Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Yet another way I disturb people

I think I scared my friend Squirrel today.

I told him what I'd like to do to the man who crippled him through sexual abuse...it's not a pretty thought...To me it's a very happy one.

The man has hurt my friend.  I want to hurt this man. Badly. Doesn't mean I necessarily would act on the desire...there's a little matter of going to jail...

Am I supposed to feel guilty about this?

My friend was so horribly abused he can't think about it without vomiting.

He's a wreck of a person when he could have been brilliant, happy, and successful.
I read what he says sometimes and I just start crying.

I wish I could hurt the man who did this to him.
I would enjoy that so much.

To another friend, I said, of a woman who was stalked and raped multiple times by the same guy..."I'd be proactive, take it to the police, get protection, but if it came to it, and he came back, I'd arrange to be sitting in the dark, waiting to fill his belly full of buckshot."

"Because a rapist is a waste of oxygen."
People don't understand my sorrow and morbidity.

I don't think people understand this righteous killing fury either....

WHY DON'T THEY! WHY!

Repost: Why I quit my old forum

Better slap the :trigger: warning up here...


I've been alternating between ______ and the other mental health support forum I go to...They are blunt around there.
Usually this has been good.
Sometimes I have to get called on my BS.

But one of the mods there, I think her bipolarity's put her not in a good place...

I was hanging out there in chat there because I was lonely, wanting distraction...and this lady came in and basically accused me of making this all up.

This being the abuse.


(Now with extra :trigger: goodness...)


I mean, I went from relatively stable to going crazy in all directions over the past three years. I am just not doing good.

My marriage is something I want to keep, but having anyone that close to me, emotionally, is a constant trigger. It also brings up emotions that...I felt for my Dad.
I loved my Dad, incredibly much...I remembered what it was like to love like that recently, and it's terrifying and beautiful. I loved him, I trusted him, I felt safe with him. This boundless, overwhelming love and trust...
He decided me coming in to sleep in his bed and having daily nightmares (From the two prior rapes) meant he could have sex with me. When I was 6. This I dissociated, because I NEEDED him, I needed to be safe, and held and comforted.
That was what I needed, and I had to prostitute myself to get it. So I dissociated it all pretty much every night, and went insane during the day.
Thumbnail of the horrorshow in my head. AAAnd I'm getting back more recall.
*******************************
So anyway, this lady didn't believe that-she actually said "Weren't repressed memories debunked a few years ago?"

And I stayed in there and defended myself...but after, her questions spiralled into me half not-believing myself. That, and thinking that most of the people on the site were thinking something like this:

"Here comes______, that dumb ****. She not only thinks she was sexually abused and wants us to feel sorry for her, she thinks she's an androgyne, calls herself third sex! What a f***ked up freak she is"

At least I don't talk about the SI much. Mainly because I'm not ready to quit.

But I already had one blow-up regarding my med decisions-they're creative...long story.
I was not feeling entirely welcome anyway.

But now I feel like I lost a community.
Because I now don't feel believed.
I've been going there almost daily since '09.I have known this woman for some time, liked her, thought her advice was often kind and good...and she just went off on me like this.

I have no emotional armor-the flashbacks are just blowing it off. Anything anybody says can just sink in and hurt.

And not having this be believed...it just rocks my whole world's axis.

Repost: how do I get past this?

Okay.

:trigger:

This is a triggerfest. Strap on your protective gear and your full-face helmet.

I have figured out that being in a close, committed relationship...is triggering me.

Not all the time, but it's a pretty significant trigger. Why? alright...I'm going to lay out the full story here, sports fans...

My child sexual abuse started at four. I remember that the upstairs neighbor invited me into his apartment to see his rats and spiders. I've definitely never acted like a girl-I adore rats and spiders... and had already been in to see them with other kids.
What I remember is him turning the old radio on country music...and somehow his dick was down my throat. I can't even picture the position. Then he's throwing me out of his apartment and I'm running down the orange carpet the projects had.
This I did not recall until I was 19. I blamed myself. Why? I had been told by my mother (in her angry voice) that I must never go in someone's apartment. So what happened was my fault. That's what happened to bad little girls, bad things.

