part 93, or "it really, really sucks to be able to feel so much"

I left my house today. I really thought this was a sleep-and-eat-all-day-in-my-jammies kind of day, but I had really, really, really real and extended flashbacks from some of the violence I experienced when I was little. It really shook me up.

I have been having increasingly intrusive and graphic images in my head for about the past month, so when I found myself with three hours at home with no one else there, I slipped into the remembering.

I didn't do it on purpose, but once I was aware of the opportunity I had to experience things in a safe place with absolutely no one else around, I started to let the images hang around my consciousness instead of immediately filing them in their box to save for later.

I feel kind of stunted writing right now, but I really wanted to write about what happened today. It sucked.

One of the things I haven't talked about on this blog is that my dad did things to other people. Really bad things. A lot of times he would have me along to participate and/or watch. It was very important to him that I be exposed to these types of things, I guess as part of his "training" of me. Shit like that really reinforced the notion that the two of us were isolated demigods living among fools.

The time I was remembering today happened when I was 8. On my birthday, actually. My dad brought me with him to participate in this very bad thing he did to someone as my birthday present. That's what he told me when I was not enthusiastic about participating, so that I would feel guilty that he went through all of this trouble to give me this opportunity to participate in the very bad things, and I wouldn't even make any effort to do it.

I have been told that the things I did under orders from my dad are not my fault. Sometimes I believe that.

When I see an eight year old little girl, I couldn't imagine blaming her if she did the things I did when I was eight years old. But I remember it so well, and it felt like I was deciding to do it before I did it, so how could I not believe it was my fault?

I saw a tv crime procedural the other day, and the subject of this particular episode had dissociative identity disorder, and several of her alters were shown throughout the show. I've seen "The Three Faces of Eve," and I've seen "Sybil," but this depiction I saw the other day of someone with D.I.D. was much more personal to me.

When the character in the show transitioned among her alters, no one made any hype about it. There wasn't any super-dramatic background music, or artfully composed camera shots. At least I didn't notice them.

I saw the movie with Edward Norton where he pretends to have d.i.d. in order to back an insanity plea in a murder case. I saw it years ago, but I have never forgotten the moment when the camera catches Norton's expression at the moment it is revealed that he was faking it. It made me nauseous. He is a really creepy guy, which is not relevant here, but I still had to say it.

Anyway, the procedural I was watching the other day did not seem nearly as hyped and dramatic as the Ed Norton movie (I would tell you the name of it, but I don't really have a very good memory for that type of information). It just felt like this is what this girl is experiencing, and it is accepted immediately by the main players, and there is no debate about whether d.i.d. is even real, and they just worked with her d.i.d.

I saw the way the girl's face changed when she transitioned between alters (alters are the separate "personalities" within one person, just in case you didn't know), and I knew how that felt. I could just feel what it feels like to transition alters.

But I don't have d.i.d.

I only have one me, but there are different faces I put on for different situations. Not like smiling or frowning, but feeling my entire body and mind and heart slip into this callous and cold person that I remember being a lot when I experienced the violence against other people.

I also experienced it a lot when I lived in my car, and when I was doing meth and all that, too.

I don't stay like that anymore. For most of my life, the change into the girl with no feelings and no expression and no empathy and no sense of self-preservation was very common, and really actually constant for long periods of time (like days or weeks - maybe even months). I haven't been back into that face since I went to the hospital over four years ago.

But having these very vivid and drawn-out flash backs (lasting about 3-5 minutes instead of the usual 1-3 seconds) today has reminded me what it felt like to slip into that mode.

I was capable of anything in that mode. I have done very bad things to people. It was always at the great persuasion of my dad, but he was good at provoking me into that mode so that I was removed enough in my mind from what was actually happening to actually do very bad things to people.

But I remember it so well.

I think I have been very much deflecting the guilt and shame I feel about what happened to those people; about what my dad did, and what I did. I have gotten to a point where I can have a settled notion that none of it was my fault.

But the guilt and shame haven't gone away. I just hide them better now, I guess.

Today though, I let them come out for a bit, and I was having these long flashbacks about things I vividly remember doing, and vividly remember slipping into that distanced mode and staying there while I did the very bad things, and not coming out of that mode for days.

