Marriage stuff

So...neither of us have been making the other happy...

This weekend I need to come up with concrete things I need from her.
The first specific action...I told her I wanted a phone call from her every day at 830 PM on weekdays.  Just to say hi.  We're both at work at 830 PM, you see...

I know she doesn't like talking on the phone.
I decided I don't care.  That may seem harsh...  but since I stopped denying how incredibly lonely I was in this marriage...The feelings of grief and sadness are just washing over me.

...Let's see.  I want to be sexual...weekly, at least...more if/when it becomes logistically possible.
I want both of us to be happy having sex...which probably means doing it her way every time...this will be emotionally triggery for me, but it's really important getting over it.
I want her to keep going until I beg her to stop, though...I usually feel like I'm being selfish after the fifth orgasm or so and tell her she can stop...I'm gonna just buy her a wrist brace.

...I want hugs at least twice a day every  day...Last night I jokingly pointed out something true...she hugs one of the cats (her old lady cat) twice a day...but I wasn't getting hugged twice a day.

I want her to talk to me every day, even if it's just a phone call.  There have been  weekdays in which I did not speak to her all week, because of the way our work schedules run.  Last year when I was getting repressed memories back of sexual stuff my dad did to me...My best friend talked me out of suicide, told me over and over I wasn't horrible, that I was wanted, that he'd miss me terribly.
Where was she? WHERE WAS SHE???
Why didn't I share with her???
In part because I think I stopped hoping she'd be there for me emotionally, in part because she never shared her feelings with me...in part because she finds long conversations to be really hard work and she gets overloaded...in part because what I did tell her she did not seem to be able to understand.
She doesn't.  She's not an incest survivor.  She's not good with emotions, even.  She cares and wants to help, yeah, but through this period... she did what she wants done when she is upset.
She left me alone.
I am finally feeling the pain of her not working harder to engage.  She just left me alone through what was the worst emotional pain in my life...and it went on for months...so it's not like it came and went...

....On Wednesday...I think I finally conveyed it to her in terms she got:
"Imagine losing a cat every day for a year."

I am feeling...grief and bafflement.
Why did she leave me alone when I was drowning in pain?  WHY???
I don't understand...Maybe I wasn't clear enough.
Maybe it was my fault for not asking loudly enough, I don't know...I don't know.
I was drowning,  I was drowning mostly without her...and I don't understand why.

Because I suck...

(In case any of you actually thought I was a nice person or easy to live with...I just wrote this to my wife)

Okay...
You told me you want to understand me.  It's not even clear what you want to understand. SO I will just throw stuff out about what I feel right now.

I've been in and am now in a tremendous amount of pain.  A lot of times I feel overwhelmed, exhausted...and profoundly alone.

At this point I try not to speak to you unless spoken to, because I never know if I'm going to get yelled at or not.  You're the one person I am almost always desperately craving the presence of, but I have to hold my tongue and keep silent until you speak.
When you don't speak to me it's almost as painful, but I know trying to get attention just gets me shouted at.
Yes, you sitting there and ignoring me caused me a great deal of hurt, once. I wanted to hit myself at times because you would not talk to me.   Now I'm accustomed to it.

A better way to communicate to me about saying “you're not stable enough to have a baby,” would have been...”I think you are not o.k. to have one right now, but let's revisit that in 3 months.”
I was sort of getting better because I knew I “had to.”  Because there was a baby on the way.
You said “You're not stable enough to have a baby,” I heard that more like “_______, you're stupid to think you'll EVER be stable enough to have a baby.”
I have been feeling a growing sense of despair that I'd worked on myself so much for nothing.

I'm still intensely triggered and freaking out over the sex the Sunday before last.
I've been hating myself since then, self-injuring since then, and the feelings of wanting to beat myself, of wanting to take skin off won't...bloody...stop.
I have an urge to take steel wool pads and abrade my genitals.
My body is a sewer. 
I'm disgusting, a human toilet.
How could anything anyone does with this carcass be beautiful?
Right now I think I'm disgusting and pathetic, and barely worth the bullet it would take to kill me.
I don't see you as needing me
...What do you need from me?  I never feel you need me.  I can't believe it.

Cutting is soothing, that was one thing I was trying to give up for the kid.  I'm not fighting it now.

 I hate myself for being angry at you, and usually feel I need to self-punish by hitting or cutting after getting you angry. I don't know how to express anger appropriately, so I either say nothing or explode. I often self-injure after I have made you angry, I feel extreme emotional turmoil until I am properly punished for making you angry.  Feeling anger at you is frightening.

I love you and admire you and fear you, you can destroy me.
I feel subservient to you, yet resent it.
You hurt me now by reminding me of how worthless I really am when you say something critical.
I love you but at the same time I'm fighting being terrified of you, because you are too close, and yet not close enough.

I doubt that helped.

something I posted elsewhere

My mom divorced my dad some time ago...My brother was six...
the repressed memories uncorked later...and I decided not to tell my brother so that my brother could have some vague excuse of an actual dad.

Trust me it's been a vague excuse.

But anyway, I did finally attempt to tell my brother...and he said that first, he really didn't want to know...but that he didn't really like or respect dad anyway. I replied...after thought "Ok....But you and ______ are trying to have kids.You need to know that if you have a girl don't leave her alone with him."