This same year...and in what order the two occurred is a very, very good question...a different neighbor tried to force me into his ground-floor apartment window at gunpoint.
I was terrified to go outside for about a month after that, until I told my Mom "He had a gun," at which point she said: "Well, maybe he was cleaning it."
Being four, I was just too flabbergasted to argue with her.

So...I kind of stopped being the outgoing ham of a child that I was and...became shy. fearful, especially of men. I didn't talk about things.

Skip forward to when I was six. We had just moved into a new house! It was so nice! Well, I think what had happened is my Mom and Dad went somewhere and needed my Grandma to watch me...only Grandma didn't drive.
So my Grandma needed my uncle to drive her, he was 17 at the time.
Grandma liked to watch tv, pretty loud...so I guess she didn't hear what happened.
I went up to pee, and my uncle followed me up. As far as I can remember he threw me down, pulled down my pants and raped me.
It was something he did fast.He told me to shush, but he he had to hold me by the throat to keep me from making any noise.
I kind of remember him wiping the the blood off with a white washrag,because it burned. I remember him walking out of the bathroom.

Fragments. The fragmentary nature of the memories... so frustrating.

I went and laid down in my bed, so the blankets and stillness would keep my body from flying to pieces. Eventually I fell asleep. I remember my mom coming in and laying her hand on my forehead, saying "She doesn't have a fever."

So even though I dissociated this all, I was already having nightmares. They got worse.
And my Mom fond a job. She was an RN, so she went to work at the hospital on the night shift.

My memory is shattered into pieces at this point, but what I never forgot is this: screaming in terror to be left with my Dad.

What I've recalled...and what's really messing me up at the moment is this:

I went in there to sleep with my Dad because I was afraid to sleep alone...because of the nightmares. He had sex with me...in return.
I now recall standing outside his door crying silently, stuck between two terrors: sleep with the company of the nightmares, or sleep with him.

The thing is, I went from hating it, to accepting it, to liking and wanting what he did.
It's horrible, yeah, but the feelings in my body,and the glimpses in my mind are telling me I enjoyed what he did after a while, wanted it, became sexually aroused with him even though it never stopped hurting.

The thing is...is that I have started hating myself again for the past few years.
I think it's because I am in a really deep, committed relationship with my wife.
I love my wife dearly, and trust her quite a lot. That means I fear her terribly.

When I was left alone with my Dad, I needed him to comfort me, you see...I fought going in to sleep with him, I remember that. I remember the shame of not stopping myself
Because I needed him, he required a price of me. I paid.
Eventually I liked and wanted what he did.
That fact still fills me with shame, revulsion...and sexual arousal.
Uck. Uck. Uck.

Now I loathe myself for depending on anybody...and when people are emotionally close to me, my love for them is in constant warfare with my desire to get as far away from them as possible.
All the people in my life.

I wish I could just do without human connections.

I wish I didn't have any emotions. I don't want them.

Repost: freakish

:trigger:


Funny enough that...My abuse was pedestrian.
Sadly not exceptionally bad.

I even had one sane parent...in denial, yeah, but sane.

And I blocked it all out, dissociated, blanked everything that happened.

Was able to forget the neighbor, my uncle. Forgot my Dad as it happened, every night...I forgot so he could keep me safe.

But that meant I went insane during the day.
I had a voice that screamed in my head, over and over again, in a drunk Australian accent...and I'm American, I didn't even know what that accent was as a child...
The voices yelling incoherently in my head, the fears, the terrors....the television theme songs in my ears.
I guess I was going psychotic because of what my Dad was doing...I was shattering inside...I was six. I was just a six year old child and nobody would have believed. Nobody.
Most people don't know what it's like to no longer be in reality...

And for having had this breaking of my mind and soul done...I feel forever isolated.
On bad days contaminated...but even on good days, estranged.
People who weren't tortured every night by having a beloved father force his dick into a body far too small for such...most people...they won't understand.

And even worse, I grew to like this price he exacted for his attention and affection. His insane substitute for the love I needed, and I went insane, and was aroused, and wanted the sex...and that the most horrid and loathesome thing of all...

People don't understand this, people don't believe this, I can't stand this, I am stamped with this horrid thing, every inch.

I want to be loved and accepted but I feel like I've been forever...set apart, rendered very different, made alien, by this thing. I'm always going to be sad and broken spirited somehow...

