Different/Normal?

     They say, verbal and emotional abuse is more damaging than physical.  I believe this because I have experienced both.  I have experienced physical abuse that I never talked about in detail until I wrote my story.  I never shared those details until I allowed Dave to read my story.  I believe that the reason verbal and emotional abuse is more damaging is because the abuser touches a very private part of your being.  Your mind is a place you choose to share or not to share.  You choose which parts you are willing to expose and to whom you are willing to expose them to.  But our most private thoughts and beliefs hidden away in our minds belong to us and we have control of them.  Our thoughts cannot be taken from us without our permission, but they can be touched and changed by the abusive words of others.  Words touch the core of who you are.
     Someone broke into my parents home a few years back and I remember my mom kept saying how violated she felt.  Strangers had gone through every drawer, every closet, taking things that belonged to my parents.  I totally understood her feelings.  I'm sure to a degree it has changed their lives and the level of safety they experience daily.  They are free to talk about it and anyone who has experienced a similar crime will understand their feelings.
     Sexual abuse, including rape affects it's victims in ways no other offense can.  There is no other crime that touches a life like sexual abuse.  God intended two to become one with each other during sex.  To become one with a person who is hurting you causes a pain I have yet to find the words to describe.  It's a violation that is internal.  It touches your soul.  You can't even imagine what you know you are experiencing. 
     It changes who you are, how you see things, how you hear words, how you stand, how you sit, how you talk, how you feel how, you believe, how you trust, how you even breathe.  There is no one part of you left untouched.  And you feel it.  You feel different and you spend your whole life trying to feel the way you did before, knowing it's impossible.  There are days you don't think about it at all and there are days it consumes you and you may not even know that's what it is.  It is also the one crime people don't talk about, because it's just too personal, unimaginable and shame has been attached to even though the victims are no more at fault than a victim of robbery.
     This morning I remembered a movie I watched in the theater many years ago.  Prince of Tides is a movie full of dysfunction.  I hate the movie and at the same time there are lines and scenes I will never forget and for some reason I like.  The most memorable was a scene where the mother is trying to convince the father to join the family at the kitchen table to sing Happy Birthday to the twins, but the father insists he is watching TV and wants no part of any celebration.  An argument starts and he says things like, "Don't tell me what to do woman" and to his wife he says , "You are a guest in my house."  All hell is breaking loose when the older brother suddenly shoots the TV, totally destroying it and says, "The TVs broken you SOB.  Now you can watch your kids blow out their candles."  The whole theater erupted in laughter.  My reaction was different.  If I would have had a shotgun near me, I would have shot the movie screen.  I hated everyone in that theater for laughing, "There you SOB's laugh now."  I sat through the rest of the movie filled with anger.
     I am addicted to escape by movie.  But once in awhile I will have reaction that I know is not normal.  Children of a lesser God was always one of my favorites, but one scene confuses me still today.  When James tries to convince the deaf Sarah to use her voice it irritates me.  I want him to leave her alone.  When she finally freaks out and starts screaming at him and you can barely understand anything she says, I get this feeling that is difficult to describe.  It's almost like I know her, like I have heard that awful scream before in me.
     Digging this stuff up the last year has been difficult, but in some ways I am experiencing more freedom. The bad days don't come quite as often or stay quite as long.   I guess I would compare it to The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. I have always felt like I live in a bubble.  In the movie they make him a suit so he can leave his house and be mobile.  That's where I'm at now, in my mobile bubble, but at least I'm mobile.  Different is the new normal anyway.

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it."

- Helen Keller