The following paragraphs remain to this day as relevant to me as they did when I first read them decades ago. All my discoveries came from understanding our painful human experiences in those terms. I can't remember from which of many books I took it. I see the influence of Alice Miller in it, but I'm certain it's not her writing. These paragraphs are at the root of my novel, The Porn Writer.
"Those who think they can will themselves back to health with the trick of forgetting only trick themselves. The trick of forgetting is the denial which kills them. We think we’ve come to terms with our pasts when we learn not to feel the feelings associated with our memories. Our feelings, specially if they’re rooted in severe childhood abuse, seem overpowering and too huge to face. So we refuse to feel them and pretend they don’t affect us.
"But hidden memories take a secret toll on us because we hide them under addictions. We control them by not acknowledging their powerfulness in our lives. We control them by getting drunk or getting laid or getting high or getting power in high places, or by working seven days a week or by losing ourselves in another person, by watching seven hours of TV a day. On and on. Control is addiction.
"Then we lie to ourselves and to others, thinking we’ve put our memories behind us because we are not able to feel them anymore, except in little flashes. We say to ourselves and we tell others, ‘A person’s got to get on with their life. You can’t dwell in the past forever.’ Yet everything we do, everything we speak, everything we are is influenced by the secret we try to keep.
"Of course we’re never aware that our whole present is but a reflection of our past. We think we’ve neatly escaped our memories, but it’s plain as day they haven’t gone away once you make the breakthrough from addiction to acceptance.
"The secret is, was always, a big billboard on the top of our heads which blinks the truth to everyone around us while only we are unaware of it. It’s like that card game in which each player places a playing card, face outward, to his forehead so that everyone but himself can see the card, then tries to evaluate the strength of his card by the cards he sees that the others are holding to their foreheads. We don’t know what card we’re showing, but to the others, it’s obvious.
"However, there is better though more uncomfortable way. We can choose to dwell from time to time in the past, to face the awful truths, to grieve our losses and accept them and, specially, to accept and embrace the wounded person inside us who needs our love and acceptance rather than our denial. We have a choice to be courageous and admit our pain or to spend the rest of our lives running from the truth in every deed we do and every thought we think.
"Sadly, if we deny the painful truths of our pasts, we deny ourselves and team up with the abusers of this world. We become self-abusers and, finally, abusers of others too. Abusive people are often the ones who most want us all “to quit crying and get on with our lives!” Then he or she can go on about their business of abuse without interruption.
"In the end, you have to lose control to get control. Eventually, you must give up and surrender to the pain. This surrender is no easy task. Re-feeling the pain, you become, for a time, helpless as the child you once were, the child who is being traumatized. All your defenses come down, and you are as vulnerable and naked as you were at the time when the wounds were inflicted on you. It’s a frightening and painful experience, but only then can you experience the magnitude of the damage done to you and begin to grieve and relieve your loses.
"Though recovery is actually practical and sane, the path back to a moderately-successful, healthy frame of mind feels frighteningly irrational and painfully emotional as you walk it. The way back is through pain and darkness and, at times, does not feel like the way to light. You may think you will drown in darkness, alone and unloved, but let me assure you, you won’t. You only think you will. However, it does take real courage to do this work, to walk this path. It’s not a job for the weak. It is the weak who scream out, ‘Forget it and get on with your lives!’
"So we do have choices to make. We can shut down and never feel any true feelings, except terror or nothingness, or we can dive right into them and experience our true feelings, our true selves, swim through them and come out on the other side. There is hope. Every time we honestly get in touch with our childhood experiences, we cry and take pity on ourselves and get a little stronger. The feelings get a little less blind control over us and we become a little more conscious in our choices.
"The process isn’t a clean, neat scientific work. It’s a magical work in a wonderland of seeming monsters and heroes, with princesses and princes, villains and good guys. It’s all within you. Many things are inexplicable, things happen as a result of re-experiencing them that are completely magical and very real. Reason will never get us there but fearlessness and feeling will."
