Blog > Thoughts > Other's Thoughts > Tom's Thoughts > More on The Handless Maiden
More on The Handless Maiden
Written by Tom on Wednesday, June 3, 2009
I had told Chloe about The Handless Maiden by Loranne Brown, and she eventually read it. I had been thinking of writing a post about it for quite a while, but I never managed to get past the first few lines. Then, Chloe published her post, The Handless Maiden. I’m not going to say much about the novel in this post, I’m not even trying to get to anything, this is just a bunch of reactions that I went through while reading Chloe’s post. And this is very personal.
Mariah, The Handless Maiden, is sexually abused and looses a hand as a consequence. This is all explained in the first few pages of the novel. The ressemblance with my own story stunned me, and got me on the path to understanding a little better my desire to loose my left hand and the relation with childhood sexual abuse. Today, I understand that I want people to know that I live with a disability. CSA made me disabled. It is not visible. My disability is not visible, and this is why I want there to be a stump at the end of my arm, for them all to know I’m living with disability. CSA is at worst a murder, at best a mutilation. I was mutilated as a child. I am an amputee. I am a cripple. I only have part of me left. I am in constant pain. And I try to live anyway, and they all ignore why I am so hard, they don’t understand and they blame me. The way such life experiences make you tough and hard comes up in the novel as well.
It’s not just about making my disability visible, however. "Like an animal caught in a trap I’d chewed off my own paw to win my freedom", Mariah writes. I have explained in earlier posts how the temporary loss of an arm had freed me from the abuse and how I was caught in the trap again when recovering my arm.
But ignoring the elephant in the room has always been natural to me. Since early childhood. I didn’t have a choice really, but to put up a face and repress my emotions and my revolt. That’s how I became a cripple. I use the word cripple deliberately. Because of the shame. Not so much my shame. It’s their shame, all them who cross the street, who look away.
What do they do to you when they induce you into sexual activities when you’re obviously not ready for it and not asking for it? What do they do to you when they are your teacher, your father, your mother, your relative, any trusted adult? What do they do to you when they steal your yet to blossom love from you for their own pleasure, for their own satisfaction? What do they do to you and to human kind in general when they cross that border that is one of the only safeguards a child or a youngster can rely on? I call it murder. And you’ll have to spend the rest of your life as a living dead.
People talk about their parents. Their families. Their dads and mums. Which parents? Can I say I have parents? Do I have a dad and a mum? I have had an appearence of a dad and mum as long as I could bear it. As long as I could put up with the sick game of making believe we were a perfect family. Then I had to amputate my dad and my mum from me because they were drawing me to the bottom like two dead weights and I couldn’t stay afloat anymore with them. Survival. I had to amputate them from me on my own, no assistance, no help, no support. The whole story is about survival. There is no life. From birth to death, there is only survival for me. Wonder when death will come and put an end to the suffering. I want to die. I have wanted to die since childhood. I have been living by the thought that there would be an end to this life, and to the associated ordeal. But if I can survive a minute longer, I’ll do my best to survive a minute longer. I attempted suicide once. I contemplated suicide countless times. I hurt myself many times. Sometimes, I’m so tired of the daily struggle to survive… There is no glory in survival. There is only pain.
These things don’t happen in normal families. These things happen in dysfunctional families. These things happen in families where individuals are not valued, especially if they are children. Emotional neglect or abuse. Perversity. Bullying. Harasment. Manipulation. Sexual abuse. Lies. Pain. Pain. Pain everywhere, in everyone of them. They believe that suffering pain and causing pain is normal, they believe it is good. They know no love. They know no compassion. Empathy doesn’t exist with them. You learn not to cry. You learn there is no help and no hope. You learn to hate yourself and self hatred becomes your best friend. You learn you are alone. You learn to survive. These things happen to people who were unfortunate enough to grow up in such sick families, even if the abuser is not a member of the family, even if the abused one isn’t a little kid any longer.
Survival.
Took me 38 years to understand that abuse isn’t the normal course of things. I was 38 when I heard for the first time in my life someone with authority state publicly that these things shouldn’t happen and should be punished.
I wish I could transpose Mariah’s story onto my own story. Then I would have shot at my father and destroyed my hand instead. Then my mother would have understood what was going on and would have taken action. But my mother still lives with my father. My mother still thinks her son has a duty to make her feel good – she never got around to thinking that she is the one who should have been protective to her children. She still believes that children are animated objects of sorts that only exist to make women feel good. Poor, despisable thing she is. I eventually stopped talking to her more than a year ago. Couldn’t stand her whinning any more. This is sad. But this amputation was a matter of survival.
