Body Intact, Soul Destroyed

by Barbara (a personal essay & book review)

Inside the doors are sealed to love
Inside my heart is sleeping
Inside the fingers of my glove
Inside the bones of my right hand
Inside it's colder than the stars
Inside the dogs are weeping
Inside the circus of the wind
Inside the clocks are filled with sand
Inside he'll never hurt me
Inside the winter's creeping
Inside the compass of the night
Inside the folding of the land
Outside the stars are turning
Outside the world's still burning*

I was lucky enough to get on the waiting list for a copy of STALKING THE SOUL: Emotional Abuse and the Erosion of Identity about 4 years ago. I had to wait until a copy could be found because it was out of print then.

Personally, it was one of the most galvanizing things I have read. It didn't just take a clinical look at what emotional abuse does to someone on the surface. It talked a great deal about the erosion of the spirit. The shredding of self that someone, like myself, who is a long term victim, experiences. Even touching on how our souls have so many holes in it they are like chum in shark-infested waters to emotional & psychological predators.

Dr. Maxine Harris says:

The perverse abuser is one who is intent on the destruction of another. He or she manipulates, distorts, and controls another human being without feeling guilt or regret. Hirigoyen asks the reader to consider the problem of human evil, that force which allows one person to purposefully murder the soul and drain the life energy of another.

