part 117, or "stay gold, ponyboy"

Sometimes it just hurts so bad. It’s not an ache, or anything sharp, it’s just hurting.

I watched the movie Matilda today. I had never seen it before. It was just like me. Except Matilda had a much better head on her shoulders than I ever did as a child.

She looks just like my niece (the girl who plays Matilda). So does Suri Cruise. So do I. I miss her, really a lot. Its one of the bad things that come from making a decision like I did – I had a lot of really bad family, but they weren’t all bad, or even bad all the time.

I miss moments, like my mom and my sister and I all laughing. It is true I never felt completely comfortable around either one of them, and they seemed to sort of fuse together when we were all there, so that I still felt on the outside. And I know that my sister thinks I’m crazy or whatever, and that I’ve done horrible things to my mom and our family – and to her, and her girls. And I know that it’s better this way.

But as much as I remember hating and resenting and fearing my sister, I just miss her, too. Not so much my brother – it will probably take more than a year of not having anything to do with him before I start to miss him.

I wish they would believe me. I know that it is not the way things really are, but I wish so much that they could see me like who I am, and not like the picture that my parents always painted of me. There was A LOT of fighting, too – yelling and screaming and pulling hair and taking each other’s things – all three of us (my sister and brother and I) were awful to each other, and as much as I have felt my shame in all of that slipping away, I remember even more of how they treated me, too. It wasn’t just all me – and I feel like I should be mad and resentful towards them, but it is really just more hurting right now than any of that.

We were all in it together. I may have been hurt more, or exposed to more, or hated more, but all three of us were in it together. At least when we were really little. I remember that my dad would leave us in the van for long periods of time while he went into whatever building we were at so he could do whatever it was he was doing, and I don’t know how we did not kill each other.

I remember being isolated with them a lot – with my brother and sister – but I don’t remember ever fighting with either of them when were all left on our own in the same place, on the same level, by the same dad and the same mom.

I really, seriously do not ever remember getting along with them very well, either. Maybe I have just gotten to the point where I am remembering what it felt like to be attached to them on a primal level, as siblings. As people who had to get along because we would die if we didn’t.

We were hurt a lot together. I wonder if they remember any of that. I don’t think they do, but it seems like just being one year younger than me, my sister’s memories wouldn’t be too different from mine. I don’t know what the hell my brother’s memories are of – he probably has a mix of exultation and misery. Actually, I think all three of us share that. I was just more familiar with my sister’s exultation and misery because her exultation was almost always at my expense, and when she was miserable, it was okay because then she was being the bad kid.

One time my dad told her he was going to take her to the hospital to get the whine cut out. We all believed him. She would get rather terrified, and by then I would have kicked in to protective mode and tried to get her to just stop so they didn’t cut her throat open and remove the whine from her body. I wonder if either of them – my brother or my sister – remember how much I loved them and wanted to protect them.

Maybe they just remember me being mean and a bully, but they didn’t understand the things that could happen to them like I did.

Anyway, I remember being very protective of them, especially when we were really little, like all under the age of 7. Bad things happened to all of us, but I don’t think they remember much of that, if anything at all.

I think I am totally okay with them not remembering, and with being the one who got hurt the most, because imagining them having to live through what I’ve lived through, and go through what I’ve gone through just to keep living some more, it scared the ever-lovin-shit out of me. Their fear terrifies me – it always has.

I made my brother and sister mad a lot. I beat up on my brother a lot, and told my sister what to do a lot. But I could never handle seeing terror on their faces.

The idea of being separated from them used to scare the shit out of me, too. Not because I wanted to be around them, but because they needed me to protect them.

And then we were just all awful to each other, more and more as we got older. I do wonder if they will ever understand what I went through to keep them as safe as I could, when even I didn’t understand what I was doing. I hated it when my dad paid any attention to them, and I always whined and was obnoxious when he was paying attention to them and not to me. It wasn’t that I wanted his attention so much as it was knowing his attention on them put them in danger.