My mother still lives with my father, and my father still lives happily, undisturbed, unchallenged, a perfect retired citizen. And society protects him by denying us, his victims (I’m not the only one who "benefited" from his sexual "favors"), the right to sue him (if you were born before 1966 and if you were more than 28 y. o., in this country, back when I understood what had happened to me, then the law said there is prescription; since 2004, the prescription has been extended by 10 years, but this still is not enough). Society protects him and his likes by denying or minimizing the very exitence of what these people do. I hate society. Society is trying to change, but there will have been so many lives destroyed while good society was taking time to change leisurely… Makes me sick in my stomach.
What is there about us, survivors of CSA, that makes us recoginze each other without a word? This has happened to me many times. I don’t know how it happened. It just happens. Still happens to me. Guys and girls. For instance, how come a guy I had spent a couple of hours with in a gay bar suddenly asked me "did your mother touch you when you were a kid?" as we were walking away in the night. Somehow, the scars must be perceptible to those who know about this kind of scar. Not easy. Not easy for me to show my scars. Not easy for me to hide them scars either. Not easy, not easy for us to recognize the limits, when the limit of the limits was trespassed once in our lives. Not easy to live by conventional limits. Survival. Daily struggle.
I can’t remember Mariah’s exact words when she prays for the music in her head not to stop ever. But I am with Mariah in her prayer. As long as there will be music in me, I’ll have a means of survival. Let the music be. Let songs be. Let them musicians save the world for me. If there were no musicians and no singers, would the world still exist? No, it wouldn’t. Music is the one thing that makes me think there is something good in human kind. I know I’m being unfair. And yet… I wish mankind stood up to shout their revolt.
Mariah looses a hand because of sexual abuse. But this is not the only BIID connection in the novel. I don’t want to give it away. I can’t say more. But when I read it, the BIID and devoteism stuff startled me. Nearly fell off my chair, when I read that paragraph on page 125. It turns up all of a sudden. And it is a theme throughout the novel. Very puzzling. Wonder where Loranne Brown got these ideas from… There is a debate in Mariah about BIID. And she evolves towards an answer as the story develops. Not the kind of answer I wanted to read, but I couldn’t deny there were sense in it.
I’ve been trying to think of something lighter to say to close this post, and I’ve found myself unable to. Oh, well… yet another sad Tom post… The sun goes on shining anyway! Thank you for reading this.
Tags: Amputation, Childhood sexual abuse, Family, The Handless Maiden
This entry appears in Tom's Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
11 Comments
The horrors they do, everyday, everywhere, in our societies, exist. This is hard to say and this is hard to hear. I have gotten to a point in my life where it is not possible for me to lie anymore. Not saying these things is a lie. Silence is a lie. I cannot go on living in lies. What you write, Chloe, about Alicia, or what Alicia writes through you, turns me inside out. What I wrote turned me inside out too while I was writing it. This is bloody hard. But it has to be said. Thank you for writing all this down.
Many victims of childhood horrors manage somehow to forget the horror. They go on living, unable to stand straight, but they avoid the giant gap in the middle of their lives. No one can blame them. I went through that too. They might live by uncommon, weird ways. They might become alcoholics or drug addicts. They might cause lots of harm to others without even knowing, even to their own children (I have a perfect example of that in my acquaintances) in their desperate attempt to deny and forget what happened to them.
Those who don’t forget, either because they can’t or by choice, are brave, they face the unbearable pain in them and they show it to the face of the world. This is brave. This is beautiful. This is the unbelievable strength that exists in human kind. I’m not saying they are heros. There is no glory in pain, and all this is not about glory. Love is the strength of human kind. To be able to choose to love human kind anyway, or to try to, is extraordinary. This is what I am faced with. I could go on hating everyone and saying they are not worth it. Or I could choose to try to love them anyway. Try. And fail, probably more often that not. But succeed at times too. I have a choice. This is what I get at, after reading you, Chloe and Alicia. You girls are right. You are beautiful and brave. Thank you :)))
Love,
Tom
After thought: I realize I engaged in this process a while ago, actually, even though I only understand it now. That was when I posted my first posts on this site. That was when I chose to show myself out there. This is great. This is a great place with great people. Thank you to all of you.
I have just started to read this book. Already I can see how well the author can recreate a child’s world and the way a child understands things. It is pricking my consciousness in ways I had long forgotten.
