Showing posts with label abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abuse. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Wednesday Wisdom - DO YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE YOUR STORY? Vol 2





POWER

Do you have power? What is it? How do you get it? What do you do with it?

Power: The ability to do or act in a particular way to direct or influence others’ behaviors. 


I know in the mental health community, my experiences with power are not dissimilar to others. When I think of power, I am reminded how little power or control it seemed I’ve had over my life, particularly as a child.  Growing up, Birth Mother was more of a “my way or the highway”  type mom.  To say she was controlling and unyielding in her power over me is a generous understatement.  It is only now, decades later, that I am finding the nerve to take back my power and stand up to her.  Recently she told me to be quiet, and I responded to her in a respectful tone to never tell me that again, and immediately she told me to be quiet, and the cycle continued until I left.  As an adult, my mother has tried to take away my power of voice when it is inconvenient to her.  So it is quite understandable that when being abused as a child, I didn’t say no.  I didn’t try to stop it.  I didn't know I could stop it or use my voice to tell because I was taught I had no power. No power at all.


But over time, little by little, I DECIDED and COMMITTED to the belief that people will no longer take my power away from me. I firmly believe if you want to be powerful, if you want your voice to count, if you want to take recovery by the horns and let it lead you to a better life, you have to decide that you will take back your power.  Power is not something that you can acquire by osmosis or wake up one day feeling it in your soul. In order to take back your power, you have to realize to begin with that you are capable of using your power and can take it back by taking small risks, by believing in yourself, and realizing you have power, and so do I.

HOW WILL YOUR STORY END?

So when the quote tells me, “This is NOT how my story will end,” I know I am entitled to create a different ending than what my abusers handed me, and I have within me whatever is needed to implement a different ending to my story.  


My abusers created an ending for me, one filled with pain, desperation, helplessness, confusion, dissociation, and hopelessness.  I don’t want to live like that anymore.  So I’m taking my power back, the power that was stolen from me, and I’m screaming out loud, “This is NOT how my story will end.”

I've realized I have the power to fill my life with people I love and that love me.  I have the power to fill my life with happiness and peace.  I have the power to shed my shame and create a version of me that is compassionate and understanding, not just with others but also with myself.  I have the power to eagerly wait and see what great things will happen next. I have the power to make the changes that seem impossible. Most importantly, I have the ultimate power which is to take back my life and recover.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin
Follow my blog with Bloglovin
With my power back where it belongs, my ending can be anything I want it to be, but it will NOT be, now or ever again, written by my abusers. Their show is over.

I'd love to hear from you.

What is your experience with power?
What would you use your power for?
What is one thing you have the power to take back from your abuser(s)?

Thursday, November 16, 2017

BROKEN, BEATEN, AND BULLIED




I can count on it.  I depend on it.  And it never lets me down.  The nighttime, from 6-10, is the graveyard where my pretenses  go to die.   


It’s kind of good in a way . . . to feel this despair, I mean.  Before I would try to steel myself against the pain, but now innocent tears plunge down well worn pathways, and my resolve is lost.  I become that bullied child again.  


I often think I should just get over it.  They were just kids, weren’t they?  Did they know better?  Does it matter?


Ask my insecurities.  They’ll tell you.  They’ll scream the truth if it were safe.  


Ask why we constantly need other’s approval or help in making decisions.  Ask why we can never trust ourselves.  Ask why our adult-self cannot make friends, trust others, and fears being social.  Ask, ask, ask away.  The answers agree and never disappoint.


Now, decades later, so many years have ticked off the calendar, but I still see that emotionally beaten and bullied child, 6th grade, head down on desk, tears bursting through failed attempts of constraint, embarrassed they caught her in their grasp again.


Sadly, I remember that girl.  She was me, and I was her.  And neither of us are okay tonight.   She still cries, and I still watch, helplessly.  We take turns when it gets to be too much . . . and tonight it’s too much . . . for both of us . . . and I want so badly for someone to listen.  


Monday, November 13, 2017

INSPIRATIONAL MUSIC MONDAY!! POST 1

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Maybelline hogging my heated plush throw.  Silly girl.  



