part 77

So calling my mom a mind-fucking bitch in a blog appears to be crossing some sort of line that has never been crossed before - and will probably never be possible to uncross.

I have these moments where I think about my mom and get all anxious and then think about publically calling her that and take on a kind awe. Not of myself or anything, but of the concept of saying something so bold and crude and true about my mom. And saying it to the world.

It is so weird. Maintaining a relationship with her and getting her love and approval have been goals of mine that I didn't even realize were etched so deeply into my brain, probably at birth. I imagine this is a basic human thing, but a lot of mothers don't use their child's need for love and protection to manipulate them in very negative ways.

One of the things I get very angry about is remembering how it felt when I was back there, in that house, on that street, completely shut off from any external source of hope. I felt so devastatingly alone and sad. I remember thinking about how many years would be left before I could leave there.

When I was five, being big enough to leave there seemed like an entire lifetime away. When I was 14, it still seemed like an entire lifetime away.

Actually, now that I think about it, I started trying to leave that place before I was even in grade school. I started running away when I was four or five years old. It felt so powerful, just leaving like that. Then it felt scary not having a home. Then it felt like crushing grief because I didn't have a family anymore.

That really sucked. No matter how much I knew I had to get out of there, once I was gone I would fantasize about my bed and how the blanket smelled, and eating whatever my mom would make for dinner, and just being home.

The back porch, the hammock, my roof outside my window, my closet, my stuff, the fireplace, the stairs, the closet under the stairs, our dog, my brother and sister, my mom - even my dad.

I would get pictures in my head of the whole family just hanging out around Christmastime, playing Uno and laughing, feeling the comfort of having a fire going in the fireplace - love, safety, and acceptance. I would get terribly sick for the place and people I felt so desperate and relieved to get away from.

Then some adult would bring me back home, or my mom would find some way to contact me and tell me to come home, or I would go home because I didn't have any place else to go and was hungry and dirty and it was so cold or so hot outside.

The especially shitty part is knowing that our family did really have Norman Rockwell moments. There were times my dad was protective and friendly. There were a lot of times my mom was a comfort just to be around. There were times my sister and I would agree on something and resist tearing each other down any way possible. There were times my brother was not getting beaten up or teased or tortured by me, and he was just a cute little kid who was fun to be a big sister to.

Acknowledging all of the abuse and bad things is not the most difficult thing for me - acknowledging the sense of belonging and of being loved - even fleetingly - at all in my childhood is the most difficult thing for me.

There is no way to deny that my mom nurtured me and protected me and took care of me. There is no way to deny that resting my head against my dad's shoulder was one of the most wonderful feelings in the whole world. There is no way to deny that my sister and brother and I knew we had each other's' backs when things got scary.

All of these things definitely existed in my childhood. What do I do with all of that stuff? What do I do now that I know those things will never be enough to make up for or excuse the things my parents did to me?

And now I've gone and called my mom a mind-fucking bitch on my blog. There is no turning back from that. It was a horrendously painful cut to make, that one between my mom and I, and I know I would have to do it again and again and again if I didn't so definitively sever the tie.

I feel like I'm realizing for the first time that I've been trying to gnaw off my umbilical cord to get away because she never allowed there to simply be a clean cut. I guess I had to grow up and learn how to cut it myself - but as an adult, there is a lot of pain in turning my back on my mom. She's been my mom for thirty five years, and I miss her.

It was not very complicated to sort out that my dad was a really, really, really awful person and to see that the relationship I had with him had been so twisted and harmful. I was able to go ahead and let who he was go and to grieve the father I wished he'd been.

But I like my mom.

Although I see her now much more clearly than I have in the past, it is not so easy for me to just let go of who she is and to grieve the mother I wished she'd been. In a lot of ways, she WAS the mother I'd wished she'd been. She came to the school productions and soccer games and softball games, she made dinner for me and my brother and sister every night, she tucked me in and brought me a cup of water when I couldn't fall asleep (I'm not sure why the water was such a great salve for my anxiety-produced insomnia, but as a little girl it really did the trick).

She took me to the dentist the doctor and the dermatologist and even a shrink. She took me shopping for clothes and she came and got me when I threw up or had a panic attack at school. She waited on me when I had chicken pox and strep throat. She was right there by my side the whole time I was in the hospital when my ovary was removed. She was there when both of my babies were born. She was at both of my weddings, and really supported me during my one divorce.

Umbilical cords don't heal and grow back. After they have been cut, they shrivel up and die and fall off and are discarded and forgotten. I don't know why or how I have been part of this purgatorial relationship with her. All I've ever known is that I have been absolutely terrified to do anything that would make me shrivel up and die and fall off and be discarded and forgotten.

Calling my mom a mind-fucking bitch is a line I've crossed. It's the line that held me in her life, and now I'm on the other side of it. I mean, purgatory sucks. Breaking off my relationship with my mom and realizing and liking the person I am now sucks less than purgatory.

But is still miss my mom, mind-fucking bitch or not.

part 76

So I got a good start on my new novel. Then I got an email from my mom, and got a bit derailed.

