a day in the life

Well, more like the past week. I haven’t been on here in forever, partly because the things I feel/remember/deal with would probably violate a ton of obscenity laws if I spoke as openly about them as I need you to understand. Partly because I don’t want to put them in ink where they have a life of their own. I want to drown the ***kers. Partly because with the DID (multiple personality, for you familiar with older terms) when stuff hits, it ricochets around in six different voices, and I hold silent until we get to a response that won’t blow up our own personal universe. Sometimes it’s because I get lost in the fog, or distracted, and nowhere near internutz, and other times I am near it, but …..

 

Anyway, this past week has been up and down. A neighbor died, an old friend-of-the-family had to be put down, the roomie STILL hasn’t found a job and plays WOW all day, it’s hotter than hades, I hurt, drank coffee earlier in the week and ended up with MAJOR cramping and pain so bad I missed a session holding my tummy in the bathroom to press whatever muscle or nerve point was acting up. The memories that triggers, the bleeding, the Arts workshop I was in for four days really messed with my controlled persona: I had tears several times, and made someone else SRSLY lose it (we had to talk about stress in our bodies and listening to me … too much…she had lost her husband too).

Budget ceiling concerns, grocery concerns, processing hell, the approach of major WORKitude, financial woes, a beautiful walk in the park. Fights with family, cheap-theater movies to get cool, loneliness, grieving, healing. And so it goes.

 

Back to cleaning!

 

Hilarious

Could you be any better timed? Check this out…

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html

I want to die.

Note: This is not a threat, read on. Warnings for the usual: suicide, r*pe, etc….

My doctor won’t let me go on birth control pills because she’s afraid the hormonal fluctuations will cause me to commit hari kari. Or however you spell that.

The Dude would chase me around until he caught me, or trap me, and he really hurt me…but. But then he’d keep holding me down and work at it until my body reacted. I went into shock for weeks, just dead lying there, if I wasn’t fighting him, while it went: Fear, Panic, Pain, Helplessness, Zoning Out, Less Pain, Comfort.

He would pet my head and tell me how much he wanted it to be good for me. He would hold me after until I stopped the uncontrollable shaking.  He only forced me when I fought back. So I stopped fighting. And when I was at home, I saw blood everywhere, and your sense of time changes and I was caught in an eternal NOW of reliving it. So I went to him. For some reason (I have since learned why.) being with him helped kill the panic. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. But I would go over and he would hold me, and when I tried to leave, he wouldn’t let me go. Until. And he told me that was what I came over for, and I said no, and he said, well, what did you expect?

Well, what did I expect? The only answer I ever had for him was not this.

Honestly, I just wanted IT to go away, but after putting my foot on his ribs and pulling, and leaning off the bed to get away, and pleading that I had to go to the bathroom…. all of which he didn’t even open his eyes for… I stopped, stuck, and thought, well, what DID I expect? It’s already happened, it can’t cause any more damage. Sigh. And I sat back down, his hand still clenched on my wrist, his eyes still closed.

He liked to hurt me, I guess me fighting back was more erotic than me lying there dead. And eventually I stopped fighting, and once the shock wore off (I don’t really think it did for years, but enough that I could move my body by volition) he encouraged me. There was one place, I think where the worst tearing was, and it felt so much better when he went THAT way. It made the pain stop. I would stop fighting. He would say, see? You like that.

I guess……yeah? It made the pain stop. It felt better. Does that mean I like it, if I like it? How do I untangle the fact that the reason it feels better is the reason it was hurt in the first place? Where does the line of responsibility (guilt) lie?

And as I recover enough to not always want to kill myself after sex, I am blocking off the pain.  I can’t stop myself from the pain or the self-injury or the suicidal thoughts. It’s like the wish to kill myself that I had in the middle of it has stayed imprinted even though he himself is no longer a part of my life. But everyone else is. The ones who told me I wasn’t raped, I was seduced; that if I really didn’t want it, I would have known better and he wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of me; the ones that told me that if I really wanted to, I could leave; the ones who told me that I didn’t know what it was like to want to be loved, obviously, and that I wasn’t a real woman, and that I was too self-righteous, being stuck in my no-sex-before marriage mindset, because OBVIOUSLY this thing I’ve been taught my whole life is only… an abstract; the ones who told me I should have had more sex if I wanted children in my life, that they didn’t want to spend time on the phone with me, because I was just being negative, and if I wanted to do something there was always the shelter.

