I read in Childview magazine about Rosemary. Rosemary was only twelve years old when soldiers from the Lord’s Resistance Army (they raid families in Uganda and train the children in Sudan) grabbed her from the road near her family’s home. Starved, beaten and forced to kill, she is among the children who escape, only to find their hearts are still at war. She says, “Many children just ate leaves. There was not enough water or food, so many died. I was so thirsty, I drank my own urine. ” Another girl, sixteen, says, “The rebels were murderous and merciless. I saw a young boy, with feet swollen from walking long distances, knifed to death because he was so weak and tired he could not walk anymore. I was forced to step on his dead body. I was warned that if I ever got tired or tried to escape, I would be treated in the same manner. ” In the magazine, there are drawings by those children, showing soldiers hacking children to death. So it would seem to me that my little pain is nothing.
I am beginning to be more and more certain that I have invented the whole thing. Why? Because, no matter how much I want to remember, I don’t. If the pain was so terrible that I erased it from my memory, then I must be the biggest coward on earth. Others, many others, children and adults alike, have gone through pain and still manage to smile like Rosemary does in Childview. What is my problem?
The drawings, the writings, even seeing little Micha’s smiling face floating in front of me in my mind’s eye after my session with Hell, the one when I wanted to get out of the wooden box so badly, cannot convince me anymore. My decision is that I invented the whole thing or that I’m chicken. Of course I would rather think I invented everything — who wants to be a coward?
I have come to the decision that if there are no memories by the time I go to Peru, then when I come back, addicted or not, I will drop my visits with Hell. Hopefully by then my bladder infection will finally be behind me. As of today, I know there is still something lurk-ing in my bladder; something that is making me unwell, but it is very stubborn and I can’t seem to be able to flush it out even by doubling my dosage of cranberry juice.
I will stop everything after I have finished the thirty-day cleanse and, if I still have the infection, then I will take antibiotics because I do not wish to be sick in Peru. I don’t think I can take the cranberry-juice pills through Peruvian customs.
Oh, dear God, why do I feel so much like crying? What is wrong with me? I wish I had never started this whole process — for the hundredth time. I must be back in Phase II, I feel so down. I keep repeat-ing to myself over and over again, “I am not afraid of the pain. I am a big girl now. I can take it. I am no longer afraid of the pain, so I can remember. ” But I don’t.
I Hate This!
Aug. 9, 1999 (NSA journal after adjustment) Today I felt…I was breathing; I was trying to breathe through that spot in the middle of my back. Saw images. One was an orange wheel with many spokes, almost like a slice of an orange. Also saw a blue hand at the left side. Is it Shiva who was blue? But no matter how hard I try, I can’t find that place where the pictures are. It frustrates me and makes me very sad. I must have made it all up. Seems to me that, otherwise, I should have remembered by now, or, which makes more sense, that I would not have forgotten.
Aug. 11, 1999 (NSA journal entry after adjustment) Today I felt…Stage Three says to acknowledge that space where I am stuck. I did. Little Micha wanted to be rocked. So I did.
Aug. 13, 1999 (NSA journal entry after adjustment) Today I felt…that it wasn’t me who felt, it was my body. I acknowledged every part that wished to talk and even my head that didn’t want to. That’s okay, I’ve ignored it the most, so it’s allowed to sulk.
Aug. 13, 1999 (Computer Journal)