. This time I had been concentrating on the will of God, trying to keep my manic ego out of it, and on love, love of others and myself. It seemed to make all the difference.
I’d been hospitalized three times in the past eight years for “psychotic episodes” related to these disturbing “thoughts”. The one thing that was common to all three was fear. Overwhelming bouts of fear of a malevolent natural and supernatural world caving in on me. A world I should be able to control, hold together, create, but since I was shit I couldn’t and it all came crashing down. My fault. The world came apart, people got hurt and it was all my fault.
But this time the fear wasn’t there. Somehow I had found the key and I wasn’t afraid. In the absence of the fear I was able to really look at my “thoughts”. Seeing them without fear for the first time brought me to a certainty often shaken and questioned but never broken: I was abused as a child.
The next day we went up to a lake cabin I had been working on and it was there that I told her what I now knew to be true. She looked at me as though the final piece in a puzzle had fell into place. She hugged me and cried and later told me that in a workshop she had attended recently (she is a counselor) the subject of child abuse came up often. Suddenly a thought, like a message flashed across her mind: “Mark was abused as a child”. Why this hadn’t happened before, all I can say is we weren’t ready. The workshop was taught by counseling psychologist who was eventualy to become my therapist.
The rest of the weekend went like a second honeymoon for us. Our relationship had been very strained recently. I’d been unable to open up or reach out. I’d been irritable and distant. For some unknown reason I had taken to keeping a knife with me often. Looking back, probably as protection from the abuser who was almost literally coming back to get me. Another manifestation of my abuse that had been expressing it self recently was the desire to crossdress. I’d struggled guiltily alone with this since early childhood, since my first abuse, and it was coming back strongly now. All this seemed to melt away for a time. We were at peace and close to each other for the first time in months and with the new revelation there was a part of me I was able to share for the first time.
I of course got absolutely no work done. Try as I might, I couldn’t pick up a saw, I was so totally drained. I would wander out to my sawhorses, look at things, fiddle around with my tape measure, laugh and shuffle back into the cabin. The owners, our doctor and his wife who were also “friends” from church, were on a tight schedule and were counting on me to get certain things done. I didn’t. We figured they’d understand since we had been declared “family” by the wife, he was my doctor, she was a counselor who had been abused as a child herself, we shared our faith , and had known them for so many years. They didn’t understand. They were livid. Or rather she was livid and Dr. Wimp just smiled weakly and went along with her. This was a great contribution to my recovery, I must say, and a great burden on my wife as she had to work in the same suite of offices with this woman and actually had try to explain the whole thing rationally to this irrational person.
The cabin eventually came off on schedule. I was able to offer just enough help and a lot of advice to get it done in time for their high profile guests, who are such nice people I’m sure they wouldn’t have minded a little unfinished work anyway. We were never invited back. I spent nearly every spare moment for a year on that place. Heart and soul, man. If I’d had insulin shock and the flu or a broken arm and a strained knee it would have been OK. But I had the temerity to have a mental illness and an emotional crisis so I was deemed irresponsible. And by “professionals”, “friends”, “spiritual family”. I have some anger invested in this still, I think.
As I said earlier, I was eased out of my job . After the weekend at the cabin I took some time off and some limited duty days when I stayed in the office or talked to people by phone from home. I was still manic so I was doing great things... or not. The rental management people we contracted with didn’t understand what was going on and I wasn’t about to tell them. They weren’t the type of people you trust with intimate secrets. I had told Brad, my boss and a couple of the guys I worked with directly and that was enough. Management lost confidence in me, decided I didn’t like my job and, worst of all, decided I was too expensive. They started giving Brad hell whenever he used me. At one point he said, “It looks like it’s either you or me Mark”. It was me. It took a while, we made it through the busy summer and the August-September rush on the edge of our teeth but then things started to wind down. Brad would give me special assignments here and there and ask me if I had a lot of projects of my own. I did not. I decided to go after it in ernest, though; and for a little while it looked like it might work but the jobs didn’t come fast enough or big enough. Soon I was looking for a job, again.