hoy me rompe el corazón

a little over a year ago i came face to face with one of my abusers. I wanted so badly for an apology. initially i received one, then he recanted. he claimed it didn’t happen.

today my birth mother is going to see her family, including this abuser who is her brother.  I’m trying to understand how to feel about "the family" supporting him, wanting to see him.  it's also disturbing that the birth mother would go and not stand up for her daughter. i’m confused. Parts of me are feeling defeated. How could the aunts and uncles, her brothers and sisters, want to associate with an abuser? Is there not enough love in their heart for me to hate their brother who hurt me?

I wanted to go with them for the visit. only just to scare him, intimidate him, and make the visit uncomfortable for him. but i thought in the end it would just hurt me worse than it would him. i thought the Littles would be traumatized by his presence and the rest of us would feel small again. helpless.

sadness is coiling around me, squeezing out the ever flickering light inside of me. i feel so betrayed, so alone, so . . . silenced.

Forget that. I need to numb out. I need to escape. I'm not fit for survival. I'm trapped. There's too much damage and I'm all by myself.

Surviving Myself

 Despite myself and sabotaging my own efforts, I keep surviving. It isn’t pretty, but I’m doing it.

I read a post today from a regular blogger to whom I subscribe that reinforced her description of her blog. She related it was a pro-recovery blog, and so she was trying to keep everything positive in her posts. I have a different view of my blog. Recovery is never perfect, and, for me, infrequently positive. At least right now. So when I write, I share exactly what is going on with me: the good, the bad, and the ugly. If it is triggering, then I’m sorry. If it’s negative, I can’t control that. I have to be as authentic as I can, and that often means when I write it is not from a good place. So if this blog triggers you or takes you to a place in which you find it difficult to cope, I apologize.

I relate this, because I vaguely recall a post that was submitted recently, and I’m afraid the post was triggering. I do not know what this post was about. I never go back and read my posts, because I don’t want to be reminded of what I might not have written. But I have a funny feeling it might have been triggering. If so, I regret that it might have hurt people.

As I’ve obsessed about mentioned before, I am having horrible anxiety attacks, and they are related to food and weight. And right now I’m in the sticks of Tennessee where my in-laws specialize in anything deep fried, so it has been hard to navigate what to eat and what not.

For the first few days in Sticksville, I didn’t run because I didn’t know where the trails were. This town is the king of hills, and it is not safe to run on the streets. I finally found a trail, but it was on a riverbank that was disgusting and filthy. The trail itself was questionable; I couldn’t tell if I was running in mud or duck and dog poop. So the run was less than stellar.

But yesterday I found a trail that was beautiful and made me want to strap on my running shoes. The sun created twinkles on the lake, and the air was so crisp and clear to breathe. It was the run that saved me. It was 4.5 miles of grounding myself by listening to my feet pounding the pavement, hearing my heart beat, and focusing on my lungs expand and contract. I cleared my head of all non-sense. I saved myself by running.

My salvation lasted only a few hours, and then the anxiety returned, kicking me in the gut, seizing my thoughts, fueling my desire for escape, and rendering me useless. But that’s okay. For a few hours I felt like myself. And I realized in my darkest of darks, I can save myself. It’s not beautiful, and it’s not scripted. It seems to be rough and ugly, trial and error. But I’m saving myself! And I know if I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

Peace.

"End this sweet madness, all it's glorious sadness"

That's from the song "Angel" by Sarah McLachlin

Warning: I’ve lost my mind.  I can not be held responsible for the crap I spew out.

I suppose since no one reads this crap anyway I can say what I want.  And what I say is purely none of your business, but I feel better when I say my shit and send it to the universe . 

And today I won’t make sense.  I am going to throw it out like the garbage that it is and not regret it.  “We will not regret the past not wish to shut the door on it.”  That’s what we say in our AA meetings and EDA meetings.  But I do regret the past.  I regret being born, I regret being abused, I regret gaining weight back.  I regret everything.

My favorite tattoo reads, “For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’”  I wonder what might have become of me if I had not been abused.  I wonder what would have happened to that little girl had she not been hurt.  I wonder what might have been of me.  Would I be a capable, productive member of society?  Would I have normal friendships and relationships?  Would I not feel this innate, inconsolable loneliness? 

