Hurt

Miserable.  I don't deserve to be miserable.  This has been my mantra over the past several weeks.

I was stopped dead in my tracks shortly after my last post.  I went to therapy, minding my own business like I always do, and my therapist told me he had a possible solution for handling my vices.  Or addictions as they should be more accurately described.

REHAB

Are you fucking kidding me?  Turns out he wasn't.  And that was a sobering moment.  To come to the point in my life where I'm told that I am essentially out of control and I need to be locked up to gain control is probably enough to get most anyone's attention. 

I am all about control so coming to the reality that control is not something in my arsenal; well, that one is a tough one for me.  I came here and had nothing to say.  Perhaps out of embarrassment.  Perhaps out of fear.  Perhaps I was wordless.  And so I was quiet.

Back to the rehab thing; I used my daughter as a reason... excuse... and asked for a month to get my shit together.  I then went home, armed with a list written by my therapist for my husband.  And I actually gave the list to him and did a lot of explaining.

I've left my husband in the dark about a lot.  Especially when it comes to the food and cutting problems.  When I told him that I still cut his response was, "but that's what fucked up people do". 

I met his remark with a smile and a raised eyebrow and said, "yeah".

So I'm doing what fucked up people do.  I'm talking; not in my head but with audible words for real humans to hear.  I'm trying to express my feelings better.  I'm being honest about my habits.  And I'm letting people help me.  All novel concepts. 

To keep busy, I'm also quilting and sewing everything in my path.  I made two quilts in a week.  My husband is worried that he is going to wake up and find himself quilted to the bed.  I told him that if it keeps me sober then perhaps he should pick out some fabrics that he likes.

I'm doing better.  I am thinking before I eat, drink, or hurt myself. 

And politely speaking, really all of this has just been one form or another of hurting myself.  Impolitely, I have been self-destructing or fucking myself up.  Whatever it is, I don't deserve it. 

I've been hurt enough.

Lost

I get lost.  In my own head. 

According to my husband, I have been alarmingly quiet lately.  I don't mean to.  Really.  It just happens.

After a screaming match culminating with said husband telling me to get the fuck out of my head; I told him that I am lost in the darkness of my voices.

I have my friends.  Best friends that I have had for years.  Our friendships have endured the well-worn time and lately I have been spending an increasing amount of time with them.  While I read, sew, crochet, quilt, and even sleep, they are there and we talk.  They are my comrades in a perpetual war; one that never stops, one that has wounds that never heal just right.  They know me and they understand me.

But they are not real.  And that makes me weird and quiet.

I have nothing audible to say.  My voice is locked inside my thoughts, my hurts, my scars.  I hurt but how does one verbalize horror?  Horror in the movies is simply expressed in screams both silent and audible, twisted faces, running, backing into a corner, all until one is consumed completely by the evil.

To say that I am scared is an insult.  I am terrified.  I am haunted.  I live in horror.  I have joked before about what kind of writer I could be and I always conclude that I would be one hell of a horror author.  I love Stephen King yet I can read very few of his books because ironically, they scare me.  However, when I can, I have to wonder what happened to him?  Horror does not come naturally to most human minds.

I am struggling at this moment.  What I wrote in my previous post has sent me reeling.  It is horror in black and white.  Black and white that is vivid color in my memory because it is my life.  These silent times are when depression grows taller and wraps its dense, dark grip around my mind, my body, my eyes.  The darkness is in the corner of my eyes, just out of sight, no matter where I look.

I paint a smile on and talk to people all day long.  But in those same dark corners on my eyes I have to wonder what if they only knew.  And if they did know would they be as lost as me?

Sorry

Good.  God.  Where to start?  I said that I wanted to be honest here so here I go.

I am a perfectionist.  Black and white are the boxes I have tried to stuff my feelings, my thoughts, and my life into.  It's not working for me anymore.

I am far from perfect.  Especially when it comes to being a mother.

I smile and say that I'm not angry but rather I am sad, depressed, tired, etc.  Those feelings just sound more polite.  But really, I am boiling over with anger, hatred, rage, and just pure poison.

This morning I fucked up.  Today I reached the point where I truly was not sure that I could be a parent.  Nice.  My daughter is a cute little six year old with the vocabulary of a ten year old, and the mouthy sass of a teenager.  Mornings before school are tough around our house.  My husband leaves before we get up so it is me versus two beagles and a six year old.  I lose most mornings.

In typical fashion my daughter fought me on what to wear, what to eat for breakfast and continued to sass me.  I had been pretty patient but then I lost it.  With the last words of back-talk, I turned around and asked her if she wanted me to go to her Christmas party today at school because she sure wasn't acting like she wanted me around.  Then I said something to the effect of "because I can just leave you and not be around at all".  And I didn't just say these things.  I screamed them.

I watched the tears well up in my daughter's eyes and I saw my own painful grimace worn on her undeserving face.  I hurt her and my made her cry before school; two things I swore I would never do.

I salvaged the tears that I could and dropped her off at school.  A few hours later I went to her party and as I walked in she looked up and saw me and burst into tears.  In those tears I could hear my mother's words taunting me.  We talked for a few minutes, she calmed down and I apologized.  But really, how does five minutes do anything but put a band-aid on the real problem?

I'm that problem and I am scared to death.  There are some people just made to be parents.  They are the ones who should be allowed to have kids.  I am not one of those people.  For a fleeting second this morning, I honestly thought that me walking away would be best for all involved.  I hate myself for arriving at that point because I watched my mother flirt and threaten with that point more times than I can count.

