Religion Part 1 - With a Side of Dreams

For my benefit I write this post. For my anxiety I disclose these words.

In the last thirty six hours I’ve purged five times. I feel completely out of control.

Session with Therapist was deeply disturbing today, but I don’t feel as bothered by it as I do the dreams that hacked at my sleep all night. It was the usual dream: my being around abuser X and abuser X denying what he did to us and me just trying to make him admit it. In the dream there were the other “family” members who were so non-chalant to his presence. Everyone was acting normal towards him. Both sides of the “family” was there, which was an odd part of the dream. I never speak to the other side of the family, not because I don’t like them, I just feel like they don’t “get” me and don’t understand how to handle me.

We have a cousin who is older than us by just a couple of years and in this dream she was going through a hard time. She was sleeping on the floor or an air mattress like we do because beds terrified her. I asked her questions and was surprised to get responses. It turned out she was me, just inverted. She had just begun to deal with the abuse by her older brother. She reminds me of a member of my system.
This dream has rocked my world today. The anxiety has been unbearable and I just want everything to stop. I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s more than I bargained for. It’s more than I can handle. I feel like I’m doing this alone and I want to stop. I want to effing stop this "journey."

I could have brought this up with Therapist today, but we were too busy being disturbed by a different topic on the table: religion. I don’t like discussing religion or my beliefs. My beliefs are significantly different than some of the other crew members and I don’t want to be blasphemous to something they believe.
We were raised very religious. Christian. I’ll leave out the name of the specific denomination because I don’t want to put it in a difficult light. Even though I don’t believe in it, I can still respect it enough to protect it. But I want nothing to do with religion. I remember the birth mother shoving it down our throats, always pulling out her study books, trying to teach us, and acting superior to us. She always tried to quiz us on various topics and events in the Bible, “just for fun.” Only it wasn’t fun for me. In addition, the place of worship became an unsafe place for me. I remember being around eight years old and refusing to close my eyes during prayer because I wanted to know what was going on around me, not because I was afraid of prayer, but I was afraid of what happened when I closed my eyes. It was protective.

I also hated the songs. They were beautiful songs, and Birth Mother taught them to us before we could read them. The songs were very inspiring and would pull on our heart strings, but I don’t go for that emotional bull sh*t, so I didn’t like it. I know the music would make some members cry, but I don’t think it was a good cry. I think they cried because the music made them feel empty and deficient.
The damage by abusers had already been done. We were already emotional and tearful and not put together well. So when the music was added to our emotional state the result was feeling empty and helpless.

That’s enough m*effing, bull sh*t for now. I’ll write more later.

If only the words would come alive I could tell you what is deadening my heart, what is making me screech in the silent darkness. I can't speak the words threatening my sanity. I can't speak the words that would save me.

Bathroom secrets

The need to write is strong, but the words aren’t easy to come by. My mind is split. Raked out the center. Emptied of all reality. I’m disillusioned. Our actions are those taken by a troubled woman, but she feels no urgency at all. What for one woman might be a cry for help, for this other woman is simply everyday life.

Anxiety still has been high. Some wonder why we just don’t face what we fear and the anxiety will lessen. This continual running, or avoiding as Therapist would eagerly point out, only makes the anxiety grow stronger, gives it more power.

Power. Therapist said we were giving abuser X all the power back,; I guess because we are engaging in eating disorder behaviors again. I don’t know that I see it that way. I don’t have a logical explanation for the eating disorder behaviors, but I don’t see how it is related to abuser X. The timing is suspect, I acknowledge. We started back into behaviors shortly after seeing abuser X in October. But when we refuse a meal or purge, abuser X is not on the mind.

On the topic of abuser X, he made another appearance in our dreams. It was a benign dream, if that is an appropriate categorization. There was no abuse in the dream; we just heard his voice and his denials of what he did to us. But something did happen in the dream that freaked me out, and I find it hard to admit because I don’t know what it means, and I’m afraid of what it says about us/me. At the end of the dream, there was one of the littles. I could only see her back, not her face, but I knew who she was. I was scared by her presence. She was scared too. What shook me about the dream is that Therapist was there. He physically got down to her level, on one knee, and told this little girl that she could tell him anything, any secret, and it would be safe. And in the dream you could feel that this little girl wanted to tell him something but was too afraid. Then, Therapist whispered to her that they could go into the bathroom and she could tell him her secret. At that point I woke up, but I woke up with feelings of being safe with Therapist and protected by him. I shudder to think what that says about us. I’m sure there’s some fancy psychological phenomenon going on, and I hate that it’s happening. I know he’s not our protector, so why would I dream it? It’s embarrassing to admit that he was involved in our dream that way.

I think it interesting that he offered to take her into the bathroom because, as weird as it sounds, that has always been a safe place for me. I don’t know if it’s the privacy of the bathroom, the ability to lock the door, or what, but the bathroom floor has always been a place of refuge.

When the body was little and we were too afraid to sleep in the bed, we slept on the floor, eventually the bathroom floor. And over the years, throughout anxiety attacks and flashbacks, it’s the cold bathroom floor that we’ve sought for safety. So I find it interesting that is where Therapist offered to take the little girl.

The image of the little girl stayed with me throughout the morning. We had a series of intrusive pictures of the old bedroom, and that put us on edge and fueled the anxiety.

I don’t know what else we have to do to get better. It seems the key to getting better is locked away with the other members. How does everybody heal? Do the memories have to be shared in order to recover?

Today at work while doing a mindless task the stray thought wafted across our conscious regarding if “normal” people ever think of suicide. I guess the thought stems from the meeting with Dietician we had today. It left us feeling hopeless and powerless and like death is the only way out. Not that I’m thinking of suicide. But when the thought floated to me, I wondered who was thinking of suicide and how serious they were.

So after saying all this, I repeat what I wrote in the beginning. My mind is split. Half of me thinks there is something wrong with me, and the other half thinks everything is okay and the eating disorder behaviors aren’t a big deal. I know something is wrong, but I don’t even have to try and outrun myself. It just comes so naturally. So, thinking out loud, if running from things comes naturally, then I’ll have to do something “unnatural” to face my fears and anxieties. But I don’t know what that is.