Upcoming Holidays
4/10 Full moon
4/14 Good Friday
4/16 Easter Sunday
4/21 – 5/ (third week of April) Preparation for sacrifice in some Satanic sects
4/30 Walpurgisnacht/May Eve
5/1 Beltane/May Day/ Labour Day in Europe
Important dates in Nazi groups
4/16 Hitler’s alternate birthday
4/20 Hitler’s birthday (Note: Hitler was born on Easter, so Nazis celebrate his actual birthday, 4/20, and Easter of the current year.)
4/30 Anniversary of Hitler’s death
This post is not about ritual abuse itself, it is about my family, which practiced Satanism, and how they raised their children. It was strictly ordered, with no room for children to be spontaneous or independent. Everything had to be down the right way, in a defined length of time. And the children were watched to make sure they were doing things right. My therapist feels that this child-rearing method was as harmful to me as the cult, albeit in a far less violent way.
Now back to the present. The weather has been cold and overcast or rainy for weeks, it seems. At least three weeks. Not good gardening weather – soil too soggy to work and temperature too chilly to enjoy. But for a few days the skies cleared and the temperature rose to seventy. Bliss!
Except some days I didn’t go out. The other days I went out so late that most of the garden was in shade. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable.
I brooded over what was happening and came up with the realization that I was using gardening as a reward after I did all the things (or most of them) on my to-do list. That’s “If you don’t finish your vegetables you don’t get dessert” thinking. Why can’t I start the meal with dessert? After all, I live alone: nobody will see and nobody will know unless I tell them. Why can’t I garden in the nicest part of the day, replenish myself, and then do the stuff on the list calmly and proficiently? Gardening without guilt! But that’s not the way my family did things.
This is such a simple idea that I am sort of embarrassed that it took so many years to think of it. It is absolutely amazing how tight a hold lessons taught in childhood have on us. There must be hundreds more habits that I never question; I just do what I was made to do as a child.
I can remember being resistant to being told what to do. “I can’t help talking with my mouth full…of teeth.” Being told to hold my knife and fork correctly and then starting to eat the European way. How sophisticated I was at twelve! (In case you don’t know, you hold your fork upside down in your left hand and cut with the knife in your right hand. You then spear whatever you have just cut and put it in your mouth. You can also use the knife to shovel food onto the back of the fork. You don’t need to put your utensils down until you are finished. Much simpler and more efficient than the “correct” American way.)
I can remember sitting at the table silently fuming and not eating my vegetables. “I don’t want to, I won’t do it, you can’t make me.” Yet the orders bore deeper into me than the memory of my resistance.
Back to the work ethic. (We always called it the Protestant work ethic, as if nobody else worked hard.) I know people who don’t make to-do lists. They have a vague idea of what they want to accomplish that day and then they do what they feel like. Their actions are fluid and they seem to expend very little energy. But yet a tremendous amount gets done with very little stress.
I notice they don’t procrastinate. They don’t do a crossword when they feel stuck writing something. Instead, they do the dishes or water the plants. They have faith that they will get unstuck pretty soon and meanwhile they get a pleasant break doing some simple.
I don’t have that faith. I believe I have to push myself, force myself, to get something done. If I lift my eyes, I can see at least twenty things that need doing. I’m afraid that if I don’t push myself, nothing at all will get done. I will drown in guilt and spend the rest of my life staring into space. It’s very tiring.
I think this goes back to the days when I was constantly dissociated, with no idea what state of mind I was in. I didn’t know where I was, what I felt, not doing anything,why or if I was tranced out, nothing. I didn’t move. Somehow I snapped out of it and started my homework, fighting all the time not to slip back into that space where I was floating, didn’t do anything, didn’t know how to read, couldn’t talk or move. I only made myself do the homework because I would have gotten yelled at if I didn’t finish it within a certain time and got everything right, with lovely handwriting. Talk about tiring!
So, yeah, I still am tempted to slip into a trance when I hit a rough spot. For example, about three paragraphs up I didn’t know what to say next. So I did the New York Times crossword. I was still stuck. Then I thought I would try to do something physical and simple, so I cleaned the cat boxes and watered my Spanish moss. I came back, and I was no longer stuck. Perhaps it was the physical movement that freed me up.
I could get resentful that I am still, after all these years, figuring out ways of breaking old patterns, some from my family, some from the cult. These are my golden years! I am supposed to be dancing around having fun! But I prefer to be grateful that I have a mind that can think things through, hands that can type, and people (you guys!) that are willing to listen to me.
Ritual Abuse 