But that's not what I was feeling when I was remembering today. I was feeling shock and horror (that song, "shock, shock, horror, horror" started to play in my head) and revulsion and something between choking and throwing up. I was reacting to what happened like someone who didn't have the distanced mode would react. I was horrified.

My face was twitching and contorting, and my arms and legs and hands and feet were having twitching things, too, and every now and then I would stop and think about what I must look like and feel stupid, and try to stop all of the twitching, but it would keep coming back without me even realizing it again. This is actually why I won't do any remembering in front of anyone else - I can't handle the idea that someone would see me being all twitchy.

When I called the time-out on the remembering - when I told myself that it was enough, and that I don't have to stay there (in the memory) anymore - I was lying down on my bed. I realized I had tears on my face. It was so weird - I didn't even know I had been crying. But feeling them on my face was comforting, because I hurt so badly when I was remembering things.

The pain of remembering doing very bad things to people was sincere, and I was relieved that I was crying because I did not cry when the very bad things actually happened. I didn't feel so much guilt and shame today either, but I felt so, so sad for the little girl I was and the people who were being hurt.

I don't know - I think the way they handled that girl's multiple identities on that show made me realize that, deep down, I have been broken in so many ways, and I wasn't the one who did the breaking. The shattered pieces of who I always believed I am are evidence that I am not that cold and callous bitch who can hurt people and not even feel bad about it. I figure that if I was truly was that bad person, there wouldn’t be shattered fragments - there would just be one single blob of pulsating hate driving me.

Before today, I had not been able to remember what I did without getting the perspective of my age at that time straightened out. I may have been eight when this particular thing happened, but I'm 35 now and remembering it like it just happened a few seconds ago - it's hard to get that age thing in context. But I am glad I was able to do that, even though it was only just a little bit.

I keep expecting the remembering to push me back into the guilt and shame, but so far that has been stopped by the knowledge that I am someone who cries real tears when someone else is hurting, even if I am the one doing the hurting. My dad couldn't do that. He was not someone who could do that.

I'm starting to realize more and more that my mom is not someone who could do that, either.

I'm proud of myself recognizing that I spent enough time remembering, and that it would help a lot if I left the house for a little bit; got out into the air and breathed it in and out, and saw other human beings. It did take me about an hour to get out the door, because I really felt like I needed to be wearing a hat, but every hat I found made me look like a crazy person, so I eventually went without a hat.

I'm exhausted - I'm going to go eat some of my Christmas chocolate and watch inconsequential television shows.

A

part 92, or, "i'm not that scared of you anymore, but you can still go to hell"

The hearing on the temporary protective order against my mom was this week. I was very, very, very nervous because she had gotten so huge and terrifying in my head. It was the same way with my dad when I first started remembering all of his abuse, too. It took me a really long time to get my dad back down to size in my mind, but it didn't take that long with my mom.

I hadn't seen her since I was able to get out of her mind-fucking web, and I felt like she would be able to mess with my head in some way I couldn't protect myself from. But she wasn't, and now she's back down to her regular size. A smaller size, actually, because I am looking at what she is, and not at the person I desperately needed to be my mom.

Jonny and one of my best friends were there, and I very literally don't think I could have gotten through it without them. My mom had a lawyer, my brother came from out of state to be there, and my uncle was also there. I was very sad to see my uncle - we have a lot in common, and I felt that he might not get caught up in all of the dramatic bullshit, but there he was.

The last few times I had spoken with my uncle were, I felt, good conversations, and I was relieved that he still wanted to have a relationship with me and my family. The last conversation with him though, started off strangely, and I got the impression that he thought I was drinking again. I told him I had four years clean and sober this past August, and I have been clean and sober since then.

I can see that my mom (and/or my brother and sister) would suggest that I was drinking again to make me look like I was more of a threat to her, and also to discount my credibility. My mom exaggerates a lot - A LOT - and it isn't difficult to imagine her exaggerating the possibility that I might be drinking again into a fact that I was actually drinking again. Bitch.

Her exaggerations are one of the good reasons I don't have a relationship with her any more - I don't have to deal with her twisted bullshit. I don't have to deal with my brother and sister anymore, either, and don't have the stress of trying to convince myself that I actually like them.

