Surrendered

Photo: From the movie: Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl

When I was first brought to the network, I already had the habit of splitting. I had been abused as an infant by my mother, molested by an uncle at age 3, and had been groomed by the couple who first brought me to an orgy - that is to say - I had been raped by the man, while the woman had hurled verbal abuse at me. I had no recollection of being a victim of my mother's violence each morning, when she put a cup of hot cacao with buttered bread on the table for breakfast; I already had split off "parts" called "alters" by some. I prefer to refer to "parts" because I recognize that not only survivors of violence or sexual abuse have them; everyone does. That's to say, no one is always fully present. Everyone has gaps in their memory. Everyone can shift and a different aspect of their personality can come forward, and sometimes these aspects are barely aware of each other, or are in direct conflict.

Once I was being taken to the network, I started splitting severely, creating different parts to cope with different aspects of the abuse. It has been in returning to these parts, breaking through the shame that kept them disconnected from my consciousness, accepting, honoring, and integrating them, that I've found healing.

The part that has given me the greatest trouble throughout my life, was the part that I was most ashamed about. This is the part that had to completely surrender to the abuse. This is the reflection of the abuser's part, which also had completely surrendered to their abuse. This part could not afford to know that anything was wrong. This part didn't think. In the complete surrender, in the union with the abuser, there was a sense of freedom - the same freedom the abusers experienced.

This part in me I call Dionysian girl, after descriptions of the wild Dionysian, drug-ridden orgies where humans were sacrificed.  Dionysian girl often came out in the network after being drugged, but certain abusers required her presence without drugs. She was wild. She offered herself. She was one with the perpetrators, one in their idea that what had once happened to them was this great secret for pleasure and fun, and that what they were doing in the present was no different. This was not abuse.  She gave herself completely to the sexual pleasure. The pain of the abuse was carried by other parts, fully disconnected from Dionysian girl. She was on her own. An avid sex addict, she couldn't get enough.  There was no end to the excitement, no satisfying climax. Her eyes were glistening, her cheeks were flushed, her hair was messy, she was always naked. It is the part that, if unchecked in adulthood, becomes a perpetrator. This part has no awareness of their own victimization, and won't tolerate victims. 

My mother was stuck inside such a part. She had no resistance in her complete surrender to the dark side. She felt this particular excitement in anticipation of the release in promising to take me to the network, or with all men, who were all stand-in abusers holding the promise for her release through surrender to them through sex. This energy can be present in bars, when many are waiting excitedly to release this part, perhaps through sex with a stranger who may walk through the door. Alcohol releases parts. Many women have this excitement when they talk about men, to the degree they view them as potential perpetrators. The same energy is palpable around stars, whom people admire or adore, because being around power augments the vague promise for the release of the beast lurking inside each of us, whereas the powerful need their power to release that beast without getting caught. I had been noticing this excitement in myself lately. Dionysian girl took over a few times, and embarrassed me intensely. I lost control over myself. My Dionysian girl had been relegated to my sex life throughout adulthood, and I've been celibate for many years. But she's been pushing her way to the surface in other situations, and I painfully observed myself getting excited around certain people, causing infinite shame because it was how my mother acted around men.

The shame was very difficult to break through. Because my perpetrators were completely unconscious,  this surrendered part has zero awareness. My abusers had no conscience, and in attuning myself to them, Dionysian girl has no conscience either. She couldn't be angry with the perpetrators, because she didn't know that they were doing anything wrong.

The most powerful of those all-powerful Dionysiacs in the network, was the perpetrator who required complete surrender for the most extended period of time. During those weeks, he also experienced this excitement, which put him in that space of pleasure and release, substitutes for the love and freedom forever beyond his grasp. He so much didn't see anything wrong with incest and child rape, that he worked behind the scenes of the world stage to normalize child abuse.  His own identified state with his abuser thus honored that perpetrator, furthering the narrative they didn't do anything wrong, ensconcing them in the annals of the history of the world by their darkest actions. This agenda has made headway. Dissemination of alcohol is a big part of the agenda, as it releases parts, and encourages abuse. We are confronted with horrific stories of child abuse in the "news" every day. Pedophiles in Europe are forming groups and demand to be heard. They claim pedophilia is a sexual preference one is born with. Meanwhile young children are undergoing sex change operations, "by choice." The prisons are filling up with pimps and pedophiles as the market is being monopolized. We are constantly looking at perpetrators' faces, continually puzzled at how "normal" they look, while the relevant laws and ridiculously short sentences simultaneously minimize the crime. The agenda wants children to be treated the way they were before the 20th Century, as though they were little adults. Beware, my liberal friends, of giving too much agency to your child, that you don't rob them of their childhood. And beware, my conservative friends, that you don't stifle your child's freedom of expression so much that in seeking freedom, they fall prey to a predator. 

I am finally accepting Dionysian girl, finally giving her the understanding she needs - that she is just a child, who had no choice. I am finally breaking through the shame of identifying with the perpetrators, and in doing so, my anger for these men is finding expression, through her. I found release through a memory. Trigger warning: I remembered initiating sex with him. In visualizing myself on top of him, I saw my Dionysian girl transform into a bloody vampire, opening her mouth wide, laughing:

"So, you like Satan, do you?"

In the fantasy, Dionysian girl gleefully rips off his face, but she doesn't kill him. He'd be no fun dead, and she is all about fun and freedom. She continues to scare him by fully reveling in her true nature, finally against him instead of with him.

The empowerment I've experienced from allowing my "abuser" part to surface and be seen for what it truly is - a little girl - is changing me very quickly, in many areas of my life. I'm having more fun with life as it is, and am more loving.  Something inside of me has softened. I am not able to be as damning, or as judgmental towards abusers as before. Clearly without access to my own abuser part, I could not truly understand abusers. 

Clearly without access to our own abuser part, we cannot truly understand abusers, and cannot expect to create peace in the world.