We are out of town for the holidays and it isn’t a good idea for me to be away from home.  I am very unhappy and I can only guess it’s my effing weight.  I know everyone notices I am sad because they ask me if I’m alright.  No, dammit.  I am not alright.  I am constantly worrying about everything I put in my mouth.  Even the broiled broccoli for dinner was a sin.  

And I have no suitable clothes to wear.  I packed jeans in my suitcase but I can’t stand the way they feel against my skin.  I can feel how large I am when my skin grazes against the fabric of my jeans.  I hate them!  So all I’ve been wearing are lounge wear and sweats.  Clothes that I can’t feel myself in.  My  lounge wear is large and I can get lost in my clothes.  And why I don’t know exactly how my abuse is linked to feeling my skin in my body, I do know that I can’t feel his hands on me when my clothes are huge and don’t hug the skin.  When I’m smaller I don’t feel his hands between my legs, but I do now and it hurts, hurts, hurts.  I feel his god damn hands and I don’t want to anymore.  There are lots of us hear.  Hurting.  Crying.  Needing some kind of release. The littles are here.  The self-harmers are here.  It’s all gone to hell.  

Hi, my name is Sophie, and I was raped.

“Let me be empty, oh, and weightless, and maybe, I’ll find some peace tonight”  ~ “Angel” by Sarah McLachlin

Scrooge It

All Santa has brought me so far is a fever blister.  Thanks, Santa.

I wrote in  A Big Secret Wrapped in a Bow that I don’t celebrate the holidays.  Never have.   I thought I would be okay this holiday time, because I’m with family.  Tomorrow more family will come, and there will be a big family dinner.  No exchange of presents, though.  Just people stuffing their faces with food. 

So I thought I could handle it this time, but as I was looking at my regular Facebook account I grew very sad, crouched in the corner, and started bawling.  Everyone on the Internet is wishing everyone else a merry Christmas and tossing around their happiness and joy.  I don’t want to be a scrooge to that.  In fact, a part of me wants to wish everyone a happy holiday too, but I can’t go against everything I was raised to believe and taught not to participate in.  It wouldn’t be any easier celebrating the holidays. It would only make me feel guilty for going against something so ingrained in me.  And it wouldn't bring about the feeling for which I wantonly crave; family togetherness.    

I want to feel like I belong to what I believe is the spirit of family and holiday.  I’ve come to understand I never will, no matter what relationship Birth Mother and I develop or how welcoming In-Laws are to me.  My littles and adolescents will always bleed tears, because they didn’t feel that connection, that togetherness, that family bond growing up.  And it hurts; it hurts so deep. 

But for now, all I can do is wish you happiness, whether you find it with or without your family of origin.  

Peace.

There is something gravely missing inside me today. My tears search it out, but the magnificent hole is still stored inside my body. There is nothing left.

grasping at air

there are f e w words.

went through R.A.D. self defense simulations yesterday

flashbacks    terror     crying

13 hours later still not okay

still crying  still scared    still terrified

need safe hugs   need peace    need for it all to go away

need to cope   bad ideas in mind  

need help   need to talk     but there are no words

i’m silenced just like then

oh, god, how i need help

NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO THERAPISTS

 

I’m feeling particularly vulnerable these days.  I don’t know why.  I don’t ever know why, and that brings out the angry part of me.  I am taking R.A.D. classes, which are self-defense classes.  They are a series of four, and they have put me in situations where I have flashbacks or vague, foggy memories.  Today is the last day.  We go through simulations today where we are really “attacked” by police officers in protective gear.  I am scared.  At first the self-defense classes were empowering, but now they just make me want to cry.  And I’m afraid I will cry today during simulations.  I’m afraid I will be break down, go into a flashback, and nobody will ever find me again.  Not even Therapist.  Especially therapist.

He has hurt us.  Again.  We disclosed some very intimate details two sessions ago regarding why our head has been so foggy and we’ve been so dissociative, and he acted last session like he hadn’t heard what we told him.  He asked us why we thought our head was foggy.  We didn’t answer him, because we had already told him and was insulted he was asking us again.  At the end of session we said he makes us sorry we ever tell him anything.  I don’t know if it hurt his feelings, but I am not sorry that was our response.  You don’t ask us to confide our most shameful and personal sides, and then tell or play like you don’t remember.  It made it appear to us like he wasn’t paying attention to what we had revealed.  I realize he could have been manipulating us to see what WE remember, but you don’t play games with us.  Don’t test us.  That’s not cool.

