The Song in the Silence

The Song in the Silence

INTRODUCTION

By The Author

This book is written for every 'good-girl' and 'good-boy' that may feel they are alone with the recall of horrible past ordeals. It is a short book to facilitate all those like me who have trouble concentrating and getting through a full length book. Its pages are designed to bring you com¬fort as it underscores you are not alone. I am not particularly fond of telling secrets as some may see it, but in honoring the lives of those who are experiencing trials. Here, I share a blanket of darkness and a bleakness of future that left me without a sense of belonging. While it was robbing me of knowing who I was and what I expected of myself, it was sometimes followed by circuitously reliving of the instant and the sur¬rounding of the perpetration of these ordeals. The recall of unspeakable events caused me to think I was a classic victim. Therefore, for years my life was constructed around the erroneous thought that 1 was not good enough nor was I of worth to one single soul, hence, I could not justify my existence, I believed I was the invisible person.

I feared that at any time I could and would end my life. This fear was also beckoning me to enter the glorious meadow that was filled with yellow flowers. In my childhood fantasy 1 would be able to blank my mind and read, ly¬ing in the grass looking up into the clear blue skies. Among the yellow flowers and being to¬tally alone the aching need to proclaim my inno¬cence and to ask... why was I the one scorned by society? Because I could not justify my existence so self-offing was a viable solution and a wel¬come sweetness. I thought it offered me a way out of my misery. But just then, the God who told me that He loved me, so much so that even the very hairs on my head were numbered... and that He knew me before I was formed in the womb... Fear that no one cared and the burden of a hurting victim gradually subsided. Ever so slowly my perception was switched! It changed my life from that of being sucked down by a blob of oozing, sucking nothingness to one of peace and greater strength enough to stand as a fighter and a survivor.

It is with boldness and confidence that I to say to the men and women who are hurting yet who chose to embark on a spiritual journey, those who feel as the apostle Paul, that 'there is a thorn in the flesh.' That thorn may not be removed as Paul found out because you can¬not turn back time to erase the reality of past hurts, reality must be faced. I cannot undo my rape and sexual abuse nor can I undo my brain chemicals to drive away the bipolar disorder. I can however manage my symptoms and find help to place each trauma in the light of recov¬ery. Recollections that threatened to kill any fu¬ture by playing the scenarios over and over in my head, the reliving of those horrible experi¬ences that left me with vivid flashbacks and a debilitating sense of doom. It was through this mélange of confusing emotions that I purposed to find myself again.

For the children of God, we often find no support from spiritual leaders who beat around the bush because of their lack of knowledge of the subject, so they leave us sometimes worse off that when we started sharing with them to obtain guidance. For them to help us leave our condition of hopelessness and perplexity behind, we must ask for them to research the subject so they can help and we must assert that we are people of faith and not "a 'second class' faith believer".

Defying all customary laws of morality and principles of nature, I endured a mind-numbing trauma before I was thirteen years old to triumph in the victory of survival at age thirty-nine; an ordeal that God saw me through. In this book you will experience the indomitable hope and conferences of a new life. Now, He is helping me in cleansing the resulting defiling and unbearably destructive thoughts. The thing for me in writing a memoir of the experiences of triumph over compound suffering is planting the seed of the good work of eradicating stigma by sharing our stories. Wanting others to accept you with your myriad of other behavior is not a selfish thing. When I accept you, and accept you me, then we are less likely to experience stigma towards others unlike ourselves. Bipolar Disorder, the feeling of uselessness and the trau¬ma stemming from childhood sexual abuse will not be the end of me! The reverberation of the memory of healing and the effects of living with the stigma of mental illnesses was my heritage, but through it all I found a magnificent voice.

This composition is entitled "The Song in the Silence," and is synonymous of my percep¬tion of God's compassion as he leads me through the valley of the shadow of death. My writing tells of peace and knowledge, the ingredients of reassurance that led me to the portal of self as¬sessment and a design of restructuring... I speak plainly of the effects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder mixed with Bipolar Disorder and tu¬multuous ebbs and flows that begged me to end it all. For so long my life seemed to exist in sound bites, brief moments of clarity and productivity mixed with or followed by chaos and confusion that brings its own dirty blanket that closed out all light and settled heavily on me with sticky sweet depression. A depression that lures me to all things, see all things wrong with me while it beckons to an even deeper darkness of death. The instruments portrayed in this book are dear to me; they represent my openness to learn and appreciation of new knowledge.

When you come right down to it, these in¬struments clashed, clanged, soothes or excited, they aptly reflect how I see the world around and my life. My life is colorful from years of art study and practice. It is dramatic and weird, peppered by acceptance of living in my present existence through which I must survive with a firm sense of my giftedness and potentials. I feel so confident that the word of God which gave me comfort will also comfort you, so I am shar¬ing some of my favorite promises from the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible. They are interspersed throughout emphasizing God's words of acceptance and coping that reflects each stage of my life as I became acquainted with Him.

This book, a labor of my heart and triumph of the wandering mind, reflects my curiosity and artistic inspiration by emphasizing early mid eastern musical instrument that evokes the emo¬tions that underlie the theme that God is the source of strength and gladly assures me as the song in the silence of the blackness of my life. It is God who is and leads us to the source of all help, starting with our words about ourselves.

This testimonial gives an advocates point of view on the topic of Bipolar Disorder and sex¬ual abuse and how it affects the believer's wor¬ship, family life and relationships. The focus of the two topics featured in this work aren't ones we typically discuss in church. While sharing my story in church one man was so moved that he informed me that his wife had suffered from bi¬polar for thirty years and every time she came out of the hospital the church shunned her. She was a faithful follower and that went on until her death. I am vocal about the subject and keep asking for prayers and visits when in the hospital. Not all others are so lucky; they suffer in silence or are seen as somehow other than blessed. In these last days, we ought to recognize what the Lord means when He commissions us to take care of each other.