Two identities. One body. Chaos.

“He hit me. So he owned me”

“Without realizing it, I fought to keep my two worlds separated. Without ever knowing why, I made sure, whenever possible, that nothing passed between the compartmentalization I had created between the day child and the night child.”               -Marilyn Van Derbur, (sexually abused by her paternal parent; recalled the abuse when she was 24), from her memoir, Miss America By Day

I started writing a memoir several years ago, beginning with my earliest memories and moving forward chronologically. I wasn’t writing specifically about my trauma, but it was still painful. I figured this was because of the trauma behind the events in my childhood that I had continuous memories for, and so it would surely get easier as I moved into my adult life. Instead, the writing got even more difficult until it finally ground to a halt.

By then I had fairly extensive, though fragmented, knowledge of what had happened to me before 14. I knew I had been, among other things, sexually abused by my paternal parent and my brother Mike. I thought the abuse had stopped then and this had allowed me to grow up. Though I couldn’t know for sure.

In 2021, I thought and wrote about that Christmas break of 1977-78, and that got me wondering if there might have been sex then, too. It was plausible that just living at Rrg’s house for weeks had triggered my past, but by then I understood that amnesia had followed me into my adult life. So sexual abuse could have happened if anyone had still been interested in abusing me.

Then I wrote about how in August of 1978, Mike came to Oregon with his pickup truck and a friend to drive me back to our home town in the Midwest. So I wondered about that as well. I had written in my journal some months before—when Jill and I hitchhiked to San Francisco during spring break—that I was surprised I didn’t feel desperate being with someone for five days. How desperate must I have felt sitting in the cab of a pickup truck between my brother and his friend?

But who knows how I felt? As far as continuous memories go, I don’t actually remember being in that cab, save that they played loud music constantly and this became irritating. So I guess I do remember how I felt. Irritated.

I remember golden wheat fields in western Oregon and nothing else until we got to Yellowstone National Park. We camped, me sleeping in the back of the truck. I remember going for a walk around the campground after dark and getting lost for a while and anxious.

The next memory: Mike and I are now in the mountains of Colorado (his friend is gone), and we go for an overnight backpacking trip. I remember there was a man near our campsite who had brought pork chops with him and was cooking them. I wondered if it was maybe dangerous to carry and eat unrefrigerated meat, but decided it wasn’t a long hike, so probably it was okay.

Mike took a picture of me standing at the campsite. I don’t remember posing; he sent me the picture. I’m wearing jeans, an old green wool sweater, and heavy hiking boots.

When we returned to his truck, I felt queasy. Mike stopped at a convenience store and asked me if I wanted anything. I said chocolate milk. He brought me a quart of chocolate milk and I slowly consumed it.

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I have no other continuous memories of that trip. But in 2021, having gotten to this point in my writing, I realized that much about it was odd. Knowing that Mike had sexually abused me earlier and I had amnesia for it, I knew there might have been sex then, too. But is it abuse if you’re an adult? It felt dishonest to write about it, because I was implying that something happened without being able to state that something happened. It felt even more dishonest to not write about it.

I was doing ketamine journeys in 2021. Most of my psychedelic experiences (using ketamine, mushrooms or MDMA) are about my childhood trauma in some way, but only some contain clear episodic memories. In August, 2021, while thinking about August,1978, I had a ketamine journey in which I remembered that trip and, specifically, being in the cab of my brother’s pickup truck. I had a clear visual image of the interior, the dashboard, and I remembered that while we were driving there was sex: hands on my thigh, under my shorts. At some point—in Wyoming? In Colorado?—there was sexual intercourse (at night?), and I opened my mouth, apparently to give oral sex.

That particular journey was rich with insights and statements which I spoke aloud, recorded, and listened to afterwards—something I always do. I did my best to integrate the knowledge, but it faded. I forgot the details. I wondered if it had really been about the 1978 trip. Mike had had his pickup for years. Maybe it was about an earlier incident.

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If this is confusing to read, I’m sorry, I’ve made it as clear as I can. It’s inherently confusing, I believe, and disturbing, so very achingly disturbing. If I actually had sex of any kind during that visit home at Christmas break or on that trip, why hadn’t I recalled it already? Surely what happens as an adult is not so deeply buried as what happens when you’re eight.

And how horrific that I would have sex with a member of my family as an adult. That I would not just allow that, but would—it was clear—actually participate in the sex. It felt incredible.

(Though, I knew by then that I had participated in the sex from the beginning. It’s often assumed that sexual abuse is sex imposed on a child, but commonly a small child is manipulated or coerced into performing sexual acts like kissing, touching, oral sex.)

