It

I'm not scared of It anymore.

It is not a mythical beast sent to conquer.

Don't get too close.  It might be the end of you.

You are too close to It's risk.  A sad statistic.

You are just like them.  It will snatch you soon.  He whispers this our one last time.

His familiar heaviness makes It real.  The forbidden rhythm numbs the pain. 

The only tears I cry are as his life drips with sticky shame.

Just like that.  They are gone.  It pulled them under.  Freshly gone; we are left. 

Like daggers he speaks.  I have you all.  To myself.  Just like we always wanted. 

Together; until It soils you too.

How might you do It?

Different than they.

Take my belt.  And when you do It.  Feel my final hands remove the life that only I could give.

I still have the belt.  Well worn.  A staple of my life. 

The gatekeeper of his piercing. 

The weapon fashioned making skin so raw.

Crammed away I hear It taunt.  It teases with It's destiny.

I remain after him but his hold lives on in leather form.

Too afraid to touch It.  His belt is my own It.  The last connection.

My pieces.  Myself.  We beg to throw It away.

That belt.  It.  His final grip.

I can only hope that courage wins to turn It over.  To will It gone.  Forever.

Until It is just a distant, formless it.

Injured

A little cut.  A little blood.  A little relief.  A screaming proof of the injured.

Burn the pads of fingertips with a graze of heat.  They lose the painful sensation of memory's touch. 

Touch reality and get burned.  Burn with a hot whisper and reality loses touch.

The swirls of unique prints become smooth.  Aptly numb to feel invisible with no identifying touch. 

A burnt sheen of skin just glossed enough as proof you are alive.

It doesn't last forever.  But long enough to freely move until the psychic pain resolves.  The subtle trick of the injured.

Thin lines of red promise a story beneath the scab.

Numb swirls go unnoticed because some stories should not be told.

Intersect

I see him coming and there is no place for me to go.  The one way out is the way that he will walk in. 

I can smell him twenty feet away. 

Through glass. 

Through a door.

The room begins to spin and collapse around me.  I tell myself that it's not him; that would be impossible.  My mind.  My nose.  My body.  They all betray me.

He walks through my door.  I offer a simple handshake.  I hope that a brief touch will flood my shattered mind with the calm of reality. 

That's not him.  He means no harm.  And then my reassurance turns into frenzied questions.

A handshake turns into a hug.  Too much contact as his cologne seeps into my every sense.  Glass shatters as my mind spins in sync with the room.

A painful haze fills the room.  My vision narrows into a tiny point.  A push.  And then a shove.  Obscenities spewed propel me backwards as a corner of the room folds me in as protection.

My back slides down the wall as I crouch to hide my face.  The two walls meet and wrap their arms around me.   I rock as I listen for the silence.  The calm.

But instead as the haze lifts I hear the racking sobs of a wounded someone. 

Tears like razors spill into my protective hands.  They cut my hands as each one drops.  I shake and pound my head into the walls. 

Those sobs are mine and I can hardly breathe.  I squeeze my eyes so tight to stop the tears.  They subside but I do not open them afraid that the monster is still there.

A voice calls my name. 

Another warns not to touch me.

One eye opens.  And then the other.  I shiver as I see the worried faces.

No shards of glass.  No wounded hands.  His smell still lingers but he is gone.  The shrinking room has expanded to an endless space of shame. 

Another hand offers me a way out of my corner.  I brush away my tears but my face burns hot with shame. 

It has finally happened.  My past has found a way to intersect with my public life.

Skeletons

Two steps forward.  One step back.  Slam the door on the weeping skeleton.

My last post was horrible to write.  I still cringe when I attempt to read it.  I have wanted to delete it but I know that wouldn't do much good.  It still happened.  It still hurts.  I am still deeply ashamed.

Shame is a funny thing.  Sometimes I can push it to a corner of my mind.  Other times I cannot even wrap my mind around it to find a place for it to rest.

Sometimes I wonder if processing and grappling with every memory is meant to be.  What would be the harm of burying the horror if a larger amount has been handled?

Everyone has skeletons.  So what if mine are a little more fucked than usual.

Status

Just like everyone else, I am glancing backwards at 2010.  Good year.  Bad year.  Something in between...

My father is dead.
I told some secrets.
I made some quilts.
I was promoted.
I learned a lot.
I cried some more.
I made a friend.
I returned to church.
I integrated broken pieces.
I am alive.

