My House of Lies: Awakening from a Childhood of Sexual Abuse

As I was trying to understand my ability to dissociate, separating my mind from my body, I remembered my wedding at 21. I revealed to my Incest Survivor Group that my father tongue- kissed me during a slow dance. He picked up my chin, put his mouth on mine and jammed his tongue in my mouth, then whispered in my ear what a beautiful young lady I was. I remembered thinking in shocking disbelief, did he just do this?

I left my body where I was feeling, went up into my head to figure out if this was real or not real while it was taking place. I kept asking myself, he couldn’t have just done this, could he? So, I thought I had imagined it. This was one of my early memories of when a dissociation occurred. Trying to figure out what is real and what is unreal, getting lost in my thinking in order to leave the sensations of my body where it was taking place, feeling thoroughly confused and not trusting myself. When it was over, I didn’t have a clue what I felt or thought.

I remembered how often I tried to decipher reality from unreality.