The worst day of my life

It's taken me a long time to be ready to write this. I'm not quite sure I am now. But I know multiple people need this. And I was told it’s time.

As I write, there is grief. And though I understand cognitively, that everything I am about to share with you makes sense, is actually textbook/ to be expected… Part of me feels embarrassed. But I am letting it go.

Letting it go.

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual Assault, Rape, Suicide

7 months ago, I laid down for a psilocybin assisted therapy session. My intention for the journey was to understand and clear away whatever was keeping me from the financial abundance and the romantic relationship I truly desire. I’ve felt it at arm's length… for so long… but couldn't bring it all the way in.

Shortly after shutting my eyes, I felt myself go back into my closet. 18 years old, hanging, dangling, gasping for air, losing consciousness. Then, suddenly, it was dark, I could breathe, but I did not like how I felt.

My mind began flashing separate scenes from a movie, all out of order.

The movie was my life, each scene a memory. 

First, giggling, being led into the locker room at swim class.

Loneliness. Feeling so, so fucking lonely, and so unworthy of feeling safe. Feeling like there was so clearly something  inherently wrong with me.

Cut to my small, childlike hands on the floor of a locker room shower. The sound of the water.

A throbbing pain in my rectum.

Stepping into the pool in my backyard, my mom commenting how much my swim teacher loved that bathing suit. Feeling sick. Feeling afraid.

Dreams, so many dreams over the course of my life that took place in that locker room. My subconscious mind working so hard to protect me, while attempting to make sense of these events.

All the while the phrase, “raped as a child”, first a whisper, then blaring across a loudspeaker in my mind.

Well, this was all news to me. Horrifying, crushing news. 

Once… in grad school this tried to surface. When I was beyond stressed, counseling sex offenders at night, nannying and providing therapy for children during the day… After a deep meditation, a few memories flit across my mind on a long drive. I felt like something happened. And I dissociated for a week. For seven days, I slept like a rock and awoke exhausted. My body moved through life, but I was not inside of it. It wasn’t until I told my dear friend and roommate about my suspicion, that I slept restfully again. 

But it never came back up. 

Not in all the hours of therapy or yoga or meditative practice I’ve had since then. Not in countless experiences with expanded states of consciousness through breath, sweat, sensory deprivation, or plant medicine… So I wrote that week off as an artifact from a past life.

Sigh. But alas…

Throughout the rest of that trip, and the last several months, I have been confronting all the ways in which being sexually abused as a child played out in my life. It has been painful, and so incredibly validating.

I was 6. And thus very much still formulating an understanding of how the world worked. So the implications were far reaching and long lasting.

Because as children, we think our parents know everything, and because my mom took me to swim class… I thought she knew. I thought she let this happen to me. Of course, this was not the case. She had no idea, she was being a good mother. We were getting a pool, and she didn't want me to drown. But this misconception led to a maternal relationship wherein I desperately wanted my mothers love, but did not feel deserving of it. I must have done something bad to warrant this treatment. And I didn’t trust her.

I began to dream of home invasion almost every night. I was terrified that our house was going to be broken into. I would cry, beg my parents to get a home security system. My parents would try to reason with me that it was unnecessary, our neighborhood and town was so safe. But my traumatized mind couldn’t be pacified by low crime statistics…I was abused in the locker room at the school right next door. 

Because my abuser was a male, this translated to a subtle, general uneasiness around men. Every time I received unexpected physical affection from a trusted adult male, fear coursed through my body. One time on the way home from basketball practice, my dad unexpectedly turned the car around and started driving the opposite direction of our house. I asked where we were going, he squeezed my leg and playfully said, “It's a surprise.” My instant thought that he was that he was going to rape and kill me. Consciously, even as a child I knew that was ridiculous, but the fear was real. (He just forgot he needed to fill the tank.)

Because I understood that this happened to me because there was something wrong with me, and because of the way my physical body looked, I started to reject my body. I wanted so badly to be attractive, and yet did not feel it was safe to be. My body dysmorphia was full blown by age 8, which is when I began menses. My periods were heavy and painful, and I bled every 2 weeks. They stopped for a time when I developed anorexia at age 10. I starved myself, then moved onto binging and purging. Attempting to shrink myself was my way of attempting to control this cursed thing that I understood to be the cause of my suffering. 

Just as my hormones were dysregulated, so were my emotions.  By 11, I was seeking out alcohol to help me feel some relief. I was smoking pot at 13. I leaned on these substances heavily. Black outs through high school and early adulthood were the norm.

This abuse also explained the promiscuity that started so early. The preoccupation with being sexy. The shame when my mother asked, “Why can’t you be more wholesome?”... As I was desperately seeking to have my existence, my worthiness validated via sexual encounters with boys, then later, young men. Partners ranging from relatively innocent, curious and sweet to overtly predatory. Me, never knowing the difference. Equating their acceptance of my physical body for sexual gratifcation with worthiness. But each time, feeling impossibly more hallow... Over and over again. Until I was more husk than human.

And the isolation. The shame. The emptiness that eventually would lead to multiple attempts to end my life. 

Later, as an adult, in consensual relationships.. Realizing why I never cared for shower sex. Or why certain positions felt so… unloving.

This explained why on rare occasions after a few too many drinks, and intimacy began... Why all of a sudden I would freak out. I would get defensive, angry, and need to remove myself from the situation entirely. Then, confusion and embarrassment would wash over me. I pride myself on being self aware, but could never explain these reactions. My education in clinical psychology pointed me towards sexual trauma, but I couldn't believe that I wouldn’t have known by then.

This explained why despite making money, I never could seem to hold on to it. Why I constantly created dynamics of panic, concern and “not enough” …Because I did not believe I deserved the safety and support that savings would provide. Why I created situations where I needed to be “saved”… Because if I was saved that would have to mean I was worthy… Right?

Learning this was, and is, devastating. That September day actually may have been the worst of my life. And trust me when I tell ya, I’ve had some doozies. 

But I am so fucking grateful for it. 

There have been many moments where the climb has felt daunting. But mostly, it just feels… like it's already done. I know I can do hard things. I know that my psyche, and my guides have kept this information away from me until I was safe enough, equipped enough to handle it. It couldn't have surfaced a day earlier.

And I believe so strongly in the power of intention. It is always my intention to be of highest service, in a way that feels fun, fulfilling, and abundant for my mind, body, and soul. I believe that this is the work I must do in order to step into the next level of service, love, and abundance. 

Having the understanding of what happened to me means I get to heal. I’m no longer treating the surface of wounds whose origins are subcutaneous. I now have a more complete awareness of the patterning that has kept me small in my finances, my work, and all of my relationships, romantic and otherwise. It has opened the door for effortless forgiveness; forgiving grudges that I didn’t even realize I held against myself, and finding new depths of self love and compassion.

There's that old cliche that knowledge is power, and I believe this to be true. When you don’t know that something exists, you’re gonna be hard pressed to do anything about it. As psychologist Carl Rogers said, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself, just as I am, then I can change.”

Looking in the mirror is hard. But when done long enough with the right intention, something shifts, and you witness beauty, where you once thought it couldn't be found. 

I love you.

-Caili