I hadn't heard a single word from her in two months, and then she emails me to let me know that I should have confronted her face to face about the things I was telling people she was doing. I wrote an email back describing exactly what she had done to me, and reminded her that I have been trying to confront her about this shit for years, but she gets so aggressively defensive at the slightest suggestion that she could have been anything other than an unwitting young mother trying to survive being married to a monster that there is no room at all for discussion.

I also asked her not to contact me anymore, so she wrote me back telling me that she didn't do anything and I had to deal with it, and it looked like she was going to be the one who finally confronted me about my memories, and that I was definitely having "false memories," and that I was obviously very angry at her and what I thought I was remembering was actually a projection of my anger, and now that she can see how angry I am, she can see my perspective so much more clearly.

So I wrote her back to let her know I would be applying for a restraining order if she tried to contact me or my husband or my kids at all.

Jesus fucking Christ.

It was exactly what I expected from her, but it still felt like she kicked me in the stomach. I felt pretty stunned for that entire day, and just sad.

It has been very strange to see the woman I wanted to be my loving mother without the filter of my needing her to be my loving mother. That need for her love and approval is probably one of the most powerful things I can imagine ever controlling me and distorting my view of reality to see only what I want to see - and what she wanted me to see. It is very similar to the way my dad was able to control me.

I do want to interject something very important at this point: my mom is a professional and she is very good at her job. She helps a lot of people - kids and families and individuals. I am in no way attacking her ability to be good at what she does professionally, and in no way want to take her ability to help away from people who benefit from it.

But on a personal level, she is a mind-fucking bitch.

I think a lot about my intentions in writing this blog.

If I idealize my intentions, then I my purpose for writing the blog is allowing the world to see me going through this very intimate and difficult process of recovering from torture, rape, exploitation, and all of the other ridiculously fucked up shit I grew up experiencing - and, in turn, helping other people who have experienced that same kind of shame and loneliness and pain and just letting them know they are not alone.

If I don't idealize my intentions, then I am writing all of this down and putting it out there because it makes me feel better. It's MY story and actual things that happened to me and my real emotions and thoughts and fears and triumphs, and maybe I am simply an emotional exhibitionist, but by god it empowers me and makes me feel stronger.

If I totally demoralize my intentions, and myself, then I am writing all of this to get attention and to hurt people I have been angry with my whole life. I am using this as a vehicle of retaliation and destruction, and am being juvenile and histrionic and just plain mean.

If I am as honest with myself as possible, I can consider that any of these explanations of my intentions holds truth. I like to think that my writing and exposing my pain and progress helps other people get through their own pain and progress a little easier. I don't mind thinking that my writing this is solely to make me feel better about all of it - which it does. I really don't like thinking that I am trying to underhandedly ruin people's lives in a campaign of subterfuge and revenge (even if it means that I get to use the phrase "campaign of subterfuge and revenge").

I can think about my intentions and make myself feel like a saint, and I can think about my intentions and make myself feel like the tiniest piece of shit that has ever walked the earth.

But I know I am not a saint, and I know I am not the tiniest piece of shit that has ever walked the earth. These are things I KNOW. They aren't things I would like to think about myself, or really don't want to think about myself, or even just don't mind thinking about myself. They are true statements rooted strongly and deeply in reality.

I don't think it is a good idea for me to try and define myself in any way - I'm not always the same person to myself, or to other people. I change and grow from my experiences, and I experience new things every day.

But I KNOW that I am a good person. I KNOW that I have been through a lot of really fucked up shit. I KNOW that my pain is valid and real. I KNOW that when it comes down to it, I am writing all of this and posting it on the internet because it is what I CAN do.

One of the really empowering things about putting it all out there is that I know people can all have their own interpretations or reactions or think whatever they want about my words, and I have no power over that.

It feels really good knowing that I can say what is true and what is real, and that anyone who wants to can try to encourage or undermine that, but it is just as true and real as always.

No matter what anyone else thinks or believes or does, I feel peace about my own sanity. I don't think it is relevant if I can take a beating or not, mentally or physically, I can just see that getting beaten is not really relevant. My fear of what other people might think or believe about me does not change who I am. It can change how I act, but I am who I am. Like Popeye.

If I was a house, people could plant flowers around me or bombard me with paintballs, or break my windows, or lovingly restore my weathered parts. None of those things would make me NOT a house.

And if my mom wants to explain to people that I have gone off the deep end, am somehow living in an alternative psychotic reality, that the things I remember are real unless it makes her look bad, that she really does love me and want the best for me, then she can do that all day long.

I don't have to listen to that shit. I know who I am - much more so now than four and a half years ago. As with my dad, I would really prefer to be bat-shit crazy than to have all of the things my mom is denying be real.

But I'm not crazy, and by continuing to try to make people believe that I am, my mom is doing nothing different than she ever has done. All that has really changed has been my ability to recognize her for who she is, to come to the point where my own sanity and peace of mind are more important to me than her love and approval.

FYI

I finally got a review on my novel. It was disappointing and surprisingly insightful. It was written by someone who reads my blog and they felt I was really holding back and not being vulnerable enough in my writing, and some other stuff. That's what I got out of it anyway.