Thank you Tom – I’d not have found it on my own.
Every since I read Tom’s writing here I have been feeling that I wanted to talk a little more about my life and my past…but at the same time I have been a little embarrassed too as well. Yall are talking about serious abuse, very serious abuse…my abuse is child’s play…infact it probably shouldn’t even be called abuse when placed next to yall’s.
A few nights ago I said that I had made the mistake of deciding to organize a stack of papers (around 500 pages) that were print outs from 3 years ago of forum entries between me and other people in a old yahoo group from a very bad time in my life. Going threw these papers was very upsetting and I guess subconsciously knew that and that is why the papers just have stayed in that pile for so long untouched.
3 years ago…that’s when it kind of all began and ended in my life. After 6+ years of constant struggle, hurt, pain, arguing, debating, and other emotionally hurtful things between me and my parents and them even taking me prisoner for a time, simply because of me trying to live my life as who I saw myself as; my parents finally made the announcement to me, we’re kicking you out.
It wasn’t abruptly, I wasn’t striped necked and thrown out in the snow after having been beaten, it wasn’t anything so horrible as that. I came home to find that my parents had already eaten dinner, something that was unusual. After I finished eating my dinner alone my parents made the announcement. “You have 2 weeks to get a job, and a month to get out of our house.”
Everything kind of worked out. I managed to find a job…though I found one on the very last day of the 2-week time period. Finding a place to live…well I found a place, but they couldn’t have it ready until after my time period. My parents very reluctantly and very much showing their unhappiness of the circumstances let me stay the additional time until my place was ready. When the time came, my parents helped me pack my stuff and move. The furniture I was given wasn’t much, but it was the basics to the beginnings of life. Against my dad’s wishes my mother did take me shopping where she proceeded to buy me the necessary things to help me live in life like pots, pans, utensils, and other such things.
When they finally left, my dad’s basic words were, “I hope your happy with your life choices. Hopefully this false world you’ve created for yourself won’t crash down on you too hard, though I am sure you will probably end up hurting someone or in jail. In any case…stay in your own world and don’t ever come back to ours.” That was it…I didn’t hear from them or see them again for over a year, except for one time when my dad called and left me a voice massage that said, “I was just asked about you using a wheelchair at church. I better not ever have anyone ask me that again, I don’t care where it is…you better not ever take that thing out of your house again, and you better think long and hard before you take that thing into Church…you think God accepts you!”
I didn’t amputate myself from them…they amputated me from them. I was the arm with the ugly mole or the disfigured hand. I was not “normal” so they had to cast me away completely. They (the family) still wouldn’t be normal because of the missing arm and everyone would see that, but it wouldn’t be as bad as having people having to see that horrible looking arm.
I learned how to survive…how to live. I had to find the blood flow first (the money to sustain life), and then a new body (friends, coworkers, church people), and learn how to just…make it in the world alone. It took time to adjust and I have made a few mistakes over the 3 years that I have been on my own now.
After a year of being away and having not heard once (since that one bad time) from my family, suddenly one day, they showed up out of the blue. We had dinner together and during that dinner they made it very clear over the hours we were together that work had become very busy and that they wanted me to come back to work for the family business. I very reluctantly said yes, but mostly the only reason I did was because at that time I had already started putting in applications when me and the owner of the company I was working for weren’t getting along well at all. I thought, well…ok I work with the family for a while, get things settled out, when things get light for them again or I get fed up with working for them, I will just go somewhere else. That was 2 years ago now.
So in a way I have been reattached to my family, but to visualize it…there are tubes running between me and them with their blood flowing threw me, but I am not a part of their body again. I have pretty much a work relationship only with my family. We only talk about work stuff and we work together, but we never talk about our lives, what is going on personally, or what we do after work. I might eat with them on occasions, but usually they are like dinner meetings in a way and not really social family gatherings.
Ok, enough jabbering…get to the point. They don’t want to hear about all your crying stuff. You know they are always complaining about how much you write and how you always go on and on and how you can’t spell or write properly (yes Sir John).
As you will notice, I haven’t really spoken about abuse here, as I said in my opening paragraph, I kind of feel ashamed to talk about it because mine is baby crap compared to the absolute hell yall are speaking of. In ways, I guess I have repressed my memories of that time during my teenage years. I can remember parts of it, but then there are parts where I can remember it, but as I do suddenly my mind just blanks out and refuses to remember the bad parts. I have, in ways, gotten over that time in my life, I have accepted it, and I have moved on. My parents were messed up in their beliefs of the world and how they raised me growing up with the things they believed and taught. But I know that they were just doing what they believed was good for me. No, it wasn’t right, but in the end…I have to move on. I accept what has happened in my life…it’s part of me, but it’s the past.