Something crucial was destroyed. I don't know if I can grow it back or it's just gone.

Gee, that was rambly. Bedtime now.

I'm terrified to sleep, but if I don't I'm going to wreck another car.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

repost: inner kids part 2

(On second thought, this whole thing's) probably triggering...)

And I want you-all to keep in mind I'm not saying I have DID...this is just a way of thinking about what is a dissociated but unitary personhood...







So, first off, my inner boy...who's about, eh, somewhere between 13-15, has acquired a name...and he's the source of those...comments.

The ones that just come flying out of my mouth, like the aforementioned reason I told a clerk I wanted sports bras. (No floop-floop-floop)
They just come right out...yeah, thank you mister...
Basically, I have articulated my inner Bugs Bunny.
I can't help but like him though.
He's a nice kid...and the reason why everyone says of me "You act like a big kid!" The boy's really close to the surface, he's the very social aspects of me. Useful. Because I'm weird, but, get people to laugh and they like me, weird and all.

The other inner child's the little girl. The six-year old, that went away when Dad started...

She...has shown me what she is, in part, the other day...LOVE.

Like a nuclear explosion, a white hot fire of love. Boundless love.

I didn't remember what it was like to LOVE like this. It's beautiful, terrifying, and overwhelming all at once. Think feeling in love with someone, then cubing the intensity and throwing it at everything and everyone you come into contact with.

So, that's who my father...hurt so badly that I had to tuck her away...

And I will never let anyone hurt her like that again.So this has been a sneaky way for me to get that compassion I have for other people, and particularly kids( who are INNOCENT!) and turn it on myself. The frontal assault method of self-love did not work. We'll see if this leaves a lasting impression.

I will tell you it hurts a lot to love like this. It's so intense.

But I want to keep that little girl inside me safe, never make her go out around strangers, never let her get hurt again.
She's not armored like me, she's not protected inside and out, it really isn't safe for her to be out alone.
The boy(part), he's sensitive and not grown up, but he's social and helpful...this other inner part of me is too delicate.

Repost-inner zombie and boy

My friend Squirrel wants me to try inner child work.

The thing is? when he suggested it, I got this image of a drowned, eyeless rotted girl crawling out of water.
With filthy rot liquid pouring out of her mouth.

So he said to make a safe place for her, and I visualized a large walk in closet with a giant pile of stuffed animals she could bury herself in. Since I couldn't get this drippy undead inner component out of my consciousness once she'd presented herself anyway.

The other night I got the impression of crying from under those stuffed animals and a wave of sad loneliness enveloped me.

Today in the store I managed to offend a clerk by making a comment about why I wanted sports bras ("So they don't go floop-floop-floop when I run." Is what I said.
Well, that hurts.
Not having your tits flap is a necessary part of running.)

I was walking out of the store, and I hear a little girl's voice in my head: " She didn't like us."
And I sad (internally) "No, she didn't, but I'm going to work on liking you."
And I made an effort to extend compassion to her...which is hard. She's very slimy and foul. Putrid. And being undead, she's very cold.

So yeah, my interior metaphors are behaving independently.

My internal boy...I guess he got to grow up in a way. I certainly feel more connected to my male side. He was the one who got me away, outside, where it was safer. Why I act like a little boy a lot. About 15 years old. I like cars and guns and explosions, and transformers, and bugs and snakes. All that good boy stuff. Action movies. The boy's the one who likes fedoras and trenchcoats and big boots, and generally looking like as much of a hoodlum as he can reasonably get away with. Or looking like Doctor Who.
The one I resemble out in public. The one who puts on a big front because he's scared a lot and insecure, like a teenaged boy.

The girl died. Maybe she can be resurrected. Maybe she will unload her tremendous sorrow on me and be laid to a more peaceful rest...a thought that fills me with tremendous sadness, suddenly.
That there is a part of me that did die. A part of me that will never live again. Something that lost the will to continue.
Squirrel says they just hide very deeply, but...I fear mine may have no life left in her.

This is really all very...weird, and sad...and I hope Squirrel knows what he's doing. He says it made him a lot less suicidal, a lot happier.

Monday, May 16, 2011

insomnia

Sleeping seems to be pretty difficult these days, or at least sleeping when I want to sleep.