This review really made me take a hard look at myself and what I am doing and what I want to accomplish in life. I personally like my novel, and am proud of it. However, it is a fairy tale version of real experiences. I know my writing can be more powerful if I allow more of the reality I feel into the process.

I guess I've known that for awhile, but it is really scarey to even think about tapping into all of that pain and history and survival and everything else I would need to do in order to write a good book.

But I want to write a good book. No wait - I want to write an EXCELLENT book. So that is what I am going to do.

I'm still in school, so between writing a new book, doing homework, and doing all of the other things I do, this blog may take a back seat. But, hey - it will give some people an excellent opportunity to catch up from the beginning, right? I mean, there is A LOT of writing here. It's nearly ridiculous.

Anywho, here is a link to the above-referenced review of my novel (the review is down at the bottom), and to the place you can download the whole book for FREE:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/83822

p.s. I don't know who wrote the review, but I congratulate and appreciate whomever it is for helping me to get off my writing ass :)

part 75

*****TRIGGER ALERT*****

I remember so much about the first time my dad pimped me out. Well, I remember so much about the first time I remember my dad pimping me out. I remember being in a canoe out on a pond with my dad and the man, them smoking a joint, me sitting between them wondering what the hell was going on.

It's been more than thirty years since then.

There were a lot of lily pads on the pond. I had never seen real lily pads before, and I was surprised to find that they looked just like cartoon lily pads.

I remember getting to the dock and almost falling into the water when I exited the canoe. My dad thought that look of fear on my face at the moment when I felt myself falling was hysterical. I felt like an idiot.

The man had on a baseball cap. He seemed really dirty to me. In my memories, his face is a shadow under that hat. He was skinny and he smelled bad, and when we got back to his cabin on the pond and my dad said to go with that man, every fiber of my being screamed, "no!" I guess my voice was not a part of the fibers of my being, because I only screamed in my head.

I did tell my dad that I wanted to stay with him. He was sitting on a couch or something, and he was still taller then me standing up right next to him. I leaned into his leg and tried to stick to him like glue.

But the man kept standing there outside the door of this room, and my dad gave me the look that meant he would have no qualms beating the shit out me if I didn't do what he said. So I did what he said.

The man ushered me into the room, closed the door, and then did things to me, and he posed me, and he took pictures, and he smoked cigarettes, and I don't remember him ever taking that ball cap off.

Just now I was thinking about how my dad used to scare me so badly when he wanted me to do something I didn't want to do. I felt like I had to do it, or get killed by my dad. I experienced that look so many times with him throughout the years, but at that time in that cabin it was unfamiliar to me and newly terrifying.

When I would get angry at my dad about things, he would either give me the death-look to shut me up, or he would make me feel sorry for him, and convince/remind me that the things he made me do were part of our greatness.

And he would remind me how lonely it was to have greatness, to feel separate from those around us who were just "normal," and at those moments I was feeling lonelier than anything in the world, and so how could I not agree with him?

He had a way of taking what was real and sliding it away from me and then twisting and turning it into the shape he wanted and then telling me that's how it was all along. It is a scary feeling to not know what is real and what is not real. Yeah, my brains and perceptions of reality got pretty scrambled in the days my dad ruled my world.

It is easy for me to remember vividly what it felt like to be under his power. I really am so glad he's dead now, because I was always afraid that if he came back into my life he would be able to convince me to go with him again. That's where the idea of killing him took shape - I didn't want revenge, I didn't want him to suffer, I didn't really want anything except for him to be dead.

It was much easier to focus on how I was going to kill him than to even consider the idea that he might come back here and take me away with him.

But now I remind myself that he IS dead, and feel grateful that I was not the thing that made his heart finally explode inside his body.

I feel much safer remembering that right now, because it has been really frightening to remember this shit and to type it out.

I also know the man who lived in that cabin is dead (I didn't kill him either). I don't know if I ever came across him as I got older - it seems like somehow I did, but that is pretty fuzzy.

I remember enough from the original incident to have pieced together who the man was, how he knew my dad, which pond that was, and where that cabin still sits today. Actually, I don't know if the cabin actually still sits there, or if there was something else built in its place. The only visual reference I have is via Google Earth, and that only gives me an aerial view.

But the docks are still there and the lily pads are still there, I can see that clearly with the images Google Earth has so considerately supplied me with.

I spent a lot of time and energy and life trying to figure out exactly who this guy was, and to gather the facts necessary to corroborate that this man did exist and did know my dad at this particular time, and that he did own a cabin on this pond at this particular time, and which particular cabin it was and who owns it now.

It is not very far from here. It's actually only a few miles. The land around the pond is guarded with gates and thick woods, and the public road to gain access to it has been officially cut off.

I could go to the edge of the neighborhood across the pond and try to see the cabin from there.

It has been so important to me to find out if all of these things were real, and to know where that man did those things to me, and if I would be able to go there or not.

I actually could most likely arrange with one of the owners of that land to meet me and allow me access to the pond. I actually could go to that neighborhood across from it, and instead of trying to see between the trees and vegetation while sitting in my car not even completely stopped on the street alongside it, and ask the people who live there if I could go in their back yard and look across the pond.

