caging the elephant

i just finished reading the elephant in my living room by marlane zillmann renner. i want to talk about this book but also how my day went cos both of them relate to each other. marlane was raped as a young girl . the guy who took advantage of her sped away in his car before her family had a chance to confront him. he was using a false i.d and fake numberplates and phone number at the camper ground. she dealt with her pain by trying to eat it away. when she was at school she won the battle of the bulge by swimming but afterwards she ended up being defeated by her gastronomical method of self medication when she was spending all her free time dating a string of men or marking exam papers. she received psychological counselling to help her recover from the trauma of her experience. it helped her to heal when she spoke aloud all the things she wanted to do to her perpetrator and how she would treat him if he was under her power instead of the other way around. she also managed to put herself inside the head of the guy by successfully gaining the ability to pity him instead of just feeling understandable contempt for him. she urged her husband to remind her to stop in her tracks and examine different ways of dealing with her frustration besides erupting in anger. it was prophesied over her life that she would marry a man who was previously attached in wedlock to another woman. she vowed this would never happen but as if to prove God has a sense of humour a divorcee turned out to be the first guy she picked out of a pile of blind dates she gained by signing up for a matchmaking service through a magazine. he had the edge over the competition cos he subscribed so he got the personals section before the others who had to wait for later delivery. she didnt bother to investigate any of the alternatives. those guys probably died wondering why they never heard back from her. hopefully they didnt all jump in a lake full of piranhas. just like marlane we often have problems caging the elephant of anger within us. perhaps one time marlane thought the elephant was rape but that was just the mask the elephant wore. once she managed to forgive her perpetrator it made it easier for her to find healing. i dont agree with the theology she presents in the book that we are all children of God. we are all creations of God but not all of us are His children. it’s only by receiving Christ in our hearts that we become adopted into HIs family. i wouldnt discount the author or her work i think it is just important to make this point. this is a good book for anyone who is struggling to find a reason to go on , who is wrestling with self blame for what they allowed to happen to them or who is trying to relate to the opposite sex because a member of the opposite sex used and abused them sexually. the ordeal she went through made it hard for marlane to get close to men beyond friendship. it took one guy who was prepared to love her despite her hateful response to his attempts to pursue intimacy with her to break the ice in her heart and permanently melt it towards the possibility of being able to be in the same room as a man without spitting in his face or running away screaming in fear at what might happen if the lights are turned down low and there’s noone else around to witness what his busy fingers might get up to. i dreamt a man was feeling a woman’s bra strap last night without her permission and someone else was attempting to justify it as perfectly acceptable behaviour. i dont think this way but sadly it is condoned by some sick sad fools in our society even to the extent of making excuses like boys will be boys when an entire football team gang rapes an innocent young woman who happens to have too much to drink. today i went to the hospital to get my brain checked out by a neurologist. a bed of cigarettes littered the lawn making a mockery of the hospital ground’s sign declaring the premises to be a smoke free zone. the doctor was from munich in germany. he flashed a blue light in my eye. he gave me a reflex test. he told me to touch his finger with my toe . he thinks that ben carson sold his soul by choosing to be part of team trump. i disagree. his name was christian but that doesnt mean he was one though he gave no evidence to indicate that he wasnt besides the fact that he could be presumed to be somebody who was not a fan of the republican party. of course he could just be a dude like me who sees good and bad in how the current resident of the white house and his close affiliates are handling the job of running their country. one nurse tested my pulse and weighed me. i weighed 72.5 kg fully dressed. my half kilogram under is very offended that she rounded it off and consequently gave my belly an extra half a kilogram in her footnotes. her name was deborah. she said some people might disagree if i said that deborah was a brilliant woman. she knew she was a prophet. she didnt say she disagreed though. when mum said we are christians to the lady behind the counter one of the nurses thought christianity was associated with christian science. mum was quick to contradict her falsehood. it is understandable that the average punter couldnt tell the difference between a religion or a cult other than the obvious fact that to most people cults seem to have more to do with killing yourself and satanism than mainstream christianity or other religions do . the german doctor told me there was a german comedian who is famous for saying that life doesnt make sense without a pug. i want a pug but dad is determined not to get one. i got mad at him cos i am the one who is supposed to have a dog for therapy but he won’t let me call it my dog and he won’t let me pick the breed. i have never gotten the privilege of picking the breed of our family dog before. the doctor has a couple of kids. they are the ones who pick up the poop. he needs to hold his breath when he does it to avoid vomiting. he works at prince charles hospital usually but two days a week he graces the wards of redcliffe. his breath smells like coffee. he has been to coburg. he asked if my sister went to canada. he said it wouldnt be a problem for her having lazy eye syndrome unless she likes to shoot animals. he was saying how the wolf population is now increasing in germany. they came down from scandinavia in previous generations and the population was kept under control by turning them into supper. seeing as this no longer happens little kids and horses are in danger of being turned into wolf snacks in his opinion. im guessing he would agree with peter beattie’s culling of dingos on frasier island. it is only through indigenous intervention that these wild dogs were saved from the gun eradicating them completely after a media frenzy whipped up a witch hunt against them when a baby wandered too close to a dingo’s mouth. this was long after eliza chamberlain’s mishap with the untamed canine cousin. when mum was getting frustrated at dad over his problems finding the right street in order to get to the library something seized me and caused me to burst into a scream. then i was weeping cos mum was saying that she wouldnt be mad if they didnt have to deal with me. i felt like the world would be better off without me. one wing of our local hospital was built with tax dollars reclaimed by kevin rudd and julia gillard. as humans we are often prone to blame shifting instead of accepting responsibility for our own actions. some misguided men would say that women are raped cos they are scantily clad. there are some women who invite the wrong kind of attention by rubbing their bodies up against men in order