So we also met with Secondary Therapist this week for the first time in a few months.  Back in late September/early October, we had a parting of the ways.  Rather, she parted our ways.  We had told her we were going to leave our Dietician, and she told us she couldn’t see us anymore.  We were devastated.  We had not seen that coming.  We felt completely betrayed and abandoned.  There was no reasoning with her.  So that day we just left her office scared and in tears.  We did go back to Dietician, but didn’t return to Secondary Therapist for a while.  I was encouraged by my treatment team to call her to discuss what happened.  I couldn’t choke back the tears enough to make my words make sense.  Dietician spoke with her and strongly advised her we needed more help, so Secondary Therapist agreed to see us.  That was Wednesday.  It wasn’t easy.  She said she had been giving us warnings along the way saying if we didn’t start getting better (gaining weight) she wouldn’t be able to see us.  I don’t remember her ever warning us to that effect.  So we decided if I lose weight or am not making progress that she will write out the consequences instead of just telling us because the words get lost in the head.  I’m still bitter about it.  Still feeling betrayed by her.  Still feeling like I can’t trust her.  But I acknowledge those things, so that gives us some place to start 

So, as of right now, I don’t have one therapist I can trust or not feel manipulated by.  It seems they always let you down, especially when you start to trust them.

I'm sitting in class. I can't think or comprehend this class discussion. There is so much anxiety in my head. I'm totally lost.

Glimpses and Misses

 

If you asked me what is wrong, I couldn’t tell you.  I would want to tell you, but I wouldn’t be able to.  I don’t know what is wrong; I only know something isn’t right.  I’ve been feeling this way off and on for two weeks.  The anxiety is palpable.  It comes in waves and crashes.  I become paralyzed, fearful, and teary. 

There have been a few times, such as tonight, when I could trace the anxiety to a member, or trace it other times when the anxiety comes at night when I’m waiting for sleep to find me.

I saw Psychiatrist recently.  He put me on an additional med, and I think it is helping with some of the depressive feelings I was having.  But nothing is helping with the anxiety. 

I’m losing time more.  I’ve lost all this afternoon.  I know “what” I did, because others have told me, but I do not have first-hand account of what took place.  The last thing I remember is running a race today and taking the subway back to our car.  I was with two other girls, and I remember thinking in my head “What if they really knew me” and I remember an off-balance feeling.  The next thing I know I’m at home seven hours later, reading a book, and wondering how I got there. 

It’s no wonder I’m switching given the amount of anxiety I feel.  But I am completely controlled by emotions of which I can’t call my own.  But I catch glimpses and it frightens me.  But I have a vague awareness someone feels so deeply empty and irreparable.  Even broken hearts continue to beat.

All the same, earlier tonight a movie came on tv that we used to watch when we were younger that would always evoke strong emotions from one of us.  Tonight, we were taken back to that exact age and started crying for no apparent reason.  It was  like déjà vu. 

While we can say there are one or two positive happenings in this, our life, there is still so much lacking.  And we are at the proverbial crossroads.  I am scared of what lies down both roads, both bends, and I am even more afraid to look.  Most especially, I am afraid it won’t even matter which path we choose; we will still end up in the same crazy place.

I've lost a whole day of time. I'm not okay.

A Big Secret Wrapped in a Bow

I’m only half a person right now.  You may poke and prod, dig around for the other half of Missing In Sight.  You will not find her.  You will find more, but you won’t find her.  I’m the only one here, lost inside this head, peeking out behind her eyes.  

I am numb, and it inspires recklessness and danger throughout me.  The drive to feel pain is better than feeling nothing at all.  Inexplicably, I am so numb that I want to numb out from the numbness.  I want to take some pills that will put me to sleep for the night where I don’t have to deal with not feeling anything.

I’ve been feeling a far off irritability and distant frustration since Saturday night.  I can pin point the exact moment I changed.  The feeling just washed over me.  

It’s quite possible and probable that my irritability is a result of my recent weight gain.  Though my treatment team would say it is appropriate I gain weight, I can’t stand myself.  I feel like I thunder through the halls at school and work.  I don’t feel comfortable or safe in my own skin right now.  I definitely feel like I’m in danger and flashbacks of one of the abusers are frequent.  