But now that I know that it is real, I somehow don't want to have anything at all to do with it. I don't want to look at it, I don't want to visit it, I don't want to learn anything else about this person. I guess I learned what I needed to know, and now I don't want to know any more.

part 74

So the neighbors have apparently gone from glaring in silence to smiling and waving. I preferred the glaring in silence. At least that indicated to me that they were aware of the fact that I was telling as many people as possible what they did to me.

The smiling and waving thing is really baffling. For one, I am again shocked by the dedication these people - including my mom - have to keep the truth from being real in their own lives.

It seems as though the solution to the past is to ignore that anything bad ever happened and instead continue to ease into their twilight years sitting in rockers on the front porch and drinking wine and watching people go by and the sun go down. Smiling and waving.

It is a good strategy, one that has been very successful when used against me specifically. I mean, how much are you going to keep telling how people hurt you when the people who hurt you are smiling and waving and the people you're telling are trying to convince you that you're crazy?

I watched Rosemary's Baby for the first time when I was 19 years old. I was also pregnant at the time, and so a bit more vulnerable to the effects of the dramatization of mind-fucking a young women knocked up by Satan. I never thought my baby was Satan's offspring, and as much as my ex-husband pissed me off, he was definitely not Satan's clever little imp sacrificing his young wife's sanity and uterus to perpetuate the evil one's bloodline.

However, I was very disturbed by the mind-fucking part. I had other things on my mind at that time (such as keeping myself and a baby alive with tremendously limited resources), and I put my reactions to that movie off to the side.

Looking back, I can really relate to poor little Rosemary. She was so naïve and young and wanting so much for everything to be as perfect and wonderful as it seemed. She didn't want her darling new husband to drug her and offer her to Satan to be raped and impregnated with evil. She didn't want the sweet loving neighbors in her building - her social support system - to be part of the insane conspiracy.

But that's what really happened (in the context of a fictionalized movie, of course), and the more Rosemary tried to address it, the more she was treated like a delusional freak.

She was convinced that she was weak and mentally infirm and in need of a great deal of care by those around her. Her memories of what was real were dismissed as nothing more than very silly "misinterpretations" of what she was told by those around her was real.

By employing this analogy, I am not suggesting that I believe the events portrayed in that movie can actually happen in the real world. Quite frankly, I think Satan would have a much simpler plan to perpetuate his blood line - if I believed Satan exists, which I do not.

But I do believe people can be as evil as Rosemary's husband and neighbors were, and I can definitely believe there are people as vulnerable and naïve as Rosemary, and I can definitely relate my experiences to the absurdity and horror of what Rosemary experienced, and of course to the mind-fucking she took.

Seriously, if you want to get an idea of how I felt as a child, watch Rosemary's Baby and try to empathize with Mia Farrow's character - yes, I am saying that really is how I felt for most of my life.

Unfortunately for my abusers, I am not that naïve and vulnerable and dependent child any more. I don’t have to rely on my mom or my dad or the people in that neighborhood to survive.

I am much stronger than that now, and I really actually believe that I am strong.

My confidence in my strength and in my ability to discern what is real from what is bullshit makes everything that was huge and terrifying and crazy by huge and powerful people when I was little into a bunch of really fucked up abuse and torture of a child by small and weak people.

(Just as a side note, my confidence in my strength and ability to discern what is real from what is bullshit is a continuous process of reality-checking with trusted friends and professionals on a daily basis. Having those people in my life is a tremendous advantage to me, and something I didn't have growing up. Another tremendous advantage is the knowledge that just because I am not perfect - that I am definitely wrong about some things - does not mean I am incapable of being a good person who can make healthy decisions. Now that I think about it, this little side note describes an arsenal of empowerment that no small and weak person stands a chance against.)

So anyway. As baffling and shocking as the smiling and waving is, I can see why the neighbors and my mom continue to employ such methods - they have always worked before, why shouldn't they work now?

It makes me think about bad people who do bad things and keep them secret for their whole lives. When you have done something bad to someone else and spend your life trying to convince yourself and everyone else that you are not capable of doing anything bad to anyone else, do you anticipate the day of reckoning?

Do you realize that the good guys really do always win? Do you wonder about the fact that no one is perfect, and the only thing that separates the good guys from the bad is the willingness to acknowledge and accept our own human imperfections? Do you wonder if the bad things you did in the past will prevent you from being a good person now?

Do you really, actually, for realsies believe that pretending you didn't do all of those bad things that you did will make you happy? Will give you peace? Will allow you to sleep at night? Will keep your knowledge of those bad things from eating away at your soul for the rest of your life?

Does it scare you knowing that regardless of how vehemently you deny the accusations, how successfully you discredit your victims, and how steadfastly you stand in denial you will never, ever be able to change the fact that what you did was real?

These are things that I wonder about, and the idea of having that shit swirl around in my guts for the rest of my life is much more terrifying than acknowledging that I have done bad things and am capable of doing more bad things and try very hard to do what is good now. It seems very simple and logical to me.