Jesus fucking christ – that man was an evil, sick, SICK bastard, and I don’t know if my sister and brother are even aware of just how sick and evil he was, even now after so much shit has come out in the open about him. I don’t think they could really know what I know about him, and about all the things that he could have done to them.

I suppose that would have been one more very deeply entrenched reason I was always so hateful and resentful toward them as we got older. They didn’t know what I had to go through, and they had no idea how much I truly believed I was taking on to keep it from happening to them.

Whatever. I’m tired of thinking about it. I just stopped crying, too, so no proof-reading on this one, I’m just going to post it; please forgive typos and disjointed thoughts or words.

It just hurts so fucking bad sometimes.

part 116, or "bangin on fools"

So I'm kind of embarrassed about my post, "mother fucking fuck fuck, revisited" (part 114). I knew I was throwing a hissy fit when I was writing it, and I knew I might regret posting it, but at the time I was very much feeling what I was writing, so I was like "fuck it."

I actually even considered taking that post down. I don't think I come across as very sane and reasonable person, either, and that is I guess why I am embarrassed about it - that and the note of desperation.

So there was this one critique of my book that said the main character was someone waiting to be rescued; I find that kind of derogatory toward the character (or anyone who is sitting around, waiting to be rescued), but it is not inaccurate. I got to go to art school for one quarter about 15 years ago (and I LOVED it), and one of the teachers said I reminded her of Blance Deveroux, always relying on the kindness of strangers. And then I was at therapy today, and we were talking about how that blog post (part 114) was a very literal expression of how frustrating - and futile - it can be waiting for someone to rescue you.

So am I someone who is waiting to be rescued? I mean, I feel like that rings pretty true in some ways.

When I was writing that post, I wrote about wanting someone to see the value in me and recognize that I could make them a lot of money (you, know, because of how boring I'm not), and buy my book and give me enough money to get the fuck out of this shit-hole town. As I wrote those words about seeing the value in me, I felt like I sounded pathetic, like a child trying to get their parents' favor  (hmmm, I wonder where that analogy came from), but failing.

I posted it anyway, and now I'm kind of embarrassed.

However, I feel very good at the fact that I have been putting all of ME out there - every unattractive quality - without ruminating too much. Because as much as it would be super-fucking-awesome for someone to come along and say, "hey I want to buy your book for the exact amount it will take you to get out of this shithole town, and also I was thinking maybe I could give you a substantial advance on your next book," it's not what this is about.

What this IS about is what is REAL, and REAL is not necessarily an attractive shade on me all the time, so….

Anyway.

The whole rescuing thing, and that last post, and how it all alludes to my state of mind since I was a child has been a lot to think about. I really do feel that someone "waiting to be rescued" is weak. I'm not sure where I get that from. I mean "waiting to be rescued" could also be seen as incredibly resilient and filled with unwavering tenacity and faith. Whatever, I've been analyzing it all day and it's getting old. My conclusion is that yeah, it is definitely something that can be applied to me, and I am going to decline to make a final determination on whether or not is an admirable trait.

On a completely different note…um, I TOTALLY outed my mom yesterday. I've been very strongly alluding to what she has specifically done to me, but yesterday was the first time I full out said it.

It SUH-UH-UH-KED. It was terrifying. It launched me into a dissociative state that I haven't experienced in a long time. I have been reliving that time, when I was 14, when she did that to me. I've been reliving the next door neighbor molesting me when I was 5. I've been reliving looking into the eyes of the sadistic rapist across the street when he was trying to kill me (which really actually was much scarier than all those times my dad tried to kill me…I mean, if there a scale of fear on that level).

I've been imagining my brother showing up at my house and yelling at me and telling me what a horrible and disloyal and evil little bitch I am, and how I am exactly like our father, and how he is so disgusted that he's never going to have anything to do with me again, but he's still going to make me pay for this horrible injustice against our mother. I've been imagining my sister doing kind of the same thing, but in a really controlled and calm way, and without using any bad words, and telling me that she will be praying for my mortal soul. They probably also would both reference the bible or god or whatever, and spear me through the chest with it.

