"My sensitive nature was evident in the first grade when I became concerned about stepping on ants. I was very careful walking on the sidewalks because I didn't want anything to die. Specifically, I didn't want to be the one who killed any living thing and this concern extended to flies also. When my mother would ask me to grab a fly swatter and kill some flies in the kitchen, to her chagrin I would say, 'I don't want to kill flies. I don't want to kill anything!'"
"'Oh don't be silly,' she'd say with frustration in her voice. 'The commandment not to kill doesn't apply to flies.'"
"As a thirteen year old, I was accustomed to walking to school every day with a group of friends including my friend, Kathy. One day we were walking home and Kathy was not with us. The other girls told me they wanted to be my friend, but that if I wanted to be in their group I would need to drop Kathy as my friend.
"I stewed over that decision because these were popular girls, but Kathy had been a good friend and I didn't want to hurt her. I hoped the other girls would just forget about the 'Kathy thing,' but they didn't.
"They told me, 'Since you didn't drop Kathy, we don't want to be your friend anymore. You can't walk home with us or hang around us anymore.'"
"I had to hold the tears inside until I got home to my bedroom. I felt like my heart was breaking inside. How could anyone be so cruel? I hurt so badly inside; how could they hurt me on purpose like that? Looking back on this event, it was the height of irony that a part of me was so surprised and perplexed that teenaged girls could be so cruel.
"The reality was that even while dealing with this juvenile 'cruelty,' parts of me had hidden away memories of much, much greater cruelty. In fact, these parts had had first-hand experience with some of the most depraved acts humans can inflict on each other." (My Tears Fall Inside, pages 31-32)
The calculated evil of my childhood abuse was so vast that I created many 'pretend friends' to hold those memories. In my mind the terrible things happened to 'them' and not to me. As a result, I had no memories of the evil inflicted upon me, but the fear of evil was so deeply ingrained in what was left of me, that I couldn't bear the thought of any cruelty or evil even existing in the world. SO, I created a world I could handle, a world where no one was ever unkind and where there was no such thing as evil. When events happened to rock that belief system, I was devastated, but would quickly return to the belief system of the world I had created. Unfortunately, this make-believe perfect world was eventually shattered.
"'Oh don't be silly,' she'd say with frustration in her voice. 'The commandment not to kill doesn't apply to flies.'"
"As a thirteen year old, I was accustomed to walking to school every day with a group of friends including my friend, Kathy. One day we were walking home and Kathy was not with us. The other girls told me they wanted to be my friend, but that if I wanted to be in their group I would need to drop Kathy as my friend.
"I stewed over that decision because these were popular girls, but Kathy had been a good friend and I didn't want to hurt her. I hoped the other girls would just forget about the 'Kathy thing,' but they didn't.
"They told me, 'Since you didn't drop Kathy, we don't want to be your friend anymore. You can't walk home with us or hang around us anymore.'"
"I had to hold the tears inside until I got home to my bedroom. I felt like my heart was breaking inside. How could anyone be so cruel? I hurt so badly inside; how could they hurt me on purpose like that? Looking back on this event, it was the height of irony that a part of me was so surprised and perplexed that teenaged girls could be so cruel.
"The reality was that even while dealing with this juvenile 'cruelty,' parts of me had hidden away memories of much, much greater cruelty. In fact, these parts had had first-hand experience with some of the most depraved acts humans can inflict on each other." (My Tears Fall Inside, pages 31-32)
The calculated evil of my childhood abuse was so vast that I created many 'pretend friends' to hold those memories. In my mind the terrible things happened to 'them' and not to me. As a result, I had no memories of the evil inflicted upon me, but the fear of evil was so deeply ingrained in what was left of me, that I couldn't bear the thought of any cruelty or evil even existing in the world. SO, I created a world I could handle, a world where no one was ever unkind and where there was no such thing as evil. When events happened to rock that belief system, I was devastated, but would quickly return to the belief system of the world I had created. Unfortunately, this make-believe perfect world was eventually shattered.
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