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.