Are you ready for some inspiration?

Welcome to the first Music Monday!  As I wrote in my last post found here,  I have dedicated Monday to music.  For today's Music Monday, I have 3 incredible songs that I hope will inspire you to keep working and  fighting in your recovery.  I've scoured songs from multi-genres and discovered music that I trust will speak to the feelings and thoughts of  men and women dealing with the scourge of mental illness.  Some of the songs you may like, some you may dislike.  I've chosen up-tempo songs as well as songs with slower beats.  I've tried to be as inclusive as possible.

I also encourage you to tweet at @missinginsight,  email at missinginsight@gmail.com, or leave a comment on what songs inspire you so that I may include them in my posts.

As you read and listen, please consider if the music speaks to you and how it relates to you.

1) The first song is "Fly" by Hilary Duff. I remember coming home from Therapist one day, hearing this song on the radio, and I was so inspired to really start trying to get better.  The lyrics I like best are:
All of your worries, leave them somewhere else/Find a dream you can follow/Reach for something when there's nothing left/And the world's feeling hollow/Open the part of you that wants to hide away/You can shine/ Forget about the reasons why you can't inside/ And start to try/Cause it's your time/Time to fly



This song is such an inspiration to me because of its message of trying when you are struggling, forgetting the reasons that you made you feel hopeless, and always trying, always keep moving forward no matter how hard the struggle is to fight off the demons in our head.


2)  The second song that I think represents recovery well is "Alive" by Sia.  It's speaks to the writer  feeling he or she had been hurt for way too long, and is exacting revenge on those who hurt her by getting better.





The lyrics that really speak to me:

I grew up overnight/I played alone/I survived/I had a one way ticket to where all the demons go/and you're taught to cry in your pillow/but I survived/I'm still breathing/I'm still breathing/I'm alive.

This song is usually on repeat because I feel Sia is singing to me.  I've always felt hopeless, all the way back to childhood, and this song is like a slap in the face to my abusers because they tried to break me, but guess what, I'm still here, trying to fight, trying to stay alive.

3)  This song is a recent find.  It's called "The Silver Lining" by First Aid Kit.  I like it because, not only is it uptempo, which I like in inspirational songs, but the lyrics are like poetry set to music.






There are so many relatable lyrics in this song that it is hard to find just a few that I love, but these are ones definitely worth listing.

I don't know if I'm afraid of dying, but I'm scared of living too fast, too slow/Regret, remorse, oh, no, I've got to go/And you've just gotta keep on keeping on/and you've just gotta keep on going straight down the road/I won't take the easy road/the easy road, the easy road/I hear a voice calling out to me/The shackles I've made in an attempt to be free/Be it for reason, be it for love/I won't take the easy road/show me my silver lining

Wow!  I love these words along with the beat and their voices.  I love how the songwriter is saying she  won't have regret or remorse because these things are holding her back and she has to keep on moving ahead or she won't make progress.  Also, personally, I've always tried to take the easy road in recovery by avoiding things that I don't want to confront.  I often still do.  But this song gives me hope that I need to keep on keeping on even if the road to recovery is difficult.  And it always is.

She also mentions how in an attempt to be free, she's made her own shackles.  I'm not sure what the songwriter is saying, but my best interpretation is that she might have made these shackles to make sure things weren't easy and to insure she isn't taking the easy road.  This way she can keep on keeping on.

- - - - - - - - -
Even though I feel hopeless often, these songs are reminders of how we must keep trying, we must find reasons to fight,  we must stay in the fight and not waste our energy on those who hurt us, but show them we are better than them.  We can rise above.

  • What are your thoughts on the music?
  • Do any of the songs speak to you?
  • What songs help you in recover?
Stay tuned for Wednesday Wisdom!

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

THE COUP: ILLEGAL SEIZURE OF POWER


Maybelline sound asleep.  She loves her crate.  Makes her feel safe and secure.
I don’t know if I can write this post.  I feel extremely dissociative at this very moment despite taking my medication.

I don’t know why it’s important to write this, but last night’s experience was so bizarre, disruptive, and disturbing that I need to make sense of it.  

