Part Three 'The Book of Ruth'

The Book of Ruth starts with my arrival back to New Zealand.

In the first few months things seem to go well. I reconcile with my father after years of estrangement. Backpacker friends I met in Australia, come and live in a house that I rent and the exuberance of youth and fun still dominate my nights. But bit by bit the flashbacks return, and are growing in intensity. When one of my friends falls from a ladder picking cherries and breaks her back, the guilt I feel is overwhelming and triggers a new set of flashbacks.

     Before I know it my everyday thoughts are invaded by the ghosts of my past – the very ghosts I had managed to avoid confronting in rehab, years earlier. Finally, after almost twenty years, I disclose details of the sexual abuse I suffered as a teenager to my father. This book will paint a descriptive, vivid and unapologetically graphic picture of sexual abuse.

     I suffer a nervous breakdown in the days following my disclosure to my father. I have found myself in the deepest pit, with no idea how to climb back out. I am diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Bi Polar Disorder.

     I have entered a new and frightening world of illness. I can no longer work. I wallow in a state of depression, interspersed with dangerous, crazy periods of mania. So begins years of endless trials with psychiatric medications, horrendous side effects, and uneasy relationships with ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation) and mental health professionals. I become a hermit, dependant on alcohol and dulled down with mood stabilisers, tranquillisers, anti-depressant and anti-psychotics.

     I hold many people responsible for my breakdown and mental state. I feel anger at bitterness at many people for my life but at no one more than my mother Ruth. I consider her own mental health traumas over the years – her suicide attempts, her alcohol dependence and addiction to pills, and the inappropriate behaviour that went along with it. I have believed that if she hadn’t had her drug and alcohol issues then she would have been able to protect me from the sexual abuse that occurred.

     I realise with horror that I now replicate my mother. I am depressed, suicidal, alcohol dependant - stuck at home with nothing but the company of television and prescription pills.

     I strive to recover some of what I have lost. In order to move forward, first I have to go back and confront all the demons head-on, before I can let go of them. When Ruth is diagnosed with terminal cancer, the need to deal with unfinished business becomes more urgent.

     I need to take a wider look at her life – who she was as a little girl and how she got to be the person she became. During this process it is easier to see how I have arrived at this point in my life. I learn that for me to get beyond the blame, bitterness, and resentment I feel towards my mother I have to address it with her and let go.

     This book has some ugly passages. This book will hurt. But this is a story that has to take readers into the darkness in order to bring them back out into the light. This isn’t a book about blame or judgement. It is my personal account that addresses the importance of forgiveness, and the process of my recovery.

Finally, the truth sets me free.