You know what is so awesome? I don't believe in that bible or that god, and they can spear me with whatever they want, because I can take pretend spears to the chest all day long. Bitch.

At therapy today, my therapist said we could do some things to help me grounded again, and I told her I did not want to be grounded, that I was very comfortable in the dissociated state I was in. It was kind of weird being that aware of being that dissociated, but it still felt like nothing at all, and particularly not like the consequences of outing my mom about the sexual abuse.

I am coming out of it now, though, and I am finding I don't feel very scared. One of the things I've been most surprised about is how scared I am of my brother coming down here and confronting me. My sister would be almost as scary as that. I haven't been so concerned about my mom showing up, but if she did, it would be a straight-to-911 situation, because she would have to be completely out of her fucking mind to show up at my house, and I'm still full up on crazy from that bitch, and I'm not interested in getting any more from her.

But being scared of my brother and sister: I have always had this tremendous guilt about scaring them when we were growing up. I yelled a lot, there were physical altercations, hair pulling, face scratching; once my sister and I hung our brother up by the seat of his pajama pants by hooking the waistband onto a stubby branch sticking out of a tree in the front yard. I have carried a lot of guilt about how horrible I was, and over the past couple of years, they had taken to occasionally reminding me of that.

Maybe that is why I have been feeling scared that they would confront me - because I hurt them in the past, and they probably feel I am still hurting them now, and I am feeling shame about it.

I think I am officially over the shame of all of the horrible things I did to my brother and sister when I was a child growing up in a world of impending doom, though.

I am very happy to find that just writing about my brother and sister has taken away that fear of them, and I am even happier to find that as I have been getting more grounded over the day, I have not been subjected to the doom and damnation that I had always believed would come to me if I told on my mom. I'm actually feeling pretty good and brave about it.

part 115, or "fat lady's singin, bee-otch"

So. Jerry Sandusky.

When the State Attorney General spoke following the announcement of the convictions, she talked about people like Sandusky hiding behind their status in the community, behind their job titles, and behind their money, and how this particular case was proof that some people can't hide forever. It is also proof of how difficult it is to accuse someone like Sandusky of child molestation, how someone with money, a wife, kids, and a particular career can be such a gigantic hurdle for a victim to get over before they even begin facing the public and all of its judgments.

Another thing the Attorney General said was that each of the victims, when questioned about why they had not reported Sandusky earlier, was that they believed no one would find a kid credible. Then she went on to talk about how she would believe a kid if they came to her, and the county (or township or whatever) would believe a kid, and how the state of Pennsylvania would believe a kid. I found this assertion irresponsible, opportunistic, and obnoxious, mostly because it is a bunch of bullshit.

How many parents have been told straight out by their five year old daughter that the next door neighbor put his finger in her vagina, and then not done anything? People who are parents, or want to be parents, or are idealistic in any way, would want to believe that they would take action to protect their child (or any child), and to report the creep-show-neighbor to the police; at the very least, they would not allow their child to be around that particular neighbor ever again.

It didn't happen that way when I was the five year old daughter, and it doesn't happen that way for A LOT of victims.

Here's the thing: as taboo as the act of harming a child is - as much as people cry out in righteous indignation about how they would never let anything like that happen to a kid - turning your head when you are confronted with it is about 90 billion times easier than acting on it.

I mean, who are child molesters? They aren't anything that can be seen or detected from a mile away, though that is what people want to believe. We have this mindset that if a predator was ever in our midst, it would be obvious, and so if anyone ever came forward and accused that person of indecency, it would be readily accepted.

But that's not who child molesters are: they are your fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and wives and husbands and brothers and sisters; they are the neighbor, the bus driver, the youth pastor, the baby sitter; the pediatrician; they are people you know - YOU personally and individually know these people. Child molesters are people who go in and out of YOUR life everyday, without it even occurring to you that they might not be the nice, loving, peaceable, harmless friend or family member or acquaintance they purport themselves to be. They are like germs - YOU can't see them, but they are there nonetheless.

