by V. J. Banis
Panic attacks occurred mostly when I was driving. When I feared I was lost, my mind would be flooded with confusion and terror, and I’d become temporarily immobilized. I’d feel impending doom, believing that I would die or be killed before I’d be able to find my way back home. I’d park the car and sit sobbing and terrified. Finally, I would pull myself together, retrace my steps, stop at a million gas stations for directions, and ultimately limp home.
One time, my eleven-year-old daughter, Robin, was with me. It was growing dark, and we were following my first husband, Tom, home from a water lily park in Maryland. At that time, we were new to Northern Virginia and were checking out the free parks.
Tom decided to take a different route home. I lost sight of him, and panicked; the park was not a safe place to be at night. I experienced all my emotions of being lost. I felt ashamed that Robin witnessed my terror. My eleven-year-old very calmly directed me back home. When I got home, I yelled and screamed and swore at my former husband.
Much of the time, emotional control was very difficult for me. I felt a lot of shame about that, too. With all the years of therapy, I was a little wiser, but the demons remained.
I attacked the diagnosis of “neurotic” from every angle I could think of. Naturally, I read every self-help book I could set my hands on; these often only succeeded in further confusing me.
* * * *
It slowly began to dawn on me, while in the support group, that I might have been experiencing survivor’s amnesia for the last forty-six years. My final therapist was Dr. Gay. Her response to one of my questions will stay in my mind forever. I told her, “I must not have really have been sexually abused as a child because I know I wasn’t the type kid who would put up with being treated that way. I know what a feisty kid I was. Besides, wouldn’t I remember that kind of abuse?”
Her response shook me to my core. “When a child it sexually abused day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and when the child has no recourse but to endure the sexual abuse; as a coping mechanism, the child will often “forget” the abuse immediately after it happens. The child does this in order to survive. The child grows and develops at some levels, but there is a lot the child misses out in the emotional development department.”
I felt stunned as I left Dr. Gay’s office. My head was buzzing and I felt weak, like I was going to faint. I knew what she said was true. It would explain so much about my life. God knows, I had plenty of arrested development. If I could remember more, I might, hopefully, make some sense out of the mess that was my life.
I had gotten to the point where I no longer set dates for when I was going to understand myself. Ultimately, I had become resigned to the belief that I would achieve understanding one day before I died. Now this, a wonderful break!
In my incest support group, some who remembered being sexually abused as older children began to discover memories of earlier abuse. From what I could consciously remember, I was certain my father had sexually abused Bobby and me. I remember the many times my father grabbed my younger brother’s crotch when Bobby attempted to leave the dinner table. The old man would taunt him and call him “little girl.” My mother had acted as if nothing unusual had happened. It would make sense; probably, many of us were sexually abused a lot younger than we remembered. After all, younger children are much easier to control than older children.
I pondered all this after a Thursday night support group meeting at the Lutheran church. As I walked out to my friend’s car, I looked at the cobblestones, in the churchyard parking lot. Questions raced through my mind. What about my mother? Was she in on the abuse? I knew I couldn’t leave a single stone unturned. Heaven knows, she and my father’s emotional development were arrested big time. It wouldn’t surprise me if they had both been abused.
I had done a lot of reading about the subconscious. Basically, everything that ever happened to us is recorded there. I decided I would try to hypnotize myself.
I was familiar with hypnotic relaxation tapes. They were great for relaxation. Why couldn’t I superimpose my questions over the words on the tape? Maybe I could get some answers.
That evening, after work, I put the tape in the recorder, and carefully began the process of relaxation. A man’s well-modulated voice said, “Lie down upon a comfortable surface and take a deep breath. Begin to relax. Close your eyes. Take another deep breath. Feel your toes on your right foot relax. Feel the ball of your right foot relax. Feel the arch of your right foot relax. You are breathing deeply. Feel the heel of your right foot relax.” Bit by bit, my body was completely relaxed. It was then I asked my first question. “How old was I when the sexual abuse began?”
