Invisible

“I’m gonna tell you something that will sound stupid or retarded.”

I had just said something to him that he had to check to see if I was rejecting him.

This sentence is often followed by something inappropriate. So I sighed and was wary.

He was sodomized at gunpoint as a child by his father’s friend.

“When he raped me first, he was violent. The second time it was not. I just thought this was how adults worked. Then he didn’t come back after that. I thought I had done something wrong.”

And at age eight, love and pain and fear became intertwined. He had been rejected by his rapist. His parents had already disengaged from him. Love and hate become the same. Pain and love are the same. He is bad, and doesn’t deserve love. He told his mom about the rape. She slapped him and called him a liar. The man was incarcerated two years later for raping his children. His mother was too high to remember this conversation.

And for him, hate and love and rage and rejection become the same. Safety is something beyond the pale, nothing that you can find a base for. You are bad. The only person who pays attention to you, you have driven away. You are tiny, young, and fragile and nobody loves you truly.

I cried. And it made him frantic. Hurting me is not allowed. But I need to take the pain from him somehow, and help him find something more meaningful than hate = love. If hate and love are the same thing, all you can do is immerse yourself in drugs.

My husband is not happy. I came home tonight crying. He doesn’t think my job should take this toll. He wants me to walk away. Of course this causes me more pain. This guy comes to me; he tells me things in ways he has not done before. My job is to take it, process it and release it to the world at large. And my job is not to condemn him for his confusion. My calling is to take his pain, and continue to care. He has little idea what love without pain is about. So it costs me something. So what?

Each time he comes to my office or I see him on the yard, he is more present. This is what I get back. I want to be a healer. He is, for the first time maybe in his life, looking at something different. He and I have taken him there. How is this not worth it?

Let me explain what I don’t think he evens gets.

He has two modes, due to the abuse. One is invisible. The new psych I am training still can’t tell who he is. When he waits in the hallway for our sessions, he hunkers down in the corner and practices invisibility. He becomes tiny. But he has this berserker presence when he feels threatened. I only sense this as he has not done it to me. When you are terrorized as a child you go one of two ways. One is to become victim; one is to become the aggressor. Many of these people become abusers themselves. He has had enough self, enough of his shiny bit that he has not gone to the abuser. But there are moments when somebody threatens what he cherishes that he becomes big. He gets at least four inches taller; his hands are big enough to crush my skull. He can dominate most of the men in the facility, but I am not sure he knows it. He should be somebody who worries me, but I know my biggest worry is him doing something out of control to protect me.

Okay, my real biggest worry is he will become so overwhelmed by the vulnerability of what we are doing he will explode it. But the other thing he is getting is the possibilities of love without pain. And of course, the pain is what he is trying to erase with the drugs. And now I am spinning.

But he is not. He has found something to anchor him. He is moving forward, and I watch with pride and love.