It’s as if all is lost and I’m so very sad. The sky is black and the air is cold – the little girl plants both fists in the warmer sand and pushes herself up – catches sight of me and is embarrassed that someone might have been watching – she tells me, “He’s not down there you know, a terrible mistake has been made – children can’t be buried until they die – the grave is a hoax – an April Fool’s Joke – anyone can buy a stone and cross,” she drops to her knees and claws at the sand – it yields easily. “You’re not there,” she says as she digs. “Don’t you dare, be there!” But then she stands up and brushes herself off and she sees someone coming – her brown eyes widen and it’s a man coming, and as he gets near she asked, “Don’t you know me? Are you going to hurt me?” in a shaky voice as if she lacks the strength to argue normally, she insists, “I’m not leaving till I’m ready – are you going to hurt me?” and she lifts a skinny forearm in front of her face as though expecting to be hit, and a thin line of perspiration is on her face – the man doesn’t give any sign of recognition – and then I understand why, because as I look at the little girl – she is Gloria and the eye in the middle of her forehead is glaring at the man as if daring him to do something – while I just stare at Gloria in amazement wondering how she came to be there – it is all very confusing even as I recall it and I hope I’m not getting Gloria ready for a “nuthouse” by telling you of these dreams – if all these details are of no help or of no importance, please let me know.
If the dreams do not make sense, I know one thing – the dreams wake me filled with all sorts of emotions like those of grief, mourning, guilt, anxiety, and all negative feelings that I don’t like. Thank you sincerely for being there, for being you, and for being with us. When I lift up my heart in prayer to God each night, I ask Him to bless you and to keep you tenderly in His care.
Lovingly,
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 57
Saturday night
Dear Adam,
This is Gloria’s Helper – I’m here to help Gloria but I no longer know how. We thought everything was fine. I don’t know exactly what happened – yes, I do. Gloria’s best friend went and got her a book she had been reading called “Creating Peace with Your Parents” and told Gloria to read it because it was wonderful and she was reading it.
Sunday was the birthday of Gloria’s husband but no Mass was said for him. Gloria was sad because this birthday was to have meant that he would retire at 62 and it depressed her but she was doing okay till the first thing she did Sunday was to open the book and happened to open it at a page where it said, “The following are samples of people trying to forgive their mothers:
I forgive you but it is not easy.
I forgive you but I still fear you.
I forgive you even though you hurt me.
I forgive you, I wish I could but I don’t.
I forgive you but I hate when you manipulate me
I’m not going any further down the list because I’m feeling what Gloria felt as she read this – the same sad and angry feelings are still there about her mother – everything is going wrong. Gloria had finished reading another book she is bringing you and was so upset, I thought she had forgotten what I knew or she had remembered the past.
Then tonight a friend called to remind her to watch “The Burning House” we both did and this was the worst thing we should have done. It was about the same personality as the “Other” and about almost anything might trigger his rage off – such awful feelings – sometimes I think all our life was a bad dream and I’ll wake up. I feel awful – I’m no longer afraid I will go crazy but I’m frightened, lonely and sad and ashamed and wish I were dead.
When the man in the movie would hit his wife it wasn’t just the pain of the blows that hurt it was the emotions that flooded me – my chest would hurt – my heart ached. I never knew what would set him off – sometimes he got upset over a thing – sometimes he didn’t – the little girl was the same way as that woman in the movie. Her psyche was more battered than her body and my emotions were so intense when I watched the tyrannies and bloodcurdling threats of that maniac that I thought it would be only a matter of time till he would kill her or drive her insane. I feel it now such a tight felling in my chest as if I can’t breathe anymore – not for me – not for Gloria – all I can feel is anger at a situation that could be and was so deeply humiliating, dehumanizing, and physically cruel and all I can feel is intense anger at all those people who called themselves human beings – see what was going on and turned away like it was not happening – right at this time – I hate – I hate – I hate – the whole world who calls itself human beings.
Let’s face it, we have a losing battle here. No matter how hard or how much we try new obstacles crop up every day. The book, “My Sweet Audrina” is a “beauty” it resembles enough of Gloria’s life to make it really something to read. We or (I’d say) Gloria should never have read it.
Well I’m sorry to be such a failure and such a deadbeat – this will probably be the end of my trying to solve this mess. I guess we’re just beyond help any longer – as to what happens now, I just don’t know.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 58
Tuesday night
Dear Adam,
Tonight the nightmares scared me! Before I’d have said I knew what scared was – like surface scared like ripping around the third curve of a roller coaster or being caught in a tiger’s cage. But this time it was different.
Tonight in Gloria’s nightmares I was in the real stuff. – I mean your genuine Basic Scared – Your Basic Pea Green Scared – I felt like I was heading for the Fall-aparts, which is just the other side of Scream City. Don’t ask me what brought those crazy dreams on because I don’t know.