Sick

Broken babies everywhere.  Fraught with shredded suffering, nothing soothes or makes them calm.  I am so afraid that I have a very sick mind. 

They scream.  They hurt.  My head throbs with psychic suffering and torment.  I am so very tired of having this twisted space of devastation within me.  Normal is relative but with simple confidence I can say that normal people do not have these images of pain.

Most memories are ones that I can endure but bleeding babies push me towards capacity.  Common people smile at me while daily acquaintances are kind and complimentary. 

If they only knew... 

If they only knew the poison that has washed over my mind.  If only they knew the images that I can never shake.  The oily suds of sin that froth and foam, they will never wash completely clean. 

I wrestle and I twist with these faces until I am overcome with the fear.  My bitter stomach churns as I reach for a familiar metal.  My hands shake with forward reaching regret until the warmth of release stings when mixed with salty tears.

My mind lurches forward as the flashbacks of the past find me unsuspecting.  The mental whiplash leaves me lost as the jarring shock brings me to my knees.  I am begging for an end; a present firmly rooted that is able to withstand the forces of his latent life. 

I am begging for relief before I am sick like him.

Husband

I have a good husband.  I was very fortunate this time around.  Husband # 1 was a first class nightmare who also found himself enmeshed with my family from a young age. 

We were doomed before we even thought about dating.

My second time around I knew better what I was looking for and I found someone reasonably healthy.  No, my husband isn't perfect but I am sure that everyone here also knows that I am far from perfect as well.  I wish I could say that I have been an open book with him but I cannot.  He knows I have a past.  He knows I had a ruthless childhood.  He also knows I have D.I.D and he has done enough reading to know what kind of abuse causes such a disorder.  Prolonged and severe; he knows these things about me.  He "knows" my alters.  Some of them like him, some of them don't have much to do with him.  Others spend a great deal of energy trying to make him leave us. 

Except he doesn't leave.  Thank God.

When we were engaged we met with my therapist together and he got the short version of D.I.D, what living with me would look like, things to avoid, and things to do.  I was able to tell him that I was abused and that there are things in my past that I do not want to talk about with him.  All this he was fine with.  And he has remained fine; frustrated at times but still fine.

I used to journal on paper a lot.  And then he found one of my journals, read it, and all hell broke loose.  So I stopped writing until I began writing on this blog.  This has been a lifesaver for me to write here.  I have shared excerpts of my writings here with him but I have not freely shared the link.  It would not be the end of the world if he found this blog but I like it better knowing that I can write without censoring and having to answer questions about the day's blog post over dinner.  Talk about indigestion...

But now I am at a crossroads; my family is gone and with them died a lot of secrets.  My husband believes that I do not have a relationship with my father or mother and that my sister passed away... many years ago.  Knowing what he knows about D.I.D he has always been fine with us having no contact with them.  Now however, why am I still holding on to many of these secrets?

Anger is one reason.  My husband will be angry over much of what was done to me.  That anger will make me vastly uncomfortable.  And further, I have yet to justify causing someone to be angry for no profitable reason.  So why make him angry?

I fear what he will think of me; this is another reason.  What if he believes that I am a whore?  What if he realizes how fucked up I really am?  It boils down to my fear that he will believe what I already believe about myself.  And if we both believe the worst about me does that then mean that we will be doomed too?

That is my greatest fear.

Surprise

Sitting on a small couch last night, I felt as if I was sitting on the corner of some cosmic world.  Alone.  Completely alone.  And this particular world was not round; rather it was square.  Square because there is no circular justice.  Not unless you count being tortured and murdered as some sort of redemptive revenge.

And then I felt injustice pressing squarely behind my tired eyes.  What has happened is not just.  Nor is it fair because they have made their exits and I have survived.

Everyone is dead... that keeps ringing in my head.  I know that is not the precise case but in my own twisted world, everyone is, in fact, dead.

So now I sit week after week, even moment after moment, left to deal with their abuse, their hatred, their woundings, and their deaths.  Then there are my scars, my memories, my terrors, and all the collateral damage that comes with being a member of this disappearing family.  Theirs and Mine: two separate and fancy walk-in closets full of skeletons and ghosts tucked away in every nook and custom built drawer specifically designed for keeping the best and most wrenching secrets.  What an inheritance.

All this while their ashes stir peacefully in the smallest pockets of square cosmic spaces.