If you haven’t been through it, that probably sounds reasonable. If you’ve been through it, you can see how ridiculous it is.

So I want to kill myself. I hate my life. I hate the fact that I’m nearly 40 and I look around and I look inside and i look back, and this sucks. And I feel so confused and helpless and full of despair and I have worked it out so I get up every day and try to work through my life and whatever the heck it brings. I know that there have been some good times since then, and maybe there will be more. I trust that I will be better someday and someday, impossible to imagine now, I will be better. Because at the counseling center there have been women who went through this and I believe them. Because I realize that when these feelings are the worst, is when I am working through some part of the sorrow. Some impossible cognitive dissonance. So. I have an extensive anti-suicide plan. And recognizing that feeling, sitting on the side of my brain sticking its foot in the middle of my workings, is the first step.  I have 24-hr numbers to call if I get too bad, to help me through. I have the local walk-in center (regularly scheduled sessions tend to push me into panic attacks for days before in anticipation, and my counselor quit because he had cancer, and there’s a year waiting list to get another, and…) where I can go and talk it through when the noise in my head gets too much. And I have a close friend or two that I can send up smoke signals to (sometimes the safety of acknowledgement helps a lot, after FIVE FRIKKIN YEARS of being told I was just making to big a deal of it [that by the local church's Celebrate Recovery leader]). . . I NEED to see someone every day, I need to eat (I’ve spent years not wanting to eat anything, and I tend to bribe myself to eat regularly), I go walk the dog, I keep a regular schedule, so I can keep walking when my steps are unsteady.

Please, god, i don’t believe, i can’t believe after this, but please please please let me find a better incarnation after this. amen.

I can’t stop being a sexual being, and my mind and body are constantly warring between wanting to go back, to not think, to surrender, to have the safety of closing my windows and doors, and push through the pain until I start taking control………………

and wanting to just MAKE IT STOP.

I feel like my whole life has been raped. Not just my body. My life.

not okay

I started this page, this personal blog, as a way to say things I can’t say anywhere else. Unfortunately, a lot of what I’ve needed to say, I’m afraid to. What if someone finds out this is me, and it all comes back to roost?

That would not be okay.

For the past couple days I’ve been in a heated debate about abortion with a fb friend I knew in college. He is very, very passionately anti-abortion, and I usually let people’s opinions sit as their own, BUT….. when you start saying sex ed courses are brainwashing so that the communist democratic machine of Planned Parenthood can get kids having sex younger and younger, so they can feed their money-making system of abortions……..

I was always pro-life. I don’t mean anti-abortion, I mean pro-life. I mean, I would hate for someone to get an abortion, just hate it. But I would do my best to stand by them. It also meant all my friends knew that if they were facing that choice, and thought adoption was an option, that I would totally take that baby.

As a young person/teen, and probably because my home life was … horrible. Just horrible. As in we were homeless half the time, moving in with one abusive drunk after another, with my mom (who did love me) an abusive drunk, no food a lot of the time, only ramen noodles every night, or when we had no electricity a loaf of bread and a package of bologna was all we had to eat for a month.

I’ve been molested, beaten, arrested for being beaten, tied up in duct tape, transient, held at knifepoint twice, my mother tried to run me over once….. anyway, which is to say, I’ve been through it.

And I would look at big houses or buildings like schools, and design homes. For tons of people. I was good at it, too. But the schoolbus would go by, and I would imagine where the garden would be so we could grow our own food, and teach about the life cycle. Where the bedrooms would be, what the big kitchen looked like. It was rather like a Ronald McDonald house, but with those of us who are starting again.

I dreamed that for years. And when I was a teen, I converted wholeheartedly to Christianity.