As I have been going threw these pages of old writings two things have been happening. It is as if I am looking at scars on my skin, seeing them, remembering the pain…the hurt…and what inflicted them. Remembering the situations that happened. The memories that my mind had blanked out on. Each page holding more and more information from the past about how things were and what happened with my parents from one day to the next. The other thing that happened…all these people who now, I don’t even remember (all except for one…I won’t mention her though she might know who she is) who supported me, cared about me, tried to understand me, accepted me, and pushed me to be myself and to be free. All of these people…who are they…why don’t I remember any of them? They were all so nice to me…to me…a withered little baby who whined about everything who had been thrown away from the family body because I was so unacceptable. Why did they care about me? And why after all that…did I just forget these people and not become any of their friends? What happened between me and them?
“Music is the one thing that makes me think there is something good in human kind. I know I’m being unfair. And yet… I wish mankind stood up to shout their revolt.”
I agree with you, Tom. When a memory slips up, I think of music. A few months ago I called the hospital I had been sexually abused in to get my file. No, I was not planning on using the well-documented abuse for to hang the administration. I needed the file as a rememberence of where I had been… how much pain I had endured while the nurses looked the other way… I was never able to get the bittersweet pleasure and pain of having the abuser get the punishment… nor will I ever know how many others she may have hurt by my silence… I needed the files to remind me how far I had come through every form of I had suffered and the battles to stand… The answer I received was one of shock. My files had been destroyed three years earlier.
My mother was much like yours…. My father had a verbally abusive temper… Mom would sit back and say nothing… She was scared to speak up.
@Wheelman.
Seven years ago I was seeing a psychotherapist about some things that were troubling me. I told her that I felt guilty for even taking up her time because there were so many people who had problems greater than mine. She soon set me straight about this.
Your anguish is your anguish. That is what you have to deal with. Your anguish is not diminished because of your perception that someone else may have greater anguish. Paraplegia is not diminished by the fact that someone else has quadriplegia. There is no anguish that is not worthy of compassion.
Hey Tom,
I want you to know that this post moved me and I could find a lot of myself in this story. It feels as if your suffering and your story opened my eyes. I stumbled onto this website some days ago and was so relieved to see that there are people like me with crazy thoughts just as I know them from early childhood. Ever since I learned what paraplegia is, I wanted to have that. Fantasies about that came up again and again. I dreamed of having an accident, waking up in hospital and starting a new life. I was always successful in everything in these daydreams, though the fantasies became more and more realistic as I gew older. But still there was this longing…
I never dared to talk about that. It’s my biggest secret. When the fantasies came up last time, I talked to my best friend, but didn’t dare to tell him what the topic was. He just knew that “I am enjoying a situation others would not enjoy”. He gave me a psychological interpretation that hit the point: As a person who has experienced a traumatic childhood, these dreams are a symbol for my standing up against the world saying: Whatever you do to me, how much I may suffer, I will succeed, I will grow from that and I will even enjoy it.
So that was what I knew up to now. And your post moved something in me. I experienced abuse too in my childhood. It was not sexual, but the extent was so big that I showed psychological symptoms of sexual abuse when I came out of that. I had learned never to trust anybody.
When I read another post of you, I became upset because of the type of your BIID. A person close to me lost a hand in an accident and at first sight I couldn’t understand why you would ever wish for such a thing. But then I thought: So is my wish to be paraplegic any “better”? Any different? And I understood your saying that the amputation is the visible sign for others that something happened to you. Something was taken. Maybe that’s the point for me too. I like this way of seeing BIID. I think I can say about myself: I want the world to know I am “experienced”. It’s just like the cutting myself when I was a teenager. I saw these scars as signs of battles passed, although I hardly ever dared to show them to anybody. Maybe I just want to tell people: See, I have seen a lot of shitty stuff and I’m still standing here steady and strong. But if you could lend me a hand once and again, reach for something I can’t get myself, give me a push…. isn’t that symbolic?
…So this is my coming out of the closet, the first time ever for me to talk about this. I want you to know that I learned something from your story. You can be proud of that. I think that’s why we’re here.
