Tag Archives: no shame

A Letter To the Defense

“In this assignment, let’s write a letter to our defendant/s. There may be one. There may be many. The Defendants are the people who should stand trial for hurting us as children. Write this letter in the voice of you as a child, saying what you want to say to them now.”  The Artist’s Way

Dear Abusers in Sam Fife’s Move of God Cult:

I wish you cared about how much you hurt me. Sometimes I sit in contemplation trying to bring out understanding of how you people can be so wicked, sadistic and cold.

Why don’t you think you did anything wrong? Do you know you were wrong and you’re too scared to admit the truth? Why? You don’t want to be judged? But you deserve to be judged.

What do you think your God’s final ruling will be when you stand in front of him? I am confused sometimes when you say “what is done to the least of us you do to God.” Why do you beat God? Why do you molest him? Why do you tell him that he is nothing but sin? Why do you say he is worthless? Why do you withhold his meals to make him comply? Do you think God will love you for what you do to him?

Maybe I’m not the least among you just because I’m a kid. What does the least among you mean to you?

I never trust you to keep me safe because I am never safe. My heart beats really hard when I’m scared of getting in trouble. Sometimes I think I’m floating halfway in the air and halfway in my body.

Mom, sometimes I look at you, and I think you are pretty. But sometimes you feel scary. I wish I could tell you that I only see demons in mean people. It’s in their eyes. Do you know that’s where evil can never hide, Mama? That’s why evil people wear sunglasses a lot, unless they have eye problems, maybe.

Do days feel this long to all the people in the world? They feel like forever to me. Mom, and how come we never get to talk to our Dad? Why do you hate him so much? Does he really not want us like you say? And please don’t marry Leis off to that man from India. He smells weird and then I’ll be all alone and you will make ME do all the cleaning in the cabin.

Mom, Brother Ray did a lot of dirty things to my body when we were living in the Tabernacle. And I am more than a sinner now. I can never tell you because then you will hate me for being a whore of Babylon. I didn’t know that little kids could be whores, but maybe I am what everyone says girls are.

I want to tell you all, how long this will follow me. It will tear apart my teenage years, leaving me void of an identity. It will send me to jail. It will make me choose boyfriends who abuse me. It will take all of my trust. I will trust the wrong people so many times I will stop trusting anyone at all. I will have months of not leaving the house. I will fail my children. I will have night terrors. I will have flashbacks of your torture. I will meet others like me, and I will despise your existence more. I will attack my own body with food and cigarettes.

I will dig my way out of your rubble. And I will find the real me. I will cease continuing your abuse by abusing myself.  You will stop owning me.  And then I will find you. I will spend lifetimes following you, haunting you, and I will tell all of your secrets. I will destroy your core and rip open your lies. I will survive.

I think you hate me because you can’t break me.

I have more to say, and I will keep writing you letters. And you will listen. Maybe we should tie you all to chairs, beating the truth out of you like you tried to beat fake demons out of us kids. Isn’t that what the Bible says? An eye for an eye?

Vennie Kocsis is the best-selling author of Cult Child and other publications.  She is a also a poet and hostess of the podcast Survivor Voices Show.

Child Abusers Rarely Take Ownership of Their Crimes

If my mother were alive, and you were to ask her if she allowed her children to be abused or if she abused her children, her answer would most likely be (with Bible in hand), “Absolutely NOT!”

She would then most likely go on to tell you what difficult children my siblings and I were to raise, along with a myriad of other excuses to support the gross denial covering the guilt she couldn’t face.   This is what abusers do; blame the child, and all too often, naive adults actually believe it.

A couple of years ago, a friend who grew up in the same cult as me had a conversation with a woman who knew me when I was a child. My friend asked the woman about my time as a child at the second compound I was taken to in Alaska, and the woman said this:

“Well, she was quite a boisterous child and was always in trouble a lot.”

She victim blamed a child who she witnessed be abused and yet still, thirty plus years later, the denial runs as deep as the ocean. What should we have expected? That our abusers would admit to their crimes? What a ridiculous notion. Child abusers rarely admit to their crimes unless they’re caught. Given the chance, they will quickly blame the child.  Witnessing child abuse and doing nothing is just as criminal as participating.

Victim blame a child abuse survivor, and that’s where my patience, kindness and association ends.

I do not ever condone a child abuse survivor having to defend themselves against the abuse they suffered. My fellow child abuse survivors, we’re not mentally ill. Our abusers are. Those who would attack your abuse are in serious need of psychological help themselves.

They lack empathy and understanding. Attacking someone’s child abuse is an extremely apathetic action. I feel we must use our voices to stand against those who would deny the atrocities that we endured as children and that children still endure. We have to stand our ground and not allow children to ever be blamed for the neglect and/or abuse they endure.