After the party was over I got in my car and headed back to work.   I ended up turning around and going back to her school but her bio-father had already picked her up to spend the night tonight.  So I'm fucked.  And worse, my daughter gets to go to bed tonight, in a bed she doesn't really like, turning over in her mind what the hell her mother meant this morning when she said she would leave.

I am sick at my stomach and none of this is OK.  Yet another thing I swore I would never do; making my daughter wonder who will be there in the morning.

I am so, so sorry.

Need

From The Pliers: The question that occurs to me tonight as I follow the progress of your reclamation project is, What is the singularly most important thing that any given reader of your blog can do for you, with you, or on your behalf as s/he or reads your words?

To be an effect.  To be affected...

There are remarkably unique readers here.  I wrote to another reader that I want my readers to take from my words exactly what they need, not what I want them to need.  That would be rather selfish of me as I have spent a lifetime being told what to feel, what not to feel, and how to feel.  Here is not the place for that.

I began writing here to keep a journal.  One out of ink and out of nosey hands.  I love my family but one member in particular likes to read my spilled guts.  I'm anonymous here and so I write freely.  I have in fact shared printed pages of this site in person but that is as far as I have gotten.

In my writing you will find love.  I deeply love my daughter and my husband.  On paper I am not capable of love.  I believed that lie for far too long.  Love is what drives me to succeed in this; to excel at being whole. 

My love goes beyond those who live in my home as well.  This is a bold love; a love that hopes and believes for the best.  This love hopes that every time my father calls that he will be calling to tell me he has changed.  This love hopes that my mother found the end of her turmoil.  This love envelops hate, consumes despair and braids the three into something fierce and sharp.  My love for my parents cuts and and shreds but loves these imperfect people because they gave me life and they did not kill me; this is the best I got from them.  Underneath the shards of pain, I love them.  Not for what they did but rather for what they didn't.

In these pages the closed mind, the unscathed will find truth.  There are those who hold tightly to a small little world where nothing all that bad happens.  It does.  To children and adults alike. An awareness can be found here as brutal words are wrapped around the perspective of a small child.  It is hard to ignore.

And lastly, for the broken, for the survivor, for the lost; there is hope.  What I write is only my version of hope so seek your hope out as well.  But take from me what you need even if it is just the smallest understanding that you are not alone. 

Because you are not.

For those who are able, take from me the awareness that there are others like me; your neighbors, your friends, the child in your own child's class who forces a smile but carries a frown that is just a little too deep for a tiny face.

What can a reader do?  Please do not waste my woundings.  Take what you need.

Be an effect.  Be affected by love, truth, hope...

Always

Ten Things I Will Always Tell my Daughter:

1. You make my life complete.
2. I have learned more from you than I will ever teach you.
3. It's not where you come from but rather the person that you become.
4. Some of my fondest memories are those from when it was just you and me.
5. "I love you"
6. How beautiful you are.  Inside and out.
7. You can accomplish anything you set your mind to.
8. The truth of who you are... kind, loving, smart, funny... even when you can't see it or believe it.
9. Don't be too serious.  Enjoy being a kid and always reserve a tiny corner of your heart that never grows old.
10. Happy Birthday.  I am so glad you were born!

Today is my daughter's 6th birthday.  She loves her birthday and she loves Christmas.  She says that December is the best month of her life. 

This year she asked for "a private birthday party with her parents".

And a Nintendo DS.

She got both and then some...

Happy Birthday, sweet girl!

P.S.  I know that you won't always want a private party with us and that is OK.  Thank you for letting us be cool for however long that it lasts... 

Writing

It is interesting what a life of its own this blog has taken on.  I originally began writing here because my husband continually found my written journals in the house, read them, and then became very angry over the content.  Anger is not something I handle well. 

So here I began to write.

I have taken a few breaks here.  Once because it became too hard to spell this shit out; it hurt too much.  And another break because of some internal conflicts I had within myself.  Those conflicts led me to this conclusion of honesty.

Writing from an honest place has been very freeing.  Some of the secrets I have held  close, I have shared here.  Those held even closer, I have not.  Yet.  When I write I am writing from raw place. There is no order, rhyme or reason to my posts. It just is. I do not see that I am any sort of writer simply because I sensor and edit what I write very little. I write for myself; to purge the poison I feel inside.

I struggle with self-esteem; I have very little of it.  I walk around thinking "if they only knew...", positive that "they" would hate me, despise me, be shocked or even disgusted by me.  However, I have learned my lesson here and it is the opposite of what I believed I would learn.  I have not had one hateful comment here or even a single hateful email.  The things that horrified me the most, horrified me for the wrong reasons.  I am not all that horrible.  The kindness shown by others here is amazing to me.  Perhaps it doesn't surprise the average person who believes that generally people are good.  However, that has not been my life experience.  But that is changing now.

The last surprise this blog has revealed is the help and awareness it provides.  Like other survivors, I have asked "why" over and over and never received an answer.  I still do not have a complete answer but I am beginning to believe that what I endured might possibly help another person.  Selfishly, I cannot say that it makes it all worth it though. 

Maybe someday.

So here I write.  I have good days and I have bad days.  Some words are what I think and wrestle with.  Other words are spilling what has happened; previously unspeakable words.  Writing is a way that we all communicate but there is a certain power in the spoken and audible word.  I have been encouraged to read outloud what I write here.  Verbalizing what I write scares me.  But just as writing has been an exercise in freedom; my wish is that speaking these words will take the sting and power out of the tragic while giving life to what is good and hopeful.