...many participants confide that the most damaging abuse they have endured has been emotional. Emotional abuse has robbed them of a sense of hopefulness about the future and has made them doubt that they have any worthwhile contribution to make or any right to go on living and asking for help. Clinicians who have questioned whether emotional abuse could possibly be as damaging as physical or sexual assault need only read of the human devastation detailed in 'Stalking the Soul.'
~~~~

"Inside my head's a box of stars I never dared to open
Inside the wounded hide their scars, inside this lonesome sparrow's fall
Inside the songs of our defeat, they sing of treaties broken
Inside this army's in retreat, we hide beneath the thunder's call
Outside the rain keeps falling
Outside the drums are calling
Outside the flood won't wait
Outside they're hammering down the gate*

These are the empathy-devoid predators who say their victims "knew what they were getting into," or "they played the game to" or that the victims "led them on," or "it's all [the victim's] fault" or "it was just meaningless." I've seen grown adults call their victims "stupid", "fat", "disgusting", "smelly", "dirty" and names that fourth graders would think twice about. Usually they call their victims these names after they have been exposed for their abuse and lying. Additionally, that their victims somehow have no right to their anger or outrage at being used and abused.
(What's really interesting is to watch these abusers attempt to convince a judge in court; so enamored are they with the belief that their words can somehow create a different reality. Unfortunately they are very successful convincing family and 'friends.')

These abusers refuse steadfastly, to apologize, make amends or somehow acknowledge their predation - harping instead that their victims are simply 'scorned' or 'obsessed' and can't "let go and move on." These abusers stalk or cyberstalk their victims, then turn it around and tell their friends "they are stalking ME!" They even get their friends into their hate & smear campaigns by painting THEMSELVES as the victims with revisionist and whitewashed history (that classicly leaves out key pieces of information about the reality of their abuse).

Guess what? Just 'moving on' isn't possible when you have sliced & diced someone's spirit into oblivion. In some ways it is almost akin to Holocaust denial. These abusers just don't want ANY accountability in their lives. None. You are an object - they want to get on to the next object while preserving their image as a "good person."

To victims who feel ready to comprehend the complexity and depth of this book, I highly recommend it. It can, however, be deeply triggering. It is a profound look into the effects of the evil and perversity of destructive narcissism & psychopathy.

Love is the child of an endless war
Love is an open wound still raw
Love is a shameless banner unfurled
Love's an explosion,
Love is the fire of the world
Love is a violent star
A tide of destruction
Love is an angry scar
A violation, a mutilation, capitulation, love is annihilation.

Inside the failures of the light, the night is wrapped around me
Inside my eyes deny their sight, you'd never find me in this place
Inside we're hidden from the moonlight, we shift between the shadows
Inside the compass of the night, inside the memory of your face*

On that note the late Kathy Krajco goes, as always, right to the heart of this 'evil among us.'

PERVERSITY IS ENDLESS
by Kathy Krajco
Thanks to [person] who supplied the name of that french author I mentioned in my last post: Marie-France-Hirigoyen. There is an English edition of one of her books entitled, Stalking the Soul.

And here is a review.

I agree with both the reviewer and with the author. How can that be? I agree that we are poorly armed, but I really don't think we need a clockwork orange run by social engineers, either. I think we just need a return to freedom and self reliance. I think we need all the social engineering holier-than-thous and all the religious holier-than-thous to shut up when they have anything anti-logical to say. Which would keep them quiet most of the time.

The answer to the problem of evil in the world is to deter it. There. See? Did that take an Einstein? Every child knows this. If somebody punches you, make it cost him. If you don't, expect another punch tomorrow.

I have seen total idiocy among school teachers on this. They think that both kids in a fight are automatically wrong. What simpletons. They need their Commandments boiled down to a cheat sheet of literal dos and don'ts, because they have no moral sense and therefore can't tell right from wrong.

They create the perfect world for bullies.

You know, like all the bystanders - who have nothing to say about the narcissist's abuse but condemn you the victim for anything you do to try to put a stop to it.

ANYTHING. They condemn you for hitting back. They condemn you for yelling back. They condemn you for leaving. They condemn you for countering the character-assassinating lies he is spreading about you - you must let him murder you this way without showing that he is lying by projection, for that would damage the poor little character assassin's good name! Yes, the holier-than-thous are that crazy. They condemn you for abandoning the poor, hurt little dear. If he or she is in your school, after they have condemned you for every other thing you might do to protect yourself, they seal the door to your torture chamber by condemning you for skipping class. In other words, they insist that you present yourself daily to your abuser for more abuse. AND that you submit to it without doing anything in your defense.

Ah, perversity is endless.

Outside the walls are shaking
Inside the dogs are waking
Outside the hurricane won't wait
Inside they're howling down the gate

I climb this tower inside my head
A spiral stair above my bed
I dream the stairs don't ask me why,
I throw myself into the sky*

In short, we need to speak up and shout down the idiots who keep preaching that self defense is a sin and that justice is "revenge" and that you must "forgive" the unforgivable = an offense in progress, a denied offense, a continuing offense = an unrepented offense.

Some people, many people, are amoral. They have no moral restraints. Unless you want to be their victim, you had better teach them an object lesson to go find easier prey.

And no, normal people don't get carried away with the freedom to defend themselves. The control-freak religious rulers and social engineers would have us think so, but that is baloney. Normal people HATE conflict. They hate fighting. The only time they are even tempted to fight is when under some sort of attack. We are just like other animals in this. They snarl and snap at an intrusion or offense and two seconds later have forgotten about it.

Why? Because the purpose was DEFENSIVE - to back the other party off. Once that mission is accomplished, it's done. Getting carried away just doesn't happen when DEFENSE your cause and goal. It's not even a temptation.

The abuser is the one who has other goals, offensive ones that he or she gets carried away with. It's the abnormal people, those who are predators, who get carried away. And what carries them away is a victim lying down for it.

Ironic, eh? Exactly what the holier-than-thous force the victim to do is what what causes the victim to eventually snap and go ballistic. I say let people defend themselves. Then they will put an end to abuse when it starts, long before it escalates to such a point.

We need these sanctimonious hypocrites to stop making out people to be evil if they fight back. Or run away. As in divorce or skipping school. You cannot force people to submit to abuse. That is the Sin of Sodom, otherwise known as making someone bend over for it. It violates the Laws of Nature. And common sense.

Beyond that, all we need is for the mental health profession to do its job by making sure the public IS aware of how many predators are out there. Most people have no idea that predators are NOT rare and that everyone runs into them. If people knew this, they'd be a good deal more careful and would take warning signs seriously.

What a better, safer world it would then be.

(http://narc-attack.blogspot.com)

Love me like a baby, love me like an only child
Love me like an ocean; love me like a mother mild
Love me like a father, love me like a prodigal son
Love me like a sister, love me like the world has just begun
Love me like a prodigy, love me like an idiot boy,
Love me like an innocent, love me like your favorite toy
Love me like a virgin, love me like a courtesan,
Love me like a sinner, love me like a dying man.

Annihilate me, infiltrate me, incinerate me, accelerate me, mutilate me, inundate me, violate me, implicate me, vindicate me, devastate me
Love me like a parasite, love me like a dying sun
Love me like a criminal, love me like a man on the run
Radiate me, subjugate me, incubate me, recreate me, demarcate me, educate me, punctuate me, evaluate me, conjugate me, impregnate me, designate me, humiliate me, segregate me, opiate me, calibrate me, replicate me"*

* Lyrics from INSIDE by Sting
http://www.rhapsody.com/goto?rcid=tra.9053176&variant=play&lsrc=RN_htm
(my personal favorite by Sting)