Death let them off the hook.  And now I feel that I am on the hook for the lion's share of the damage.  This hurts deeply; deeper than I ever imagined.  This surprises me.  I knew and yes, I fantasized, that this day would come.  And here it is and I writhe alone. 

But with this pain I have also discovered a considerable peace.  I can sleep.  Really sleep.  I have never slept well, even as a married adult sleeping in a safe environment.  From the day he fled I held my breath dreading his return.  Checking on my daughter five times a night was nothing strange.  I had to know that he was not in her room.  And with that knowledge I stole another hour of sleep.  So now I sleep surprised, soundly and deeply. 

While I always knew this day would arrive, I never believed it would. We are no longer looking over our collective shoulder. 

And that freedom is a complete, yet lost, surprise.

Enmeshed

en·mesh (n-msh) also im·mesh (m-)

tr.v. en·meshed also in·meshed, en·mesh·ing also in·mesh·ing, en·mesh·es also in·mesh·es

To entangle, involve, or catch in or as if in a mesh.

 

Used in a sentence: Shattered is enmeshed in a complex web of lust, love, and abuse.

 

Dear Ruth commented on how deeply embedded my parents are in every aspect of my being.  And possibly more so than the typical adult child.  This thought caught me falling off balance it wasn't until I fell to the ground that I took a hard look at the truth of this idea.

 

And she was right.

 

My sense of normal has always been skewed.  Well meaning people always insist to me that there is no "normal" and I have always smiled and accepted their offering of kindness. 

 

However, I'm finally going to have to flatly refuse that well meant advice because what sense of normal I have always had is certainly no where close to the typical yet non-existent normal.  Ruth brought this thought to the surface when I had to look at the possibility that in many ways, I was more connected to my parents than the typical adult.  Just like I used to think that everyone heard voices in their heads; I also thought that this enmeshment was normal.

 

But it is not.  Not even close.

 

I lived and died by my parents hands.  I starved and was fed at their discretion.  I was his companion and her demise.  I was his lover and her deepest competition.

 

And all these roles were diametrically opposed to the single role that should have existed.  Parent and child.

 

It is creepy, weird, dirty, strange and wrong but my father was my first lover.  And I use the word lover very loosely but to a daughter starving and begging for affection, that is exactly what he was.  A sexual bond existed between us that served him well to emit his constant control.  For many who read here, one can probably equate this bond to your first love; they are someone you have moved on from but you never quite forget.

 

My problem is that I never really moved on from him.  He was unforgettable.  He cast his net wide and though I struggled I never was quite free.  I was trapped in his warped lust because I carried a bond of both a child to a parent but also a bond that intimate partners share.  But now he has moved on from me.  And I would be lying if I said that I didn't feel a deep twinge of impure loss.

 

No wonder I am so very fucked up and confused.  Every single day has been a struggle lately.  My only solace is that this is finally over and with each step I take I am walking out on this distorted love.

 

I hope.

Orphan

It is funny how I just wrote about perfection and then I turn around and I'm getting smacked in the face with the unexpected, the uncontrollable, and a definite lack of perfection in my life.  And this is the shit I couldn't control even if I wanted to.

I am back on the mental roller coaster of sorts; blindfolded and going backwards while refusing to throw my hands in the air because this is just not fun at all.  I cannot write in great details right now but I will say that it appears that something has happened to my father.  So sans the details, which are gory, I can write about how I feel.

I would be lying if I said that I wasn't unsettled.  I am.  In a big way.  My head is full of screaming chatter and not one bit of that chatter agrees with the next refrain of chatter.  I have always been conflicted over him and this is no different.  There are those who love him and proclaim his innocence.  There are those who hate him and wish this to be true.  And there are plenty more who are just terrified about the situation all together.

As for me, I want it to be true.  I want to be free of him and never have his thoughts cross my mind again.  When I think, I feel very little.  A lump of shame I suppose, because this is my father and I should not wish these things on anyone.  And then a single frame of my own torture is smashed into the back of my eyes and I feel an overwhelming helplessness and pain.  It appears that he finally got a taste of what he inflicted for so many years and I am at an emotional loss.

If this is true then I am an orphan.  In legal terms I would be the sole survivor. 

Survivor. 

In the singular.

Game over.

I have watched my family fight its demons to the collective death.

I am the last one standing.

Did I win?

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?

How

As I consider the New Year, I consider the typical responses.

 A fresh start... a better year... putting to bed a bad year... this year will be better.

I have never seen a new year as anything.  Perhaps an excuse to get drunk and maybe not alone.  That is the extent.

