October Surprise

Once again synchronicity has led me to an answer...a body memory mystery I recall having since my 20s. However, in my 20s, I was completely dissociative in that insiders were trained to keep me from noticing too much of anything.

I believe I've shared about my body memory of cigarette burns in my genital area which I've tried to resolve many times in therapy because of the pain. The burns came up first as a slightly sore bump and rapidly spread from bump into the form of many tiny bumps with fiery burning for 24-48 hours.

Several years ago I became aware that prior to cigarette burns appearing, my right groin and down into my right upper thigh become sore. If men are reading this, excuse the body references. Initially it would feel like undies were too tight and I'd tug at the elastic that hit the groin area on the right. Or I assumed my jeans were cutting into me. Possibly in my 30s but definitely by my 40s, I stopped wearing jeans believing they were causing the problem. Apparently I dissociated any blisters or burning.

After memories began in my mid-40s, I was very aware of the blisters but didn't connect them to cigarette burns until later in my healing. I came to know it as a short-lived painful time. I knew the burns were a part of very early abuse...something that would traumatize a baby who only knew sounds and sensations.

The burns have become quite infrequent. Am not recalling the last time but possibly once in the past year. Last night I was tugging at my undies thinking not all the detergent had washed out in the laundry (a common first thought). By bed time, I was commando and even my numbing cream for my painful surgery scars didn't work.

Back up to yesterday when I participated in a discussion on Copperstrings about communicating with body parts in pain or bothersome. Ask it would it would like to say. This was a very effective technique when I was a therapist. People would blurt out the most amazing answers where they suddenly understood what their specific pain related to. I don't recall ever having done that for myself. I have a part (wisdom of the body) who I've come to rely on to tell me. But this groin pain is such a mystery.

Logically I imagined the upper thigh and groin pain was someone who held my leg tightly while another burned with a cigarette likely repeating "messages" that would become part of the belief system they were building for me.

One more piece of the puzzle is my discovery of a butterfly shape seared into my labia. It was not a tattoo. It was branding with a branding iron. Possibly my left leg was immobilized while someone pulled my right leg roughly to the side wide enough to allow for the branding.

In conjunction with the groin pain that arose last night, my right jaw bone (joint?) has been very sore. Pressure to keep me silent during the branding?

This morning I woke up with a very wide area of my right inner thigh too sore to touch. Am sure the date plays a role because I have terrifying memory of my first Halloween. I would have been 11 months old. While placing special cream on the sore area earlier, I recalled what I wrote yesterday and asked my thigh what it wanted to say. "Get that iron away from me!"

The long sought after answer. At 11 months of age, that butterfly was made a part of my being. A symbol to others I was officially part of the government program. Perhaps the cigarette burns were reminders of that pain and additions to the message that I belonged to them.

So many puzzle pieces here. Many years of questions and painful days. Am praying this one time this traditionally precursor pain to the blisters is all I need to know. I have my answer to when and how that tattoo came to be placed on me.

Validation is a bitch.

21/111 Scraps by grace2244 on Polyvore.com