When someone is accused of molesting a child, it is a BIG DEAL. It might not ever become a big deal to anyone other than the victim and the person hearing the accusation, but it is a BIG DEAL. Harming children is not something tolerated in our society; once that label is placed on a person, it never comes off - it's like a tattoo. It is NOT forgivable.

What IS forgivable, though, is a confused child, or a "misinterpretation" of events or actions, or even an angry spouse manipulating their own kid to make you the ex look bad. But the actual reality of that accusation is not something people are apt to consider for more than a few seconds, if at all.

My mom sexually abused me. It was only once, when I was 14, and it was to "prove" her "loyalty" to my dad. I doubt she would have done such a thing - ever - had my dad not been standing there goading her into it. I mean, the bitch hated me, but I have a hard time comprehending the notion that she regularly performed sex acts on helpless, teenaged girls. Or boys. The pleasure she got from doing that to me was in her relentless ego, her all-encompassing narcissism. She hated thinking my dad could manipulate her, and she LOVED winning an argument, regardless of whether she was right or not.

My mom took her marriage vows very seriously, and there was no way she was not going to stand behind them. I don't think my dad took the vows that seriously, but he knew that my mom hated to admit ever being wrong about something, even if was something said when she was twenty years old and decades before.

Anyway, my mom was trying to convince my dad that she would do anything to prove her commitment or loyalty or some shit, and my dad was pushing her buttons, saying that he did not believe her, that he knew she was not completely loyal to him. What would she have to do to prove it? She told him she would have done anything. ANYTHING.

I don't know why my dad told her to do that to me. I don't know if it was because he really did not believe she would sexually assault her own child, and that she would be forced to admit that she was not so loyal to him after all, and he would be the winner, or if he knew that she would do what she told him because it was the only way to validate her argument, and he knew that she would choose to do those things to her own daughter rather than admit she might not be as loyal as she was convinced she was, or wanted him to believe she was, and he could relish in the absolute power over her.

I don't know. But he told her to do it. I was right there, watching them. When he told her what to do to me, she got a shocked and horrified look on her face, but only for a second. Then all of the muscles in her face went slack, and her eyes turned into dead green glass, and I could see she was falling into that place where she felt nothing but her own superiority with being right. And then she did it.

She told me where to sit and what to do, and I did what I was told, and then she did probably the most horrific and evil thing a mother could do to her child, and as broken as I already was before then, it felt like there was nothing left of me at all - no fear, no anger, no sadness, no tears, no pain, no hope, no devastation - just a shell, a robot, completely void of any feeling at all.

And I just stayed that way. That's who I was in that house. Every now and then some feeling would come back to me, and I would smile or laugh, and it was so nice when that happened. But it didn't take long for something to remind me of what she did, and I did not acknowledge it in my head at all, but just go back to being a robot.

Up until that Attorney General lady said that about Sandusky hiding behind his reputation and social and economic status, I could not fathom telling the world what my mom did to me. But one of Sandusky's own kids, Matt, had approached the prosecution the evening before his dad was to testify, and he told them what his dad had done to him. He also told them he would be willing to testify against his dad. And that was that. Sandusky was absolutely done for.

But so is Matt's relationship with the people he has known and loved for most of his life, including his mom and siblings. I wonder if he has any idea how much pain he is going to feel as a result of doing what he did. I did not realize the amount of pain that was in store for me when I told my brother and sister and uncle that my mom had sexually assaulted me, but it was like I couldn't stop it. I was so angry, and indignant, and it was all so big in my mind, I don't think I would have been able to not tell people what she did to me.

Matt Sandusky was immediately thrown under the bus by his family. His mom and siblings, and Jerry himself, have invoked anything they possibly could to discredit that kid. He was adopted, he has always had something wrong with him, he was having trouble being able to support himself - all of those things are things that anyone who chooses to look the other way and not confront the reality of it all can use to make themselves feel better. They can think of those explanations, and not feel so nauseous, or dirty, and completely wrecked as they had been when they first heard what Matt was telling people.

Because it is DEVASTATING to do what Matt Sandusky did.

