The black hole is a familiar place to those of us who were abused as children. Despite all of our best intentions with recovery and healing there are always those demoniacal bits and pieces that seem to collect as if they knew each other ─ and indeed they do ─ while deciding where to attack that healed and whole part of us. The army of healthy choices we fought so hard to gain now has control of our lives but didn’t quite eliminate all the enemies lurking in the corners. If you have never fallen into a black hole, with or without having gone through recovery, you are most fortunate.
Having gone over the bridge of recovery and reached all the good stuff, we burst on to the scene of every-day life, the dream of being happy here at last. We have done our homework. In my case it included therapy with a child sexual abuse specialist (who was a survivor herself), hypnotherapy, to extract the memories so deeply imbedded in my consciousness, working a rigorous and honest Twelve Step program, time spent in a women’s shelter, and working what would one day be the program I share with others called REPAIR. This process, hampered by living with a perpetrator and going through severe domestic violence, took almost five years to complete.
As if I hadn’t quite learned all I needed to learn I was simultaneously fighting a sexual harassment suit at the place where I worked. My boss had been attempting to bully me into having an affair with him and when I refused he began sustained and abusive treatment telling me if I didn’t submit he would make sure my next evaluation reflected his response to my repeatedly refusing to become involved. He made good his word; my evaluation was about as bad as anyone could receive. All of my previous evaluations had been exemplary. I fought back as hard as I could and when the second step of this process, being interviewed by the Administrator of the Hospital where I worked, came down to her statement, “If I fired him I’d have to fire half of my administrators and doctors” I knew I was going to lose. I didn’t even want him fired; all I wanted was to have him stop his abuse and have someone do an honest re-evaluation of my work which I knew to be commendable.
The ending of the sexual harassment suit, which I lost, although my boss was put on unpaid six months leave of absence, coincided with the final steps to my recovery which included getting rid of my abuser and filing for divorce. Here I was at last, free and happy. The first couple of years I stumbled a lot. I had read that for those of us who had been sexually abused as children the post healing time could take up to five years. But I prevailed. Today I am happy, healthy, in a stable marriage and the author of 18 books, six of them on how to recover from child sexual abuse. The program, REPAIR had followed me into my post recovery years. I also was able to found the Lamplighter Movement, an international movement for recovery from child sexual abuse which today has 76 chapters in ten countries.
So all is well, right? As if we need to be tested periodically I find myself falling into the black hole two or three times a year. My life is moving along quite happily and one morning I wake up in such deep despair that it is as if I am a blind person and can see nothing but darkness all around. Anxiety attacks me hour after hour. I cannot see the source. Reflectively, from the depths of my anguish, I struggle to methodically go over in my mind what may have set this off. First I check HALT ─ Hungry, Angry, Lonely and Tired. All have been taken care of; no help from there. Then I drag up financial matters, worries about my family, health concerns and any other adversity which may have caused this black hole to overtake me. I see that I have no more than minor and temporary concerns, certainly nothing to warrant falling into this hole.
I spend hours staring at the wall in a catatonic state. Then the tears come. With swollen eyes I wander through the house as if its walls can spit out the reason for my wretchedness. Fortunately my husband has been warned about this, has seen me go through it before and knows he must just wait it out; he is aware that I need to find my own way out of this maize of negativity and dread. And so I struggle. I pray to my God; I repeat the Twelve Steps and The Serenity Prayer over and over. I hug my puppy as if he can provide a solution. He licks my face and wants to know if it is time for his treat. I pray for sleep, the great healer of it all. After several hours (and sometimes days) of this I am worn and exhausted by the futility of my search for a solution. Even the deepest sleep has not called me to action.
And then, one morning, like the sun rises in the east, my spirit rises above all of the demons who lurk in my dark hole waiting to claim me. Slowly and surely, one step at a time (as the Big Book says) I move towards the light and away from the dark. I think of all the wonderful reasons I have to keep on living, something which a few hours previously I’d been blind to.
All is well. I speak to my husband, who has been patient and loving, of what I have gone through as if in the searching of my words I can mend so that I know next time what to do. I talk to my daughter, herself a survivor, of my problem with the black hole. She understands and can identify, speaking of the black hole she needs to battle periodically.
Throughout history many famous people including Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln fell into a black hole often. Churchill used to call it the “black dog” and said, “I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand right back and if possible get a pillar between me and the train. I don’t like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second’s action would end everything. A few drops of desperation.”
Abraham Lincoln referred to his black holes as melancholia. He was often described as being engulfed in gloom and suffered for most for most of his life with this haunting and often tragic frame of mind that takes an iron will to climb out of.
Our world is not a perfect place, nor will it ever be. The dark passages we go through are as important as the light we eventually find as we struggle with the frailties of humanity.
