part 71

I’m still pretty bummed from all of this shit with my mom. I have started doing that thing where I go back in my mind to before my mom and I had a fight, and I feel fine, and then remember what happened and get sad all over again.

That happened a lot when I first started remembering the abuse by my dad, and it happened when I first started remembering about the abortion, and it happened a little bit when I first started remembering about the neighbors. I guess its part of the whole Dissociative Disorder thing.

I know I’ve said this before, but I would like to reiterate what a gigantic mind fuck this has all been. The torture aspects of the abuse have been the most difficult to get straight in my head. I had convinced myself that a lot of what my dad did to “punish” me and my siblings was just part of being a strict parent. It had not occurred to me that lining up our belongings on the driveway and having to smash them with a sledgehammer could be anything other than innovative discipline.

One of the reasons I am so bummed about my mom is that I am seeing her role in the perpetuation of the notion that something is wrong with my mind. I’m seeing this for the first time ever.

I mentioned before that I already did not trust her, but for some reason it took a few more years for that to evolve into the realization that the reasons for my not trusting her were based in her ability to keep fucking with my head. She would say she was 100% supportive, and that whatever she needed me to do, she would do it.

She also told me that she believed me. She told me that some people didn’t believe any of it is real, and that she lets them know just how “credible” I “appear” to her, and that I’m telling the truth.

I didn’t expect my mom to believe me when I first told her about the sexual abuse almost 4 years ago, but for her to convince me that she did believe me only to turn around and harbor her friends’ doubts is pretty painful. It’s another big mind fuck.

I feel like an idiot. I feel terribly naïve and like one of those people you see in the movies where they are realizing just how much they don’t matter to the rest of the world, and you feel sorry and embarrassed for them.

I don’t want people to feel sorry and embarrassed for me, but I really truly believe that is what my mom chooses to do.

She is still making things out like I am an unstable, hallucinating lunatic. When my view of what is real clashes with what she wants everyone to believe is real about her, she tosses my opposition into the box of things-not-to-be-considered-due-to-instability-of-the-source. It’s a get out of jail free card for her.

My mom actually believes that if she feels any emotion about me or all of this shit that something is wrong with her. She believes that only people who are calm and composed in front of other people at all times can legitimately claim to have been harmed.

When I think about my reliance on her as someone safe, I think of other people I relied on to be safe. Growing up, especially as a teenager, I relied a lot on the boys across the street – the sons of the bastard who raped me three different times. I don’t know why I relied on these boys – or on my mom – but I truly, truly loved them.

They really were my safe place. My mom was my safe place at home, and those boys across the street were my safe place when my mom wasn’t safe enough.

I would sneak out of the house at all hours of the night and, still in my jammies, dart across the street and up the steep, brick steps of their front porch, and look in the window to see if either of them was up watching tv. A lot of times they were, especially in the summer.

If I saw them I would tap really lightly on the screen, and if they heard it, they would come out and we would sit and talk. Or they would sit and I would cry.

There were times when I went to check and see if they were up and saw their dad sitting there watching tv instead of them. That scared the ever-living shit out of me. I would suddenly turn into a mist of fear and drop soundlessly off the porch and onto the ground and drift as quickly and silently as I could back to my house.

Those boys across the street both ended up in military school in Alabama. I missed them terribly when they were away. I would write letters that would actually have tearstains from crying while I was writing to them. One of the best memories I have is looking out the kitchen window expecting them to get home from school any second, their mom pulling up in their driveway in one of those giant boat cars she drove, and then both of them jumping out of the car and running and meeting me in the street.

We hugged, and each time I hugged one of them, they would pick me up and spin around and scare the bejesus out of me. In those moments, when my feet were not on the ground and I didn’t know which way was up or if I was even going to remain conscious, my feeling of relief that they were back with me existed in direct proportion to my fear of being spun around, and I was hugging whichever one of them tightly enough to avoid being spun onto the street and my eyes were closed and everything was spinning – but they were there.

It just felt safe.

I used to have that feeling of safety with my mom when I was really, really young, but it eventually ebbed off until it became simply a fact that I could not even comprehend questioning. But it was just a fact – it was not a feeling.

And now I look back and see how truly alone and unsafe I was, and how I imagined those places were safe because I had to feel safe somewhere, not because they were actually safe. I feel sad when I think about those boys not loving me the way I loved them. In the end – at least as of today – they grew up to be bastards like their father, and so it wouldn’t really matter if they ever loved me or not.

Except that it would.

Anyway, I really do believe my mom loved me. I honestly don’t think she has ever liked me very much, but I do believe she has loved me in whatever way she can.