Maybe his mom and other family members will come around to accepting the truth someday, and maybe my mom and other family members will do that, too. But until then, they are choosing to believe the shit she put out there - she said I am getting revenge on her for not doing anything about my dad abusing me, I'm psychotic, I'm a sociopath - I have all of the excuses she came up with in an email she wrote. That's how she told me she would never confront that truth about herself, in an email.

Of course, I did initially confront her in an email. In one of her responses she told me that what I was accusing her of was "disgusting." I don't know why, but her use of the word "disgusting" in denying the things she actually did makes it easier for me to not miss her as much.

At various other times in her emails responding to my accusations, she pitched her theories that people who did not want to believe the truth could believe instead. My sister called me and said that I probably had a "psychotic break," my brother called me (and my husband and my son) and said how I was "like him" (our dad), and my uncle called me and didn't try to deny any of it at all. Instead he asked me if it could have been my dad's idea, and not hers, and I told him, yes, he was standing there the whole time, and I didn't think she would have done it on her own.

And my uncle said what he's been saying for years, but that I hadn't really heard until that moment: "I've always believed your father had some sort of Svengali effect on her." When he said that, I knew he believed me, that it was not difficult for him to conclude that it could have realistically happened as I'd claimed. I knew that the pieces were rapidly falling into place for him, and hoped he would stand behind me, but he didn't.

Those are all of the reasons why I feel that Attorney General's claim was irresponsible and opportunistic and obnoxious - because I KNOW what the real story is. I KNOW that is not something that will ever be true for the great majority of victims. I KNOW Jerry Sandusky will be only one of thousands to be confronted with what he did in a court of law.

But that lady also said something else that I heard loud and clear - that other victims can feel stronger about coming forward with their own stories, and she encouraged us to do that.

And she was right - I do feel stronger about it, and coming forward with my own story is what I just did.

part 114, or "motherfucking fuck fuck, revisited"

Movie and TV depictions of 12 step meetings are very irritating to me. They seem to all involve somebody or another standing up in front of a crowd of people (or sitting in a circle), and describing just exactly what a shit bag they were when they were drinking (or using, or gambling, or whatever). Then they talk about getting humbled - all of the difficult things they experienced, hitting the bottom, going into recovery, finding hope and redemption…

I don't know - somehow the air of sincerity, of genuine humility, never comes off, and the person doing the talking looks like just another schmuck who learned how to play like they aren't really angry and in pain. Fake serenity - I guess that could be what bothers me about it.

I was going to post "my story" about being sexually abused as a child on a website full of survivors' stories. I started writing about my dad, and how I never remembered not being someone who had been abused, and how my dad was a lunatic, and fortunately dead…and then I came to where I felt a concise, yet straightforward, summation of the specific things that happened to me should be injected. The list of things that happened to me, things that can be described by only one word, categorized: rape, torture, incest, abortion, etc., etc., etc.

I have tried to put all of the single words that describe what happened to me into one sentence over and over and over again. It drives me crazy. On the one hand, using those very powerful words - words ensconced in pain and misery and desperation - are kind of overwhelming to be used all in one sentence. It ends up sounding like an intended shock-factor used to grab peoples' attention, regardless of whether or not they are genuinely interested in what is being said. You know, like Nancy Grace (that bitch is crazy).

The emphasis on those individual words with the overpowering meanings: horror; mother; child; rape; murder; slave; sex; exploitation; evil; disgusting; and on and on. Nancy Grace knows every single one of those words, and how to say it precisely for the maximum shock value; she is the modern day Geraldo. So, yeah, I don't want to sound like that.

What do I say instead, though? I mean, saying things has been an amazing part of getting myself to a place in which I feel I am a worthy and strong person, genuinely capable of knowing what is real and not real, and what is wrong and not wrong. It's the thing I have the power to do: write, talk, hold my face up, naked and unprotected, to the world.

But what about the blurb on the back of my book, or the "author" page on a website, or a concise version of my story of abuse when there is just no place for it all to fit? What do I say when people want to know who I am, why I am important, why any attention should be paid to me, why any credibility should be given to the things I say?

I mean, its not even so much of "who am I" as it is "what happened to me." I don't like that.

