The Last Closet_The Dark Side of Avalon

by Moira Greyland

  At this point, Lisa knew she had been wrong about me and my father. To her credit, she decided to try to find me. She looked me up in phone books until she found me, living in Anaheim. She told me that I was right about my father, and she was sorry. She said that Mary Mason had called me a hero for saving her son, and confirmed that what I had said about his molestation was true. She said she wanted to help me, and what did I need?

  I told her I needed to be in the hospital. She agreed, and used my father’s money to put me into a small psychiatric hospital in Laguna Hills, CA. I was on the unlocked side because I came in voluntarily, and I was not regarded as a danger to myself.

  There was counseling in the hospital, food at predictable times, and therapy groups. One of the first things they did for me was to bring a biofeedback machine into my room because I was in such utter terror so much of the time. The hope was that if I could learn to bring my own heart rate down it might help me sleep.

  Early on during my hospital stay, I had an assessment which was done on the locked side due to a shortage of rooms, to my utter terror. The people over there were very different than the people on the unlocked side: they seemed drugged, there was a lot of yelling, and I was very distressed to even be there for an assessment.

  At the end of this very long assessment the doctor asked me, almost offhandedly, what my father had done to me, knowing I had not been able to say a word about it. I blurted out “He raped me” and I ran out of the room, stumbling, crying, and clinging to the walls like an idiot. Still, this was the first time I had been able to say anything about it, so in a way it was a relief. The stumbling was ataxia: a poor or staggering gait, which was simply another symptom which showed up when I was having trouble with my flashbacks.

  I sat in my room and cried and drew until Dr. Hirz came to see me for the first time. He was a psychiatrist, and all tweed, silver hair, and silver eyes. I told him I was a real mess. He was very nice and kind to me even though my hair was wet with tears and looked like I hadn’t brushed it in a month.

  I had several issues which I barely understood. For me, self-care had become almost impossible. I couldn’t bathe because the water terrified me so much, and the best I could do was to scrub myself while partially dressed with a wet washcloth. Nakedness terrified me. I couldn’t eat, because food overwhelmed me and made me panic. I dissociated, feeling like I was not in my body. It felt as though I did not have a body at all and this could become so severe that I would become catatonic. I could not figure out how to move.

  I was diagnosed with Complex PTSD, severe panic disorder, and post-incest syndrome.

  I am quoting from the following article: http://criminal-justice.iresearchnet.com/crime/domestic-violence/post-incest-syndrome/

  “Love puts aside the parent’s needs to attend to those of the child. Incest, however, is a supremely selfish act. Where love nourishes, incest takes. Incest creates emotional abandonment by sabotaging the caregiver role. To be violated by those who are supposed to love them best teaches children that they are not worth loving.

  Unconditional love is given without strings. It teaches children that they are valued, with no expectations. Incest, however, teaches children that they must earn ‘love.’

  Nonpossessive love allows children to be their own persons, to own their own lives. Incest victims, however, learn that they are extensions of abusers. Even their bodies do not belong to them. This destroys victims’ ability to develop physical or emotional boundaries (where one person ends and someone else begins). Survivors frequently do not understand that all relationships have boundaries, where those boundaries should be, or how to establish them. Incest teaches children to be victims. Powerlessness leads to ‘learned helplessness’— paralysis, crippling passivity, and resignation.”

  The difference between PTSD and Complex PTSD is that one can get PTSD from one event and it is very troublesome but curable. Complex PTSD appears in cases where there is torture, captivity or imprisonment, long-term, repeated traumas, and often multiple perpetrators. It is much, much harder to cure, which annoys me greatly: I am accustomed to being able to solve my problems, and it infuriated me to learn I had an issue that I could not simply fix.

  During our time working together, Dr. Hirz did things which I would never assume any psychiatrist would do for anyone. Every single time I saw him, he gave me something to eat. My issues with food were severe, and if I avoided eating for long enough I would go into hypoglycemia. His feeding me was a way of demonstrating that I deserved to be alive, even if my mother and father had not fed me carefully or frequently or well.

  At the hospital, the doctors told me that the difference between me and those who are sicker than I am is that I have what is called an “observing ego.” I can see myself from an outside perspective: to recognize, as it were, when I am being an idiot, when I am not acting appropriately, even when I am having symptoms. It is a relief to be able to distinguish between “The world is ending and I am dying” and “I’m having a panic attack.”

  As might be expected, Dr. Hirz tried me on every SSRI known to man. None worked, for reasons that are more clear now than they were then: PTSD tends to disrupt the dopamine systems more than the serotonin system.

  Early on in my hospital stay I met another harpist, Rodney, who was in the room two doors down from mine. His mother showed and groomed dogs all over the country, and she offered to go get my harp for me because she had a dog show in Northern CA. Since Lisa was now talking to me and obviously wanted my approval, I managed to persuade her that it was a good idea to give me back my harp. I do not know how I spoke to Lisa about this calmly. She had alternated between threats about learning to play my harp herself and give it to other people with stories about the insurance not allowing it to be moved, but it was obvious she had kept it from me because she wanted to.

