just briefly

I'm feeling guilt.
Why? because I kept going in to be with my dad.
And getting abused again.
I traded sex for comfort.

People keep telling me that a terrified, traumatized 6 year old had to take what she could get.
This seems logical.
But I can't believe them!

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.

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 . She is awesomeness itself.

repost: it's that time again!

Oh yeah...it's flashback-time again! whee!

:Trigger:


This crap is a trigger fest, alright? if you will freak, steer clear.







I've been grappling with my self-hatred...and there's a bunch of reasons bubbling between my ears why it's so hard for me to let go:

I'm afraid to feel good-like someone will come along and hurt me for feeling good.
I feel like I MUST punish myself...because I didn't do everything right!
I believe I'm a failure, and to say I am doing my best is to accept mediocrity.

But...I feel like I'm about to decant an abuse memory.

Considering the way it works, probably one where I was enjoying sex with my Dad.

Ultimately...I have to forgive the person who enjoyed having sex with Dad. Who went in there willingly and had sex with Dad. UCK!

It may have started off forced, although the memories are so fragmentary I can't tell. I do remember, have always remembered...standing in the hallway outside his door, crying in quiet terror, knowing that to go back to my bedroom was to be left alone...with all the terror that implied...
And to go in to him was...and memory blanks, but there are blurs, and what's in the blurs...well,now is the child's little body beneath his...and the fact that it hurt, this sort of ripping pain, and aroused me, and comforted me all at once. Oh god...

And that was the price of not sleeping terrified and alone: he got to do with me what he wanted. What I am sure I wanted eventually. Because I wasn't really touched enough anyway, because I came to be turned on also.

There's something that causes me to be revolted at myself for that. That is why I fear people now...because I needed him.

Yes, there's my trust issues...there they are:
I needed him because I was having horrible nightmares from already having been raped by my uncle and orally abused by an upstairs neighbor...I needed him to protect me from the horrors in my head.
He used my need for him...to have sex with me. He didn't need to force me. I needed him, so I paid that price. I let him have sex with me.
And having nerve endings, it felt erotically pleasurable.
I liked it. I wanted it. I was willing to have sex with him.
I find that revolting...that I was so weak.

That's why I feel this sense of helpless terror when I need anybody. I need people and I loathe that I need people...and agh. Because that weakness got used against me so horribly well.

Needing people makes me feel numb and terrified. Disgusted at myself too, for needing them, loving them, trusting them...

But...how do I forgive myself for needing? for being weak, imperfect?
If I were better, I wouldn't need people. If I were stronger, I could be all alone...then I could have pride in myself.
At least that's what part of me thinks.

I hate the part of myself that is human and vulnerable and imperfect. I do NOT want to be vulnerable, human and imperfect.
That person screwed their father out of terror at being left alone. That person was someone's thing because of need for safety, closeness and touch.
That person was weak, and I feel disgust because per is me now.

Tiredness, the weightloss thing, and big triggery stuff @ the end.

One wonderful thing for you:

My Egyptian friend told me that his uncle in Cairo got a call from Tunisia yesterday.

The Tunisian congratulated my friend's uncle on Mubarak's departure.

My friend's uncle said something like, "Um, why, thank you, but I don't know you."

The Tunisian replied "Oh, no, I just wanted to congratulate an Egyptian, so I called a number randomly and got you."

(GO EGYPT! ) (RA! RA! RA! ;) )
------

The rest of the post isn't fun or funny-in fact it's a very solemn one...keep checking back for the more upbeat ones... I imagine they will come along presently.


This tiredness worries me...Does it mean the sinus infection's returning? or just the result of a typical sleep-deprived week?

 I'm getting a bit more green stuff out.  And saving it in a jar for the county ENT doctors who think I'm making shit up.
I find this ridiculous, demeaning, makes me feel less valuable as a human being and it screws with my sense of reality.
My palate is itching...but of course they won't believe me when I tell them that.

Since they have two hospitals, both with ENT departments, I'm going to call on Monday and see what I have to do to get into the other ENT department.  Maybe the other ENT's will actually believe me when I report symptoms.
----

Over the week I managed to snag four-count'em, four good pallets.   Four pallets equals two planting beds.  What I'm doing is cut a little bit out of the center of the pallets, then pick which one has the more busted up or rotted bottom, and remove those boards.  After that, I nail them together at the top corners-it's a pretty straightforward procedure when you take the back off..  Then they get lined, first with cardboard, then with mulch. The cardboard will not only help retain moisture around the sides, I think...it's definitely going to kill the grass.

