Out of the Darkness Came Light

© 2012 by Susan Michaels. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/08/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6886-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6884-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-6885-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012916914

The front and back covers are original paintings by Susan Michaels.

Any people depicted in the pictures are models, and such images are

used for illustrative purposes only.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

To my son and my best friend . . .

Thank you for guiding me through

the darkness, so I could find

the light.

I would not have made it without you!

Thank you, Dr. Bob! You gave me the encouragement I needed to finish my book.

Everything in this book is true. Names have been changed or omitted to protect the innocent and the guilty.

This is a memoir and self-help book that contains a unique psychological theory. Though they are in truth with what I experienced; they may not coincide with what others depicted in the story experienced or remember. Therefore, in consideration of that fact and in the interest of protecting identities and privacy, I have changed relationships, names, cities, states, and businesses. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD

THE BEGINNING

SEX

NOT INSANE, BUT CLOSE TO IT

AN ETERNITY

FEAR

PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

PROTECTION . . . THE MAIN OBJECTIVE

ALCOHOL, ALCOHOLICS, AND ADDICTIONS

DATING AND MARRIAGE

MIRACLES IN THE MIDST OF SURVIVAL

ALL THINGS COME TO AN END EVENTUALLY

CELEBRATING MY LIFE?

EMDR

WHAT DOES ONE DO WITH SO MUCH ANGER?

REVELATIONS FROM DOING THE TWELVE-STEP PROGRAM

DEFINING WHO I AM

GETTING OUT OF MY OWN WAY

COMPLETING MYSELF AND BECOMING CALM

HOPE IN MY LIFE

LEARNING ABOUT SOME TYPES OF PEOPLE

DATING AGAIN . . .

GETTING RESPECT

GETTING OVER THE NEED FOR PROTECTION

MEMORIES AND THEIR TRIGGERS

THE RAMIFICATIONS OF BEING AN ABUSE VICTIM IN MONETARY TERMS

AN AMAZING TIME OF RECOVERY

MY UNIQUE THEORY

FORGIVENESS, TOLERANCE, AND ACCEPTANCE

CONCLUSION

QUICK HELP LISTS

QUOTES BY ALBERT EINSTEIN

FOREWORD

Where do I begin? I could start at the beginning of my life, or I could start when my life really began.

I call myself A Work in Progress. I am sixty-four years old and feel as if I have lived several lifetimes. I keep persevering to find answers to overcome my childhood. As I break through the labyrinth of problems connected to my childhood, I am finding the keys to changing the negative into the positive. These keys are providing me with a life filled with joy, fulfillment, and peace.

So much of my life was spent just trying to function as normally as I could. The truth is, I was mired with depression, fear, apprehension, shame, guilt, and self-hatred. Many times I thought about ending my life because of the extreme pain I was experiencing within my soul. I have held on for dear life looking for what I needed to feel better. I have held out hope in my heart that there were people and/or ideas that could help me get rid of my pain and help me to have a fulfilling life. Almost two years ago, I felt true joy for the first time. When I found the keys to recovery, amazing miracles began happening to me.

I believe it is possible for people to change. When I have been in groups speaking, I have spoken about these changes and how to make changes come about. I believe many people at these meetings where I spoke wanted a quick fix for their problems. It comes down to this. There is no quick fix. It is not easy to change. It takes a whole lot of dedication, courage, effort, and work to change. It takes great strength and a huge amount of honesty with one’s self to do so. I would suggest that you try just one or two ideas to begin with in this book. It is always important to start small. Do not over-whelm yourself.

I have written about my life with great hope that I can help others heal from the pain within their souls. I believe that there are many ideas in this book that will help a great number of people. No matter how old you are, I hope that you will achieve peace and have joy in your heart.

I have an amazing story to tell you of survival through sheer strength and will. The best news of all is that I finally made it. Today I live in peace!

THE BEGINNING

I was born in Northwest Indiana, about twenty miles outside of Chicago. The day I was born, my great-aunt took my father to a bookie to try to win money to pay for the hospital bill. My mother named me after her college roommate, who ended up as an alcoholic on Skid Row in Chicago. One might say that was an omen.