Last night wreaked havoc on me, and I’m not sure I can adequately give voice to it.  

I think something was triggered in our session with Therapist yesterday.  We came home, journaled, and then went to our place of worship.  I was so emotional through the services that I sat in my seat and cried.  When time was up, we had a congregation prayer, and it dawned on me my eyes were open during it.  Then I had a flashback to a time when I might have been eight years old, and I refused to close my eyes during prayer and hadn't been for a long while.  Closed eyes do not equal safety.  You must always keep your eyes open to remain vigilant and safe from people hurting you.  

When I remembered this, I began to dissociate and switch.  It was like the light switch was being turned off and on, off and on, over and over.  The switching was constant, and I had to leave quickly.  
Meanwhile, I came home around 9:30 pm and my lower extremities were in such pain, but I had no clue why.  I hadn't done anything differently to cause such pain. It baffled me, but I took pain medication that never worked.  I doubled the dosage and nothing even came close to alleviating the pain.  

Meantime, Husband left to go to bed around this time of 10:00, but I wasn’t sleepy so I stayed in the living room to catch up on social media, pay bills, etc.  But I kept noticing I couldn’t remembering what I was supposed to be doing.  I would start a task and then forget what I was supposed to do.  It felt like I was flitting from one thing to another, but I couldn’t make sense out of anything I was trying to accomplish.  

I can not overstate it when I say I couldn’t remember from one moment to the next.  It was like being in a dense, thick fog, and I couldn’t process anything.  I was confounded, but couldn’t untangle the mental mess.

I decided to take my night meds and go to bed, but the dissociation had other plans for me.  I wasn’t tired or sleepy despite taking sleeping pills.  

It honestly felt like someone was overriding my medication or it just didn’t affect them.  It never felt like true insomnia.  This felt totally different, like my members were just wide awake.  Almost manic but without the hyperactivity.  I was simply awake and not able to think clearly.

Hours later, I took a muscle relaxer and laid in bed feeling very strange and out of sorts

Sleep finally found me but in bits and pieces, tossing and turning.  
I’ve had insomnia frequently in life but never before did it feel like the hostile takeover of last night.

Today has been similiar.  I’ve been spacey, dissociative, and I have an unrelenting migraine.  

I write this experience because I’m trying to make sense of it, and I’m wondering if anyone reading this might have had a similiar experience because this was way out of the spectrum of normal for me.

Monday, October 30, 2017

Safety is as Stupid Does



Maybelline taking a long nap after a walk.



I feel uneasy and unsettled, and a lot has to do with our session with Therapist.  The clock revealed only 30 minutes had elapsed, so I must have lost time in there.  I remember talking about Husband’s violent behavior and about how others cope who don’t cut, which I find interesting because the cutting isn’t what Therapist should be worried about.  Burning and my restrictive thoughts and behaviors should concern him more.  But with satisfaction I digress.  

Always looking for safe places.



So I’m supposed to blog about what would make me feel safe; what in my present life would make me feel safe.  

LOL.  I’m more likely to find the 8th World Wonder.

SAFETY: the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury. Security.

Ironically, what has made me feel the most unsafe is the only thing that can make me feel safe again.  Men.  I remember how safe Former Psychiatrist made me feel.  He spoke softly and tenderly to us.  He even allowed me to see how my poetry made him cry.  

Some have said they feel safe with Therapist.  I can’t say that.  I don’t feel he’s warm, soft, or caring, and that’s what we need.

Safety should be a one-way street.  There should be other things to make me feel safe.  But the truth is that what destroyed me is the only thing that can resurrect me.  

But in a perfect world, what would keep me safe?

I can’t answer that.  Nothing will or would.  I’m constantly aware of the dangers around me.  I wonder if you can be both.  Can you be aware of danger but be safe at the same time?

I have no concept of safety.  I’ve always wanted to feel taken care of and protected.  To the core and by the core, we’ve never felt safe.

This subject is bringing out my self-harm inclincations.

I hate this fucking topic of safety.  No where in the world is it safe.  Danger lies in everyone’s thoughts and behind everyone’s perverted fucking eyes.  