Well, ok, sleeping at all.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

not so much that I am wounded

As today I AM a wound...I just hurt. Abuse stuff.

go read this, be angry

Transgender professor denied tenure, terminated:

http://www.ocolly.com/opinion/transgender-professor-denied-tenure-terminated-1.2208077

Tudor is transgender.
After her complete transition, the human resources department told Tudor she could only use the single handicap bathroom located quite a distance from her office. As a result, she could only assume that Douglas McMillan, the vice president of academic affairs, made such an outrageous request.
In the past, for instance, he had openly asserted that Tudor's lifestyle "offends his Baptist beliefs."

Monday, May 9, 2011

what I do with razorblades

I didn't cut for a long time...but when I started doing college on the installment plan...I got really stressed. So usually around the end of the semester, I'd cut.

It brings me out of my emotional firestorms faster than a shot of liquor.

Then my relationship with my wife...I've been arguing, which I've read as my fault. All of it had to be my fault, I'm the crazy one.
So I hated myself, and I cut to punish.

But that morphed, and now I cut because it's like putting on a pair of fuzzy pajamas.   I take a razorblade and sketch little lines down my belly. All over it, in fact, from side to side. Then I put rubbing alcohol on it-and the burn is pure pleasure.
After I can feel this prickly sensation of pain around my middle that makes me feel somehow calmer all day.

My friend Squirrel tried to get me to use the rubberband...the result of that was that I started getting all sorts of purple, lesion-looking marks all over my left arm, where people could see it, and I wasn't getting the same comfort.
I do like the bands though, I can pop myself almost anywhere.

Today I realized I've been cutting because I was lonely for my wife's touch and affection...because we have the Stupid Argument of the Day(tm) and I was just getting it so little.

Furthermore, I thought it was all my fault because I kept yelling at her...and somehow my brain disregarded the fact that she was yelling at me, and starting the yelling in many cases...
I told her today that-I was not telling her this to manipulate her-but that I am so lonely for her attention that I cut myself so I don't feel so heartbroken and empty.
That...can't be allowed to ride anymore.

About the cutting though... I don't care anymore...I just don't want to give it up right now. It represents comfort and safety to me.
And I just feel like a massive wound right now. I'm not willing to try to move past it.

affirmation # 2

Do what works, no matter how weird it is.

Ironic & Hysteric

When bad things happen-last time it was my last car wreck, I almost split into two.
One half of me is very calm and observing, the other is having the emotions.
I thought of them as Ironic and Hysteric, and said that Hysteric's in control of the body...Hysteric's also what I'd call my previous dominant state of being.
Today during an argument... Ironic took charge.

I disengaged coolly and listened to my wife stand there and fume. I thought: "Wow, she's not ready to talk until she stops blowing like that." And I waited until she started making some different noises and I had done some dishes...and then we were able to resolve it.

I've been calmer ever since.   I have somehow figured out to flip myself into a state of almost robotic calm.

I don't know how I managed that.
I need to be able to manage it on command.

The thing is, this new side of me doesn't care about anything other than solving the problem...Hysteric is all the emotions-just a giant storm of them, all over the place.

Ironic...feels cool if not icy, and utterly ruthless.Where have you been all my life, Ironic?

So my mental side and emotional side are split off, and getting worse?

I'm not saying I've got personalities, I'm saying that...oh, I dunno what I'm saying.

I do note I'm getting more split, not less...I thought the whole point of healing was to be less split.
But I'm prepared to take functioning.
I'm looking through Ironic's view, and utility is paramount.

Ok. bed.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

dissociation's gift

When my Mom went to work, she left me with my Dad...she worked night-shift.
I had severe nightmares from two dissociated assaults, and was utterly terrified to sleep alone...so I slept with him...and he had sex with me.
I was six when this started, eight when my grandmother's presence stopped it.

But this is about the afterwards.

I don't think I repressed this so much as I didn't remember this...but I recall waking up and feeling very safe in my parent's bed, lying next to him. I felt very comforted.

The dissociation gave me this feeling of being safe and loved, waking up next to him, when I was lying next to the biggest monster of my childhood.

I think if I had realized how abandoned I really truly was, I would have gone utterly catatonic.
I would have been a far more shattered person then in the end I turned out to be.