In hypnotherapy sixty-one years later, I was asked when was the safest time I could ever remember. I described what I saw while being hypnotized. The place I was in was cottony and fluffy. I didn’t feel alive, and I didn’t feel dead. I was at total peace and felt like I was floating. Then my therapist asked when was the next time I felt the safest in my life. I described it as a very dark place. I felt comfortable and warm. I could see light far in the distance.

As far as I can figure, I was describing the time before being conceived and then the time of being in my mother’s womb. I almost hit the floor when I realized what I had described! From the day I was born, I was not safe.

My father came out of World War II an alcoholic. He also was a narcissist and so much more, as I would find out in my life. He met my mother shortly after the war. They were married six months later. My father worked 30 hours a week, went to college and graduated, and built a house within a five-year time period. I was born 8 months after they married, followed by two sisters and a brother being born within those same five years. A younger sister was born four years after that.

I slept next to my parents’ bed for the first five years of my life in WWII housing, called a Quonset hut, and in a bedroom I shared with my parents at my grandparents’ home. Two of my siblings slept in my grandparents’ bedroom. Just shy of five years old, I moved into the house where I grew up, and the fourth child was born immediately after the move.

My father explained to me, as well as others, that he used to run experiments on me. One of his favorite experiments when I was very young was to give me several spoonfuls of ice cream. Then he would give me a teaspoonful of mayonnaise. He would always laugh about how much fun it was to do that to me. Many years later, I asked him why he did that. He said that he wanted to see how smart I was. As far as I can see, it just compounded my feelings that there was nothing I could depend on, and I was the focus of his sick jokes. That was the only experiment he ever talked about with me.

My mother was a narcissist, an alcoholic, a rageaholic, and had paranoid personality disorder. I was never aware that she had a sense of humor. She told us many times that she never wanted children and that it was my father who wanted us. Her jealousy was a huge problem. I have never met anyone in my whole life that was as jealous as my mother. Like a disease, it infected everything about her. She demanded that we cater to her every need. No matter how much was done for her, nothing really made her happy. Suspicions overwhelmed her even when something good was done for her.

My mother always thought that people were out to get her. She filled me with those same thoughts. I don’t know of any human beings alive or dead, that my mother ever trusted. She always was angry and bore heavy grudges against others. When I was happy, she got angrier. Happiness was a fleeting emotion in my childhood home. Emotion of any kind was something one did not want to show . . . in any form.

Frequently, I heard my parents yelling at the top of their lungs about not having enough money and many other issues. My home was tense and filled with anger.

Every other Saturday when my father was away from home working, my mother would make my four siblings and me sit down in the living room. This was another time when she raged, seethed, and spewed her unbelievable anger toward us. Her anger frightened us. She told us how horrible we were until we were crying uncontrollably. We were told again and again how disgusting we were. She added a litany of things to the ongoing assault with what we did to make her life a living hell. I am actually shocked she didn’t foam at the mouth. It was like a poison that flowed throughout her mind and body twenty-four hours a day. When we were crying hysterically and felt we wanted to die, that is when we were told to stop crying immediately and smile. I felt like I was going crazy when I was around my mother, because of how fast her moods changed and how insane she acted.

My mother pitted my brother, sisters, and me against each other all of the time. I heard her say things like this . . . Your brother hates you. What are you going to do about it? He really hates your guts! Then with one of my sisters, she would tell her, Your sister is so much thinner than you. You would think that you could be thinner and not look as bad as you do. When this sister tried to lose weight, all my mother did was push food at her. She continued to ridicule my sister, no matter what she did. Today this sister is morbidly obese.

When I was trying to make friends, my mother used to tell me horrible things about each friend I ever had. No person was good enough, and I was not to trust anyone. I couldn’t believe how she could make every human being seem like they were evil. In her mind, there was something about each person to be wary of. I fought hard to have friends and believe in my friends. But, in total contrast to that, she kept pushing me to meet any male to date in order to marry. I always felt she did not care if I was happy, as long as I got married and left home.

When my father got home from work every day, my mother would tell my father how horrible we had been. Much of the time she made up stories about us. Many times I got in trouble for not falling asleep during my naptime, which lasted until I was eight years old. Sometimes she waited until we were eating dinner, and then she informed my father of what she imagined we did to her. Along with being yelled at and degraded, we would have to get up from eating and get spanked. Then we were told to stop crying and eat immediately. I had real issues with food and eating from all of this.