I'm too tired to do this today...I really am.  Tonight's a down night also.

Oh...I should explain my wacky ways of eating, and how that came about:

You see, I am now weighing about 152-157 at 5'9".

About a year and a half ago I weighed 275.

Before that I'd eaten my way up to 320 in high school...managed to diet down to 270...got stuck there until I went "pretty-much" vegan, dropped to 190 mainly through exercise, but a little through diet, shacked up with the wife, let myself go, back to 220, then got sick and ballooned due to stress and repeat courses of prednisone.

When I hit 275, my allergist(then about as frustrated as I was at my case) asked if I would consider stomach stapling. Said it would dramatically improve my condition.

I want my life back.  Badly.  So began a year-and a half diet-a-thon.

Well...when I got to 220, I got stuck.  I was eating 1200 calories a day, was ravenous, and stuck hard.

Enter the Johnson Up Day Down Day Diet.

I started doing it.  Actually, being the perfectionist I am, I started doing an even tighter restriction than called for, but pretty much the Johnson diet.

The weight melted off me so fast that my coworkers expressed concern.
This was full of unfun...when I first started down days going up stairs made me dizzy.  Working out made my heart pound.

Now I don't seem to really even get that hungry on down days.

BUT
I want to weigh 140.
Why?
155 is too close to 164-the threshold for me being overweight.  Having yoyoed all over the place, my body can store it like nobody's business. 155 is close enough that one good case of the fuckits can propel me into the overweight range.

That's not cool.   I want to be firmly of normal weight, because I want to guarantee I will never be obese again.

Half of the reason I wanted to kill myself in high school was my binge eating disorder...
---------

And that brings me to the last thing:

It occurred to me last night that the entirety of my adult life...I never anticipated happening.  Which hasn't helped matters as far as doing things in a planned, coherent fashion.


(BTW...You want to click away now if you're easily upset or triggered...Don't blame me if you flip out, you've been warned.)







By ninth grade I hated myself for failure to kill myself. I didn't work in high school or take college prep classes-because I was just doing things to make the parents not yell at me and-or hit me until I worked up the nerve to kill myself.  I self-denigrated every day in an active attempt to make myself do it, convince myself to slice my wrists open.
I so wanted to die that I regularly called myself a coward and beat myself up for failure to have the courage to wipe the stain that was me from the earth.

This was all before I decanted my sexual abuse memories.   This is where the shame and the self-loathing came from...but I didn't know that then.

Some of the sexual abuse was forced on me-the oral rape at four by the neighbor and the vaginal rape by my uncle when I was six.

My Dad, though, I don't believe he had to force me, or keep doing so...because being alone with my nightmares-the terror-was worse than the physical pain of his adult penis in me combined with the comfort of being touched, of not being alone, abandoned.

And there was arousal as well. Not that I wanted that arousal, was ready for it, knew what it was.
I think I may have thought I was dying, because I always thought my father could kill me-that's what I thought when he hit me.
His physical abuse was never extreme-certainly never bad enough to leave a mark.
I'd categorize his physical abusiveness as usually mild occasionally escalating to moderate...but I was afraid he'd kill me nonetheless when he went off.
His verbal abusiveness actually probably did me as much damage-perfectionism is a 50-pound millstone around my neck, and it comes from both parents.
Anyway...
I needed something from him...well, he decided he needed something from me in return. So I paid that price at age six, seven and eight.  The memories are still very blurry, but I think several times a week he chose to have sex with me.  I remember waking up in my parents' bedroom and having no idea how I got in there the night before repeatedly, so I was dissociating a lot.
------
Nowadays, we've come to an understanding.  He doesn't get around me, I don't try to kill him.

Because if I see him, a cloud of red, red rage just descends over my eyes.  I cannot see straight.  I cannot think straight.  All I see is someone who took advantage of my desperation, who was entrusted with my care, and who damaged me for life because he felt like it.

There is no one else in this world I can say I truly hate with the profound depth that I hate this man who is half my genetic makeup.

Yes, he was raped as a child.  I don't care. He's still responsible for his actions.

Yet at the same time part of me wishes...that he'd try to make amends for what he did.   There's a part of me that aches for a real father.

But he's not a real father, he's a 60-something adolescent who can't apologize for the damage he's done to everyone in his life-and I think I'm the prizewinner of that contest.
I couldn't  have a decent relationship with him even if I could get past my own fury.

I don't know how I'm going to feel when he dies. Probably both sad and relieved.

repost:the trailer park grapevine

Yesterday, it occurred to me, since I go here and there on the net, and post things, I ought to repost here those forum replies which I find most eloquent, important, or whatever.