My Mom, much as I love her...she would not have believed what was happening unless she walked in on us having sex. Otherwise it would not have punched through her denial.

So, I was able to have the illusion of safety...and apparently I needed that.
My mind gave it to me...a strange gift it is.

wondrous strange

I keep describing it as "I feel like my personality has been whacked with a hammer." Also, it really is going insane.
I am suddenly knocked loose from who I was, that person who was in a slowly-tightening death spiral...really, that me was getting worse.

I don't feel like I am the same person I was last week.  Moreover, I do not want to be that person any more.

I want to be someone else.
So that is what I am going to do.

Worry is not useful.
Guilt is only useful inasmuch as it keeps me honest, but I take it too far.
My mind needs to be controlled through meditation.
Ritual connects me; I need to engage in it.
Self-hatred is actively destructive; it must go.

But I have been running around profoundly damaged, yet surviving.   I can feel my strength now, and it is awesome...you could break ships on me.

So, my pain will not kill me, my fears will not kill me...I am a survivor beyond belief...and I can allow myself to love, and feel, and trust, because I am strong enough to take the pain.

And I don't have to feel embarrassed about turning into a one-person Greek funeral on occasion. If I want to have a wail and snot fest, I WILL have a wail and snot fest. If I want to be angry, I'll go be angry for a while away so I don't act like a jerk to people, but I can be angry.

And while I feel very unsettled, I also feel more delighted that I have in years. So much better than the internal battery acid of depression.

I'm going to have to work hard to maintain this clarity.  I need to. Who I am now is a more adapted version.

Friday, May 6, 2011

To a friend who doesn't read this blog

I just deleted this post...I decided, that as indirect and undescriptive as it was about who I was talking about, and as careful as I was to make sure any identifying details got left out...
As it was, my friend might still take it as a breach of trust, and I should not have done it in the first place.

I will apologize to him and forward the original when he seems stable enough to handle the info.

I would never consciously hurt him, and now I'm worried that he WILL be hurt when I do tell him.

He...just told me something that made my heart break for him, and I vented here...and should not have. His business is not mine to discuss publicly.

My challenge: a weekly affirmation-#1

Why?
Because I was a human blow-up doll to several somebodies, to put it really bluntly.

When that's part of your early childhood learning concepts?
It tends to cause self-hatred that has to be kept shaved regularly.

So, affirmation #1:

Only you know the tortured road you have walked, the stones that tore your feet open, the cold that ripped your heart to shreds, the demons that sucked your bones empty at night, the monsters that feasted on your soul.
You have been through hell and came out the other side.  You are stronger than steel. Do not forget it.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Just briefly

Afraid to sleep, so brain mulched by insomnia.

But I'm paradoxically feeling way better than I have in a while.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

I feel shattered: a repost

Well, at least I'm not beating on myself anymore...

Sunday's spectacular flashback (whee!) reminded me I've been profoundly broken, and I shouldn't judge myself so damn hard. The not-productive part of beating myself up I knew.
Now I really understand, finally, I don't deserve it.
I'm really broken inside, I'm doing good.

It took getting out of my wife's truck, walking into the woods and breaking into pieces there to remind me...I need to be gentle with myself.
I'm a broken person, and I may be able to heal, but right now I'm broken. I have to live with that.

Right now I feel that brokenness-I've been able to shove it down, but something has shifted. Probably getting this close emotionally to my wife. I trust her enough that it tripped yet another switch I didn't know I had. Joy.

An online buddy of mine has said that it's easier for people like us to give than to receive...I am going to try on this for size. Because recieving always has made me feel nervous and guilty.
Tonight I have to stop and buy a tarp/bungee cords for the lovely new lady in the driveway: a '78 Hondamatic 400cc motorcycle...and I think I shall buy my wife something as well, something little, because due to the Hondamatic, I'm a bit broke.

I told her if she *does* get this weekend off and feels okay enough, I'd like to go to a park. Parks don't involve people. I will not freak the hell out in a park...unless the situation really warrants it, in which case there WILL be damaged assailants.
Like the Hulk, you won't like me when I'm angry. You won't like my wife either. She goes freaking ballistic too. God I love her :D . She is awesomeness itself.