When I was six years old, I was treated for malnutrition. I was so tiny and a nervous wreck. When I was in the first grade, my class went to the zoo. My mother sent me with a cloth handkerchief. I had chewed on the handkerchief so badly while at the zoo, it was the size of a half-dollar by the end of the trip. During my younger years, I chewed my fingernails down as low as they could go. Much of the time my fingers bled from doing that.

It was also around this age, my father would yell at me to get over by him right away because he was going to spank me. I would start crying and walk slowly to him. He would start laughing at me for being such a big baby and would say that he was just kidding. So after a few times of him doing the same thing, I started laughing when he yelled at me to get over by him. That is when he would really hit me hard. I never knew when I would be hit, be laughed at, or both.

I washed and dried dishes every day! While I was busy washing dishes, my father would come in the kitchen and consistently hit me with his hip really hard to knock me out of his way so he could throw trash away below the sink. It was just one more way he treated me like dirt.

There was nothing I could believe in or bank on. My parents made sure I felt immensely bad about who I was. I felt worthless. I was picked-on by my parents constantly, and they would let my sisters and my brother pick on me, also. I became a target for all of them, and felt like I wanted to die more and more as time went on. I felt like I was going crazy from all of the immense pain inside of me!

My father tried to convince me that I didn’t know what I was doing or saying most of the time. He tried to get others outside of the family to think I was mentally unstable. I did not express myself to my parents and to others in their presence. I made sure I was aware of how I looked every moment with my body language, my facial expressions, and the sound of my voice. I was caught in a vicious cycle. It wore me out to always be on guard. I suppose one could liken it to being in a war zone for many years. I always had to be aware of my surroundings. My immune system pretty much fell apart from the extreme anxiety I experienced.

At any given moment, while sitting down, I was yelled at for sitting. I jumped up practically every moment to ask what I could do to help. My mother, being a martyr, would just keep yelling and not say what she wanted. The washing machine and dryer were real points of contention while growing up. They were used as get-even tools. I bought clothing with my own babysitting money. My mother shrunk my clothes whenever it fit her mood. She was always angry that no one did the laundry, but she would not allow anyone do it other than herself.

Out of the blue, if life was ever calm, my mother would start yelling about things I did five months ago, five years ago, or whenever. She never forgot and never let anything go. Along with all of this came the words I always hated hearing . . . Stop being so sensitive! What’s wrong with you? You are always over-reacting to everything! In my home, I believe that no one was satisfied unless life was filled with drama, anguish, sadness, and fear.

I learned to watch my parents’ faces as a temperature guide of what was going to happen, but that was not foolproof. I learned to live outside of myself. For survival, I was willing to do almost anything to be safe. I learned to do things for everyone but me, in order to buy myself safety, which wasn’t really possible anyway. My primary focus was my parents. Body language, eye expression, mouth tension, and any swinging body part coming at me were my complete focus day in and day out. I can imagine that you understand that my life was a living hell in every way. But sadly, there was more.

SEX

As I grew up, I always had the feeling that more happened to me than I could remember. I felt something awful gnawing within myself.

I remember watching the movie, Sybil, when I was in my late twenties. It felt strangely familiar, but I had no idea why. I cried while watching the movie. I called up my grandmother and asked her where I slept when I was little. It was then that I found out that I was in a bed right next to my parents’ bed for almost the first five years of my life. That alone made me shiver.

Sex was something that enveloped the home I grew up in. Before dinner was started each night, liquor flowed in to the mouths of both of my parents for the entire evening. My father was usually trying to feel my mother up under the table as we ate. After dinner we all had to go into the living room to watch television. While watching television, my father would sit on the sofa saying sexual things to my mother. He would feel her up under her blouse and under her skirt. Then he would proceed to unbutton her blouse and undo her bra. If we got up to get away from them, my father would make us sit down and stay where we were. He made us sit just a couple of feet away and deal with all that was going on. He would yell things out to us during all of this, also. It just plain sickened me to have to see and listen to all of it.

My siblings and I had to