I don’t wanna write anymore.  
But we didn’t find the answers.  
Except for one: it’s not safe even inside.  

(There is a child talking to me with a British accent and I hear Victoria trying to calm her)
Why is she upset?   Is she upset because there’s no safety anywhere?

*Realization*
Words.  Words make Victoria feel safe, especially when she can artfully craft them and express them just how she wants them to be.  She’s protected by her words.  They are her defenses.

The rest of us don’t have one.

Monday, October 16, 2017

Dear Me, I Hate You

These are things difficult to discuss because I'm afraid it will be thought I'm only seeking attention.  So when I say I don't want to talk about it, we really might need to discuss it but are afraid of people being overly concerned or or just not caring.  There is no easy way, and we don't know how to do "this" because "this" isn't a goddamn thing.

















And tired of your pretending to care.








It's all bullshit.  I'm against this post.  Never works.  Never.






Thursday, October 05, 2017

Am I Reality? and What Not to Disclose to Your Therapist!





An amalgam of three days of journal writing

Our purpose here is to figure out two things:  1) how to nurture our angry protector Tina 2) Therapist mentioned that we need acceptance.  Figure out what he meant by acceptance.  Accept what?

I don’t know what he meant by acceptance.  All I want to do is ask him to see us twice a week.  Would that be nurturing enough for Tina to see the only person she even semi-trusts for two hours a week?  Therapist would say no and charge us with finding other people we can trust, and then that would be the death of that relationship and I guess therapy.  

I think Therapist believes the only way to nurture Tina is through relationships, I guess so she can learn his fable that not everybody is scary and out to get us.  

We’ve not really talked with anyone, but we’ve hemmed and hawed to a couple of people about our stress, anxiety, and depression.  But truly it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop.  One lady knows scant little and it would be great if she had been in touch with me these past few weeks during the death of Husband’s father and our move.

I want to prove Therapist wrong.  What if he’s right?  Of course he’s not.

I so wanted to get through life with D.I.D. differently.  I wanted inner communication.  I wanted to have the gaps filled.  I wanted to know myself and feel whole.  Therapist says i know or have an idea of what happened to me.  I might have an idea, but it is so vague.  I really don’t know.  I really don’t.  

All of this just brings up a panic in me.  Is Therapist saying I’m at the end of my therapy journey, that I can get on without therapy?  It doesn’t fix the current dissociation.  

I guess i have a fear i’m being cast off, abandoned, declared with simplicity that all i need are friends, trustworthy people.  And I will be so sad if that is what he is saying because having friends won’t fix these problems.


So, acceptance.  Hmmm.  Accept what?  What work have we done?  None.  Or we’ve regressed.  The insides feel distant, like no one knows each other.  I don’t have memories of who they are, what they’ve been through.  I feel like I’m starting all over.

  • - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I feel dissociative but for no reason at all.  It’s not really a big deal.  I can just feel them behind my eyes, watching.  There are things i don’t want to write here because I’m afraid someone will put it on the blog.

I guess I can almost accept being dissociative and having other inside people a part of me.  I don’t like accepting it and there still is resistance.  I can’t fight much anymore.  I’m tired of fighting.  Fighting for the sake of fighting.

I hate that Therapist was told Tina trusted him some, but on some level we all trust him more than anyone, even Husband.  I wonder what it’d be like if we said we had love for him.  Not a romantic, inappropriate, stalky, perverted kind of love.  But a benign, innocuous, healthy! kind of caring for him for being trustworthy to a degree so far.  Ugh. Is that wrong?

Which partly explains why the group as a whole can’t shake the idea of seeing him twice a week.  Maybe it’s mostly selfish, wanting to feel relatively safe twice a week for an hour each.  

But Therapist is so flawed.  His optimism angers me.  I find his bright-side-of-things view puts a lot of pressure on me to live up to his expectations, but that is impossible and will never happen.

He says I already have an idea of what happened to me already.  I know a cast of characters.  Uncle.  Neighbor.  But I honestly don’t know what they did.  Maybe they didn’t do anything.  I don’t know and wonder how what the inside people claim can be verified and proven.  But when I say something, anything, I want to be believed, not second guessed.  I bet they would want this too.