....Today, my mom called me to warn me my father was at the house so I would not stop by. Ok, cool.
So then she started rambling about my dad's dilapidated car, and I said, "Mom, I've got a giant grin on my face as I'm imagining myself stabbing him repeatedly. The thought of killing him makes me really happy. I would love to be able to kill him and am really, really looking forward to his death."

Mom kind of got off the phone after that...

Yanno, I really enjoy hating him sooo much..

Balanced on two wheels
I float down back roads at the
Speed of butterflies.

I went for a bicycle ride this afternoon, and I felt like I had such a luxury of time, since I did not have to go to work...so rather than pushing hard, I just tooled along, eyes wide...and it's so beautiful out here, so beautiful. Tall loblolly pines, everything green and beautiful...

I found something sad and fascinating-a flattened, dessicated coral snake.  People are afraid of them because they don't know that coral snakes have their fangs mounted in the back of their mouths, and those are small. Basically, as long as you don't pick them up, they can't really bite you.You'd only have to mind babies and the severely stupid around a coral snake, they are shy and hide from people anyway.

After that, I saw bones lying on the side of the road, sunbleached. It was a cat that failed to make it across the road, I eventually saw, looked like a half-grown kitten.  The skull was in excellent condition, so I brought it home to paint.  As I was searching for the rest of the remains, I could smell that deep sweet scent of loblollies, and the call of the crows disturbed by my presence.

The third leg of my regular circuit I ride past a number of grass farms.  I  find it not good that all our food here comes from California, and instead we grow giant lawns...but that's how it is.  There's also a cattle farm out there...A ranchlet, I guess you'd call it? It's a lovely property at any rate. There's a deep drainage ditch that runs alongside part of the road, and the white heron that always hangs out there...flew away from me as he always does. 

As I rode I decided to talk to the latest member of my DID "family," Miss Perfect.
Miss Perfect is seven, and she believes if we do everything perfect, mommy will love us.  Except we can't be perfect.  So she's been the one sending me messages like "I'm worthless, I need to die," that will just sort of float out of nowhere.
Well...the thing is, I'm 39...and I won't take orders from a maltreated and very hurt 7-year old. So now that her secret is out, she's lost her power to make me feel awful.  I don't think she's happy about that, not that she's generally been happy about anything.
 At the same time, she's seven. She thinks everything has to be perfect in order to be worth anything due to her mom's bullying and rampant perfectionism.  Mom was taking her frustrations at the suckiness of mom's life out on us, was having VERY unrealistic expectations of how well a small child could do housework.  Shawn, of course, my angry boy, resisted her(as he does everyone).
Miss Perfect is the part of me that desperately wanted mom to love us, not tell us things like "You disgust me, I can't stand to look at you, get out of my sight!"
Yes, my dad sexually abused me, but it seems my mom's share of the abuse was what really made me suicidal.

Wow, that's a sad thought.

So after telling Miss Perfect I loved her and mentally hugged her...I said to her "Isn't it beautiful out here?"
"Yeah." She replied.
"But none of it's perfect."
"No?....No. No it isn't"
"Yeah, hon, all this isn't perfect.  Maybe it's ok to be not-perfect."
"I guess..." giving me an impression of rolling eyes.

Right about then we came up on this one horse pasture...next to said pasture a mulberry tree grows...and the horses are so appreciative if I feed them the mulberry leaves.  The paint horse always nuzzles me.  I need to take those guys some carrots.

On the fourth leg of my trip I rode through a gas station's parking lot.  These two cars had stopped and a small number of older people were saying how-de-do's and catching up...I could feel the warmth and joy.

Then back home, feeling at peace. After a wonderful shower, I tried to get the kids to meditate with me...which just sort of ended up with me in an internal group hug and telling the kids "I love you, I love you."

Today is a good day.  I feel like I am/we are blossoming.

General update

How I have been doing lately:



Well, sports fans, as you know I've been decanting and processing memories of my dad sexually and physically abusing me.  Now it seems him doing that may have created...other people in my head?  Some sort of weird dissociative thingy, at any rate.

I have kids in my head.  We're talking.  They are talking to my therapist-through me-which is the weirdest feeling imaginable, besides the fact that I hallucinate all sorts of shadow shapes while it's happening.

My wife and I are...getting along better. I'm less jumpy again, so not so incredibly triggered by her yelling at the computer, or bellowing like a wounded ox when she drops something.

...Look my, erm, "loving" parents would start yelling and then hit me as punctuation of sorts, ok?  a raised voice is a direct trigger.



The sex thing bears mentioning.

She's put on a lot of weight.  I don't care.   She does care.

Or, well, I do care in the sense that I want her to be happy and healthy, but I still find her attractive.

So, because of that and because of the way I approach sex (not good for her, and yeah we've worked on that), one time when I was trying to get her turned on...she started crying.

I still feel...like some sort of creep at times, and I certainly still feel guilty.

We did try it the way she likes...which is to "share energy," and that has been...um...the first time we tried it I just sort of ended up howling and sobbing in her lap because of the grief and the loneliness of going through all these memories mostly without her.

Better the next time.

I do love her, I really do...and it's not like anyone would handle my level of weird terribly well.



My sinusitis seems to be getting a bit worse, I'm losing energy again.