And why would I doubt after the ketamine journey that it had actually happened when I was 18? And why would I forget the details of the ketamine journey?

And really, how could my brother dare to do that? Surely he couldn’t risk what I might do as an adult. Which made me think that it couldn’t have happened.

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So one thing at a time.

It is not the case that one remembers the most recent trauma first, and then goes backward in time. Traumatic memory isn’t buried in layers like that. Rather, amnesia is more like a set of compartments protected by walls.

Then consider the memory itself: if it’s recorded as a complete episodic memory it’s likely to be more accessible than if it consists of fragments. Jim Hopper, who writes extensively about dissociative amnesia on his website, tells us about memories that don’t seem like memories in a segment entitled “Fragmentary Memories May Be It”:

Some people will primarily ‘remember’ what happened with thoughts and behaviors that involve re-living responses to experiences that they cannot (fully) remember as episodic memories. Some will only suspect that they had such experiences because they are having what may be fragmentary episodic, implicit, and procedural memories.

As Hopper explains, the condition or type of your memories depends on your state (of mind) when the experience happened:

Such confusing memories are more likely if the experiences happened when one was very young (before age 5), drugged in some way, in a state of intense fear, emotionally numb or ‘dissociated.’ Each of these can prevent experiences from being fully encoded by the brain systems that support episodic memory.

I may have been drugged (alcohol, most likely), and I may have been “in a state of intense fear,” though probably that fear was suppressed. Most definitely, I dissociated during that trip and probably during much of the time I stayed at Rrg’s house at Christmas break. That is, I was in a trance or altered state. If you experience something in an altered state, you may only be able to recall it when you’re in an altered state. This is called “state-dependent” learning or memory.

In my case, I probably dissociated more strongly as I got older since I was traumatized repeatedly over the years, the worst of it happening when I was 12 and 13. By the time I was 18, the walls were most likely stronger than when I was eight, my memories more fragmented, and my psyche more thoroughly split between my traumatized self and my more-or-less normal self.

This answers the question: How could my brother dare? He could dare because he knew how I was. During the ketamine journey I hear him tell his friend:

“She doesn’t remember anything sexual.” And later: “She forgets sex, any sex, so you can do what you want to her, do whatever you want to her.”

And in the ketamine journey, I say, apparently explaining to myself:

What can I see? Laid out like a piece of meat. A piece of meat. Mm. . . . Amnesia. Amnesia. (Exhalation) For all that. (Drawn out) Here is the core of me.

This extreme dissociation also answers the question: how could I remember during that ketamine journey and doubt afterwards? Psychedelic journeys are altered states like dreams and trances. Once they’re over, the walls become more solid again. It can be difficult to remember even what happens during any psychedelic journey (which is why I make a point of speaking and recording during my journeys) and to believe. Understand: the purpose of dissociation is to both not remember and to not believe. This is how it’s been for me with every instance of recalling trauma from my past. In every single case, I have recalled, at least partially forgotten, and then at least partially disbelieved.

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Finally, the most disturbing question: How could I voluntarily engage in sex with my brother and his friend? Because it’s clear that I did. In the ketamine journey, I didn’t just lie there. I didn’t curl up as tightly as I could to resist, like Marilyn Van Buren did. I acted. It’s astonishing and horrifying to my more-or-less normal self. And probably to almost anyone who might have observed or heard about it who knew what a reserved, bookish, plainly-dressed person I was.

I say in the ketamine journey “this is the core of me” and by that I seem to mean that I was someone who had sex with whoever knew how to call up my traumatized self. I would not only submit, I would do whatever they wanted. But why? An adult doesn’t need to keep dissociating. An adult doesn’t need to submit. An adult can walk away, fight back, get help. It was my choice to go home for Christmas and stay at Rrg’s house. It was my choice to go with Mike and to engage in sex with him and his friend.

I expect you can see this is all wrong. There is no line separating the adult from the child. There is no point at which our upbringing and the demands of others—let alone any terrorism we’ve endured—stop affecting us and we become free, autonomous beings. If you believe otherwise, you’ve been misinformed as to what it means to be an adult. To be human.