But I feel incomplete.  I don’t know the people/parts inside.  There is no communication, at least of which I’m aware.  I used to talk with them, but I stopped because I felt silly.  I didn’t think they were really talking back or working towards communicating.  Like doing anything like I used to do such as baking chocolate chip cookies together, getting them Build-A-Bears, sticker books, children’s books.  I wanted to believe there was a connection, but that’s probably where some of the doubt has come from.  It really felt as if I were the only one doing those things, like they weren’t actively helping.  I was doing it all alone.  Forever alone.

-- -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I’ve been thinking today that I’m losing touch with me, life, and time.  I can recite and tell what  was done today, like making phone calls, taking my dog Maybelline for a walk, the route we took, and cooking dinner.  But none of it feels like me.  I know I did those things, but did the real me do it?  It doesn’t seem like time loss, although there was a kind of awakening where I realized I had not been in control up to that point.  I wonder what has been happening.  Like I remember to some degree writing the blog recently, but it wasn’t all me.  Where is reality?  Do I live in reality?  Am I real?




I flip flop back and forth on whether to share these journal entries with Therapist.  I don’t know why I do.  He acts like he knows everything because he never listens to me.  He always acts as if he knows all the answers.  

I wasn’t feeling dissociative before or during eating, but I feel it now.  

Again, am I real?

I don’t feel well.  I’m split in many different ways.  My future seems shaky and i worry about everything.  

Still thinking of Tina, I think she needs less and less of Husband.  I think he’s soaked in his own troubles and can not help any of us to any degree.  I think that’s why we get spacy, distant, and unsettled when he’s around.  Tina would be just fine living by herself without having to wrestle with Husband’s mood swings.  I’m not looking to leave him, but I’m not happy with the way things are.  I am trying to be especially patient since the death of his father, but I would assume his father’s death would be a catalyst for change.  

So we cooked dinner tonight.  I don’t know for sure because I’m not in touch with her enough, but I think she enjoyed it.

I bury my face in my hands.  There’s something bugging me, nagging me, and it won’t go away.  When I close my eyes, I see Tina standing there, surrounded in darkness.  I think I see others, young ones, sliding down hills in burlap bags.  Where is this coming from?

Therapist said I have an idea of what happened to me.  I’ve gone back and done some reading, and vague generalities are all I find.  

Some writing says I was “hurt”.  Well, hell, what does that mean?  I’m not looking for minute, painful details to be disclosed.  I just want to know what “hurt” means.  And I want to know how the parts developed, why were they needed, what do they want and need now.  What are their fears or happy times?

I want more.  I want to know more about the people/parts that total us.

But as I stop and think how good it sounds, I know it will never happen.  Fear always wins.  

-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

This may have been written, but it’s not cause for discussion.  Don't even think about it. Don’t you dare.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Great Unrealistic Expectations

My dog Maybelline is stressing me.  She wants to go on a walk, and I just don’t have it in me to get off this couch, which makes me feel like a terrible pet partner.


Taken from today’s journal:


Been a busy day.  Service, errands, back pain.  The works.  I wish I could take a muscle relaxer right now, but I’m supposed to take Mabes for walk, and I can’t do that if I’m asleep.


Times and days are running together.  I find no support anywhere.  I was doing fine until Husband came home.  I was busy packing for our move, and when he came home we started to feel “off”.  Most would call that experience dissociation.  I don’t know what to call it anymore.  There is still the troubled argument of whether we accept the D.I.D. DX.  Tina gets very angry if we accept it.  But writing and talking just like this, isn’t that a sign of dissociation and of others?  This battle gets old.  I KNOW what’s wrong.  Tina’s doubts have left an imprint on us, but not a lasting imprint.  


*****I wonder if we’re making it up as we go *****


If you have D.I.D., but don’t acknowledge it, can you still improve anyway because the prescription of psychotherapy is still the same?  I hate whatever I’m going through right now.


So I was fine until Husband came home.  Then I felt “off” or dissociative.  I lasted as long as I could but broke down and took an anti-anxiety med.  It didn’t help much.  A muscle relaxer would help, but the timing is no good.  


