part 129, or "with love, TTFN"

I have been feeling better and better about so many things. This past year has really yielded a lot of hope for me. For the first time in my life, I am facing an existence free of constant reminders of what I have done and what others have done to me. I am getting closer and closer to leaving this hell hole behind, and having my own life to live in a place I can call home.

As things have been falling into place these past few months, I am feeling less compelled to write in this blog. Don't get me wrong - I have been writing on my new anonymous blog, and have also written a short story I will be submitting to a contest. I am excited about how my writing has evolved from something I was compelled to do into an experience I sincerely enjoy.

The short story contest I am entering has made me realize that I can write short stories and enter them into contests in a relatively simple and inexpensive manner. Blogging has gotten me to the point of accessing my emotions deeply enough to put them into words in 1,000 to 1,500 word instalments, and then continue to function in the present. That's pretty much what short stories are, right?

I used to read my blogs...it was so strange seeing my thoughts and feelings and pain and torture and growth all laid out in a public diary. Every now and then, I would start from my first post and read every entry to that date. I stopped doing this after about twenty posts, though, because that is a lot to read and I already know what it says, so what is really the point?

I also have gotten to a place where I can write about all of this shit, post it online, and leave it behind. I have gradually stopped ruminating about every detail I have revealed about myself and my experiences, and learned to just spit out whatever it is that has been pressing my mind, and then let go of it and appreciate the relief from a little bit more darkness.

I cannot express how important this blog has been to me, and to my recovery. Beyond the catharsis of getting my troubles out of my head, I have thrived on the encouragement of people I had not spoken to in decades, and acquaintances revealing their similar grief, and complete strangers letting me know my words made them feel stronger. It has truly been a miraculous gift.

I have made so much progress since I have started putting it all out there, but it has been about only one facet of my life. I know I have mentioned that there were other things my dad did, and that I witnessed and experienced, but have not been able or willing to share any of that with the world. My obsessions and fixations have gradually come to center around these other events, and images, and feelings, and horrors. I think that is largely due to the fact that I have been keeping them all so close to me, and not setting them free into cyberspace.

This is where my anonymous blog comes in. In many ways, writing in that blog is like starting over again, like I have to go through the same processes with these other things that I did with what I wrote about here. It is really difficult. I have the time and the space and the stamina and the ability to make that effort, though. This blog has gotten me to this point.

So I guess this would be a good place to leave this tome of misery and hope, just as I am leaving behind the initial recovery phase and so much of the pain of my past. It is time to move on.

So, um, yeah.

Thank you readers, for giving me this opportunity to heal. I am eternally grateful to you, the recipients of the angst and joy of the past few years. Thank you for helping me to love who I am, and I have every hope that each of you are loving who you are, too.

<3 class="goog-spellcheck-word" span="span">Rebecca

Part 128, or "its time to throw down"

I had therapy yesterday, and as soon as I got settled in, I told my therapist that I feel really good and like I don't really need to talk about anything. Of course, I knew as I was saying those words that something would come up that I needed to talk about.

One thing I found myself surprised to express in that session was how difficult this has all been. I feel now that I am in the light at the end of the tunnel, and I can finally get back to (or start) living my life. Where I am right now is what gave me hope the whole time I was working toward it. I haven't gotten here in the way I thought it would happen, and it has taken a hell of a lot longer to get here than I could have even comprehended.

I think if I knew how long it would take to get me where I am now, I may not have even started the journey. If I knew the pain and drudgery and horror the past six years would bring before it all started, I am sure I would be dead now, because I don't think I would have continued to choose this route. This route has fucking sucked.

And I know I am writing about it in the past tense; I do not for a moment think my life is going to be all shits and giggles from here on out, but I finally have a solid experience to proclaim is behind me. Six years ago (or was it seven?), I was tormented by a desperation I didn't even really know existed. I don't feel desperate anymore. I don't feel beholden to the past or to whether or not anyone else believes what I have to say. 

I don't understand how it is that I got this far, though. I mean, I understand the pain and agony of living this process...but I don't understand how someone so keenly pressed into a lifepath of misery and shame could have possibly been re-routed to where I am now. I was raised to hate myself, and to hate other people. My earliest directions were to have pain, to be hurt and hurt other people. I was taught from birth that hate and shame comprised the entity that is me. 

Where I am now does not happen often in the world, and I am actually quite shocked that my parents failed to make me into a snivelling imp. They were very talented and astute at turning a child's reality into a pit of writhing vipers. I mean, as far as brainwashing goes, my parents were the best. I would not have been surprised if, given positions of huge power, my parents were lumped into history with Charles manson and Hitler. 

