Raymer - Im Telling: Putting it All Out There: A Memoir

I'm Telling

Rebecca Raymer

SmashwordsEdition

Copyright 2013 RebeccaRaymer

All rightsreserved.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the people who believe thevoice of a child is a vehicle for truth, a cry for help shouldnever be set aside without action, and a denial of evil is an actof evil.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Putting it All Out There

The Other Stuff

Photo Album

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge my greatest champions,Jonny, Wesley, and Jonah. You make my life worth fighting for everysingle day!

introduction

In 2006, I started having flashbacksof horrendous abuse I endured during my childhood. In 2010, Istarted a blog about my experiences recovering from dissociativeamnesia, of what it was like to go through the process ofremembering countless events that were so traumatic my brain lockedthem away from my conscious knowledge for fifteen years. Soon afterI began blogging about it, I got comments and messages from allkinds of people, from all over the world. Some of these people Igrew up with, but had not heard from in decades. Others werecomplete strangers, and I also heard from a lot of peopleanonymously.

Knowing people were reading what I waswriting was incredibly rewarding, but receiving thatacknowledgement and support has been a tremendous boon to myrecovery. I literally do not believe I would be as healthy andhappy as I am right now if I had never put it all out there, andreceived so much validation in return.

Looking back on the posts I wroteduring this incredibly difficult part of my life reminds me of thepain I have experienced, how far I have come in the healingprocess, and how much beauty I have discovered in life along theway. After concluding the blog version of putting it all outthere, I decided to do a blogover (making a blog over into a book- Im pretty sure I just made that term up, and I have to say Impretty impressed, although my husband thinks it should be called ablook).

I dont want to simply cut and pastemy blog posts into a PDF file and print it out, though. In order tomake this a legitimate book (and not just a printed-out blog), Idecided that I would re-read my entire blog, and add my reflectionson each post (in the form of footnotes) as I read them. I alsothought it would be fun and interesting if I included some photosof the people I speak about in my blog, but figured I would getsued pretty quickly, so I will just include photos of myself andthe people who wont sue me, and/or are dead. These photos are allpretty much of me and my dad, since I won't sue me, and my dad isdead.

Since I was adding all of this extrastuff, and putting even more stuff out there than was in myoriginal blog, I have decided to call this book Im Telling. Andthat is what I am doing - I am telling all about the things I wastold to keep secret.

As far as the blogover is concerned, Ihave a few technical points I want to make:

1. Sometimes I write in all lower-caseletters, and I am not going to change that for the book because Ifeel it reflects some deeper insecurities that are relevant to whatI was writing at the time of the posting, and also because it wouldbe a gigantic pain in the ass to go back and fix all ofit.

2. I HATE typos, so I will be doingsome basic editing as far as that goes; I am not, however, going tochange much of the content of my posts, even if I would be lessembarrassed about revealing certain things, or if a series of wordsdoesnt seem to make any sense now, or even if I just think what Iwrote was stupid. Part of the integrity and healing of my blog hasbeen my ability to write as honestly as possible at those times,and if I made an ass of myself in doing that, I would prefer to beopen and transparent about it. Besides, everyone makes an ass ofthemselves sooner or later, right?

3. I started this blog by postingunder the title Laying it all out there on one of my earlierblogs, and changed the title to putting it all out there when Idecided to make it its own separate blog-entity. Also, the actualweb address for the blog says puttingitalloutHere, but the blogis really called putting it all out There.

4. I was thinking about including thecomments section of the posts, but then I thought about the factthat a lot of the feedback I have gotten has been in privatemessages, and started thinking about publishing those, too. I cameto the conclusion, though, that the comments on the blog are anessential part of what differentiates a blog from a book.Additionally, even if I published the private messages I receivedwithout revealing the authors, there is just something about theprivacy of a private message I feel I would be compromising, so Imgoing to leave those out. I may, however, decide to publish the onenegative private message I received in writing (without revealingthe actual name of the author, of course), just as an example ofthe shit thrown at me by people I grew up with who were moreconcerned about their familys image than with thetruth.

5. Throughout my posts, I write aboutthings happening at a certain time or date or age, but thenremember something else that contradicts that timeline. Instead ofcorrecting where I originally wrote about the timeline, I am justgoing to say that the continuity of my story is not flawless. Iused to feel really sketchy about that, that if all of my memoriesdidnt all line up in a row and if my perceptions of everythingthat has happened ever changed, no one would believe any of mystory. I still think that is probably true, but I dont really careanymore about who believes me and who doesnt.

6. As with typos, I hateshoddy formatting. Again, however, this has all just been toooverwhelming for me to work on by myself, and I cannot examine thisdocument much further without having to be checked back in to themental hospital. As a result, some of the formatting is a bitgimpy, and it may be unprofessional and irritating, but it does notget in the way of the message I am attempting to convey. SPECIALNOTE FOR .EPUB VERSION: ALL OF THE FOOTNOTES HAVE BEEN CONVERTEDINTO QUIPS INSIDE BRACKETS - [footnote] - DIRECTLY FOLLOWING THEREFERENCED SENTENCE.

So those are the technical points Iwanted to make, but I have a point about the content, as well. Inmy blog, I reference a lot of really shitty things my dad did toother people, things that I never specifically identified.. I havealways been terrified of revealing this information, and in myre-reading, I have been astonished at how closely I came to tellingthose secrets, even in the vague nature of my blog. When I proposedthe blog as a book to a friend of mine, she suggested that Iinclude the information I had heretofore withheld.

I had been wanting to make thatinformation public at some time, but as I mentioned, I have justbeen too scared. At my friends suggestion, though, and upondiscussion with my husband and therapist, I decided the way to dothat would be to include it in this book. After the blogoversection of this book, there is a section called The Other Stuff.That is where I reveal those other things my dad did.

If you are someone who actually readsthe introductions to books, you are now armed with the knowledgethat you can skip all the way to end and find out the big secretbefore ever having to read a word of my blog in any form. I do haveto warn you, though, that it is super fucked up, and this is myofficial trigger warning for that part of this book. Hopefully, thepeople who do not read the introduction become so attuned to thefucked-upped-ed-ness of this whole mess by reading the blog firstthat they will not be too traumatized by reading The OtherStuff.

Regardless, as with everything Iwrite, I hope any of my words can bring you some hope, and that bythe time you finish reading this book, you will be aware of someworth and strength in yourself you had never noticed before. Icertainly do recognize those things more in myself, having writtenit.