I suppose that is why I am so baffled by the smiling and waving thing. It takes so much work and causes so much pain and a lifetime of dedication to lies - it is so much easier to just acknowledge it and move on. I mean, why would you want to dedicate your entire life to lies? Like I said, it is baffling.

I am really hurting right now, still about all of this shit with my mom. I expect that pain to take a really long time to get past - if it ever happens at all.

I am finding that no amount of harm and betrayal and bad things people did to me, or their attempts to conceal those things, can destroy the peace of knowing what the truth is, and being able to have that peace and knowledge on my side.

Because really - the truth is the bottom line, the foundation. Anything else is bound to crumble eventually.

part 73

When I was a teenager I hated being in my house. I would go out as much as possible. I remember distinctly the feeling of walking out the front door and slamming it behind me and flying down the porch steps and across the front yard, and getting into the car of whoever was gallantly waiting to pick me up and take me away from there.

It was a fantastic feeling. It was a mixture of "thank god I'm free" and "go to hell bitches."

One of the worst feelings - well, not the worst, but maybe the most helpless - was when I would hit the wall-of-no-understanding with my mom. That's what it felt like when I was trying to express my outrage at the things my dad did to me or how he treated me or how she made it easier for him and I finally accepted  that she was not going to concede a single centimeter of her stance to at least just acknowledge that I was in pain. That's what the wall-of-no-understanding is, and I always tend to hit pretty hard.

I hated her so much at those times. I have thought about how much hate I felt toward her a lot since my oldest has gotten older. When he was little, I wondered if he would hate me like I hated my mom. I thought it was part of the natural progression of getting through the teen years.

But he doesn't. He is definitely not always happy with me, but it is rare when I see his face show me his utter contempt and disdain for whatever it is I'm not allowing him to do. I remember feeling that way almost constantly with my mom.

I have also been trying to remember when I felt protected by my mom. I know it happened. I know she hugged me and made me feel better sometimes, but I can't remember a single instance of that. Even when she would step in between my dad and I, she would be just as angry with me as she was with him.

It seems as though she felt she would be compromising the integrity of the parental disciplinary team, like any alignment with me would be a stand against my dad and a crack in their wall of solidarity.

I wonder if she ever figured out that the wall of solidarity only existed in her mind. It was a vehicle of manipulation - my dad convinced her (though she may believe she convinced herself) that if there was ever any disagreement while disciplining one of us, it would be a tremendous act of betrayal and detriment to their relationship. Also, it would show weakness to whoever was getting punished.

Divide and conquer. That's what my dad was always trying to convince my mom I was doing - split them up. Apparently she believed him. She stuck by that asshole like he was god and she was Jesus out in the desert getting tempted to stray from her unquestioning faith in him. The person doing the tempting was Satan, of course. That would have been my role in that scenario.

Her devotion to him always kind of baffled me, and I remember feeling how absurd she could be when she would stick by him when he was at his most glaringly worst. He would just do stupid shit as punishments for us and she would back him up every time.

Even the time we had to take our stuff out onto the driveway and smash it up with a sledgehammer.

When I was a little older and was working for my dad (at his manufacturing company, not as a child prostitute), I confided in my mom about work stuff. My dad was hard-core running his business into the ground, and it was very tense around there. I told my mom about my concerns and about how nervous the other employees were.

Later I found out that she told him everything I told her, and he used some of the information against some of the employees. I was stunned - I asked my mom why she would tell him things I only wanted to share with her.

This is what she said: "You know where my loyalties lie."

I can hear her saying that in my head even now as clear as though she was sitting on the other end of the phone saying it the first time.

My mom hasn't tried to contact me in three weeks, ever since our big falling out. I imagine she feels as though she is in some kind of danger, like we would hurt her or "attack" her again. Maybe she is imagining that I have done something to her - something so terrible and hurtful that she is punishing me by removing herself from me.

I don't know. It feels like a slap in the face. I know what a slap in the face from her feels like because she slapped me in the face one time, and this is how it felt.

I don't understand what my expectations of her have been - I know what kind of person she is, and I have had my entire lifetime to establish an impression of her based on her actions. I am incredibly angry at her for her role in what I was subjected to growing up, and the perpetuation of the idea that I am somehow delusional.

It still hurts, though. Pretty bad. Like someone took a melon-baller and scooped little bits of my stomach out over and over until there's only an empty, gruesome cavity left there for my belly.

Her silence for some reason has surprised me. We had spoken so often about how the neighbors reacted when I told what they did to me. She agreed that they were definitely acting like people who had something to hide - like people who are guilty of the things they are being accused of.

And now she's acting that way.

Maybe she can make up with the people living around her and they can get neighborhood legal representation and file a class action suit against me. As much as that would shock me, it wouldn't surprise me at all if that is what actually happened. Seriously.

I feel like I did when I was a teenager. I am angry and hurt and scared and betrayed, and I want to surreptitiously smoke cigarettes and get my tongue pierced and probably a new tattoo, also. I want to fill up the front seat of her car with shaving cream. I'm not sure why I want it to be shaving cream - maybe just because it is age appropriate to my teen angst.