  Rodney’s mother told me about her encounter with my father. She knocked on my father’s door, and he answered wearing nothing but a towel. She told him she was there to pick up my harp. He said “Oh dear…” shut the door, and was gone for several minutes. She knocked again, and he answered the door still wearing only a towel. Again he said “Oh dear…” and disappeared for several minutes. Once more, they repeated the same performance. Eventually, my father said OK, let her in, and showed her where the harp was. They brought it down to me in the hospital, and I kept it there with me in my room.

  Then Lisa came to visit me. I was ambivalent and anxious about seeing her at all. I had been angrier with her for taking my harp than I had ever been about anything she had ever done to me, but I felt obligated to see her, because she had made it so I could be in the hospital to begin with.

  The visit was a disaster. Lisa told me that Mother had “molested” her too, and that she was no longer sexually involved with her. I found it hard to accept that Lisa had been a victim since she had been 26 when she came to live with us. She also told me that the reason she didn’t believe me when I turned my father in to the cops was that she couldn’t believe my dad “would be stupid enough to do that again.”

  She knew he had done it before, and she had done nothing. Of course she knew. She knew because I had told her. She knew because she acted atrociously on that knowledge, not by calling the cops, but by giving my father a private place to stay.

  Lisa mentioned the time my mother twisted the skin on the back of my hand with her fingernails and drew blood. Lisa demonstrated this on my hand, for what reason I cannot imagine. My doctors intervened and threw her out, forbidding her from ever returning to the hospital.

  Mother had given up on me becoming the famous opera singer she wanted. I was now 23, and Tracey Dahl, the youngest girl ever to win the Merola opera contest in San Francisco, was also 23. Since I could not beat her I would never be what Mother wanted. I decided I was going to become a professional harpist and play for weddings and parties.

  I was in the hospital for ten days, and then I was in what they called “partial hospital” for a few months afte
rwards. “Partial hospital” is where you live in your own home but come to the hospital during the day for therapy groups. Over time, seven days a week would be reduced to one, then none. While I was an inpatient, I had been given passes to attend my college classes, although I had had to reduce my schedule to 6 units that semester.

  While I was still in partial hospital, I was beginning to go to SCA events. I met Velma Cameron, a Celtic harpist and singer. I introduced myself to her and told her I was a beginner. I asked her to listen to me and tell me if she thought I could begin performing. I played and sang for her, and she told me that not only was I not a beginner, I could be a professional performer right now.

  I called a local tea shop and arranged for a performance. While I was there, a woman asked me to come and play at her home. I protested and said I only knew a few songs. She said she didn’t care, and hired me anyway. From that day forward, I had more harp work than I knew what to do with. When I was about to be discharged, the hospital hired me to perform an event there. I played Irish music for their reception on the concert harp, and I sang. My performances were very much like the music from “Celtic Woman,” except I played a concert harp.

  Chapter 36: An Opera and a Funeral (1991–1993)

  My father was a child molester

  His daughter was the lone protester

  She’s long since fled

  He’s jailed, now dead

  And now she weeps and plays the jester.

  —Moira Greyland

  While I was in the hospital, I was living in an apartment in El Toro by myself. I was such a mess of fears that it was impossible for me to turn off the lights at night, and any sound sent me into panic. I was doing some work as an extra in a few movies, which meant I met more people, including handsome men, and ran into more of my own propensity for stupid conduct: I decided to get a boyfriend. I realized that I was incapable of living alone, and if I persisted, I would probably end up having endless one night stands to stave off my terror and insomnia.

  I chose poorly. I chose a highly-intellectual harpist, who ended up being—guess what?—another sex addict. He wanted me to dress a certain way, very sexy with high, high heels and red lipstick. He believed, as some fetishists do, that women become sexually aroused from wearing high heels. I told him he would do better offering to rub the feet of women wearing high heels, because they hurt. Naturally, he could not endure this at all, and angrily denied that this was even a possibility.

  The problem with fetishism is that the other person does not exist. To him, I was not a woman but a prop: a mannequin or dressmaker’s dummy meant to look a certain way. I didn’t matter, my shoes mattered: Five-inch stiletto heels. My lipstick mattered: Bright red. At the heart what mattered to him was his fantasy, and I didn’t think there was any reason for me to be involved. Eventually, I left the shoes and the lipstick on the bed, and told him to leave me out of it.

  No doubt he would find much to be angry about with me, and less to forgive me for.

  Of course, that is not the whole story. I was a rotten girlfriend. I fell in love with another man, and naturally my liberal background did not instruct me in how very much men hate it when their girlfriends want two boyfriends. After all, polyamory and consent…but he didn’t consent, so I had to leave one—or both. So I left both.

  To be fair, I had no business trying to be in a relationship with one man, let alone two. What I really needed was a babysitter, not a boyfriend. I was consumed by my pain and tormented by flashbacks, and only out of the hospital because I was stable enough to care for myself, not because I was all better.

  Michael, the man I loved, had brought me to visit his parents, Richard and Maryellen Bancroft, and they remained in my life for the next few decades. I called them Mom and Dad, and I lay my continued health and sanity at their feet. God bless them both, my guardian angels. They lived on a ranch in Riverside with fifty elderly horses, and a flock of chickens and one of guinea hens and a few ducks.