As with many, many other people in the United States, my family and I have had a lot of financial struggling for the past few years. I am powerless to do anything about it - I can't hold a regular job, and I don't get paid anything for writing. Every day I go to class (I am now in my 7th year of obtaining my 4 year degree), we lose money.

When I first started going to school, the student loans and out-of-pocket expenses were an investment toward what I would be able to earn after getting my degree. I hadn't factored a nervous breakdown and ongoing, crippling mental illness into the equation. And it gets harder every day to keep floating that borrowed and spent money - it feels more like I am just pouring it all down into a bottomless well, and less like I am building something better for myself and my family to stand on.

Another thing I had fruitlessly counted on was our house, and how it would be a resource to help us get through the emergency, unexpected expenses of being alive. That was 12 years ago, and obviously (again like so, so many others) don't have anything to show for that except a roof remaining over our heads. I have to focus on that, too - we still have our house, our home - that is a lot more than a lot of other people have, so how can I complain?

Um, well, one way I can complain is that I don't even want to fucking be here to begin with. What good is a house if there is no other choice but to be in it while simultaneously and constantly dodging the people who raped and molested and generally fucked me in every way possible, literally and figuratively? And one of those people is my own mom! I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, how am I supposed to be able to not only be awake, but to TAKE CARE OF MYSELF, too, in this miserable fuck-hole town?

I have just spent too much of my life in bad situations waiting and waiting and waiting until I am able to get somewhere else: that's all the first twenty years of my life were. Maybe I am just getting kind of greedy, or ungrateful for what I do have right now. I have a beautiful family, and a car, and a really nice husband, and amazing kids, and a number of super-cute bags and pairs of shoes, and regular meds, and regular therapy - I mean, I have even been able to go to the dentist and get my teeth fixed (well, about half of them so far). So am I being ungrateful? That is a distinct possibility. But I don't fucking care!!!

I've worked so hard, and done so much, and have been told how strong I am, and what an inspiration I am, and all of the other horrendous and crushing shit I have done, and I have paid my goddam dues, and put in more than my share of suffering. Why can't I have a front porch with a swing on it where I can rock and be peaceful and watch people who did not rape or molest or torture me go by?

Why???????????????????????????????????? WHY AM I STILL TRAPPED HERE?

For Christ's sake, why hasn't anyone come along and seen the value in me and helped me to take my family and GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE? Haven't I done enough earning? The only way I have been able to maintain some semblance of sanity is by having complete faith that the bad will always be outweighed by the good, but at this rate, I am going to drown in this shit before I even have a chance to experience the amount of "good" that will make all of this "bad" even out.

And the goddam words that I have to say every day, the infuriating individual words that name what happened to me, so I can figure out who the fuck I am now.

Somebody, PLEASE, get me the fuck out of here!

FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

part 113, or "stupid bitch-ass bitches"

I was reading this old interview with Augusten Burroughs' mother.

 http://www.npr.org/2006/10/08/6209286/augusten-burroughs-mother-speaks-out

I was about 22 years old when I figured out it was really shitty to say anything not good about anyone's mother to that person, even if they say not good things about their mother all day long. I've learned a lot since then, too, including how not good my own mom truly is. I don't ever remember anyone saying anything bad about my mom while I was growing up - not to my face, anyway, or not anything that could be taken too seriously.

My dad was really the only person I heard say bad things about my mom. He made fun of her long, pointy nose and her overactive startle reflex and her absentmindedness. When they got divorced about ten years ago, my dad said incredibly mean things about my mom, and to her. He was a big fat whore, and in defense of himself, said my mom knew about everything that was going on, and always had. My mom, of course, claimed to know nothing of the kind.

I thought my dad was really reaching when he told me that my mom knew everything he had been doing with other women for years. It wasn't difficult to take her side - the man was loony tunes, and said all kinds of things that didn't make any sense (for example, when he told me he was god). I've never trusted the man that I can remember - one of my earliest memories is of him mangling my two front teeth, the baby ones. I was only like a year old when that happened, but I remember it, even if remembering something when you are one year old is not supposed to be possible. And I don't remember ever trusting him before or after that incident.