I was shocked at what I saw. There on a table was a neatly folded pile of baby clothes. The abuse must have started when I was a baby. We had lived in Oakland, California for a few months after my birth. My parents had suddenly decided to move to the sticks; to Humboldt County. Did it have any relationship to the abuse?
I didn’t always get answers when I hypnotized myself. Sometimes I fell asleep. Once I put myself so far under I became aware I was making loud sucking sounds. I realized I was sucking a baby’s bottle. A picture would appear during hypnosis, in answer to my question. It was like watching a slide show. No matter what abuse I saw, I didn’t feel any pain. I was an observer only. My emotions would kick in a few days later.
After awhile, the constant self-hypnosis produced more information than I could make sense of. A friend directed me to a certified hypnotist. He explained he wasn’t going to put me under as far as I had previously gone, because I wouldn’t be able to tell him what I saw as I was seeing it.
The two of us worked together for about three months. After having struggled half a lifetime to understand what happened to me, I’d obtained answers. These answers pushed me forward.
Finally, I reached completion. I’d received what I had desperately longed for: self understanding. Later, I would find inner peace.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Eve Birch: Born in 1962 in Virginia, and currently a Wild and Wonderful West Virginian, Ms. Birch spent many years as a literacy volunteer, hospice worker and crisis counselor from Massachusetts to Missouri, Maryland and Washington DC, favoring the work with AIDS patients, abuse survivors, and addicts. Creating poetry and impromptu support groups wherever she lit a cigarette. After a sojourn into the deep woods of West Virginia for five years, where she honed and simplified her hunting and wood cutting skills, as well as her writing style, she finally decided to share her unique views with the rest of the world. “Listen to peoples’ stories, that is all most of us need.”
Sally Brinkmann: She was born in Washington, D.C., but has lived in the Berkeley Springs, West Virginia area for most of her life. She taught secondary English and Learning Disabilities for many years.
An award winning author, Sally has had short stories published in Tales of the Springs, I and II, and Tri Tales, sponsored by the Morgan Arts Council. She has also had two plays presented by the Morgan Arts Council Theater Group. Now working on her first novel, she continues to write about this area of West Virginia.
Calvert Estill: The author of numerous published short stories, essays and poems, Calvert holds a degree from the U.S. Military Academy and served for 10 years in the U. S. Air Force, as both a fighter pilot and a bomber pilot. Born in Charleston, West Virginia, he has traveled widely, living at various times in Mexico and Italy, and lives now in Martinsburg, West Virginia with his wife, June, and one lovely dog, Bichon.
Leigh Horne: Born near Memphis, Tennessee, Leigh Horne grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and the San Francisco Bay Area and lived for a few years abroad before moving to the suburbs of Washington, DC, then Baltimore, with stays in other places, including the Near East and Europe. She now lives in West Virginia, with her potter-architect husband, two dogs, three cats and a parrot.
After completing the Honors in Humanities Program at University of California, where she minored in theater
arts and majored in behavioral science, she completed a Master’s in Social Work, Magna Cum Laude, at University of Maryland, and proceeded to work at Johns Hopkins as a therapist before moving to the far, far-western suburbs of Washington, where she continues to work as a therapist and writer.
Early apprenticed to the muse, Leigh won awards in secondary school and college for her short fiction and plays. With motherhood and career taking the forefront early, she postponed her writing ambition, occasionally dashing off a few poems, and songs, which helped hone her abilities as a wordsmith. Now that the children are launched into marketing and law, she has returned to her first love, writing seriously and continuously since May, 2005.
With the encouragement of Joe McCabe, lately lamented friend and mentor, and the Martinsburg Library Critique Group, Leigh began to share her efforts this year. Her first short story, “The Wildwood Flounder” took a prize at the 2007 West Virginia Writers competition, in the category, Best Emerging Writer. Her second short story. “Pappy’s Angels” was published in The Main Artery. Her first play, a one-act, The Crazy Quilt, won a competition and was produced for the Piecework Festival sponsored by the Morgan Arts Council and the Mountain Arts Quilters’ Guild at the Ice House in Berkeley Springs in April, 2007.