I want to rant about her and call her a fucking bitch to anyone within earshot. I want to drink Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill and lie about staying overnight at a friend's house and go do bad things with boys in the woods and the back seats of cars. I want to skip school and dye my hair purple. I want to scream at her - not necessarily words, but definitely loud, shrieking noise.

But I'm not a teenager anymore. I don't drink alcohol any more (also, Boone's Farm? I'm getting nauseous just thinking about it), and I don't smoke anymore - not cigarettes or anything else. I like going to school. I think it would really hurt in a prolonged manner to get my tongue pierced, and I am tired of prolonged pain.

I could probably still swing a new tattoo, though. I could probably find some people to listen to me rant and call her a fucking bitch, too. I am almost certain Jonny will be up for doing bad things with me - maybe not in the woods or in the back seat of a car - I mean, we have a nice comfy bed to do bad stuff in, and after doing bad stuff in a nice comfy bed for 15 years, the woods and the back seat of the car seem pretty uncomfortable.

Regardless, I am hurt, and no matter how angry I get, there is still a raw pit scooped out of me where the mother I always wanted and needed used to be.

However, I am not stuck in that house anymore. I also am able to choose to be with people who love me and are nice to me. I am also a mom with my own teenager, and I can keep contemplating with wonder how he doesn’t hate me like I hated my mom.

And if all of those things fail to make me feel like me again, I can always watch The Royal Tenenbaums - for some reason, my spirits are lifted and calm by the end of that movie no matter how many times I've already seen it. Wes Anderson is a genius.

part 72

There have been some questions concerning my credibility lately. Actually, I don’t know of a time when my credibility was not questioned.

For a long time, the only way I could find my own mind credible was if other people agreed with me or did not think I was making any inappropriate moves or comments or whatever. I had very little confidence in my ability to discern what was real from what was not real.

I mean, there are a lot of really obvious reasons for this. The big one is that I was taught to unquestionably believe lies and to consider the truth a figment of my imagination. I could go into a whole other blog post on that subject, but deciphering that part of brainwashing just makes me feel really tired right now.

So back to my credibility.

When I first went into the hospital (four years ago exactly), I was terrified that what I was remembering was real. I honestly would have preferred a lobotomy and a straightjacket to counter my insanity than for anything that I was remembering to actually be real. I obsessed on all of the things in my head and what they could possibly be, as long as they weren’t real.

Leave me drooling and useless in an asylum, but make it so my parents loved me and wanted to protect me and didn’t want to hurt me and didn’t want to let anyone else hurt me. That would have been very much preferable to all of that shit being real.

At this point in the game, though, it is much more about accepting that the things in my head really did happen, and grieving and being sad and angry. And trying to live the life I was given.

I have spent a lot of time and concentration and energy on learning how to differentiate truth from fiction. I have remembered so much shit and have gone through the process of testing to see if it was real or not, and if I could accept it or not, that I’m an old pro by now.

I know what it is to have a memory surface and no matter how sick or twisted or shameful or disgusting it is, to learn how to incorporate that awareness and knowledge of being abused into my past – so that I can live in the present, and look to the future.

Remembering for me is not a simple process. There are very distinct ways my brain and my body go about re-introducing the horrors of my childhood into my present consciousness. One event – or even one second of one event – could take months of processing before it goes into my day-to-day consciousness.

Remembering for me involves feeling my body being hurt the way it was hurt then, smelling whatever I was smelling at the time of the trauma, hearing the noises I had heard when this was happening to me, and seeing it unfold in front of me and inside of me, and experiencing the fear and terror of it all over again.

It happens again and again and again – it is a process I’m familiar with, and it only happens when I remember the truth.

What that means for me is that I find myself very credible. I know what happened to me. I know a lot of the people who did things to me. I know I’m not making up this horrendous nightmare for whatever reason there could possibly be to make up such a thing.

It is real.

It is shitty and exhausting and disgusting and shocking and cruel and gross and incomprehensible.

But it is definitely real.

Having learned how to build this foundation of sanity around the concept of continuously looking toward what is true, I no longer need anyone to agree with me or tell me I’m not weird or that I’m not crazy in order to know what is real and what is not real.

The entire issue surrounding my credibility is irrelevant.

All I’ve ever really wanted was to know the truth, and now I am learning what the truth is and what it means to me now. I haven’t asked anyone to believe me.

I hadn’t expected anyone to believe me from the get-go (the reasons behind that are an entirely separate blog post, too), and I have been unspeakably grateful for the support I have from all different kinds of people.

But I don’t have to stress out about how credible I have to sound or appear to anyone else anymore. It is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to do with anything at all. I don’t have to convince anyone that I am sane because I know that I am sane. I don’t have to prove the truth behind my assertions because I know that I am truthful.

I don’t have to convince anyone of anything because I am not asking for anything in return. I have what I need. I have found my voice and I am using it. I’m not asking anyone to listen. I’m not asking anyone to react in any particular way. I’m not asking for revenge, or even for justice.

