Identity...

What is identity?  Seriously ... what is it?

The rote answer I hear in my head is that my identity is in Christ.  But I honestly do not know what that means.  I mean, take my friend Mary, I think folk would call her a wife and a mother or maybe an author.  I think she would say those are her vocations.  I am not sure if she would say they were ... any of them ... her identity.

That scene in Battlestar Galactica where Starbuck is looking at her burnt body and screaming, "If that is her then who am I?"  Such pain and confusion there.

In counseling today, when I talked about being able to acknowledge that I do not believe that I am worth of love and belonging, I said that I cannot see how that can change.  How does one change what one believes about herself?  Her response was to say that my problem was two-fold:  One that I do not see how that can change and the other that I do not believe how the world sees me (maybe defines me ... I cannot remember) will change.  Last week, we had a bit of a difference of opinions on labels.

Or was it the week before?

I have had great trouble with the label of "sexual abuse victim" on my medical records.  Once, my life was in danger because I was being treated as "hysterical" instead of having an asthma attack (that pernicious coughing!).  I was treated quite poorly by the medical staff after the pit bull attack and they brought up that label.  As did every single neurologist I have seen here.  I am not a physical patient.  I am only a mental one.

Sometimes I want to scream:  A HISTORY OF SEXUAL ABUSE IS NOT MENTAL ILLNESS!
And I want to scream:  I AM NOT A VICTIM.  I AM A SURVIVOR.  WORDS MATTER!!!

SIGH.

I have battled that label, deeply regretting I ever told.  I would have, were it possible, to scrub it from my records.  In so very many ways, despite how unhealthy it would be for me, I wish with my whole being that I never told a soul.  About anything.

I believe I will never not be that label.  I was treated differently in church. I was treated differently at work (the one place it came out). I was treated differently in the medical community.  I was treated differently in the dating world.

It is hard—very, very, very hard—when you have weird and frightening physical symptoms and to be dismissed as crazy, as an hysterical female.  So very many folk with dysautonomia have encountered that countless times.  I am not alone in that experience.  The brutal part, to me, lies in hearing that what is wrong with me is that I are a sexual abuse victim.  No, actually, it's not.

Even though I have had three doctors in the past month all tell me that I am not crazy, that I am ill, I struggle not to drown in all those accusations, assignations, dismissals, neglect.  They speak the words I long to hear with my whole being and yet I still see myself as the label because that is what I know.

I think really there is a third thing.  I do not believe I am worthy of love and belonging.  I do not see how that can change.  Because ... because ... because I believe that psychologist who taught me, as a young girl, that I was born to serve men like him.  Because I believe I am a whore.

Oh, how I hate my body!
And the things done to it.

To be fair, I thought that way before I heard and felt the condemnation by those in my Christian world that I was no longer a virgin.  I was not pure.  Such an apt word to be flung over a girl who has felt dirty and ashamed her whole life.  Gosh it stuck good and well.

If one thing or three, how do I change what I think about myself, when what I have experienced reinforces those thoughts ... proved them?

I ordered Dr. Brown's book on her shame research.  I want to learn more about shame and the shame triggers that she discusses.  I don't know if it is asking too much of myself, but even if I cannot see a way to change what I believe about myself, fundamentally, I hope that I can learn enough to stop drowning in shame.

I am thankful ... deeply thankful ... that I have found this research on shame and found my way to the research on shame that my counselor wanted to explore.  Shame.  Trust.  Vulnerability.  I just wish I could add to that learning what identity is.