But my mom was different - everything she always said was the truth. For example, AIDS is a result of gay men having sex with monkeys in Africa. Also, it's okay to marry someone black, but it would be best not to, because mixing my white blood with their black blood would likely produce a child with a lot of health problems. She also said she loved me, that she put her children before herself, and that she wouldn't have let anyone - including my dad - hurt any of us (my sibs and me).

These are things that my mom said, and that I truly believed with all my heart and soul until I was an adult, and even with conflicting information coming in (and causing me to feel naïve and stupid), I somehow kept hanging onto the idea of my mom as someone honest and smart. At therapy this week, my therapist noted that I had an extreme loyalty to my mom. I didn't understand what she meant at first, but we both worked it out so I could understand: my loyalty to my mom was in my mind. In my mind, I stuck by my mom like glue.

I'm sure I've done some mean things to my mom, but I can't remember anything specific right now - btw, I have said a lot of times that I am certain that something in my past was true about me, and can't remember specifics. I'm wondering now if there were no specifics to remember - what if I just believed what people said about me? Huh.

Well, maybe I haven't done some mean things to my mom. When I was on drugs, I stole money from her, and I took cash out of her purse all through high school, and I know SHE thinks I was mean to her, but I just can't remember anything. I remember hating her, but not necessarily consciously acting on that.

A couple of years before my parents split up, I was in the kitchen talking to my mom, and I was going to come right out and tell her about my dad's affairs (specifically the sexual ones), but I just couldn't tell her something I thought would hurt her so badly. It was very frustrating how she clung to my dad and refused to acknowledge anything bad enough about him to leave his ass, and I thought by telling her straight up that my dad cheated on her, she would be shocked into getting the hell away from him.

But I thought of how that information would hurt her deeply, and I decided that it was my dad who was having the affairs, so it was my dad who could tell her about it.

Once on her birthday, my dad completely ignored her and nobody even could tell if he remembered it was her birthday, and it sucked. It hurt me a lot to see him hurt my mom. I asked her why she let him do such mean things to her, and she started crying. I was wrought with the guilt of my part in making her cry.

I really cannot even imagine saying anything mean to her growing up. In the last communication we had (about a year ago), I said a lot of TRUE things about her, and about what she had done to me, but nothing deliberately hurtful.

She was just always so VAGUE, about everything. It was hard to even try to pin anything on her. It has taken a lot for me to get beyond that mindset - my loyalty to her.

Needless to say, I say all kinds of mean things about her now, such as "my mom is a mind-fucking narcissist, and I don't know why somebody didn't ever beat the shit out her at any time in the past."

The way she is handling things now, my specific accusations against her, is by pretending they don't exist. She focuses on what she wants to believe and what she wants other people to believe. She is seriously a heartless bitch.

So when I was reading this old article about Augusten Burroughs' mom, I got very agitated when it got to this part:

"At this point, Running with Scissors the book and the movie are a great part of [Augusten]'s life," she says. "But it's part of his life. It's not a part of my life. That book really touches me very little. It's not my focus. "

When I read that, I was thinking, "well, no shit it's not your focus - it reflects negatively on you and if you don't acknowledge it, then you don't have to react to it." It's a very selfish thing for a mother to do, to refuse to acknowledge the pain she caused her child, to act as though it was never real, and as if she is tremendously gracious for saying she still loves her child even though that child tried to say things that would make her look bad.

I really do think it is foolish to say anything not good about someone else's mom, but my impressions of Augusten Burroughs' mother remind me very much of my own mother. And since my mother is my mother, I feel perfectly comfortable in saying that the woman is insufferably evil.

part 112, or "its all a mix of good AND evil"

I have this awesome new phone, and I put a 32gb card in it, and downloaded all of these games and apps, and I love it so much.

Lately I have been doing a word search game on my phone. I find it very soothing. I noticed that whenever I can't find a word, I start to feel anxious and prepare myself for disappointment, but then I find the word - every time. When I am searching and searching for something I know is there but can't find it, I start to wonder if there has been some type of mistake made, and the word was accidently left out of the search, or the word was never in the search, and was added onto the list of words mistakenly.