  Richard wrote unpublished science fiction, modeling his favorite heroine, Lady Barbara, on me. It is from him that I learned that men can love women as daughters with their clothes on. I made him a pecan pie, and he wrote me a poem. He had been an electrical physicist and he had fought in Korea. He was aghast at the things my parents had been up to, and we would talk for hours and hours.

  Maryellen cooked, and taught me things. She was relentlessly cheerful, and worked all the time. She was still running irrigation and feeding the horses into her eighties. I say of her: “Maryellen doesn’t say ‘I love you.’ Maryellen holds you when you vomit.” And she did. She nursed me through a bout of rubella, and I can’t tell you how many flashbacks. She showed me decisively that love is what you do, not what you say. She had a fantastic sense of humor, though utterly without pretense or silliness. We would laugh and laugh… she met my mother on one occasion, and she certainly made an impression! She helped me learn to laugh at a lot of things which certainly are better laughed at than taken seriously.

  Even though I was a complete wash as a girlfriend, professionally I hit my stride. I got hired to play twice a week in a restaurant in Costa Mesa: Mother’s Market. My employers noticed that people would sit there holding hands and not eating by the hour when I sang, so they decided to have me only playing the harp. This meant I needed to learn two hours of instrumental harp music very quickly, and within two weeks I did. I began to get hired at other venues, and I became an established professional harpist in Southern CA.

  Meanwhile I was trying to mend fences with my family, no matter how stupid that sounds. I wrote to my father in prison before he died and offered to visit him. He wrote back to me and told me he prayed I would return to sanity, and realize the harm I had done to my family. He told me not to come if I was going to moralize at him. In utter fury, I wrote back and told him that I would never see him again. And I did not.

  Yes, the harm I had done to my family, as though molesting children was the most natural thing in the world! Hoped I would return to sanity, and repent… putting a felon in prison for destroying the life of not one but many children? Was I wrong for refusing to see him? Maybe. What could I possibly have accomplished by seeing him? Would he forgive me and love me again? No. Not even if I gave in and agreed with his ideas, which I would never do. Would I persuade him that he had harmed the batch of us? No. He staked his life on his Grand Vision, and he was not about to give it up for me.

  I transferred to the University of Redlands and continued studying harp and voice. My teacher, Patricia Gee, was a delight. She gave me Mozart concert arias, and had me accompany her on the harp when she sang. I had arrived on campus knowing nobody, and I auditioned for and got the lead in the school opera, The Merry Wives of Windsor. The performance went up in April of 1993. The show was amazing, and the papers called me “Outstanding!”

  Then everything went back to Hell. Right before the first rehearsal of Beethoven’s Ninth, I had a message from my mother telling me to call back right away. She said it was about my father.

  I felt my blood chill. I knew he was dead, even before I called her back.

  When I called, I told Marion I needed to make this a very short phone call because I had to get to rehearsal. She told me it could wait. I told her no, not even if it was about my father dying it couldn’t wait. She sputtered and said it was just a rumor and she didn’t know for sure and Richard Kihlstadius was probably wrong. I got off the phone, feeling devastated and in shock, and went to rehearsal. I told the director that my father had died, and there was no way I could do the show.

  That night, I dreamed I saw my father. I was sitting behind a black desk in an office with a window, and he was walking across the hallway in front of me. I saw him through the window. He was wearing one of his rainbow shirts and he was transfigured with heavenly light. I asked him if he was okay, and he said yes. I asked him if he was dead, and he said he was. He told me he had to see Yeshua. Suddenly I woke up, crying, but feeling at peace.

  My f
eelings of peace did not last. Later that morning, my mother confirmed his death. I went to Northern CA for his funeral. I was very apprehensive, and expected either shunning or a lynch mob. There were two services: one at St. Mark’s Episcopal in a little chapel, and one at Greyhaven. At the service at St. Mark’s, I borrowed Margaret’s Celtic harp, and I sang “Starry Starry Night” for him. To me, it fit both because of his artistic nature, and because I was convinced that he had committed suicide by ignoring his cancer. I never sang it again.

  Later I wrote this:

  Don’t touch me ’cause I’m not alive

  I’m not in a body, I’m not really here

  If I lie still enough I can get to that other place.

  But you keep disturbing me and saying “wake up! Wake up!”

  And my tears have run to the back of my neck.

  I don’t want to wake up. Ever.

  I’m trying to find my Father, have you seen him?

  See, we had a fight and he left before we could make up.

  He’s six feet tall with a halo of grey hair

  Looks like Santa—Wait—Don’t say that to me!

  Don’t say that he’s a pile of scattered ashes and bits of bone.

  I mean my Father! You can’t tell me that anyone

  Would throw him on the fire and roast him like a Christmas goose!

  I mean Walter, my Father! If I look hard enough I’m sure to find him.

  He’s just over the center divider, in the center of the noose,

  Over the cliff and behind the Valium,

  Under the razor and in front of the trigger.

  Please don’t let me find him.

  © 2003 Moira Stern