coping mechanisms and re-memberances

I cut my parents off after watching Once Upon a Time in the West because of the rape scene.

That was a few months ago? I'd like to say I'm feeling better, because in some ways I am. But in a lot of ways I feel awful.

Right now I'm working on the Courage to Heal workbook.
I'm learning about coping mechanisms. I circled the ones that I use and wrote down some more. Then, following the book's direction, I organized them into ones I'm ashamed of and ones I'm not.

coping mechanisms I'm ashamed of:
-fantasizing
-self-mutilation
-avoiding intimacy
-creating new personalities
-leaving my body
-anorexia (baby's first coping mechanism!)
-hiding from my partner
-suicide attempts
-avoiding sex
-spacing out

coping mechanisms I'm not ashamed of:
-denial
-rationalization
-perfectionism
-forgetting
-staying in control
-minimizing
-staying busy
-taking care of others
-looking on the "bright" side

I realized the difference between the first list and the second is that I think others expect and want me to do the things in the second list.
I think some of them do. I've hopefully cut all of those people out of my life.

Oh. Now I remember what else I was going to say.
I remembered my pastor raping me when I was sixteen and having sex with my boyfriend. Rather, when I was sixteen I remembered my pastor raping me when I was seven? eight? nine and ten?
I worked on it as well as I could at the time, and finally told my estranged mother during one of my rare visits to her home.
I thought she was supportive, but she asked, delicately, if I was sure he had raped me, since she did my laundry when I was small and never noticed the blood that would have shown.
That was disturbing enough to hear but the answer to her panty-problem was "no" as far as I could remember and I only realized the other night that ever since she asked that, I stopped thinking he "raped" me.
I tried to minimize it to "molested" (not that I would ever tell another person that being "molested" is somehow better than being "raped"), but then it just sort of slipped into denial. I started having a hard time saying his name when I had learned at 16-17 to do it, started telling myself and others that I must be making it up, must be, because I couldn't REMEMBER ANYTHING

then the other night I had a dream:
I was in a long corridor with all of the people I loved, all my friends and they were dancing around cleaning the place up. they started to pull the partitions down that made the long room lots of little rooms and I realized that we were in my old church, where my pastor used to touch me and tell me gross things about how he loved me and I was little and pretty and bad and beautiful and sex was good and he would teach me, and that I had so much potential--
so, in the dream, I hunched into a ball and tried to scream but I couldn't, and some of my friends noticed and tried to help me up and asked "what's the matter" but all I could say was "ffff fffff ffffff ffffffff" and then I woke up.

I decided after this transparent metaphor that I should just act like he DID sexually abuse me, because if I was wrong, it didn't matter. who did it hurt? it was just my head.

and then the memories started coming back. but I didn't want them to. so I shook for a week. my heart began to have arrythmias. I went to the doctor and they gave me medicine to sleep. eventually I asked my friend if he would like to give me an orgasm, and he did, and I remembered my pastor giving me an orgasm, and it was awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful, awful

but at least I remember? at least I can heal now? can I? ugh. I'm going to work in my book some more.