As is always the case, I am not alone in my horror at my own behavior. Apparently, most who are sexually abused are horrified by their own behavior whether they perform or they freeze—or by their sexual desire. When Marilyn Van Derbur—sexually abused by her paternal parent from 5 to 18—came out publicly about her abuse (around the age of 50), one of the greatest barriers she had to overcome was her violent contempt for herself:

Although the words were difficult to speak, I gave information that I knew would cause some people to judge me harshly. I knew “I was five years old” was a safe answer. The response to that was, “Oh, you were only five. A precious little child. I’m so sorry.” But no one wanted to hear, “18.” I knew exactly how people felt about that because that’s the way I felt about it too. . . I would sob it, cry it, rage it, “I was 18. I was 5' 8” and 130 pounds.” And then I would crumble into heaving sobs. “Why couldn’t I stop him?”

Her husband responded to her anguish by saying: “Because, like Pavlov’s dogs, you had been conditioned as a child.”

Yes, though the word ‘conditioned” only begins to describe what victims of incest endure.

Marilyn Van Derbur called her two selves the night child and the day child because her paternal parent came to her bedroom, abusing her only at night. In the day, she dissociated all that and led a normal life. I was abused in the afternoons as well as at night and by more people, but I also split into two selves.

The first sex I suspected (in my early forties) and eventually remembered (at 53) was sex with Rrg starting at six or eight. I think these memories, though dissociated, were the most accessible because I wasn’t “in a state of intense fear” during these experiences. Fragments of memories indicate that I was eager to do what he wanted, to win his attention and approval, what all children want when they are young. One thing that makes incest by a parent worse (in many cases) than abuse by others is this love and desire to please. Just as we might do our homework or try to look nice or clean our room because we’re wired to love and obey, so we might follow instructions to perform sexual acts and also to keep it secret, all the while believing that we are being good.

That seems to be how it was for me for a while. At first the grooming, the seduction, the bribes. Though even then I was wetting my bed and getting headaches and side aches, probably because of the horrible dissonance between obeying/loving Billie and obeying/loving Rrg. And the sexual drive stimulated too soon, unmanageable. And the dissonance turning into hate and rage that couldn’t be expressed. Ultimately there were threats, beatings, by both Billie and Rrg.

At some point Mike started to sexually abuse me. I don’t think there was ever a point with him where I was willing, but I may have believed it was inevitable. He was much stronger and by then I knew I couldn’t go to Billie or anyone else for help. So he easily, and it seems entirely, dominated me.

And this, too, came up in the 2021 ketamine journey. Near the end I say:

Pain in my left cheek. Yellow, yellow. Wheat fields? I feel my hands on my belly. Why is there this pain in my left cheek? I touch my cheek. The bone. Aah. (Moan) He hit me there once, so he owned me. He hit me. So he owned me.

You can forget anything.

There it is. “He owned me.” He had been hitting and otherwise terrorizing me all my life. He knew he could tell me he was picking me up in Oregon and I would obey. He knew how to reliably guide me into sex and amnesia for the sex.

My sisters and Rgh also “owned” me both when I was a child and as an adult, because they, also, had terrorized me. They could tell me to do things, and I obeyed, always coming up with some other reason for my behavior, having no idea I was obeying.

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We look at others who are dysfunctional, promiscuous, violent or addicted and judge their behavior harshly, not understanding what makes them do what they do. We say they have free will, it’s their choice, it’s their responsibility.

And we do this with ourselves. When I was 18, how did I understand the fact that I was participating in sex? Was I shocked and confused, or was it all familiar? What is it like to hear someone who knows you say: “She forgets sex, any sex, so you can do what you want to her, do whatever you want to her?”

Did I remember then that he had hit, dominated, and threatened me many many times? It seems likely that I didn’t when I was 18, because I say “You can forget anything.” That is, not just sex but physical abuse as well.

And what about Mike? It’s likely he too was abused or knew about Rrg abusing me and our sisters. He learned from Rgh and others that his role as a male was to dominate, that females exist to meet the needs of males. We are wired to do that, to imitate, to learn how to behave and how to think from our parents and others. Especially we emulate the same-sex adults. But most likely he had no idea that his behavior was a direct result of having Rgh as a model. He must have thought of his behavior as normal and freely chosen.

Perhaps he—and others in my family—even split into two parts like Marylin Van Derbur and I did. Why does this happen?

For me, it wasn’t enough just to repress/dissociate memories of what happened. I had to form into two personalities or identities. I needed patterns of actions (procedural memories) and a set of beliefs (semantic memories) to cope with the sexual demands of the males in my family, the violence inevitably surrounding those demands, and the silence demanded by every person in my family. And I needed, of course, very different behaviors, beliefs, and values in order to build the rest of my life.

Two sets of memories were absolutely necessary.

Two identities. One body. Chaos.

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See my Resources page for links to more information about dissociative amnesia.