Which doesn’t believe in sex outside of marriage. I think that’s a better way of saying what I was thinking.

And so I converted, and my church became my surrogate family.

I loved them.

I fed them. Croissants, muffins, whatever.

I served them. Home visits, clean-ups, celebratory events. I was always the quiet person in the kitchen, plugging away at the dishes, listening to everything and just loving them. But conversation scared me, so the kitchen allowed me to just keep the visits short.

I babysat. I visited the Old Folk’s Home. I visited the sick. One of my favorite local farm matrons made me a homemade angel-food cake every year for my birthday. I looked forward to that bit of inclusion with a probably disproportionate affection and gratitude.

But no sex. And in college, the same, limited boyfriends. And after college, …soooo much of my life, every breath (pray without ceasing) determined by faith in god, in His decrees, in His intent for purity, and the reinvestment of your passions in the church, in the family, which is your family if you don’t have one.

So when my Christian neighbor raped me, I turned to my family. My church family. I can’t remember all the stuff they told me, things along the line of oh that’s too bad, to ….if you didn’t want it you’d leave (through the shelter I learned I was in shock, and he trained me, so. No, I couldn’t.)…to …at least you’re broken in now….to…you’re not a real woman.

Yeah, that’s right. My only friend left from college moved in with her boyfriend, and since I knew she was a Christian of the same bent regarding sex, I told her I didn’t understand. She told me that Christianity wasn’t getting her what she wanted, so.

I was a 30+ Christian virgin being repeatedly raped by my neighbor. And when I say repeatedly, I mean he followed me to work so I could see him from where I worked, he left things outside my door, he stood at my window, he called in the wee hours, he always was so sorry after, there was always another trick. Like I refused to see him alone, so he told me his family were over… he lied. Then he held my wrists while he did it again, and told me that the only reason I had come over was for sex. (I actually came over to return a coffee cup. Of course, knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have cared about the cup, but like I said, it was DIFFERENT each time. That’s why I felt so trapped. I had to way to forsee what would happen when. No way to get OUT.)

And when I say raped, I mean he would body-block me, then pin my hips while he undressed me…whether I was crying, fighting, or just staring blankly at the wall. If I fought, he held my wrists down while he forced himself in me, and then he just went on and on…telling me over again that this was what I wanted, telling me how my body was reacting, and this was what boys like, telling me that he WANTED it to be good for ME…while I was crying, fighting, and eventually just shut down and stared at the wall. Eventually I learned that there was no way out, and I started cooperating.

So there was that strange time where I was sexually active, and I WOULD go to him sometimes, especially when the panic attacks hit, when the flashbacks to all the blood were all I could see. And it was surreal, how everyone treated like this was normal. So I did too.

And I remember at one point, messed up on my second dose of Plan B, because of course I didn’t really get the final word on condom choice. I had told him I wasn’t on birth control… because I wasn’t sexually active. I guess he figured if he could force me, I was a liar, just another girl deluding herself.

But no, really. I don’t think I’d kissed a guy since 6th grade.

And I remember looking at the mirror, and all the weird chemicals and hormones and not understanding my body and being swollen and my belly was so tender and thinking……

I could be pregnant.

And a whole world of possibilities ran through my sleep-deprived, hormone-addled, pain-filled mind. Adoption? That would mean pregnancy, he would know, I have no place to go, he would always have a hand on me. I would never get away. I will never get away. I would never be able to get away.

And as a mid-thirties Evangelical Conservative Christian who was having the first relationship in her life with what you might call a lover, I stared at my reflection, my chest because I couldn’t bring myself to see my face, or maybe I just don’t remember it. And I held my child in one hand and my life in the other.

The only chance I’ll probably ever have to have a child.

And I knew that the only way to make sure this man, who I couldn’t control, who I couldn’t be safe from, the only way to make sure *I* lived, would be to take away the factor of the baby.

Oh, god, that hurt.