So, this is my first repost...but since I'm a compulsive editor, it's been modded:

...Interesting, how I can find out more things about my Dad from people I barely know, and therefore don't know whether to believe them or not.

My Dad may or may not have slept with a then 18-year old woman across the street...we do know he pulled the peeping-tom number on her when she was 16 and 17, and swimming in a backyard pool over there.
He confessed to her and a friend of his one night, when very drunk, that he had a son with a mistress when stationed in the Air force in Thailand, and had been sending money until my Mom almost caught him at it.
That little bit of info came out a few years ago...I've been meaning to see about tracking down and verifying that I do have a half-brother.
I can't help him financially right now, but maybe when things get better...and if he wants to emigrate I might be helpful...maybe.

Now today, I was out running the dog...and the slightly off old man down the street was outside...and he decided to talk to me.
He didn't realize whose daughter I was...and when he did...
I didn't realize my Dad had stayed with him.
Now remember-all this stuff isn't stuff I know to be true...but:
When I said that my Dad and I don't talk and don't get along, at all, and I don't know where he is and don't want to know, he told me some things...

Apparently, my Dad had been molested and raped as a child-the old man didn't know who. It messed him up in ways he was never able to deal with. And I am not the least bit surprised.

My Dad was also supposedly raped by a female bodybuilder while working as a cabbie this-not 100% sure I believe. I could see the vulnerability...he's never been very built, and him being...what he is (sex addict), she could have just asked him to screw her silly, and he probably would have agreed to try. Unless he said something that pissed her off about the way she looked. Which...in that case...and he does run off at the mouth... and if she was on steroids...

He's good at pissing people off.

And of couse after he moved to New Orleans and a trio of thugs almost killed him-robbery/murder, only they didn't quite succeed in killing him. He took 17 stab wounds, but was able to crawl for help. Was on life support for a month, but failed to die.

As far as it goes though...what was done to him DOES NOT excuse what he did to me.

But viewing that monster with...well...pity, is something that feels very uncomfortable. He damaged me. I'm not capable of being entirely the person I could have been had I not been so damaged. Potential has been permanently shaved off.
Admittedly, benefits have been added: I'm very tuned in to things, I'm sensitive to emotions, I have more compassion towards most things than I think I would have otherwise...but things I'd like to do I can't because I've been rendered way more physiologically vulnerable to stress. Besides that, I'm likely to have more immune system problems-child sex abuse survivors involved in the Putnam longitudinal study did. I suspect this will also cause me to die younger-because my body's always going to put out more cortisol and have stronger stress reactions than it would have otherwise had.

Anyway...
I survived him by learning to hate him. And since he did so much damage, I learned to hate him very well. Now, feeling anything but hate, loathing, disgust, and a desire to kill him...IS EMOTIONALLY DANGEROUS.

That all dates back to when I was 12, and he was taking me to school-a private school. I wanted to go to private school because I hoped I'd get bullied less there, but I was still getting bullied there, too. My depression-though I didn't know it then, would have been considered clinical.  And as always, my undiagnosed learning disability was making it outrageously miserable to do math homework.

I had made him late to work three times in a row because of the math homework and general reluctance to go to school, so he kicked me before we left the house, and kept slapping at me and screaming the whole way to work.
That particular incident pretty much changed our relationship forever. Because I used it.

I deliberately stopped loving or trusting him, because it hurt too much to do so. Whenever I started feeling warmth, or relaxing around him and talking freely, I would recall The Incident...and I would stop those feelings. I would visualize him slapping and screaming as he drove, me terrified and thinking about opening the door, jumping out onto the freeway at 60 miles an hour. I'd talk to him when I didn't have to, and I'd imagine him kicking me. I'd forget to be wary, and I'd visualize his face contorted in rage.

So I didn't kill myself over shame and disgust at what he did probably, at least in part, by hating him, and by fantasizing about killing him.
So feeling compassion for him??? it feels like handling an emotional nuclear bomb.

But today...that is indeed what I felt the barest whisper of. And it shook me up quite a bit.

The money situation has hit the fan again, that combined with the gender situation and this...and I'm struggling really hard just to maintain. 

I haven't done any cutting yet.  Maybe I ought to, because if it gets rid of this awfulness rattling around in  my head, it would be totally worth it.

I'd like to not need to cut anymore, but when I have these periods of intense unpleasantness going on, they are all that works sometimes to make me feel better.  I've  been on the verge of tears for two days now, my chest just aches, and everything else I have tried so far to comfort myself has either not worked or has actually made me worse.