Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren't Being Fooled Read Online Free PDF Page B

her home on the Oregon coast. Rebecca lives alone and is highly artistic. Her home was warm and welcoming, and the rare Oregon sunshine came in through ruffled curtains. Her big dog slept on the floor at her feet. Rebecca seemed at peace, but here's what she said about her earlier life: “For the first forty years of my adult life, I was in the depths of confusion, anxiety, guilt, and depression. In the last few years, I have finally achieved mental/emotional peace and respect for myself, and I really work very hard not to descend again into my previous horrifying state of mind.
     
    “I just couldn't cope with the world around me. I was always in financial trouble, I was losing jobs. I had originally—when I was in teenager—expected to have a PhD and teach at the college level, and I certainly have the smarts for that, but I never could do it because of what I call ‘scrambled brains.' I was just barely surviving, and it was getting worse.”
     
    Rebecca remembered vividly the terrors of her childhood—the early deaths of her brother and sister and her father's nightly visitations: “Yeah, I would wake up, he was on the evening shift, and I would wake up with his penis in my mouth in the middle of the night, choking. And then when we were picking strawberries, he would stick a great big strawberry in my mouth and just laugh 'cause he thought that was just so funny. So . . . I don't know how long, I think by the time I was in high school, he wasn't doing it anymore. 'Cause I was probably getting too big and strong for him. And as a bereft child, actually society let me down after my sister died because there was no help for children in the '50s. My mother was physically but never emotionally there for me. I had a wonderful second-grade teacher, and I was in second grade then, and she gave me a book of common prayer because she knew I was Episcopalian. She kinda took good care of me, but after that, by the time I was in fourth grade, my fourth-grade teacher asked me why I was acting out, and I told him my sister died. He asked, ‘When was that?' and I said, ‘Two years ago,' and he said, ‘You should be over that by now.' Betrayal.”
     
    Scrambled brains, as Rebecca called them, made life more and more difficult to cope with. She lost a teaching job at a small college because she couldn't manage anymore: “I experienced this black chasm, I thought I was going to fall into it. I was just so overwhelmed, and there was no support for me, being the head resident. I lived in a dorm. So I simply quit that job, which I really wish I hadn't because it was an outstanding college, and I wish I was still there. But that was more than forty years ago.”
     
    In her forties, Rebecca began to figure out what was happening to her after she went into therapy for the first time: “I went to her for a year until I felt like she had abandoned me. During that time, she didn't make any suggestions at all. She just listened. But I started having flashbacks, major flashbacks, and that was about twenty years ago. It was horrible. . . .
     
    “Mostly at night. But while I was awake, it wasn't dreams 'cause I didn't dream for decades. I didn't think I dreamed. I didn't remember them. It would be kinda like I might be half awake, but I actually had to get out of this house I was living in because it was just so terrifying to wake up and have these visions. And it was a horrible, horrible house, too, it had holes in the wall because I was so poor by then.”
     
    Rebecca's story is ultimately hopeful, though, and you'll read her inspiring words in the last part of the book. In the meantime, we'll leave her cozy warm house and look at a bigger picture of betrayal.
     
    Kevin's Story
     
    Child abuse is an intimate and personal betrayal. Other betrayals can occur at societal levels. Racial discrimination involves numerous people and organizations. Although it has a shared existence, it nonetheless affects individuals intimately and