I want you to know I reached out. I reached and reached and reached, but it seemed that no one wanted to really talk to me, because (looking back) it was too overwhelming for them. But I couldn’t leave myself. Everyone I reached for told me it was my fault, I had more control than I thought, that I had to handle it…but in much crueller terms. If I can remember those things, maybe, someday I’ll write it down.

So I was on my own.

I will never have children. My former-christian-friend told me I was just being too negative, and that I didn’t know what it was like to be a real woman, and to want to be loved, and to have a family, since I was protesting “my” sex, and not understanding her choice.

I have torn ligaments, so my uterus doesn’t stay in place. It slides down and sometimes gets caught under/squished by my lower edged of my pelvic bone. It’s the reason it was excruciatingly painful to sit for so long…months…even after I finally got away. Then with the flashbacks, I started self-injuring, in ways that caused more damage. I can’t even wear a tampon, because that squishy uterus rubs up against it INSIDE the vagina, instead of hanging above like it’s supposed to.

And I am so abandoned. I feel so alone. SO alone. My friend who moved in with her boyfriend had children. Two, it seems.

I can’t tell you how hard that it. I’m crying now. Darnit. When she sent me pictures of her daughter – nine months old, because she hadn’t talked to me since. Because, you know, I’m not a real woman. I don’t understand. Anyway, when she sent me pictures of her daughter, I literally cried for three days. I’m serious. It was a total breakdown. I cried and screamed, and tried to stifle it in my mattress, and ended up using the entire sheet for a snotrag.

I don’t understand what it’s like to be a real woman, right? That’s why I would go back to him, even after it all.

It’s taken me years to understand that my innocence wasn’t something I should feel bad about, but it was a factor. I didn’t understand how the real world works.

Now I’m almost 40, and my psychologist (who had to quit because he had cancer) has diagnosed me with DID, a version of multiple personality disorder, which means that it was such a harsh crack between my realities, I switch from one person (with certain memories, emotions, reactions, reasoning) to another sometimes so hard it scares me. So I’ve locked myself away for several years. I have nothing left but I just do what I have to do each day and wait to die. Sometimes with more or less passion.

So I had a friend who lost her job move in with me last week. Sigh. I can barely handle myself, but maybe I’ve healed enough to not drive her nutz. And I have an observation today.

But. My mind is still stuck between the before and the after. Between wanting to be loved and touched and held, and wanting to feel that kind of love…….and it mixes with the violence and pain and all the cruelty that people have dished out, and then I feel like what the hell. Can’t threaten the damned. Anything. ANYTHING to make me feel something. Or stop feeling anything.

Which is why I shouldn’t be drinking. I’m not. And why I am walking a thin line. Breathe. Step. Breathe. Step. Breathe. Step.

Cry.

si

sigh……

sigh

It is too real….

The b*tch of it all…

OK, this post has been percolating for a long time…. not intensely, but in various forms in my head, little bits brought on a piece at a time by one small incident after another. Or not so small incidents. :0)

I may need to revise it for clarity.

I posted a teasing response on my cousin’s FB page, in response to a post where she was talking about funny errors on things posted on real walls. She responded publicly with: Oh, I guess I need to proofread what I put up on my “wall”; and privately sent me 20 minutes of scathing text messages. SCATHING. BITTER. It offends her that I could post on her page, but she can’t comment on mine. I told her no one can post on my page right now. If you want to talk to me, you have to message or chat. She cited that as a reason she had every right to take it so hard and respond so brutally. TWENTY minutes of biting sarcasm and personal attacks. Then the next day she came with her daughter (for me to watch for the day) and a nice card with a gift certificate as a form of thanks. Which I appreciated. But when she found out I had my other niece and nephew too, and would be maybe taking them to the park, she literally called every person she knew so that her daughter wouldn’t be driving around with me. It seems I am only worthy if I’m safely ensconced in her own house, and not anyplace else.

My mother tells me she loves me. She sends cute text messages and I love yous. She whines that I don’t call her enough or that she hasn’t been invited to come to my new house yet. But when I do call her it’s Russian Roulette which mom I’ll get, depending on how much she’s had to drink and her mood that day. And I feel safe, finally, in my own house. I don’t want her here. I want to keep enough distance that we can talk, but that I can retreat if she gets abusive. She’s never hit my sister, but I still have the scars on my chest from the last time she freaked out on me.