In fact, I have specifically studied Hitler because he reminds me of my dad, and learning about his personality and actions and habits was very familiar to me. At the time it was exciting, but now I find the minds of charismatic sociopaths to be boring. They all seem to be very similar in a very rudimentary way, and that is all there is to them: a bag of tricks and snake oil, and the ability to peddle it to people who have desperation living in them, and there are a lot of people who fit that description.

This is not to say I am not terrified of sociopaths, because I am - body and soul terrified. They are very dangerous people who are very talented at hurting others, and who have only a longing for hurting others. Talent with a coinciding motivation is what greatness is built on. Whether or not the greatness is positive or negative is not really relevant.

But I have always been terrified, and I believe it is unchangeable. I will probably feel terrified for the rest of my life. But the thing about terror is, since I have been on such intimate terms with it for so long, it does not pose as much as a threat or hurdle as it used to - not psychologically, anyway. I believe it will be very difficult for anyone to intimidate me intellectually. I have mastered the art of bullshit, and now it has no power over me! Well, not very much power anyway.

When a manipulator's greatest weapon is fear, and I am already scared anyway, it takes some wind out of the manipulator's sails - what the fuck are they going to do? Scare me some more? The more scared I get doesn't affect my ideals and values so much anymore, so scare me all day long - no one can do anything worse to me than what has already been done, and I got through all of it the first time, so...yeah. 

Fear is the number one motivator. Its what money and power and religion and politics are all about, but in my recognition and acceptance of my own constant terror, and by allowing the whole world to see it all, I am finding myself free as a bird.

So, yeah, if you want to beat the shit out of me, I will definitely run away from you. But if you want to fuck with my head, good luck with that. My head has transcended the power of getting fucked with. The power in that is not that I am a threat to anyone else, or that I want to scare people or hurt people with my perspective, it just means that I am not going to automatically submit to anything I feel is in any way tainted with bullshit. I am free as long as I am completely honest, and honesty is not nearly as painful as being raped by my own parents, so I think I am going to stick with the honesty.

I do keep feeling uncomfortable using such terms of finality and confidence. I know it is possible - and that it most likely will happen - that I will get sucked into some bullshit and get my head fucked with again. It is a part of life.

But now I have the most amazing armor against bullshit, and I feel so much safer being in the real, live world. The world really has so much beauty, and I am very pleased to be able to see it clearly, without my fear holding me back.

Going back to whether or not I would have chosen this route if I had known what it was going be like, I do know that I would still go this way. All I have do is think a moment about what it felt like at the beginning, and I know I would choose this route again. But this route has still fucking sucked.

part 127, or "post-op...alyptic"

So it turns out all of my guts had grown together, and that had to be all cleaned up during the surgery for my hysterectomy. Aside from taking much longer than had originally been anticipated, the procedure went very well, and I am very pleased with the progress of my recovery. Enough about my guts, though - I mean they are guts, and the surgeon didn't find anything interesting in them (like a twin, or human teeth, or a colony of worms), so that's that.

I apparently prepared for the emotional and psychological aspects of the hysterectomy well. I haven't had any emotional or hormonal fallout at all. It feels a lot like when my dad died, like losing such a significant part of myself would have been devastating if it was happeneing to any one else, but it is happening to me, so it is just a big relief.

I feel good. I am really feeling the symbolic and literal and spiritual parrallels of everything going on in my life. It seriously just feels really good.

One thing that has been on my mind a lot is my mom, and how different the circumstances would have been if she was still a part of my life. I am really relieved I did not have to deal with her making my surgery all about her, or making light of my experience, or judging my decisions about very major things in my life. I also am glad I did not have to keep track of all the people who wished me well and wanted to be a part of the superficial aspects of the healing process, like my brother and sister, and my mom's friends.

I realize how snooty and disaffected that might sound, but it is like when anyone uses the phrase "well, bless her heart!" It is a contrived reaction to something bad happening to someone you don't really give a shit about, but you don't want anyone to know you don't give a shit about the person something bad is happening to. Then there is the obligation on the part of the person whose heart is being blessed to acknowledge how wonderful and thoughtful and gracious the heart-blesser is, or dire social consequences will follow. It is all very old-money and Southern. I hate it.

I also am glad that I don't have to deal with justifying to my mom the validity of my hysterectomy. When I was a kid, one of my aunts had a hysterectomy. Up until then, I had been under the impression that a hysterectomy was something devastasting and terrible, that having one meant you were forever disfigured and marked as "less than," and were one to be pitied. When my aunt had her hysterectomy, though, my mom was really irritated about it all. My mom said that my aunt was making a big deal out of normal things, and that she just wanted the attention a valid hysterectomy may have warranted.

