When did I have the first inkling that something was wrong with me (that I was "different?") When I was 8 yrs old I found a place by myself on the school playground and used little pieces of broken glass and metal to cut my hands and knees. I did it because that external pain was a way of objectifying the inner pain. Not necessarily, however, for others to see it and know what was going on inside me...but maybe that was what I was hoping for. With no way to verbalize my inner pain, the physical cutting and bleeding put it out there in the open. If anyone asked me about the cuts, I planned to say I fell on the playground. But no one asked. I guess I did too good a job of hiding them.
Sometimes I wonder if I was depressed at age 8 -- was that what the angst was all about? I do not remember any losses at that age, I do not remember any abuse, but I do remember a strong sense of aloneness. My own private world was beginning construction. The walls were going up. I guess God had the blueprint of those walls, heaven knows I didn't know what was happening. But I have never blamed God for what happened. In fact, for much of my life there was no god. Oh, I knew enough about the Bible and said prayers at the dinner table and attended church regularly, but I had no sense of the presence of God. There was just this overwhelming feeling of emptiness and anxiety.
At age 10, I was sitting in class one day listening to the teacher. All of a sudden, her bodiless head appeared in the right side of my head. And it was joined by the devil's head and two other heads I did not recognize. I have always called them The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They were to stay with me until I was 46 yrs old. They were constantly there, watching, nodding, smiling, communicating with each other but not with me. I felt the lack of privacy. I felt like I had secret access to this other world and often went there where I did not feel so alone.
Then at age 11, the devil began to appear to me out of a whirlwind. This wind would whip up out of nowhere into a towering tornado and there was the devil in the midst of it. He glowered at me and pronounced that I was a sinner and would have to pay for those sins. I saw and heard the devil on and off throughout my teenage years. Many times, it seemed like life would be easier, better, if someone else knew about the voices and the talking heads. But no one asked me if everything was all right. I mean, why should they, right? It felt so wrong inside that I thought there surely must be external signs. I ached to tell someone.
More to follow....
Carolyn
