Anger times infinity

Friedrich Nietzsche said, "Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment."

This was the quote for my daily mediation today. I have to admit I've fallen prey to resenting the majority of my life and those who've played a role in its demise.

It's natural to resent being hurt, but if I'm TRULY honest with myself, I've made a career out of resenting those that have dishonored me and abused me. But I don't know how to not be angry and resentful.

Those people hurt me deeply, seemingly irrevocably. How do you get over that? How do you get beyond the anger and resentment? More therapy, indeed.

I'm calling myself out about being eaten alive with hate, anger and resentment. I realize this only halts my progress into a world where I can fully live without being triggered by the anything and everything. People on the outside would never know how damaged I am inside because I put on a front. I have members who are responsible for interacting in the real world. But I'm not at peace and never will be until we can let go.

As I write this it sounds to familiar to the post we wrote about forgiveness. Bad topic. I won't forgive, so if forgiveness means I have to let go of the anger and resentment, then tough shit.

But maybe it's not mutually exclusive. Maybe we can still let go of anger and not forgive. Anger is just a warning sign that something has hurt us. I don't even know what I'm angry at, just that I'm angry. To be honest, and I know some of the blogging community thinks this is bull shit, but I have a member dedicated to anger. It is her job to hold the anger; it's her defense mechanism and the way she keeps people at arms length.

I know she can protect us through other means, but the anger is so much easier for her to revert to. Not everybody is out to get us.

But I'm off track and my thoughts are easily being tumbled and foggy. The issue on the table is letting go of anger and resentment. Anger is a message that something isn't right, and we've gotten the message. The abuse wasn't right, but we can't go back in time. And anger can't be fixed just by acknowleding that the abuse wasn't our fault. So we honestly don't know where to go with this post. We don't know how to get rid of the anger.

Maybe it's something time takes care of. Maybe acknowledging the abuse wasn't our fault will stop us from punishing ourselves, but that takes time. Feelings of guilt, anger, resentment are all tied together. How to untie them is a good question. Moving forward depends on handling the anger towards our abusers, ourselves, and the world.

I find this post flabbergasting. I started it out with one angle on anger, feeling I had answers, and now I've done a 180 degree turn. I don't know how I feel or what it will take to let the anger go. I've confused myself.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Cooking in the south!

Last night my god-daughter was learning how to make fried okra but felt the okra would suffer if she didn't have on an apron. Seriously, C., where did I go wrong?


She stops cooking for just a moment to pose for me. She's almost fourteen years old. They grow up so fast.

C. is getting a cooking lesson from Grandma. Grandma extols the virtue of cooking with lard; my arteries close just listening.

There are too many cooks in the kitchen, which is my out to leave. Yeah! I don't have to cook! I love you all!

BTW, the artery clogging okra was fantastic. Nothing says cooking in the south like a cupful of lard! :) This is why we only visit twice a year.

Trip to Tenneessee

Still writing from Tenneesee. We are a little crowded in the van, even with the two middle seats taken out. These are two faces only a mother could love, and I love them very, very much.

On the other side of Twizzler and O. is our other god-daughter, C. She's sleeping and drooling all over my pillows.


This black blob is Sam.

He is adequately tranq'd for both his and my benefit. He is never this mellow. He's lying on the floor where we took the two middle seats out. That's my Strawberry Shortcake blanket he's bogarting. How could I refuse him?

Somewhere under here is our god-daughter, O. , and our other dog, Twizzler, who is too prissy to get on the floor.

Twizzler is totally monopolizing the backseat like good dogs do. O.is a little camera shy. "Mom" she cries.

As a side note, they are African American and we are Caucasian. Info. just in case you read our profile.

Things are slightly better at the moment, but we spent the day in bed. I'm totally proud of our abiility to transfer pictures to our computer and put them on Flickr and on the blog, so you'll be seeing more pics in the future.

We are switching more. and I think that is due to the one member staying in bed all day. Once we started switching we got up and got on-line and showered. We never made it to Panera. Our streak is broken. Heaven help us.

More to write later.

Days like this I don't know what to do with myself

I don't know what to say. I hate feeling like this. I feel uninspired and rather ineffectual right now. The sad music plays and soothes my brain. I'm sorry, dear reader. I would rather post a positive blog, but I'm not so positive right now.

I'm at Panera, as usual, but this time I'm writing from Tenneessee, where my in-laws live. It's hard to have a good visit with them because I'm so far out of my f*cki*ng mind. I'm not okay and I don't know how to get okay. I can't wait to get back into town so I can see my shitty psychiatrist and get a change on my meds. I really think I need a med change. I hate my psychiatrist; before I left I called another psychiatrist that is supposed to be really good with D.I.D. and eating disorders but she's on vaca. this week, so I couldn't even schedule an appt. with her. So next week I'll see my usual psycho-iatrist and still schedule an appt. with the new one.

I feel so utterly sad. I'm starting to get daily affirmations and mediations on my cell phone. However, I came across this one on the Internet. http://www.deeshan.com/ It doesn't really apply to me today, but it is something to think about when we are dissecting our own self-worth.

Secret Shadows has had some blogs lately about parenting with D.I.D. that at the time didn't apply to me, but I read them anyway since I have god-children. I never thought I would be telling my story when reading hers, but I have to.

I never thought I would tell my god-children about my condition but the need arose lately and I was amazed at their maturity in accepting my condition.

My god-children , C. and O. are twin, thirteen years old, just shy of fourteen. They've had a very difficult life but it has taught them resilency. We had custody of them for five years, between the ages of six and eleven. I never wanted to have children but they needed a home and what was I supposed to do? Throw children I already loved into foster care? Nopie. So we took them in. It was difficult, to be sure. Now they "live" with their bio-parents but, even though we don't have custody of them, we are still their parents. They call us "mom" and "dad."

With that sad, I have some members that are starting to relish coming out and the freedom it entails. They are all about self-expression and even got a nose piercing. My family is ultra, ultra, ultra conservative so I had to explain to my children that we all have parts to ourselves. "Part" of us likes Disney World, part of us like Busch Gardens. Part of us likes "abc", and another part likes "def".

Then, one of my daughters who has some severe learning challenges from being a premie asks me," Mom, are you talking about identities?" I was floored. Apparently she heard me and D. talking about it and looked it up on the Internet. She had been sitting with partial knowledge for a year.

So of course they had a lot of questions, most of which I was unprepared for but we answered. I couldn't believe how grown up and understanding they were being. I was upset that one of my members got the piercing and C., my daughter, said, "Don't worry. It wasn't your fault. We know it wasn't you." What a blessing.

I could finally take a deep breath around them. Now, one of my members wants to get a tattoo. Our arms are so scared and we have most recent burn marks on our left wrist and it looks like a cuff. It is bright red and it gave the member the idea to have "Love" tattooed on her wrist. It is in part because of TWLOHA, the grassroots organization to demythitize self-harm. So by tattooing "Love" on her arms, she believes we will never self-harm again. Would that it were. If that would be the trick, I'd go get the tattoo myself.

We have an appt. with a dietician next week. I'm so relieved. We need to get on a program. We are feeling so desperate. We ordered diet pills on-line last night. I know that was a bad move but the feelings of desperation are so high. We haven't been this heavy in a long time. Just months ago, we were severly underweight. It is hard to mentally wrap our head around what is provoking this response from the eating disorder.

I'm really reaching out to the world today. I'm accepting hugs if you're offering. I feel so down in the dumps. Mostly because I can't stand the way I feel inside this body. But enough of that. So this is so random.

Stay strong and take care.