This excerpt appears in Ch. 1 in the book, although it occurred in
the fourth year of her therapy.
I was floating in water and hearing it flutter in my ear. I heard a
steady heartbeat. I was stretching and yawning, calm and peaceful. My only
concern was growing. All that was happening seemed to be in preparation for a
different dimension in my life.
I remember ‘thinking’ before I was born all that was
going to happen. I was going to be born so somebody could love me and touch
me, so I could be enough, so I could be a part of a big, working thing and I
could have an effect on the world.
All of it was going to be so neat. I was going to be
a part of a whole big world. The world was a good place, and I was going to
be a part of it! Me! The world was going to be better because I was here,
because there was nothing like me. Nowhere could the world get what it was
going to get from me. I was important, as important as anything. Even the
tiniest speck!
During labor, I felt squeezed. I wasn’t frightened.
I was going along with the process of being born. I was starting to get out
when somebody pushed me back in. Gosh darn it! I was not in charge of my
birth anymore. They were pushing my head in, and I couldn’t breathe. I was
very frightened and confused. I thought I was going to die before I could get
out.
Somebody was jerking me and scaring me. Everything
was just jerking and pulling and turning. It hurt everywhere on my body. I
didn’t know what to do. I was dizzy. I wanted to go back to where it was
quiet. Make them stop! Leave me alone! Everyone leave me alone, and I’ll be just
fine. Let me do it!
The doctor simply plucked me out of my mother and
said, ‘Here’s the little troublemaker. I can tell she’s going to be a
stubborn one.’ My mom hurt, and she hurt physically because of me. There was
a lot of confusion. The lights were bright, and the room was noisy. The
medical team was in a panic, and everyone was yelling.
It seemed like the whole world was a mess. Things
weren’t going right, and it was all because of me—because I was ready to be
born and I wasn’t doing it right! Everyone was frightened and scared, and
they didn’t understand.
Two nurses took me and washed me roughly. They were
talking and laughing with each other and were unaware of how they were
treating me or how I felt. I remember one of them saying, ‘Who do you think
you are? You’re just another person to take care of.’
I was hungry and screaming and scared. It didn’t
matter. Nobody wanted to touch me and hold me and smile at me. There was a
whole room full of people. I just had to wait! I wasn’t any more important
than anybody else! Everyone was doing what had to be done, and I had to just
behave and stop crying.
And I’d learn…I’d learn I was a nobody, that I was
just like everybody else. It didn’t matter what I wanted or expected. I was
in the real world, and I’d just have to wait. I was nobody special, and I
didn’t deserve anything any more than anybody else did. It didn’t make any
difference who I was. I was just one more person to take care of. It all made
me feel like I wasn’t what they were looking for, like I was a nobody. Who
the hell was I?
They weren’t concerned about me. They were just
concerned with what I had done and how hard I had made it for everybody. Like
I had any control over it! All I had done was be born. And it was no big
deal! I came out ‘thinking,’ ‘Ta, ta, I’m here!’ And everybody goes, ‘Big
deal!’
“Everybody felt like I had to prove myself. It was
like everybody thought it was a tough, mean, crummy world. Welcome to it,
kid! You’re no different than the rest of us. It’s all crummy and rotten and
look what you’re a part of. They must have had a lot of bad attitudes.
“I felt like going and hiding. What did I do good? I
was just born! It didn’t matter what I had to offer. Nobody saw any good in
me. I was waiting for someone to be so delighted and happy I was here, that I
was out and now the world was a better place because there was one more good
thing. Nobody felt I had contributed something only I could. I thought
something unique had just happened and never in the space of time would anything
like that happen again, because I was different. I was one of a kind, and I
could contribute things nobody else could.
I do feel like I’ve committed a grave transgression
because I was born. Because of me, I added more hurt to this world. I didn’t
add good things. I wasn’t good, and special, and one of a kind. I felt so
awful, like I didn’t have a right to live.
Everybody thought the world was crummy and a mess
and that I added to the awfulness and the crumminess. I felt so disappointed.
Yuck. This was what I had waited for?
After being cleaned up, I went to sleep. When I woke
up, I decided to give the world another chance. It was tough being born. It
was.
Then she looked at me directly and asked, “Do you
remember all this stuff? Do you think I’m cuckoo? I know all this happened.
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