She was the same way about a family that were our close friends, swearing the mom had Munchausen's by proxy, and had imposed imaginary bad things on her daughters so that hysterics and surgeries and conditions and fears of infertility were a constant part of their lives. Now those the daughters are all grown up, and it turns out one of them is not able to have children, and after my own experiences, I really resent my mom's way of invalidating other people's pain and hardship.

So I guess what I learned from my mom is that hysterectomies are horrible and devastating and life changing IF the person having it did not somehow bring it upon herself by pretending to be sicker than she really was. Otherwise, it was just another "bless her heart" on the outside, and then talking shit about feigned symptoms and histrionics behind closed doors. I am glad I didn't have to submit myself as fodder for either of those categories, especially since I was actually really excited about how much better I might feel after a hysterectomy. I mean, I don't feel any need to be pitied or condescended to, and frankly have not been.

My aunt, and our family friend and her daughters, were on the "I'm super crazy, look at me" end of the bless-her-heart spectrum, and I did always view them as being somehow insincere in the way they went about their lives. Like something was wrong with them, like their feelings and thoughts were to all be discounted because somewhere in it all is a big pile of steaming dog shit - pretty much the way my mom presented me to the world.

I did not want to be like those crazy self-absorbed people, even if in reality they were much nicer to me than my mom was, because going to all kinds of different lengths to call attention to yourself was the worst kind of person there was. In hindsight, I would call that a complete absence of compassion, and having no compassion is the lonliest way to live. I wonder how lonely my mom feels on a moment to moment basis.

Before I wrote about my aunt who had a hysterectomy, I thought about how my doing so could be contrived as stiring shit up, "sewing discord among [sisters]," and basically calling my mom out for being such a petulent bitch her whole life. Will my aunt read this post and realize that her pain and trauma were the butt end of my mom's disdain? Maybe. Am I intentionally attempting to interefere with whatever intact relationships my mom has at this time in her sad little life? Maybe. Am I being a spiteful little bitch? Maybe.

But do I give a shit if my motives are insincere and non-therapeutic and simply petulant, like my mom's motives so often are? No.

But if I don't give a shit about that, does that mean I am taking a great risk by leaving my viewpoints and conclusions vulnerable to dismissal by others? If my viewpoints and conclusions are dismissed by others, does that mean they are not valid?

Who gives a fuck?

My mom is a cunt. FYI, that has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I really just felt like calling her that.

Having the hysterectomy behind me makes me feel clean, and strong, and capable. Perhaps paradoxically, it gives me a keener sense of my femininity, of my place in the world as a woman, and of my ability to know what it is to have respect for myself.

On a different note, I am done with school. I am not officially graduating, but I am done. As disappointing as it was to let that goal of being a college graduate go, especially after all of the time and money and energy I have put into it, I feel really good about this, too. Having the piece of paper does not mean to me now as much as it did when I started school seven years ago. Also, it is very easy for me to see that all of that time and money and effort actually do mean something - my failure to get a diploma does not dismiss the abundance of knowledge and self-worth that I have acquired along the way.

By redefining my perception of what being a college graduate means to me, am I making excuses to justify throwing in the towel? I don't fucking know.

What I do know is that I am tremendously excited about having so much time to write! I am espeially excited about a new project I am doing anonymously, about all of the things I have been scared to reveal in this blog, where people know me, and can use the information I publish here as a means of judging me. Also, where it would be easier for others to be hurt by what I have to say. I am excited to put all of this other stuff out there without the burden of identity.

I don't know if anyone will read my new anonymous blog (I probably won't be advertising it), or if they will believe what I write there. It really is so tremendously fucked up, even more fucked up than what I have revealed in this blog. But I recently found a quote by Maya Angelou: "There is no greater burden than bearing an untold story inside of you." It is so, so, so true, but now I have a means of unburdening myself of those other stories!

Unforunately, I cannot reveal my new anonymous blog here, you know, because it is anonymous. But I am certainly going to continue posting here - writing this blog has been my life blood these past few years, and I have grown accustomed to having life in my blood. So now, while continuing to maintain the strength I have built up for myself, I am starting a new chapter - perhaps even a new life - with my uterus-less body, and enough college credit hours for four different bachelor's degrees (but not even a single actual degree), and with my physical and mental health, and with my beautiful husband and sons, and - miracle of all miracles - with peace of mind.

Seriously, it feels really good.