Dreaming of soldiers fighting at one part. Gloria must have thought she was Attila the Hun – me trying to wake someone (in the dream) up and she won’t wake up and suddenly I know she’s dead and she’s dead because I killed her. There in another dream a dead girl comes alive and she follows me around and looks the same as before I killed her. I don’t know – people in the dream say I killed her – I change everything – around me changes, but the dead person stays the same, stays the way she was when I last saw her and she keeps getting bigger and bigger and very important – it’s all very sad.
Then there’s the other bad dream – it’s about a little girl, she’s at the bottom of a hill and then I become that little girl and I’m looking up toward a group of people who are standing in front of a bright, white stage building – I know they are waiting for me and I try to make my way up toward them but my legs won’t hold me – each time I take a step, I sink to the earth and struggle upright again and fall again, my legs feel numb as if bandaged for a long time – then suddenly I notice the white picket fence and I start to crawl to it till I can pull myself upright and I begin hitching myself along pulling myself from one picket to another. I’m getting angry and really sad because the group at the top of the hill have turned toward me but make no move to get closer or try to give me a hand. I try to see who they are but they are too far away – I can see though that there was four people and have colorful clothes on – the wind blows my skirt out in front of me and I see that my skirt is black, not colorful like theirs. I keep struggling to reach the four at the top and suddenly I can walk. I’m there, and I walk quickly up to them but when I approached them they turned their backs to me so quickly that I still could not see who they were – I get very frustrated – all that climbing and struggling to see four people whose faces I’m not allowed to see – why?
Next thing I know I open my eyes, sure that Gloria and I have dreamed this many, many times before and I say to myself, “I hate that dream.” I think of the dream of a doll’s head on the table this is a horrible dream but I like it better than the dream about the people on the hill. I always found the people around me utterly strange, but in the dream all the people who seemed strange
were familiar, very familiar and it was my fault that I could not recognize them. What an awful dream! It’s as if all the people in the world wore masks and when they took them off they were all the same – they only seemed to be different.
The other nightmare – I was crushed by an infinite sadness-it was mentally crippling. I can’t even go into it – it was raw like a wound – that was the bottom – that dream made me see that nothing absolutely nothing was too low or too terrible to happen and I’ve come to the conclusion after these dreams that the little girl we talk about has seen things of such horror that even I can’t think of them without sudden quiet shock. So it’s best to end this now and think no further. Thanks for listening.
Gloria’s Helper
AUTOMATIC LETTER 59
Wednesday night
Dear Adam,
Something strange happens about dreams that Gloria has – the real world seems to get mixed up into the dreams and the dreams seem all the more real – with part of your mind you’re aware of what’s going on around you, but part of your mind is drifting and things start to get mixed up. What I’m trying to say is that the human mind has developed a safety valve and dreaming is really the unconscious mind (me in this case) clearing up the debris it has otherwise been unable to cope with on the conscious level – if this is so, then tonight’s dreams became like “a horror show” in which Gloria and I were literally imprisoned.
I know that I was alone in an empty house, so far away from everyone that no one would hear me even if I were dying – that it might be days before my corpse was found – my one thought was to escape that house – then I heard voices and realized there must be others in the house and then there was shouting and I stumbled upstairs and laid down on the quilted spread of a child’s bed. My hand upon the silken fur of stuffed animals and I became less fearful as I looked at the Teddy bears, Raggedy Ann’s, baby dragons because I found their glassy eyes kindly, unjudging and forgiving.
My heart quieted down and I was almost asleep – for these few moments I was not empty or abandoned – then I froze because crying sounds reached my ears and someone was screaming, “You aren’t supposed to cry. Do you hear me? Stop that! I could hear pounding and my mind saw fists flashing down striking and the hissing, “Don’t you cry!! Don’t you dare cry! There were angry mutterings and I heard a little voice ask, “Am I going to die?” There was no answer – an eerie silence came – then someone asked, “What happened, what did I do – answer me do you hear me, answer me,” but the little voice just said, “I can’t. I’m too scared,” then a hoarse voice shouted, “I’ll teach you to obey if it’s the last thing I do,” and, “look at me, you don’t have a little boy do you understand me?” No answer – another long, “Do you understand?” A little “yes” softly – then I heard a door slammed shut and someone walked away and I heard the little voice say, “from now on no matter what happens I will act as if I’m not afraid and I will never cry but what will happen if I forget,” and I heard little feet coming out of the room where the door had slammed and walked out. I looked out of the window and saw a little girl limping and she was carrying a shovel in her hand.
She crossed the yard and I slipped out to follow her – to see if I could help her or comfort her and suddenly I felt a loneliness that was so intense I felt so cut off, so far away and I thought, “every day I wait for something from the outside of that house – a letter, a visit – a piece of news – anything to give me hope, to make me feel I’m still part of the world – and I decided not to go after the child with the shovel because I sensed she was going to take my last hope away and there was no way I’d be able to help her – then I changed my mind and decided to go after her after all – and Gloria woke up.