I think it’s also possible this emotional instability is due to the holidays.  The big secret wrapped in a bow is that we have never celebrated one holiday.  No birthdays.  No Christmas.  No Thanksgiving.  No nothing.  The littles feel very hurt at this time of year because they have never played in what they see others do.  They have never experienced what children might feel like on Christmas, waking up to lots of presents, peeking in stockings, smelling hot cocoa wafting through the cozy, snuggly house.  The Bigs feel left out because they don’t know what it’s like to shop for others, to gather with family and watch movies together, to sit down to a special dinner with special plates and special glasses and special forks; To have enjoyable, happy and laughter filled dinner conversation; To feel the comfort and safety of family surrounding you, supporting you, loving you.  

I feel sad for all of us.  Even in the body’s adulthood, we still aren’t “allowed” to celebrate the holidays.  It’s a power of wills between the members.  And in this case, nobody wins. 

Homeless goodbyes

I’mma bout to have a panic ‘tack 

My members have gone gangsta on me. 

I’m feeling irritable tonight.  I can’t say for sure why.  I feel like I need to type the energy out through my nails.  I completed a major project for school that is worth 25% of my grade and decided to take the rest of the night off.  But nothing satisfies.  Not football.  Not music.  Not my dogs.  Not the letters from my students.  I think having nothing absolutely pressing to work on gives me a chance to be idle and to sit with myself.  And that just doesn’t do.  I can’t be alone with my head at all. 

My members have been out quite frequently.  Even at times when I didn’t think I was feeling stressed they were swirling in my head, staked out behind my eyes, watching and observing, sucking the energy from my body.  I went into my job today full of energy and hyper and high as a cat’s back, and soon I crashed.  I could feel them taking over me.  I started to get nervous.  I could feel them inside me.  I wasn’t feeling stressed.  I don’t know why they were out.

  Tonight I can’t settle down.  I’m watching the clock till I can take my sleep meds.  I really want to come off all my meds.  I’ve been down this road before where I wanted to take myself off my meds, but I was met with disastrous outcomes.  I know better, but I still play with the idea.

In ten minutes I can take my sleep meds.

This last month has been tumultuous, grand, exhilarating, and demoralizing.  I was interning as a student teacher and it was a very difficult placement in the public schools.  Every corner of my support failed me, except one of my favorite professors who thinks she understands me.    She does understand me, she just doesn’t know “what” she understands.  She doesn’t know I lose time, hear voices, see people, and feel people peering out behind my eyes.   But she does know how to alter my assignments in a way that I can understand and be successful, which goes a long, long way.

The placement in the public school was difficult.  And it brought out members that had been lying dormant for a while.  I think the last time (oh, hell) the last time I remember noticing them out was when I broke up with a guy about 15 years ago.  This man was abusive towards me.  These members had been feminists then, and as they have returned recently, they continue to hate men.  I’m noticing old fears creeping back up, old memories returning, old feelings of anger and hurt resurfacing.  We are much more reactive to movement and cognizant of escape routes.  We had a meeting with two of our professors, one whom I intensely dislike, and I had to sit in a pathway close to the door in case anything threatening happened. 

Part of what I am wondering, more especially as I type this out, is whether the return to middle school had anything to do with activating those members.   At first I thought my returning fears, time loss, and the general running around of the members had to do with my other professor for whom I have a strong dislike.  This bad seed professor has been unprofessionally abusive, harsh, and overly critical of me, which has set up a difficult teacher/student relationship.  So at first I thought he might have “tripped the wire” that brought out these other members.

Now I’m wondering if it was because I was interning in a middle school.  Middle school has extremely unpleasant memories for me; more specifically, I was bullied, endured parental turmoil, raised the birth mother, and was abused my by neighbor at the same time.  I hate middle school, so it is not a far stretch that some unpleasant memories and associations have been brought up for me. 

Memories of the old bedroom and certain landmarks of the neighbor’s house have been brought back to life for me.  I have felt myself shrinking back into a child that can’t handle things.  Back to “that” child.

I’ve come to know that those memories and feelings will NEVER go away.  There is always one waiting around the corner as soon as the current memory and association starts to fade.  There is always another memory waiting for me, waiting to hurt me and remind me I will always be a damaged child stuck in the body of a damaged adult.  I’ve come to learn there is no such thing as goodbye, because an old “hello” of a memory is always waiting for me.