I've come to like some things about them over the last few years, but the truth is I really don't like either one of them. My sister is terribly pious. She acts like a little piece of her soul dies whenever I say the word "fuck" in front her.

My brother is just an ass. Seriously.

The last time I spoke with him, I used the word "placating" - I repeated it three times before I figured out he didn't know that word. I know a lot of words (I'm not being sarcastic - my vocabulary is stupendous), so when I use words other people don't know, I can usually just say other, more common words that mean the same thing, and that's what I did when I used the word "placating" with my brother.

He used the word "placating" in one of the emails he sent me after that. I wonder if he remembered that he heard that word from me - I don't think he did. I'm pretty sure if I asked him, he would deny ever not knowing the word, and that I am just making that up to be a manipulative bitch.

Until the past couple of weeks, I hadn't realized how much time my brother thinks I dedicate to plotting evil things against him. He really actually believes that things I did years or months ago were to set him up to make him look bad now.

If he cared about me the way he swears he does, he would have picked up on the fact that I can't plot things - I actually am not capable of forming a plot and remembering all of the steps in it to the end. I've tried. I do not have the mental capacity - I'm not exaggerating - I actually do not have the mental capacity, as in, my brain doesn't work right. I've always been like that. It's the same thing with math.

It's because of all the trauma - I have actual brain damage.

Anyway.

I feel like this post is a big bitch-fest to antagonize my mom and sister and brother. I'm okay with that. I really just wanted to write about the hearing, though.

The judge ended up not instating an extended or permanent protective order, but I got on the stand to testify, and he kept asking me questions, and I told him (and the world - it was a public hearing) everything. I mean EVERYTHING. I told him about the two big things I haven’t been okay writing about in this blog. After telling the judge all of that, in a public, recorded hearing, I'm reconsidering sharing those two big things here.

Hmm. Its definitely something I will think about doing, but that is not the kind of thing I would do without first consulting my husband and my therapist - it's very, very, very, very fucked up shit. It’s the kind of shit that once its out of the bag, it changes your life forever. It's pretty intense.

It felt sooooo good saying all of that at the hearing, though. It felt safe. Even with my mom sitting right in front of me, I felt safe saying it all out loud. So I did. I didn't even care if the judge thought I was crazy - I mean, what the hell did I have to lose? Only the opportunity to feel safe enough to say those things out loud to the whole world. So that's what I did.

I kind of felt like a little kid FINALLY finding someone who would hear what I had to say, and who thought those things were just as terrible as I did.

It is NOT how I expected that hearing to go, but I'm glad it went the way it did. Even though I didn't get another order of protection against my mom, I feel like she takes me seriously now. I'm hoping that will be enough to keep her from trying to contact me or my family.

I guess we'll see.

part 91, or "i really feel like i have to have an actual title for my posts now"

In the movie Mary Poppins, there is a scene where Mary and the kids come across Burt on a sidewalk, and he is making chalk drawings on the cement. Mary Poppins is magical, so when she held the children's hands and jumped onto the drawing, they all shrunk down and went into it. The chalk picture was still chalk, but they were inside of it like it was a 3-dimentional alternate universe, interacting with the cartoon characters and horses and penguins, and singing songs and dancing, and having a marvelous break from reality.

When it starts raining on the chalk drawing, Mary and Burt and the kids all jump back out of the drawing, and end up on the sidewalk, looking down onto it's 2-dimensionality, as the chalk began to blur and smudge from the rain. To me it seemed they took a moment to re-orient themselves with the real world, and when they looked back at the drawing, it seemed impossible to accept that they had just been inside of that manufactured land.

What they were feeling at that time has been what I have been feeling for about a week, since I got a restraining order against my mom. Taking that action to concretely sever my life from hers, and from my brother's and sister's, set me down with my feet back in the real world.

I am still shaking and twitching and dissociating in various forms of intensity, but I am able to become calm so much more quickly when I remember I severed those ties.

Up until now, my life has been in one of those chalk drawings, except Burt didn't draw it, and Mary Poppins didn't magically take me there (or out of there, either). The chalk drawing I've lived in is dark and cruelly mercurial, and nightmarish, and I've been scratching to get out of it since as long as I can remember.