Christine Kaye: Born in Newman, California, Christine holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Speech pathology and audiology from Cal. State University. She began writing in elementary school and has continued to do so throughout her life. The moderator of her local writers group in Martinsburg, West Virginia, she has had articles, stories and poems in various publications and anthologies.
Bev Rees: Born in New Jersey and a resident of West Virginia since 1988, Bev holds a bachelor degree from Maryville College, Maryville, Tennessee, and has done graduate work at the University of Arizona, and has taught elementary school in New Jersey, Tucson, Arizona, and on the Navajo Reservation.
Six years in India and two years in Nerja, Spain, and well as travel in Europe, Asia and the United States have given her a heightened interest in different cultures, and in the wide spectrum of the human condition, which she tries to reflect in her writing. She believes there is a common bond of humanity and even in the most remote, alien location on the planet, one could look into faces that reflect one’s own.
One of her monologues was published in Young Women’s Monologues; a textbook that is used in auditions for aspiring actresses, as well as in drama curricula.
Bev currently lives in Martinsburg with her artist husband, and a big black, very vocal cat.
Wanda Riggle: She was born in Oakland, California and grew up in several Northern California towns. Always longing to travel, formerly the wife of a career Naval Officer, she once rode in a submarine. She’s seen Canada, Mexico and every state in the union except Alaska.
She restlessly explored a number of occupations, including Nursing and Institutional Cooking. She attended Marymount University and majored in Interior Design, and worked several years as a custom decorator.
“I love writing the most, though, because it is a means through which I am able to fully express myself. It’s been very helpful to belong to the Martinsburg Library Writer’s Group. I’m also grateful to Survivors of Incest, Anonymous, an organization from which I learned volumes.”
Wanda has two grown children and lives with her husband, Fred, in Charles Town, West Virginia.
Trish Rudder: She raised her family in the Washington, D.C. area before moving to Berkeley Springs, W.Va.
She is a graduate of Antioch College with a B.A. in Communications.
She began writing short stories as a girl, and in the 1980s she wrote two full-length plays. White Lies was produced as a staged reading in 1986 through the Writer’s Center in Bethesda , Maryland; and Lucas, Are You Dead? was performed as a staged reading at the Ice House Theater in Berkeley Springs in the mid-1990s. The Azalea Quartet is her first novel.
She and her husband live in a passive solar home on Short Mountain. She is a reporter for the Herald-Mail newspaper and covers much of Morgan County.
Craig Tucker: (Editor’s Note: I had planned to cut this rather lengthy bio, but after reading it a second time, it seemed to me that it was practically a story in itself, and a pretty interesting one, so I decided to leave it much as it was. VJB)
I’m one of those people who wanted to live fast, die young, and leave a good-lookin’ résumé. Alas, still here, and ain’t so good lookin’.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1952. Mother was from Naples, Italy. Even though my Dad was Archie Bunker, I grew up by the sharp back-of-the-hand from Sister Mary Antonia and the rest of the Catholic Church. Can’t stand religious phonies, but still clutch dearly to my rosary as well as my favorite quote: “Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”—H.G. Wells.
First book read: Treasure Island, 1959. Last book read: Off Magazine Street, 2005
After I was kicked out of Catholic high school, I attended the University of Interstate-80. Guess if I filled in the blanks...I started out as a boring shoe salesman in Des Moines and ended up as an interesting lunatic in a Veteran’s Hospital nuthouse.
US Army: served as Recon (that’s scout to civilians types). Served near the Mekong River crossing between the countries Thailand and Laos; the DMZ in South Korea; and the Berlin Wall.
After the Army I landed a great job as a public relations man with a commodities firm, complete with car and expense account. My old man did that sort of work, and love Dad though I did, I feared his life. I quit that cushy job, sold my sports car, and hitchhiked to Louisiana, where I landed a spiritual gig working tugs and barges from Galveston, Texas thru Venice, Louisiana.