to tease them and stimulate them in clubs but i think most women just wear whatever makes them feel comfortable. sure some of them dress to get attention but no woman on earth wants to have the choice taken out of her hands over what happens to her private parts. an over exposure to pornography in our world is a sufficient explanation of why men are driven crazy by lust and treat women like sex objects. this material is more readily available today than it was in the last century and millenium when you had to go out of your way to access it and it wasnt flashed all over the internet billboards on our highways and magazines in our petrol stations and supermarkets. some of these magazines focus on sports but they also include more sinister material. i praise God for the death of for him magazine but there are other smutty publications that still need to kick the bucket. some women have been lied to. they have been told that taking your clothes off for money is empowering. it’s not it’s degrading. you can see the progression or regression of a woman’s self esteem as she becomes used to stripping her clothes off or having sex for money. she tends to smile less and cry and frown more. she tends to wonder if anyone would love her if she had a little extra cellulite or if she gained a few more wrinkles. she wrestles with self hatred cos she longs to become once again the innocent woman she once was. there is hope for her. she can be washed in the blood of Christ and made whole and new. yes sad to say there will be christians who judge her and condemn her and say she’s going to hell cos of the way she behaved in the past but there will also be better representatives of Christ who will love her and help her heal and teach her how to forgive herself. although mostly aimed at christians the questions and themes presented in marlanes book could help people from a variety of backgrounds including those who identify as having no religion whatsoever. it is true that the monster of anger is less able to eat us alive if we bring our pain and suffering out into the open instead of hiding it away in the darkness due to shame and embarrassment . when parents get angry at each other some kids tend to blame themselves. they do the same thing when they get divorced or treat each other with contempt. there are some kids who play one parent against the other to get what they want. it is important for parents to present a united front so kids can’t wrap them round their little fingers. in some families when dad says no to seeing a certain movie mum will say yes. there is one poor little boy in the u s of a whose mum dresses him in womens clothes. this is not his choice but his mothers choice. when he goes to his dads place his dad gives him the option of wearing male or female clothes. he always chooses to wear the male clothes. his mother is forcing him to have chemicals which will cause him to be castrated and stunt the growth of his testicles. she is also attempting to use the courts to block his access to his father. she forces her son to use a female name at home but his dad allows him to use the male name he was sensibly given at birth. there is a movie called ghost dog way of the samurai. it’s made by jim jarmusch. i’ve never seen it. previously before listening to an episode of the wrath and grace podcast the only thing i knew about it was that the soundtrack was composed by rza from the wu tang clan. now i know it is a movie about a guy who constantly visualizes his own death . for me death is not a scary thing cos it means going to heaven when i die. death is the gateway to eternity. i remember working at the coffee shop with my waitress friend tammy. she had a dream about death and it terrified the pants off her. i guess thats the same method the boss used when he got her pregnant. its possible he used his power against her . i very much doubt it was his suave personality or physical attractiveness. he was a man of slim build but had few redeeming features other than a deep love for God that urged him to close shop on sundays for devotions yet didnt prevent him from treating women like the scum between his toes, compromising on the issue of marriage or spraying his potty mouth everywhere he went. we had a swear jar at work but he wasnt honest enough to fill it up every time he released garbage from his throat. he sold wooden objects like keyrings and pens on behalf of the local mens shed. his wife was a groper. she touched up my homie in the darkness. my other ex work mate had the gall to suggest he gave her the come on. that definitely wasnt the case. he was just a young teenager at the time and she was an old short unattractive woman . i believe this incident contributed to a fear that developed within him of relating romantically to the opposite sex. he always kept me guessing about his sexual identity. the same schizophrenic spirited boss exposed him to videotaped footage of executions. at first it disgusted him then he became immune to it. it made me sick to the stomach when another workmate at my charity job watched videos of men committing sexual acts with the rear ends of horses. he thought that pagans worshipped devils disguised as deities in the form of carved wooden or stone objects. i found out recently this was only partially true. this was a symbolic representation of actual physical encounters with demonic beings. we get the modern word asteroid from aster or aesteroth . mohammed was urged by an angelic being to worship this devil oft perceived falsely as a female goddess. he later denounced this pronouncement as being the work of satan. God is allowed to change HIs mind but He doesnt drastically contradict HIs character and nature. i know i dealt badly with the anger i felt at people who responded to my request for donations to my charity in a hateful venomous way. i couldnt take my anger out on them so i took it out on my parents. i’m glad i no longer have this job so the emotional wounds arent as fresh in my mind but i believe there are times when they still open themselves up again. my indian friends suffered worse than i did. people took their identification cards off them and called the police on them. i was amused when one guy mistook a pen i was selling for charity as a bowel cancer testing kit. he asked me how does it work. some guys in the new south wales office were offered sexual favours during working hours. one woman said she couldnt give any money but she could give me something else. she was rubbing my genitals while they were still zipped inside my trousers. when she started to unzip my trousers i made a hasty exit. i should have known something was up when she shooed her little dog into a corner of the room. i cried to my friend about it on the phone. i’ve never talked about this to any other woman besides my bestie. i still feel hateful thoughts towards that woman. like marlane i pity her foolishness. i would have been happy if she had nothing to give me. better than leaving me scarred for life. she probably thinks she did a nice thing for me. if that’s what she thinks she couldnt be more wrong. i know God is in the process of healing me. if marlane can forgive then so can i. if tjandarmurra o shane can forgive a guy who poured petrol on him thene set him alight as a little boy then so can i. if Jesus can forgive my sins then i forgive others who do wrong to me and hate me cos of my belief system. i have been forgiven of much so i can forgive much in others. time both wounds all heals and heals all wounds. beyond this life lies hope for complete restoration and permanent wellness . it is found in our ever loving saviour’s arms ❤