My aunt loves me. I know this. I really do. In college, she was about the only relative to send me a card or letter every few months, and I still have them…in my scrapbook…which I can’t find. :0) BUT. She’s also untrustworthy and explosive. When I borrowed the van, she freaked out for half an hour over not being sure if I was going to return it…even though I returned it exactly when we agreed. And then chastised me over the fact that they wanted to pack it for a trip and I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that they don’t have a light in the garage, and brought it back earlier. My thought is that you can CALL MY CELL PHONE! Communicate, people! This happens time and time again. Recently, she’s been going through a major illness. I love her. I wanted to help. I wanted to be there for her. I called every week and offered myself, and she always said she was fine and refused. Her daughter says I should just go over and force myself on her, but I was r*ped by a guy who was CERTAIN that he was doing the right thing for me, and I just …. she’s an adult, and has the right to say, thanks, I’d love some help with raking this week; she also has the right to say, I want to be alone.

My ex-roommate and I did not part very happily. I still owe her money, but when I moved in it was established that I didn’t have to pay ON TIME (since I was between jobs at the moment) and that I could make it up whenever, just let her know.  I told her both before and after I moved out that I wouldn’t be able to start paying her back until taxes came back, and the deposits for the new place were all taken care of.  She did not dispute that arrangement. I hear from another friend that she is going around telling everyone I haven’t paid her. This isn’t fair. I’m abiding by the agreement, and I told her not until taxes, at least. Doesn’t that give me until April? Now everyone thinks I’m an ungrateful cheat and a flake. She’s taken me off her friend list.

A new friend from church left the country for several weeks, and I didn’t know. So while she was gone I was trying to follow through on a new friendship, and I left about 4 messages. After 4 messages I figure it’s just plain stalking. The next time I saw her, she gave me an enthusiastic Hello! I told her, I don’t get it. You haven’t answered any of my calls. Oh, she said, I was out of the country. Oh, I said, I figured you didn’t want to be friends. She turned to the person next to her and said, (I am NOT joking!) “THIS is what we were studying about in Bible Study this week, how you shouldn’t have expectations of people.” No I’m sorry. No Did you want something? No Sorry I forgot to mention it. No. In our church “sorry” is anathema. Jesus wants you to be happy and you do that through the power of positive thinking and through taking care of your rights. “Sorry” is almost considered blasphemy, I think. We aren’t friends. Why would I be friends with someone who uses me as a visual aid for improper expectations?

My best friend here left her husband. I hadn’t known them very long, but love, love, love her a lot. I helped her get out. I do believe in staying and working it out. I also believe in a person’s right to make themselves safe. Once I offered to get an apartment for a friend who was fighting with her husband, so they could have separate corners while they negotiated. She never spoke to me again. Seriously. I’d known her for 10 years.

Anyway, my friend who I love left her husband and left town. He comes across to everyone as a fine, upstanding, son-of-missionaries True Christian (with apologies). It’s a long story, but basically, when they split, I was a part of their friend-group, and I made an effort to call him once a week or so, ask him how he was, hey, let’s go meet for a sandwich or at the park. Have you showered and dressed yet this week?

It seems I’m the only one who did.

Which means he developed a huge fixation with me.

And denied it all, of course, because he was DEVOTED to his girl.

Right.