A lot of times when I was in the drawing, I would forget that it was not a real place, and my mind would hide all of the bad stuff out on the edges, and I would bury myself into the middle, and only see what I could handle seeing, and it was still a really shitty and depressing and lonely childhood, but in it I had not been raped or molested or tortured; I hated my parents, but also loved them fiercely and believed they loved me.

I hated my brother and sister, too, but held on mercilessly to the idea that they were my brother and sister, and so I had to fight to keep that connection going. Even now, I am a little surprised at how much I don't care if saying that I hated my brother and sister would hurt their feelings. But that's what I'm talking about with the chalk drawing analogy.

In the drawing, I was bound and restrained (mentally, emotionally, etc.) from allowing my mind to consider anything outside of the center of that drawing. My concern for my parents' and siblings' feelings was like a gigantic, gooey, meshy, mooshy web that held me down. It was what kept me in the middle, from seeing the bad things that were all around us.

But their feelings aren't so much a factor anymore. I have been terrified of letting go of them, and I had never really considered that it was an option. I did recognize it as an option (eventually), and I'm letting go of them now. It's like they were giant parade balloons I had to hold down to the ground, but now I've let go of all the ropes connecting them to me.

It feels very free.

But now I can also look back at the chalk drawing I had escaped from, and can hardly contemplate that it was the life I was living. It was who I was. It was my world, but being able to completely step out of it and look at it has been tremendously grounding.

Unfortunately, it has also been horrific to look back at that drawing, because now I can see all of the bad stuff all over it.

It is really bad stuff.

They are really bad people.

I know they have the power to take me back there, too, and so my main priority is protecting myself from anything to do with them.

It is weird sometimes to look back at the chalk-life, and see it for what it truly was, and be startled and even shocked at the things that went on there. In my mind, I can look at it and say, that was me - that's where I was. That's where I fantasized about someday getting out - out of what, I wasn't quite sure at the time, but just OUT.

And now I am. I'm out. I feel like there has been some existential battle going on between me and my parents and siblings, and they fought very, very hard to not let me win. But I did. I won. I'm out.

I remember how I felt when I was little and fantasizing about not being there, and I am able to say to myself, "those fantasies - that's what is real now. I'm not in that interminable nightmare anymore."

Imagining being at a place outside of myself has been one of my greatest survival techniques. It is where I found hope and love and kindness. One thing about the dissociation stuff is that I will suddenly be standing somewhere or driving somewhere or walking somewhere, and have no idea where I was or how much time had gone by. I would be terrified I was coming back into that horrible place from the place outside of myself.

I was really good at tricking myself into believing that, too - telling myself that my husband and kids and house are not real - they are that fantasy world I hoped for so passionately, and that I am not really in it. I would really, truly believe that. I kept waiting for my dad to come around to prove that I was not really in this happy life now, and I was so scared because I wanted to hold onto it whether it was real or not.

Ever since he died, though, I have not been able to trick myself very well like that. It is kind of like being about to sneeze, but then realizing you actually don't even feel like you have to sneeze, and taking a deep breath and being so incredibly grateful that the car I'm riding in is real, and my little dog is real, and my house is real, and I get real mail in my real mailbox.

And my boys - Jonny is real, and Wesley and Jonah are, too.

I could be alone at home, and not connected, and feeling and seeing and smelling and hearing my past like it was my present, but when one of those guys walks in the room and says, "hello," I get reconnected and every time am reminded again of how blessed I am to have these beautiful people in my life.

part 90, or " i'm scared of you. go to hell."

I'm just now realizing how scared I am of my mom and my brother and sister, and my dad, too, even though he's dead. It kind of feels like I grew up in a tornado, and now am having the opportunity to step back and look at it in context, and realize how fucking terrifying and horrible and harmful it is.

I try to think of nice memories of my mom, from when I was little. Memories that involved me feeling safe with her, or when she took me out of dangerous situations. I keep coming up with her picking me up from school because I was sick. It was really a relief to see her every time. She was very nice and maternal when I was sick, the way I remember it.

Any time I left my mom for any extended period of time, I would be really homesick. I went to Girl Scout camp for one week when I was about 12. I couldn't go to sleep in that strange and different place without crying. I had my same blanket and same pillow, and brought group pictures of my parents and siblings, but at night I cried anyway. During the day, I would almost cry sometimes, but would suck it back in and wait for it to get dark so no one could see me.