8 On 27 August, 2009, Sean said:
Hey Karen! Thank you for coming out :) I’m glad you find some relief from reading Tom’s posts, and others. It is the reason this site exists :) Don’t be shy, now that you started, I hope to see you continue participating on the site :)
Thank you so much, Sean. This topic is moving me, and I have the feeling to find a lot of answers on this website.
Hi Karen,
First of all, sorry for letting you stand out there without a reply for so long. I was away from home on holidays and came back a few days ago.
Thank you for putting yourself out! And I’m glad my writing struck a chord with you, this is the whole point of sharing one’s thoughts. I hope you’ll write and share with others on this blog, it really helps relieve the inside pressure… well it did for me, although I went very restless for the first few weeks! Many others did, but eventually things calm down. Good thing for me is that I made several friends through the blog and met some of them in real life. What a relief to meet with like-minded people!
So, welcome, and feel free to write to me in private if you wish, or to share with everyone on the blog!
Tom
Hey Tom,
I would love to accept your offering of e-mailing to each other. [note from Sean: Email address removed, passed on to Tom] Thank you!!
…and besides. I told my best friend about my BIID some days ago. I decided not to make an entire blog entry abput this, because it was not very theatralic. I just scanned through this website and thought: I need to talk to someone, I really need to!! So I just called my best friend and asked him if I yould talk about the topic of my fantasies. He knows that I often fantasize about something others would not enjoy. He said: “Yeah, just go ahead.” And I said: “What? now?” But then I did it. I introduced the topic by explaining him BIID. Luckily, he had heard about this before. Then I said: “I like paraplegia.” He asked some questions about the kind of paraplegia I want, and about the episodes I like to go through in my mind over and over again. Then he said: “I know it’s very emotional for you, but really it’s no big deal. There are people with even more weird fantasies. Who knows what people think? You’re not hurting anyone, so it’s ok.”
It was SO relieving to talk about that after 13 years!!!! And to see that others don’t make a big deal about it. I had thought he would tell me I’m crazy and never talk to me again. But he understood. And accepted. It was so great. Now I have somebody to ask questions. This whole disability topic is moving me at the moment, and up to now I did not know who to ask what’s ok for dealing with it and what would be too much. Now I can compare the world in my head with reality (that’s what it feels like) and it is a great feeling.
Thanks to the people who contribute to this website. Your stories encouraged and inspired me.
Post your comments
© transabled.org - 1994-2012 - All Rights Reserved.
1 On 3 June, 2009, Chloe said:
Tom…
I was shaking with emotion by the time I had finished what you had written here. You took this to a depth I dared not go. I owe it to you and others to follow a little way:
For me, the topic is mostly about my partner; so I needed to ask her permission to divulge more. It is hard for me to ask. It is never far beneath the surface for her. She said yes:
My partner’s CSA ended one cold winter’s evening when she was sixteen. I’m not up for describing all the details; the rest can be filled in with imagination. I’ll preamble by saying that my partner’s abuse was not just sexual. She describes her childhood as not being without a day that she carried bruises and weals from a recent beating.
On that one ineradicable day there was ice on the ground, and a light snow falling. She was stripped completely naked, beaten, shoved out the front door, and told never to come back.
Tom, your analogy of amputation of your parents really hit me. Alicia had been amputated of everything except her bruised, bleeding, naked, freezing, abused body… I have to pause; this is not easy to write…
Alicia was not well prepared for the years of homelessness that followed. She’d had a very strict, sheltered, religious upbringing. Naive about the world, she became a feral animal, living in the woods, never far from starvation. Sometimes people were kind to her. Have you ever tried to feed a feral animal? They don’t know if you’re going to feed them or kill them.
Well, this is not the place for my partner’s biography. When I met Alicia there was still a lot of the feral animal in her. She told me that I had saved her from a life of misery and emotional torment. Would that I had such miraculous powers! No, I can’t cure a torment such as this. Alicia tells me that I am the only person who has ever loved her. Most people run when the feral animal turns to bite your hand, when the beast within is revealed. She knows I will never leave her. She knows my love is not diminished by the pain she feels… She knows that I NEED her.
Tom, what you said about music is amazing. Like Mariah, Alicia would not have survived without music.
The paragraph on page 125 is indeed very startling. I had to stop and read it through slowly several times. Later, the idea is developed in more psychological depth, and I was astonished that the author possessed such profound knowledge of my love for Alicia. Like you say, Loranne Brown seems to know a LOT of intimate things, about Alicia, about me, about my sister, about you.
Tom, you may sometimes feel alone, but I am thinking of you, and caring about you.
Hugs ~ Chloe