It went from posting picture albums full of my pictures (taken behind my back or in social groups, but mostly just with me [8 out of 11]) on FB. He denied it for 3 months, while I asked him to put a clarifying note on there that we were NOT a couple. Eventually he said he denied it because he didn’t think I could see them. He would have porn on his computer when I came over. So I stopped going inside. I wasn’t allowed to have my dog, and he said I could use his yard. I went to pick her up, let him know I had her. Then when I came back: here’s this naked guy wandering around inside, the windows wide open. You would think I’d learn. But his excuses: I was doing laundry. I argued. He denied. Fine. I stopped going over at all. The last straw was asking me to video his band, and handing me his phone. HE HAD A VIDEO OF HIMSELF AND MINI_ME ifyouknowwhatimean as the last video recorded, and I stumbled across it because I didn’t know how to use the phone. So I quit going to his concerts and pretty much only contacted or spoke to him in our public group (where he saved my seat, and pre-ordered for me, and basically pissed on me and all four tires). A couple weeks ago, he posted nekkid pictures of his ex on picasa. The album clearly states, “OPEN TO PUBLIC” so I don’t really think he can claim ignorance again. She’s sleeping in some, turned away in others. It reminds me of the pictures he’s taken of me by sneaking up from behind, even after SPECIFICALLY asked not to. So if you google her, guess what comes up?

All of which is to say, I have pretty much blocked him from my life.

But I gave him several warnings. And most of these things could be considered sexual assaults, MAJOR violations of personhood.

 

Another friend blocked me from her fb page this week because I put a long response, probably kinda snippy, to a post she had up. Which was a question I’d asked at dinner the night before. Which someone popped of: Direct her to this bible verse.

I have a degree in Biblical Studies. I know that verse.

So I posted back the history of that verse, my freebased thoughts on the origin of the proposed question, and a link to the wiki article about it.

Again, probably kinda snippy. But she KNOWS I have a degree in Bible, so it’s kinda rude too, to dismissively point me to a single verse and assume that’s the answer.

So. I am blocked.

People tell me I wouldn’t be abused if I didn’t want it.

People tell me that, “People treat you the way you ALLOW them to treat you.”

People have drilled into my head for the past several years that the obedience I learned as a Christian is LEGALISM. I say that loving America and showing it by following her laws doesn’t make me legalistic. Loving my grandparents and showing it by following their house rules was legitimate obedience for love, not legalism. Having faith in god and showing it through obedience does NOT mean you felt that you think it was your obedience was the thing that saved you. Loving where I work and trying very hard to follow their rules and laws and procedures is not LEGALISM. Being willing to conform for love IS NOT LEGALISM.

And it’s been drilled into my head that (“Let your gentleness be evident to all; the Lord is near.”) my only right is to fight for myself, the same right everyone else has. That I was raped (my doctor actually said this) because I was “very loving, but just not assertive ENOUGH, so no one is going to take your NO seriously.”

So I am repeatedly taught not to be gentle, NEVER say you’re sorry, don’t ask for what you need, don’t tell me what you think, if you’re disappointed, it’s your fault, don’t ever expect a Sorry from me, I can do what I want to you unless you fight hard enough, if you fight hard enough, you’re a jerk, jesus loves….

In the middle of distress, I asked my friend, Why does god hate me? She answered, God doesn’t hate you, why do you hate yourself?

I think that was one of the major points when I stopped believing in God. When GOD became me. My expectations. My WRONG expectations. When it was pointed out to me that everything I believed about god was UNREASONABLE. I heard time and time again, But what did you really expect?

So my obedience turns into retroactive regret. I don’t deserve the things I wanted because I didn’t want them enough to rebel (on the one hand) and I don’t deserve them because I wasn’t fine enough quality to tolerate anything better than THIS.

I keep thinking of an episode of Grey’s Anatomy I saw recently, where a man who had lost his wife at the hospital came back with a gun. He kept asking people for directions, and no one would really help him. Finally, he just up and shot one.

This does not mean I’m going to shoot anyone. Once upon a time I would have been afraid of that, but thanks to the local counseling center, I can look at these thoughts as just thoughts, and see what they have to tell me, without being afraid that the thought is equal to the action (as in Christianity).

I get it. I’m supposed to be tough enough to force myself through this world. But once you accept that you have not only the right, but the responsibility to be active in your relationships, communicate, and participate in establishing rules: once you get to that point, and start speaking up, you’re in danger of being counter-attacked so others don’t lose their “power”; or completely turned off. Blocked. Put in a safe corner, tied up and resilenced.

Like I said, I’ll probably have to edit this later for clarity, but. Tell me what you think.

Peace.

me