I mastered the art of crying silently - the trick is to not let too many tears out at a time, or my nose would start to run, and my cover would be blown. In unfamiliar beds in unfamiliar places, I would pull the blanket over me and take a deep breath and let some tears squeak out. Then I would exhale very slowly (so people couldn't hear it), and then took another breath and held it, and so forth and so on. I would do this until the fear passed, and then I could just go to sleep.

I guess that's how I still cry now, but not nearly as intense, and if I'm alone, I let a lot of tears go all at once and blow my nose a lot. Usually I feel better after a couple of rounds of this, but sometimes the pain just will not subside. I end up numb staring into space like a vegetable until I fall asleep or someone or something makes a noise that brings me back, and by that time, I don't need to cry anymore.

Anyway, when I was little and went on a sleepover, my parents always had to come get me in the middle of the night because of how terrified I was. That was a good memory of my mom - coming to pick me up from sleepovers.

Another good memory of my mom was knowing she was next to me when I was in the (regular) hospital with an ovarian cyst, and then surgery.

But its just like the process with my dad: I will keep holding on to this catalog of positive memories, but when I start to consider that my parents aren't the loving people I needed them to be, the narrow focus on those memories pans out a little, and eventually encompasses the events surrounding that moment. With my dad, every single moment I held onto to be sure that he loved me occurred within 24 hours (before and/or after) of a traumatic event.

I guess I'm kind of suspicious of my positive memories of my mom. For example, she came and picked me up from school whenever I threw up (which was pretty common, especially in grade school), but she had a very young daughter who was in such a constant state of anxiety that she (me) was physically sick on a regular basis. Why would that not raise any flags? I always felt like my getting sick was brushed off and attributed to something dietary, or neuroticism.

(It just now occurred to me that the times I was sick growing up may have been the mornings after my dad abused me. Huh.)

My mom, just in the past few years, has told me that she's told other people that there had always been something wrong with me. She was so relieved when I was in fifth grade and they said I had a.d.d., and even more thrilled when the meds they put me on reigned in my overtly aggressive behavior, and turned me into a geeked-up little zombie.

Why wouldn't my mom have done something sooner? Why was she so thrilled when I was diagnosed with a.d.d.? After the diagnosis, she went out and learned everything she could about a.d.d., and was then always ready to explain my strange behavior away. I think she was glad to have a somewhat socially-acceptable disorder (there is a lot of controversy about a.d.d., but it sure was a better diagnosis than post traumatic stress disorder resulting from incest, among other things) to pin it on, finally.

My mom actually wrote me a letter describing her relief when the a.d.d. diagnosis was made, and that she was happy to have a name to put on "it".

I kind of feel like I was a little caged animal. I believe my brother and sister felt the same way, and that is how they treated me. Actually, that is how they have always treated me when I go out of their lines of decency, like when I told them I'm not a Christian. My brother wasn't so bad about that, but my sister angrily preached to me like I hadn’t spent a significant part of my childhood drowning in a church.

She would use her concern over my immortal soul to just let me know some things she felt really strongly about, and just wanted to tell me because it was really important to her that I not burn in hell, and she needed to make sure I had eternal salvation.

She really actually thought hell would be worse than my childhood. It has not occurred to her that earth is actually hell, and we're all already in it - that's the horse I'm betting on.

My brother has been more like that when it comes to my oldest son. Even as a teenager, he would chastise me for undermining his authority (the kind that only existed in my brother's imagination) with my son, and he had endless lectures about how much more he knew about parenting than I did, and that I needed to do this, and that, and whatever, because I was obviously taking my son down a path of treachery and evil (also the kind that only existed in my brother's imagination).

My brother's latest excuse to interject himself into my life was that he was worried about Wes (my son). He was concerned that Wes was only getting my side of the story, and so took it upon himself to copy that email he wrote (the one that lays everything out as he sees it, and explains to me what reality is) to Wes. For Wesley's own good. Just to make sure he is not being manipulated by me.

They have always both been very integral in the brainwashing aspect of my parents' abuse, and as I'm sure I've said before, they are still doing the same thing. They may also be victims of our horrific upbringing, but that doesn't mean I have to put up with them.