Tonight I sit in contemplation, knowing where my passions are, and what makes me feel in a space of forward movement.   I am aware of where I put my time and my energy, for my goal is to always be focused on believing and supporting child abuse survivors.

Recovery Time for Trauma Survivors

You’ve planned all week for Friday’s dinner. You don’t get out much. Hyperawareness keeps you home most times. There are the buzzing hive sounds of every patron’s voice. There is the echo of the hustle and bustle. Surely, everyone in the establishment is looking at you, confirmed by the moments your eyes coincidentally meet more than one strangers’. See? They ARE looking at you!

But you’re gonna do it. You’re gonna push yourself, get out into the public and socialize. This will be great. You’ve already planned your outfit by Wednesday, maybe even trying it on to be sure. Pre-planning is finished with no Thursday worries except hoping that Friday you actually come through and show up.

Friday mornin you are ready. You are looking forward to it, actually. Friday afternoon you get a call. Change of plans. Dinner has been rescheduled for Saturday. Everyone else is cool with it, and so you say you are too.

but FUCK!

Saturday you’d planned to stay home and relax, watch a movie, have you time and anyways you’d been planning all week for Friday!

The glass bottom has just dropped out. You won’t make Saturday’s dinner. You’ll make an excuse that you already had other plans, which you did, even if they were with yourself, and you’ll grieve the lost chance to actually get out. You might feel like it Saturday, but doubtful.

Because it’ll be a while before you brave the human maze again. These moments are like rare sightings.

and that’s part of what it feels like to carry social anxiety and agoraphobia all the while smiling beautifully through your glowy mask. Too much change, even the slightest, can make some boats head back to shore for good.

Streams Of Consciousness | 6.25.15

I am here weightless. Ear tuned to every sound. The fireworks are starting. A week filled with the explosions of war. I despise the celebration of generations who’ve been traumatized by genocide. Headphones. I’m trying to stabilize.

Can I float off away from this place yet? Work to do, but goddamn, I’m tired. Inside. Down in the caves where the seaweed waves in water. She, there, that siren; she is tired inside her liquid soul.

Outside, my body pushes. My face smiles, forced because maybe if I push at it fiercely it turns into the real real. The sounds of fans whirring above me. It’s heated evenings with the shades pulled up to catch the breezes.

Life moves on. Can’t do shit to change that except to feel it all. Face forward. Eyes on the prize, girl, eyes on the prize. Actualize. My destiny has arrived.

Which looks like….

A settled sunset in a camp chair around a beach bonfire,

A triumphant glow in the eyes of a child who has escaped the pain and healed,

A human holding accountability softly in their palms saying, “I fucked this up. I deserve to carry this, not you.”

An acceptance,
A sag of the shoulders and
A rest before the next climb.

They say don’t expect too much from people. It gives way to disappointment. I say that goes along with all the other ways a victim is left to carry the blame. No. The shame belongs solely to the asshole who throws away lives without a care. Don’t blame us.

Here is YOUR Diagnoses:

Apathy, Chronic
Envy, Unresolved
Greed, Chronic Satiation, Level OCD
Selfishness, Harmful Ideation

Everything with you motherfuckers is about money. It temporarily numbs the pain like drugs, and when that plug is pulled, what’s left but the abscess to drain endless,

Your chosen mental madness,
Your fucking sadness,
The voices in your head
Telling you that you ain’t shit;
I know all about it.
I used to be a pro
At telling myself no,
Instead of attending
To my precious soul.

Thinking about it makes my stomach sick. I’d rather live a thousand lives of loneliness than ever give in to anyone again.

I say yes to this right here; the silence; the peace; the ability to freely be me. And fuck the gurus and the controllers, the betrayals and the disloyal. It’s a journey of suffering embraced like a blanket and the shit ain’t mine this time. I get to leave it all behind.

So, I am weightless on this bed. Thinking about communion style wafers of white chocolate and laughter that fled at the sight of action and accountability, because standing on your own two feet ain’t never been a strength when you care more about Vera Wang than your own ability to become better and change.

Lying and manipulation is the crutch of your existence,

And me? I’m just weightless. I’m just feeling, dealing and healing. Because that’s what I do. Live my truth. Even if the self hating critics keep the rest of you in prison, I have escaped to never, ever return to that gate even if it grows flowers;

Unless I have a mallet
To knock down the malice.