But I eventually find the word - every time. It is very reassuring, and I think I am starting to really trust that the word is there and that I will eventually find it, even if it seems like it is missing.

We just started watching the fourth season of Breaking Bad last night. That show is sooooo triggering for me. I mentioned it to my husband, and he asked me why I watched the show. I told him I don't like the triggering parts at all, and I spend a lot of time with my eyes screwed shut and my fingers shoved into my ears when I'm watching it, but the show is really fascinating. Also on a lot of different levels, I can relate so much to the characters.

I've witnessed and been involved in a lot of violence (A LOT); I used to use meth; I am a parent; I have been desperate; I have seen how I can do things I never thought imaginable before getting so desperate that horrible, awful, crazy, ludicrous ideas become logical; I know what it feels like to detach from violence and pain; I know what it feels like to be scared.

These are the things about me that are also portrayed in the show, and it is not difficult for me to imagine myself being in those situations.

Last night it seemed, though, that I was seeing much more logic in killing people (not real-life people, just the characters in the show) to get out of tight spots. I'm usually not so callous. It makes me remember that I am capable of doing that kind of thing - of becoming emotionally and psychologically shut down enough to survive the most horrific experiences, regardless of whether or not I am a perpetrator or an innocent bystander.

I hate violence. I mean, I HATE it. It is ugly and cruel and unnecessary and destructive to anyone touched by it. Violence is like a poisonous gas - you can survive being exposed to a poisonous gas if you don't breathe too much of it in, but over time, being repeatedly exposed is not harmless. It is going to hurt you, if not kill you, eventually.

But for whatever reason, you are unable to stop being exposed to the poisonous gas. It may be that you are continuously forced to be in the vicinity when someone else releases it, or it may be that you have survived releasing it yourself so many times that it just makes more sense for you to do it than anyone else. It may be that you have been exposed to it so many times that you know the damage is done, and you don't give a fuck about furthering the harm of repeated exposure. It may be that someone else offers you some irresistible incentive to do it.

Whatever it is that puts you in the place of poisoning yourself and other people over and over and over again, the result is the same: being poisoned and poisoning other people becomes part of who you are. At that point, you keep doing it because it is who you are. You know how it works, and you are good at it.

And let's face it - committing mass murder by gassing a room full of people is much easier and simpler than trying to come to terms with their existence, or trying to convince all of those people to do what you want them to.

It's just that you lose your soul in the process. I guess in some ways losing my soul has been a relief, but in others, it is the worst pain imaginable. I haven't lost it completely, though - I actually have a good bit of it left, but I have to be careful about what I am exposed to, because the damage that is done is done. Souls don't grow back, they just get stronger if you work really hard at it.

And let's face it - it is easier letting something die than it is to work so hard to keep it alive, even if it is your own soul or your own self that you are letting die.

Its fucked up. It is so completely counter-intuitive to our fundamental human instincts of survival.

But it's there - it's real. I mean, what the fuck else are you going to do?

I don't know why I still have some soul left. By most accounts, I would be locked up in prison or a mental hospital by now, soulless and vile.

Evil is a strange thing, and resilience against it is even stranger. I don't feel like I had any choice in getting clean and sober, or staying that way, or in learning how to get along with a big chunk of my soul missing after my own parents systematically lobotomized it over my childhood, and into my adult hood. For some reason, there has always been a solid bottom line for me where I land after I've been sinking.

It has nothing to do with willpower, or goodness, or righteousness, or any other bullshit mind-fucking ideals like that. It's just what is there.

I'm writing my second book. It is about the way people come to the point of committing irretrievable violence. I don't think it is necessarily a healthy thing for me to be writing about, but it's what I have; it's what I know. Maybe the writing is what is holding the complete destruction of my soul at bay - it feels like that sometimes.

And if I can make a living off of doing what I know how to do to keep my soul from imploding, then even better still.

Seriously, what the fuck else am I going to do?