I don't wish anything bad to happen to them, or for them to suffer in any way, and I feel that way about my mom, too. But what I really want for them is nothing. Regardless, it doesn’t matter what I may or may not want for them, or believe about them, just as it doesn't matter what they may or may not want for me, or believe about me.

I do not care. I do not want to have anything at all to do with all three of them. What they do with that information is not my problem.

But they are so, so crafty at reopening my psychological wounds, whether they are aware of it or not, and that is why I am scared of them - they can hurt a place in me that I have no way to protect. And that is why I will take out restraining orders all over the world, if I need to, to keep them away from me and my family.

I really hope the restraining orders will be enough to keep them from contacting me.

part 89

My brother and sister contacting me really shook me up, and then when my mom sent a text message to my son, it was like, "what the fuck?"

It scares me that I am telling them not to contact my family or me in any way, but they don't take it seriously. It seems like the only reason they even acknowledged my request to not contact me was that it was just a little game, one they would let me play out, but would definitely interfere with if I went over the line.

Also I think my mom and my brother in particular both feel they are entitled to contact with my kids regardless of what I say or do. That scares me, too.

I took out a restraining order against my mom. It sucked. The whole process sucked. But I'm scared, and I'm an adult, and I do have a right to tell her not to contact me and my kids, and that is what I did.

During the process, a lot of people asked me why my mom and brother and sister would still contact me or my kids after I told them not to.

I really don't have an answer to that question. I can speculate that they believe the inflammatory nature of my blog allows them room to respond and to defend themselves. I can also speculate that they think I am silly, and are not going to let my latest "tools of manipulation" interfere with their contact with my kids.

Outside of that, I feel the only reason they would contact any of us after I told them not to is to fuck with me.

My sister (Jessie) has said that she will always be my sister, and there's nothing I can do to change that, and that she will always love me. My brother has insisted that he loves me and wants to support me in any way (but only concerning things he feels are acceptable). My mom seems to think that if she puts the words "I love you" anywhere in a letter or other communication that it means everything she is saying is for my own good, and she's only saying it because she loves me.

But I think that if someone I loved and cared about asked me not to contact them or their family, then I would not contact them or their family. I might not know why they don't want me to contact them, but the simple act of saying "don't contact me" indicates that they are distressed by my contacting them. I don't want the people I love to be distressed, under any circumstances, even if it makes me look bad to everyone else.

They claim to love me and I have asked them not to contact me because it distresses me, but they have been doing it anyway. This says to me that they are all more interested in preserving their own egos, or continuing to attempt to keep all the skeletons in the closet, or are completely self-obsessed and cannot consider that the reason I don't want them to contact me is because it distresses me, and it doesn't really have anything to do with their feelings or wishes or beliefs.

In one of my last conversations with my sister, Jessie, I told her that at this time her feelings do not matter to me. I told her that because her feelings did not matter to me at that time, and because she uses them to blackmail me. I had been trying to talk to her about me, about what I was going through, but she made it about her.

With my brother, if I mention anything to do with even the idea that he was shitty to me at any time in our lives, he assumes that I am accusing him, not just wanting him to acknowledge that he has not always been perfect because I might need for him to do that so I can progress in our relationship.

With my mom, when I tried to confront her about her involvement in my abuse, she decided that if I didn't flat out accept that she has been the naïve dupe in this whole situation, case closed, that I am attacking her, and the whole thing is therefore, about her.

So I guess the reason they have been contacting me and my kids after I asked them not to is because they are seeing this as being all about them. The reason I took out a restraining order against my mom is because I know she will never acknowledge that she hurt me in the past, and continues to hurt me now, and as long as it is going to be about her and what she wants other people to think, she will continue to always hurt me and will not stop unless there are serious repercussions (like jail).

I'm tired of being hurt. I have a choice about continuing to be hurt, or to do what is in my power to stop it. That is all it's about - it doesn't matter what they want to say or to do, or whether or not people believe me or them, or whether the things I am experiencing are causing them to think about things that are unpleasant about themselves and their own pasts.

I don't owe them anything. I don't have to convince them that I have a strong enough argument to premise my distance from them. I don't care if they love me or not.

I just want them to leave me the fuck alone.