Spiritual Abuse

When I was fifteen years old my mother told me that my brother was evil because I made him that way but that I was evil because satan made me that way. I honestly think now that I believed her. 100% 

I believed that I was evil because satan was inside of me. My family made me watch The Exorcist when I was 13 years old. They said it was a classic. I was a 13 year old catholic girl watching The Exorcist and I was told that it was based on true events. Of course I believed it was going to happen to me. I didn’t sleep well after that, not that I slept all that well before. But the nightmares about possession began then. They have continued for my entire life but they have just recently began to change for me. Years ago when I was struggling with the illness of a family member I was unhinged with fear and worry. I was barely sleeping, sweating through the sheets, and having wretched dreams about her every night. One night in particular I was having one of my demonic possession dreams. My dreams always flip-flopped from me being inside of my possessed body and feeling Satan inside of me to me being the person standing over me and performing the exorcism. This dream has haunted me my whole life. And I never won. The best I could do was to wake up from it screaming and then have to spend the rest of the night sleeping with the lights on. But this night is when it started to change for me; I was having the dream and I could see the possessed me sitting on a staircase distorted and evil from having satan inside of me but instead of me leaving myself to become someone else to perform the exorcism I could feel myself struggling from within the possessed body. I was fighting within myself to overpower satan. Then I started chanting, “FUCK YOU - YOU ARE NOT ME!" But satan still had my body so even though it was me saying it from within me, it was coming out of me with his voice. I kept chanting it. I could hear myself saying it and it rattled my ears. My husband later told me that he woke up to a sound that he had only heard in scary movies. A man’s demonic voice in the room with us. He knew that we were not alone and he jumped up to turn on the lights and that is when he saw me struggling with myself under the covers and could still hear the voice but was finally beginning to understand that it was coming from me. However, the lights turning on had woken me up and I stopped. We were both terrified; of me. Since that night though the dreams have changed. They occur less frequently and when they do occur I am winning and I am not as scared. And when I wake up from them I no longer need to turn on the lights; I can simply go back to sleep. I recently dreamt that I was waking up in my own bed. It felt real. I looked out through the bedroom and into the bathroom. There was a big black cat on the counter. I was very mad about that and trying to figure out why it was there. Then I realized... The cat was satan!! And I was not scared at all - I was angry and indignant. How dare you be in my house!? I ripped the covers off of myself and stomped into the bathroom. I started beating the cat with my fist like a hammer coming down on it and screaming exorcism chants, "In Jesus's name I command you to leave this house! God commands you! Jesus compels you!" And on I went. It didn't take long though. It actually all happened very fast. The cat literally shrank under my blows and chants. Then it disappeared completely. I thought to myself, "Look at yourself in the mirror!" So I put my face right next to the mirror, at first it was really hard to focus and to see myself. Then everything came into perfect clarity and I could see my own eyes inches away from me. I pulled in closer to the mirror and I scream-roared, like a lion! I had never felt more powerful in my whole life.

As a child I was constantly in "trouble" for something that I said, thought, or did had upset my mother again. She would rage on in her name calling...

Satan - Whore - Slut - Pricktease - Selfish - Lazy, on and on and on. But always I was a liar. 

And, sometimes I did lie. Usually I didn't though. I didn't lie because I was adamant in my refusal to submit myself to her. I didn't want to be to the person she wanted me to be and I tried hard to convince myself that I wasn't the terrible person that she told me that I was. 

But the lying. The being a liar. She would pull out the Bible and make me swear on it. "...And if I'm lying my Mom will die in her sleep as punishment." That is what she would make me swear. And it didn't matter if I was lying or telling the truth I felt tormented afterwards. She said I needed to tell her the truth in order for her not to die. And she knew what the truth was. So I felt compelled, I would wake her up in a hot panic in the middle of the night and confess the lie that I had told. Or I would wake her up in the middle of the night and confess the lie that I had not told. And tell her what she wanted to hear. But then I would worry because NOW I actually was lying. Or was I? Did she, as she said, "know the truth better than I did". Was I a "compulsive liar who didn't know the difference between a lie and the truth?" I know now that this is called Gaslighting. When someone makes you doubt your own reality. But as an EIGHT year old, no I did not understand. All I knew was that I was BAD and that because I was BAD, God was going to kill my mother in her sleep.