A fresh start is a foreign body to me.  To do that would be to erase the memories, the scars, the voices in my head, the shadow people in the corners of nearly every room I enter.  All are impossible.  Especially when there are many, many memories below the frozen surface of my mind.  Frozen in time; so cold that it hurts. 

A perpetual brain freeze.  I wish for just one day without this pain.

No fresh start for me.  What I can do though, is obsess over the how of my life.  I have pretty much given up on the why.  There is just no good answer there; at least not at this point.

How doesn't have to do with other people.  It has to do with me.  How the fuck did I survive?

There are a lot of awful childhood verses sung; a creepy uncle, a leering step-dad, a secret priest, an angry mother, a lost and groping sibling.  Each verse different yet fraught with painful similarities and fragile coping. 

And then there is me.  And others like myself.  I am shattered and still standing yet I have no idea how I got here or how I figured out that this was a life worth surviving. 

How did I not give up?

How did I put one aching foot in front of the other, day after day?  Night after night?  

How did I barely sit down at breakfast each morning believing that our dance in the dark was a household brand?

How did they know just how far to go?  Close enough to fearful pleasure.  Far enough from impersonal death. 

It is a precarious how.

Stupor

Surprisingly, my parents drank a lot.  Surprised? 

Me neither.

Their parties were always something to behold.  Free flowing liquor, wine, and none of the cheap stuff.  I knew a party was upon us when the liquor store mobilized and brought their goods directly to our doorstep.

I loved the labels.  The fancy colors.  The carefully branded shape of each bottle.  Into the corks I would dig my small fingernails.  I have no recollection as to why those corks felt so fascinating.

The nights of these events were the highlights of my worn and tired years.  Free to roam, just out of sight of his lustful radar, I pretended these parties were for me.  A celebration of good grades, an acknowledgement of good behavior, a bash just because I was me.

So many people.  Beautiful and handsome.  Smiling, laughing, pouring, drinking, spilling, expounded tales, more hysterical laughter.  These were the highlights.  Half empty glasses cast aside to make a ring on an unsuspecting table; I would rescue such table by picking up the offending glass.  My remedy: throw my head back and gulp the burning liquid.  To me these glasses were half full.  My eyes always sprung singular tears in response to the fire in my throat.  Glass after glass; these were tears of joy. 

My life grew better with each set of tears.  Wobbly eyes made her look a little happier, him less intense and leering.  My parents looked like the people I wanted them to be. 

From a distance I could see how others saw them and it made me happy.

Ultimately, these evenings never ended well.  When my tired haze could no longer hold its own I found a bed.  But I wasn't the only attendee who was on the verge of bedtime.   Warm from the inside out I would fall into an easy sleep.  Until I found someone weighing heavily upon me.  What should have been scared, instead I did not mind.  It was easier.  I was easier.  My drunken warmth relaxed me and whomver it was slid easily inside.  No mistaken tears, no overwhelming pain, no staggering fear. 

Alcoholic breath breathes deeply into my being.  Sloppy lips bring me out.  A joyful stupor makes me fun.  My smile comes easy.  No faking of any sorts.  I am awake and I am so alive.  I dance, I flirt, I tease, one after another needs are made whole.  Art and beauty are created.

I am Lively.  Fun for now.  A painful child deferred for later.

Ten

Ten Things I Will Never Tell my Daughter:

1. I never thought I wanted children.
2. How terrified I was when I was pregnant with you.
3. The truth about my parents.
4. The truth about my childhood.
5. What a wreck I was the first 2 years of your life.
6. I bought a pregnancy test and filled a prescription to overdose. You saved my life.
7. How much hatred I hold inside.
8. I sometimes resent the childhood you have because it makes me grieve for mine.
9. The times I cringe when I see his mannerisms in you.
10. The truth about your father.

Children are not created to carry adult burdens.  I hate my mother for doing this to me.  I listened to her rage, was the brunt of her hatred, and I now carry the shame of her truths.  These are the things I will never tell my daughter.  She deserves better than the truth of who I am and the secrets that I carry.

My mother destroyed herself and in the process, nearly destroyed me.  I carry her woundings and hide them as best I can.  They don't heal; they only fester. 

The inner conflict I feel makes my skin too tight.  I love, I hate.  I am numb, I feel.  I despair, I hope.  My heart blisters and I cut.  My screams of hate are silent lines and hidden scars.