I’ve felt many emotions while recalling this dream, enough so that I’m not going to talk of the other dream – following the little girl. Somethings are better if not remembered at all. Thank you for listening – to get myself out of this down mood, I just decided to send you a picture I cut out. Just picture Gloria walking into your office like the girl in the picture – someday – let’s see how much talking she does then. Ha! Ha! Ha! Till next time,
Gloria’s Helper
NOTE:
Gloria’s Helper used gallows humor in this letter and enclosed a sadistic picture of a woman wearing a Hannibal Lecter’s restraint mask symbolic of her bondage to ease the horrors she faced. Throughout our early work, she would slip magazine and newspaper clippings in some letters depicting pictures of hangings, slavery, captivity, torture, killings, and abused, kidnapped, or abandoned children. One caption read, “Child Burned in Oven.” She also included beautiful pictures of healthy and happy babies and small children as if to ask the dark question why me?
AUTOMATIC LETTER 60
Sunday night
Dear Adam,
Gloria is in a state of complete relaxation and our “friend” upstairs has been led to her hiding place by promises of help – as for me I am torn by conflicting emotions between wanting to help her and wanting to break her neck – oh, yes! She brings back many memories of the past – if only it were that I, Gloria’s Helper wouldn’t feel as disgusted as I am.
Oh, let’s forget her and while she’s quieted down I’ll try to recall the same incidents that happened to Gloria that had us in a similar situation. By the way the old lady upstairs (next door to our friend) told Gloria on Friday that everyone had been telling her about the girl who was left homeless in a city where she doesn’t know anyone after her boyfriend Bob, who she was living with, died. That she was a girl from Canada and couldn’t speak any English.
So the girl and Gloria have been communicating in French despite this, the girl keeps making loud noises through the night even the old lady hears her. What a mess! I know how the girl feels – so does Gloria – agitated yet with a defiant determination not to be caught now. It doesn’t make any sense – as for me I cannot allow myself the luxury of pity nor the time for lying to someone, I know we cannot help. Gloria took you at your word when you said you would help the girl – she doesn’t remember the past but I do – you meant you would help Gloria because you have doubts that girl, the woman of thirty years old is really there – just a phantom – a projection of Gloria’s disturbed mind. What is going to happen when the woman upstairs that the old lady just got up to search for is not helped???
Enough of this – we’ve had our time to address ourselves to the tough business of survival and we didn’t have a thin ray of hope that Gloria is offering the “one” upstairs – we searched for a refuge also and no one believed us anymore than now – all we met was a wall of rejection – when I think that a man who is dead, left a hidden place for a woman who is back again after a year of peace and quiet. I feel a helpless frozen fury – a volcano just before it erupts – what resources can help us out of this predicament if we weren’t believed when Gloria was a child – she survived only to be put in this again. I’m furious at this Bob who is dead and I’ll stop this before I get any angrier.
Gloria’s Helper
NOTE:
Here Gloria’s Helper re-experiences the little girl’s wretched rejection, hopelessness, and despair when no one believed her or offered her refuge, and the fury at being subjected to that rejection and disbelief again after surviving devastating childhood abuse. Gloria’s Helper challenged me to believe in her if I wanted to help her, “what resources can help us out of this predicament if we weren’t believed when Gloria was a child …”
After considerable soul searching my intuition outweighed my logic, and I gave Gloria my blind faith and the refuge she desperately needed. It was critical for Gloria to become empowered. Our healing relationship had to create a safe and trusting atmosphere, to allow her to remember and mourn and to promote her reconnection with everyday life.
AUTOMATIC LETTER 61
Monday night
Dear Adam,
Tonight we had an odd dream – in it an older Gloria and I were walking through
a forest when we met (would you believe it?) a three eyed woman. She smiled and asked, “What we would like to be like if we could.” We didn’t understand then Gloria said, “I’d like to be as normal as a child would be.” The lady smiled and said, “You have all those qualities now – children have a sense of wonder about all of life – children are free to show affection – children are unconcerned about conformity – all things seem possible for a small child,” Gloria inquired, “But I’m not supposed to be a child now?” and the lady said, “Jesus commands that we should, “become as little children to enter the Kingdom of Heaven – this is needed for your spiritual life and you have it already except that you are not a little child who is totally dependent. You are rooted in trust though and persistent but not as a child but persistent to getting bread at an imminent hour and in getting help when needed to get a fair ruling.” The woman went right on talking till we both fell asleep and when we woke up we were children and we saw a large black beast looking straight at us – we didn’t move – till we got tired of sitting there, we made a move to get up and the beast started to get up. We ran and came out of the forest and saw a house with a golden key in the door, we unlocked the door and locked it with the key and we could hear the animal banging against the door and I woke Gloria up before the dream went further. Hope tomorrow’s dream is a better one.
Gloria Rising: A Story of Hope and Survival In Dark Evil Places Page 10