I’m just using my voice. For the first time in my life, I am using my voice. I have never experienced peace like the peace I feel by using my voice. I use my voice because I can. A lot of people can’t say that. But I can say that, and I know how amazing it is to be able to do that, and I’m not planning on hiding my voice behind other people’s insecurities and interests anymore.

My voice is for me and I am using it. I don’t plan to stop any time soon.  

part 71

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It just felt safe.

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

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

Except that it would.

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

part 70

Here is the thing about evil: it eats your mind and your heart and your soul consistently over your lifetime. If you are not fortunate enough to be killed suddenly in the midst of some freak accident, evil will kill you, too. It is a slow and painful way to die.

The things that my dad and my neighbors and even my mom did to me are evil. I don’t know if they recognize that by hurting me in the ways they did, they have condemned themselves to misery. I don’t know if they recognize that what they did was even evil at all.

Evil people are not happy. They might be rich and powerful, but they are not happy. Evil is the opposite of happiness.

Of course, people can always attempt to convince themselves that they are happy when they are not. It is another quality of being human. The problem is when the pretend happiness is confronted by the real evil.

Hurting other people is real evil, no matter how it may be justified. Hurting other people is evil, and the more you hurt other people, the more evil hurts you.

I truly believe that when my pretend happiness is confronted by my real evil, I have a choice about how to handle it. I can deny it is real (despite insurmountable and irrefutable proof of varying degrees) and continue to hold onto and feed off of that evil and thereby have only pretend happiness.

Or I can acknowledge and accept it, and thereby reduce the damage to myself from my evil. This is a painful thing to do, but it is the only way I know how to separate myself from that evil, and to find peace in my life.

A few years ago, I was planning out how I was going to kill my dad. I had justified it from every different angle.

The one thing I couldn’t get around, though, is that it was my real evil, my capability of taking someone else’s life regardless of the reasons behind it. Carrying that evil with me and using it to pull the trigger of a gun aimed at my dad’s face would have done a lot more harm to me, maybe even more harm than he did to me.

At the time I was planning to kill my dad, I couldn’t conceive of any other resolution to the problem of his existence and my conscious knowledge of what he did to me and to other people. I didn’t end up killing him though – it took a few more years, but he died on his own by holding on to all of that evil.

I’m very grateful that he is dead and that I didn’t kill him.

I still have the realization that I could and would kill another human being, though the other human being I could have and would have killed is already dead. Granted, the other human being was an incredibly evil and dangerous human being who had harmed me and others beyond anyone’s imagination, but still – he was human. I can call him a monster and say that he deserved to die, but it doesn’t make him not a human.

He was a big, giant, disgusting, horrific, festering ball of stinking, rotten pus – but he was still a human.

I honestly do not believe I would have had any problem killing him, or any remorse that he was dead. But I would be carrying the evil of killing someone else, and I would have to live with it, and it would eat at me for the rest of my life.

It wasn’t about what was right or wrong or what he did or did not deserve – it was the damage I would be doing to myself as a result of killing him. It also would have had horrible consequences for my family and loved ones – again, I am very grateful he is dead and that I didn’t kill him.

He was almost completely consumed with evil the last time I saw him, about seven years ago. That is a lot of evil.

I am not the only person my dad hurt. I saw him hurting other people. He brought me along. He wanted me to be his protégé. He believed he was god and he wanted to pass his supernatural powers down to me – a person created of his own blood. He was very proud of that – creating a person of his own blood.

He believed it was passed on to him by his father – that he was somehow special and chosen to be the next generation, I guess, and he wanted to pass it down to me.

If my grandfather exposed my dad to the same types of things my dad exposed me to, it would be very easy to see how he got so fucked up, how he came to warp reality and to believe that he had all of this power over human beings. The things he did to prove to himself that he had these powers came about in the form of raping and torturing me.

They also came about in the way that he hurt other people, and how he made me watch, and how he wanted so badly for me to participate so I could carry on his powers and he could become a legend, as he saw his own dad. I guess he thought if he could do these atrocious things to other human beings, it proved his godly superiority and control over them.

Very, very sick, and absolutely bat-shit crazy.

Okay, I am shaking like a leaf in a tornado and also feel like I am going to throw up, so I’m going to move on now. I’m glad I know how to type because no one would be able to read my super-shaky handwriting.

I did have a point – my neighbors – the men and the women – have been fabricating their own happiness for years. I confronted them with their real evil. They are pretty pissed about it, too.

But they are also suffering because of it.

Sometimes this is not such a great comfort to me, but being exposed to so much evil and seeing what it does to the people carrying it gives me a sense of peace in the midst of the fury and the pain those people caused.

I don’t have to do anything to retaliate. I don’t have to sue them, or somehow force them to become accountable, or throw eggs at their houses, or be consumed with an ingenious plan for ultimate revenge a la The Count of Monte Cristo– not only would all of those things hurt me more, it would force me to think about those assholes almost constantly, and they are certainly not worth the energy.

In hurting me, they created their own punishments. I am not really sure exactly how evil works or how to avoid it or heal from it, but I do know that doing the things those people did to me sealed a very unpleasant fate for them. Having been confronted, I know their minds are being eaten up even faster with the evil they have carried and tried to pretend was not there.