Rough-necked on oil rigs in Wyoming and the Gulf of Mexico; cut tobacco in Kentucky; cut sugar cane in Australia; worked salmon boats in Alaska; bartended in Downtown Chicago; drove a Land Cruiser and flat-bed truck in Outback Australia; sweated around as a bodyguard in Rio de Janeiro; hired on with a Chuck Norris film in the Philippines; and drove a taxicab in New York City (Jackie was one of my passengers).
List of Accomplishments:
a.) Hiked every step from the Caribbean coast of Colombia to Peru, via the Andes Mountains.
b.) Went AWOL during the war and rode an elephant taxi to the up-country and hung out with the opium people of the Golden Triangle.
c.) Successfully impersonated a soldier after my discharge and traveled world-wide for free with the US Air Force.
d.) Freaked out my first time in New York and bought a cheap round trip ticket to Venezuela, chucked the ticket away, and hitchhiked all the way to Alaska from Panama City, Panama. The great accomplishment: the Sandinistas stopped and forced me into a truck with their soldiers so an American could see how the other one-thirty-second live—but I made ’em laugh and I lived.—that was the accomplishment.
e.) Rescued two orphaned baby kangaroos that were mingling around their murdered mother when I found them - raised one of them; damned thing slept in a potato sack at camp.
f.) Raised a ferret and taught it to sneak into my girlfriend’s room and filch her jewelry.
g.) Survived a 10-hour stand-off with an Alaska grizzly bear growling around my campfire (kissed his brown butt; begged and whined and always, always called him Mr. Bear).
h.) Survived getting my own ass kicked by a baby elephant in the mean streets of Bangkok. (Actually I survived the humiliation and laughter of the Thai people seeing a big strong American GI lying flat on his back with Dumbo pinning my chest with his big fat foot.)
i.) Made friends with a sea otter in Valdez, Alaska—always fed his fat ass crab legs by the pier. Never saw Oscar again after the spill.
j.) Got off a plane—broke—at LAX, and walked every step to Garden Grove, California. The accomplishment...? Walked through the notorious Watts at night and my white-ass out-crazied them all (told ya—I vacation in VA nuthouses, work on planet earth).
In the end, I learned screenplay while at the VA (with a little help from the VA Hospital librari
an scrounging me screenplays from all over (first one: “Chinatown”—second: “Harold and Maude”), and am still learning.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
V. J. Banis is the critically acclaimed author (“the master’s touch in storytelling...”—Publishers Weekly) of more than 150 published books and numerous short stories in a career spanning nearly a half century. A native of Ohio and a longtime Californian, he lives and writes now in West Virginia’s beautiful Blue Ridge.
You can visit him at http://www.vjbanis.com
BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY VICTOR J. BANIS
The Astral: Till the Day I Die
Avalon
Charms, Spells, and Curses for the Millions
Color Him Gay: Being the Further Adventures of That Man from C.A.M.P.
The Curse of Bloodstone: A Gothic Novel of Terror
Darkwater: A Gothic Novel of Horror
The Devil’s Dance
Drag Thing; or, The Strange Tale of Jackle and Hyde
The Earth and All It Holds
The Gay Dogs: Being the Further Adventures of That Man from C.A.M.P.
The Gay Haunt
The Glass House
The Glass Painting: A Gothic Tale of Horror
Goodbye, My Lover
The Greek Boy
The Green Rolling Hills: Writings from West Virginia (editor)
Kenny’s Back
Life and Other Passing Moments: A Collection of Short Writings
The Lion’s Gate
Moon Garden
The Pot Thickens: Recipes from the Kitchens of Writers and Editors (editor)
San Antone
The Second Tijuana Bible Reader (editor)
Spine Intact, Some Creases: Remembrances of a Paperback Writer
Stranger at the Door: A Novel of Suspense
The Sword and the Rose: An Historical Novel