So why do I feel “dissociative” when Husband comes home?  Probably because he’s so temperamental and to some degree I (and the littles if there really are any) am afraid of him, his moods, his headaches, his temper, his race -car driving.  I never know which Husband I’ll meet next.  So we get scared around him.  


If D.I.D. has lots of faces, shapes, and norms, why couldn’t mine be one?  I question whether I really hear voices of others or is it just my own voice.  I guess D.I.D. has been going on so long I have failed to recognize just . . . I don’t know what I was going to say.


What am I?  I just want to be sure I’m not lying or making a fool out of myself.  Mostly it seems too much to believe.  Bad things couldn’t have happened.  I had a happy childhood.  But, oh, how I hated Birth Parents.  And it can’t be denied that at least on a superficial level there was some abuse and neglect. I own that.


Good God.  *sigh* I think we want to see Therapist more than once a week.  What bullshit.  Some feel “close” to him and have a need for his attention, so they want to see him more often.  Little children who want to feel special.  Is that good or bad?  Does that give Therapist too much power and make us even more vulnerable?  Better yet, why need more attention now?  Has their source of attention dried?  Are they not receiving attention inside?  I doubt Tina, in her crisis, is up to showering them with love and attention.


For some reason, this journal entry feels accurate. I think it's because it feels like we're communicating.  It feels true to what is going on inside, and that is a cause for mourning: Mourning for the system that doesn’t feel like it used to feel, mourning for Tina who is not the same right now and is in crisis, mourning for those parts who require more attention and special feelings, mourning for those who aren’t getting their needs met by this ever-evolving system.  

I can feel Tina seeping her way through this journal entry.  I feel her sending her hate and anger to me, but that’s not all she’s sending. I sense from Tina some subtle undertones of helplessness and vulnerability.   I sense great fear in her . . . and great sorrow.  What a pity.  I almost don’t recognize her at all.

Thursday, September 07, 2017




I don’t feel well.  I have been dissociative, spacey, and dizzy all evening.  There’s a sense of urgency to write, and I can’t escape it.  I must, I must, I must eject what’s in this crazy, demanding  head.

I was anxious this morning, but I knew I would be taking my dog Maybelline for a walk and that would help dissipate some anxiety, and it did.  After our walk, my anxiety lessened until this evening.

But this evening the anxiety shot back up, and the dissociation made it impossible to think and speak clearly.  I’ve had some things on my mind today, and I’m wondering if there is any correlation to my dissociation and anxiety.  These are not things of which I want to write, and I’m angry that I’m being pushed into doing it.

I don’t know if I’ve written about it before on this blog, but these memories came crashing into my head today, fresh and new, and I feel the need to document it.  I don’t know why it’s necessary to write on it, but I feel something  propelling me forward.  

What has my brain so rattled is the memory of me as a child sleeping on the floor because I was afraid of my bed. Stupid, right?  I don’t know exactly when it started, but I was somewhere between the ages of 7 through 9.  But that’s just a guess.  My memory just starts with me sleeping on the floor because I didn’t want to sleep in my bed.  The bed seemed scary.  I just remember finding sleeping on the floor comforting.  The next thing I remember is sleeping on the floor in the bathroom.  I honestly don’t know why I moved from sleeping on my bedroom floor to the bathroom floor, but something made me seek shelter in the bathroom.  

For years I slept anywhere other than a bed until I got married; of course then I started sleeping in the same bed as my husband, although there are still some nights that the couch is safer than the bed.

Why does this matter?  I don’t know.  Perhaps it doesn’t.  I don’t attach meaning to it, but somewhere inside I felt the desperate need to share it.  I know the writing is paltry, skimpy and scattered.  It is very dispassionate and non-descriptive, and it doesn’t really paint a picture of what was going on at the time.   But I don’t have a clear picture, and I don’t understand why it was so important to write about it tonight.  But I couldn’t not write.  As stupid as it sounds, writing this tonight was for survival.

I hate myself.

I would love to hear from those reading this.  Am I alone here?  Have you ever experienced your bed being scary, or  would you sleep in strange places?   





Saturday, December 24, 2011

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.