So I had my say. I don’t need to do anything else to resolve the situation. They will make themselves more miserable than I ever could, and I don’t have to carry around anymore evil for it. I also don’t have to put myself in the position of determining what should or should not happen, or what they do or do not deserve – being free of that kind of responsibility makes happiness much easier, and I really like having the ability to be happy.

part 69. sigh.

So wow. It’s been awhile.

I haven’t written in a while because I have been kind of taking advantage of summertime to rest up and acknowledge and accept some pain. It has been bittersweet to do that – pain hurts, but I feel so much more grounded and confident in my own sanity and judgment.

I recognized a few days ago that when I did a reality check on my memories I could no longer weigh the possibility that all of this has just been the makings of my own insanity. I suppose that has been a big part of my survival of all of this – keeping some hope in the back of my mind that maybe, somehow, all of this shit didn’t really happen.

I’ve come full circle from questioning whether these things could have been real to no longer questioning if they happened at all.

It sucks. It hurts. It is so, so, so, so bad and tremendously fucked up. It feels very, very heavy.

It is so DARK and EVIL and WRONG.

I have recently been able to see my mom much more clearly, as well. I did not ever write much about her in this blog because I wanted to protect her from judgment and criticism. Protecting her is no longer relevant. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to protect her, it’s that it’s no longer relevant. At all.

I have tried so hard to see how my mom could have seen all of this shit happen to me over the years and yet still love me and want to keep me safe. I have tried to reconcile my experiences and her neglect and manipulation with a caring and loving mom. It just isn’t going to happen.

For the past few years, I felt like I was being up front with myself about my mom because I was willing to acknowledge that I was angry with her for the past, and that I was just waiting until the time would come to address that anger and her role in the abuse.

In the meantime, I just wanted a mom.

I still do – I really, really do.

The bottom line though, is that I cannot handle the duplicitous nature of how she acts and thinks. There is just too much of a disconnect between what she sees as real and what is really actually real. I like to think she is pathological about it, that she is not really aware of doing this, that it is just part of who she is – thinking about her being consciously malicious and conniving makes me nauseous and sad.

At the end of the day, I really don’t know if she is consciously manipulative and cruel or if she is not aware of the damage she does at all. Regardless, I can’t handle it anymore.

I have been working so hard at finding the truth, sticking with the truth, and accepting the truth, painful or not. But that just isn’t who my mom is. Maybe one day I will be able to have a healthy relationship with her, but for right now my relationship with her is simply not healthy, and I am tired of working so hard to make unhealthy relationships work at the expense of my own peace of mind.

Writing this now, I imagine her reading it and deciding that I am being vindictive or somehow intending to use this as a venue to hurt her. It doesn’t really matter how I address her role in the things that happened to me, though – she will find a way to make it about her being a victim. I’m just so tired of this shit.

I feel good about recently really confronting my mom about telling her what was happening to me when I was little and her not doing anything about it. Her response, though, was to say that it was something I needed “to work out in therapy.”

She sounded just like my dad. If I ever displayed any kind of emotional pain around him – or even just confronted him about anything at all – he would tell me I was being irrational, and then turn his back to me. Actually, he would only turn his back to me if he had bothered to face me to begin with.

My mom has been very direct about her views of emotion – emotion is equal to insanity and a lack of control. Expressing emotions is a sign of weakness. Emotions take things that are real and turns them into things that are not real.

I have never really seen her express a lot of emotions. Maybe my dad taught her that the only way to say something legitimate and relevant is if you say it without any emotion at all.

I still have a lot of shame about feeling things – good, bad, happy, sad – I am very guarded about acknowledging and accepting my feelings at any given time. Therapy has really helped a lot with this. I have learned to recognize when I am uncomfortable and ask myself if I am having trouble respecting my own emotions. I really do make an effort to respect how I feel about things and to recognize that emotion does not mean I am crazy.

I looked up Histrionic Personality Disorder today. I’m not a shrink and I am not attempting to diagnose my mom with a personality disorder. However, reading the comments and experiences of other people whose mothers have been diagnosed with HPD, I am finding a lot of validation.

It’s funny - my mom was constantly trying to convince me that I was histrionic when I was growing up. Well, I guess it isn’t funny, maybe just ironic. Regardless, her recurring claims that I was histrionic played a very helpful role in convincing me further that feeling anything means that I am crazy.

I realized about two or three years ago that I simply could not trust my mom or what she says. I still wanted her to love me and want what was best for me – and willingly overlooked a lot of shit to convince myself that I saw that in her - but I can’t deny anymore that is not who she is. I do feel a lot of peace about coming to this particular awareness of my mom, and even more peace about my own perceptions.

Still, though. It just fucking sucks.

I know she sometimes reads this, and that people she knows reads this, and that there is probably no way she will not know that I have written this and posted it on my blog.

Is it a histrionic attempt to make my mom look bad and make me look big? Is it a way to get a dig in at her publically? Is it a chance to try and hurt her the way I have been hurt by her?

I guess it could be any or all of those things, but it could also just be that I am putting it all out there, and it is time to stop pretending that my relationship with her is anything other than what it is.