Stream Of Consciousness 6.1|15

Where do I go on nights when my skin aches; when I feel invisible hands gently massaging my heartache. I clutch pillows, squeezing into pieces until it mimics the human form. I am so far from home. Here alone, swept into the solitary existence of the empath; seeing signs in their eyes as they die. Where do I sing when even the wind is lonely. We are elements without the ability to rewind time. I am not sad. I am contemplative. I feel each strand of my DNA. Close my eyes; watch the molecules fall and rise, morphing sunrise into moonlight. I am a droplet in a waterfall, a music note inside the siren’s call. Hold me tight. I’m feeling it all. Where do I go when I need fixing? Which seamstress has mastered my stitching? I am holding mirrors threading needles through my skin, piecing together some of the fragments again. Did you know I rise and fall a thousand times before I can retrieve my mind? Guess who’s here, my dear? Ms. Melancholy Blues. She watches you run every time the feelings coming. Over emotional roller coaster, could you love her the most with matted eyelashes, swollen from fear letting? Where do we go from here? You played the game the wrong way, sucked inside a wormhole, and now you can’t get away. I feel the watching. I hear the echoed talking. I’m observing, hovering, recovering from temporary setbacks. I am raw and splayed, repairing the frays. And who will hold me when the minutes get lonely? The dark shadows and moon tides? Or the memory of a night I didn’t have the strength to say no?

Streams Of Consciousness V 

I don’t know why I’m choosing Roman Numerals. I don’t know them enough to stay in sync nor do I have the passion to google them.  I’ll return to regular numbers soon. 

Ramblings. Rapid thoughts. Dealing with ignorance is like batting flies. Dumb bitch attempted to attack me with my own disorder she claimed not to know about then in the same paragraph states how close we were.  Don’t send me novela text messages full of lies and bullshit.   

Shut the fuck up.  No more niceties.  You’re full of shit, envy and I’ll respond here since you apparently haven’t been reading it for years.  Such a close friend. Yet never read a blog. Can’t recall disorders shared; the same ones you mimicked.  Fake sister. You’re pretend.  I’m intelligent. Never mistake nice for weak.  You’re right, child.  You really don’t know me.  But that was your choice.  To be self absorbed to the point you can’t recall shared moments… So vulnerable.

Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on you. 

I keep dossiers of information. Recordings of files just in case memories need to be jarred.   Just in case truth must be revealed. Is that bothersome, email digger? Don’t attempt to hustle the hustler.  Voodoo dolls and dark behavior is comical.  Keep churning your karma and wonder of your misery.  But beware the battles you choose.  I can introduce you to the throngs who lose.  I am long trained in the art of dealing with behaviors spurned from self shame. 

Oh, has life taught me from encountering vermin. Warrior I stand regretting no love given; purely with no lashing, whining or betrayals. I stand proudly in my ethics, but if it’s battle you want, okay.  I have always enjoyed winning fights. 

I hold no secrets and no shame.  I am cunning and on my game.  I’ve trained long, well and if it’s hell the malevolence wants then hell it will be.  So come on. Attack me. I walk away laughing. 

There’s a love awaiting.  It takes a choice. Meantime. I use my voice and no weapon attempted has ever prospered because I have fostered the tool of ignoring the imploring of hopelessness. 

Heal. Heal. Heal.

We’ve all wept, fallen, scraped knees, broke down teeth, pain, disdain.  Choices.  Cycle the pain or rise.  You decide. 

But me? I leave drama behind. Goodbye. No time. Psychopaths lurk in corners and I hold secrets.  Because I keep my word and rats fear what they are the most. Rats. Brats.  Hypocrites. 

Meanwhile gifts are buried under tears and pain, choices that leave humans holding onto the only thing that makes them feel real.  Lashing out. Victim mode. Can’t fly with broken wings.  So we gotta heal some things. 

The cold bites me.  Life is changing.  Rapidly.  I have no choice but to shrug and float, hold onto hope because everyone’s got their journey. 

And mine is winding, invisibly ahead.  So I can only be led by instinct and feeling.  Welcome to me.  I don’t fear the unknown.  I’ve come home to the damage, the holes, the beauty that unfolds and I do so with acceptance. 

But don’t underestimate…. Me. 

You aren’t prepared for what you’ll see. 

So ends this round as I… Sleep soundlessly.  

Alone

Tonight we are alone in the house.

The Pappa Bear has gone to visit family. It’s just us and the animals.

Vennie played the guitar and sang. We drifted into music dimension, wrote, painted, listened to music. Enjoyed the quiet us time.

Angie checked the doors at least three times then four (the even number thing) “don’t talk about it or I’ll start thinking of checking the doors again.”

“Okay!”

Collective chuckle

Knowing wants to sleep.
Vennie is processing emotion and in some waxing moon introspective space.
Maude mentions that the dog would quickly divert any hanky pinky around the house so everyone should chill the fuck out.

Sila is scared as shit, aware of every noise, and the Angie hyper vigilance isn’t helping.

So we sit here writing out the thoughts that go through our head, feeling in multiple states of being at once.

While our cats stalk a mouse downstairs who came in the house just trying to find warmth from the coming winter.

Thank whomever made Netflix to drown it all out. I know, I could Google it, I just don’t give a shit. Hopefully “Lost Girl” will lull us to sleep.