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.

Family

After Christmas we went to visit family.  My fathers two sisters and their families.

I agonized over going or not going.  I've lost so much of my family so I get a little weird about what I have left.  As the time got closer I really began to worry.  I didn't make the final decision until the morning we were due to leave.

I didn't spend a lot of time with them growing up.  The majority of holidays were spent with my mothers family.  I have fond memories of his sister just a few years younger than him.  She married a very nice man and they had two daughters.  I always watched in amazement at how they were with their dad.  They weren't scared of him and he was nice, but not too nice, to them.  And then their mom; she hugged them, spoke kindly to them, and it was obvious that she loved them.  I remember secretly wishing that they could be my parents.

His youngest sister; not so many good memories.  She, my father and I all look alike.  I have always despised looking like him and I'm pretty sure she hates it too.  She has always been a little on the crazy side.  But I also know and understand what is wrong with her. 

him.

We stayed with the oldest sister and stayed up late talking each night.  A lot of the conversations were nice but there were others that left me with the wind knocked out of me.  Her husband went to high school with my father and said that he was the meanest person he has ever known.  Because of that, combined with my mother, he didn't think I had a chance in hell to turn out even halfway OK.  Given that, they weren't surprised about my sister.

My aunt began the first night with an apology because they knew that things were going on but didn't say much or do anything about it. 

I told her that it was fine.  It's really not but what good does it do to cause her more distress over something that cannot be changed?

My uncle talked about walking in on my father with me.  He wasn't sure exactly what he saw but my father quickly told him that he was putting me to bed.  My uncle wondered how that was since I had been put to bed three hours before.  He never said anything.

My aunt told us about one conversation with my father.  She was concerned with how rough he was with my sister and me.  She made the observation that it looked like he was trying to raise little soldiers.  Robots would have been more accurate.  He got mad and they didn't see us again for three or four years.

There were other things too... my bruises, scars, behavior, strange fears, and just odd behavior in general.  I was not a typical kid.

I was also told how my father was sent to live with their grandparents because he kept hurting his sisters and their family pets.  He was sick from very early on.

I had little interaction with his other sister and that is probably best.  She's nice enough but she is also drunk most of the time and hasn't been the best of mothers to her own children.  She is on her third marriage after marrying two abusive creeps.

On one of the nights, her daughter approached me because she needed to ask some questions.  She told me some horrible things that her mother said to her about not wanting her when she was pregnant.  It all sounded very familiar but all I could tell her was that I was very sorry. 

Then she asked about her biological father.  She wanted to know if I remembered him messing with me or my sister.  The short answer was yes.  The longer answer was that my father found out and almost killed him.  And not for the right reasons either. We didn't see them for awhile and I never saw that uncle again.  He eventually terminated his rights to my cousin and her older brother.

She told me that her biological father abused her and that she was in counseling.  She said that she was making progress but she needed to hear it from someone else that he really was a monster.  Her mother has never been supportive of her and always dismissed it as she was imagining things, making things up, or just crazy.  That also sounded very familiar.

I also understood her need to hear the confirmation from something other than her own memory.  I have always held on to that tiny bit of denial that I was just crazy or imagined it happening.  I received that same confirmation on this trip.

Does it make me feel better? 

Not really.

I've lost the security I had in my tiny piece of denial.  In the past when I have really felt bad, I would make myself feel better by using that denial.  Now I don't have that safety net and that is frightening.  I am also forced to accept what happened and who they really were.

And then there is the obvious reason that none of this made me feel better. 

If they knew that things were going on. 

Witnessed things with their own eyes and ears. 

Knew what he was capable of. 

Knew that my mother was crazy too. 

Why the fuck didn't they do anything?!?

I get that they were scared and maybe even intimidated but shit, they have two daughters of their own.  Wouldn't they want someone to speak up if something had been happening to their girls??

It's always nice to reconnect with family over the holidays.  Especially the part when they tell you they knew that their brother, your father, was fucking you all along.

Fuck them.

Update

I apologize for neglecting my blog.  I've been in a weird place as of late and I suppose I've spent some time pretending that all this isn't happening.  In my mind, if I don't write here then I must be fine.  Right?

Wrong.

I got over the hump of the last integration only to slide downhill into a family mess.  I have worked hard to keep my head above water and ignore the worry that comes with this shit.  And I was doing a good job until last weekend.

A breach of my intimate trust occurred nearly five years ago when my husband and I were engaged.  His relationship with his mother has always been strained for a number of complex reasons.  In an attempt to share his life with her he shared with her about me, our relationship, and what seemed to be harmless details. 

At least to him. 

When he told me about their conversation I learned that he told her about my past and my Dissociative Identity Disorder.  I have never believed that he did this with ill intent but I have always worried about her own ignorance of perception.  Because she is a truly ignorant person.

And now their conversation, as I have always worried, has come back to bite me in the ass.  For a whole other post about the reasons, she is angry with me for something I have no control over: my husband's relationship with his two kids from his previous marriage.  To pay me back she has taken my disorder, skewed it's reality, and has shared it in an open email to any family member with an email address.  All under the guise of "let's pray for her".  Like all good Christians do... and I write those words dripping with truthful sarcasm.

My husband keeps telling me that she looks worse than anyone could ever think of me.  I am having a hard time believing that.  I'm also having a hard time not being angry with him.  I know he didn't do this with the intent to hurt me five years later but the truth is that is exactly what is happening.

I have tried. I really have. But I am out of ideas or delusions that this is OK. It's not and it hurts terribly.  I am horribly embarrassed and no matter what I don't see a way out of that feeling.

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.

Badness

I am learning there were two versions of truth. 

His truth.

And then the truth. 

Forgive me because none of this is black or white.  Nothing is as it seems and this is so fucking confusing.  Ever since I received this news I have had an overwhelming sense of guilt.  Shame.  In little kid terms... badness.

Small voices repeat... bad people get killed... he was bad... he was our dad... so we are bad... over and over and over.  These are anxious words wrapped with fear.  Fear that we are next.  An irrational fear yet a real anxiety.

How could I be good yet come from them?  I get that they were bad.  Exceptionally bad.  So how did I get here when badness raised me?

Bad little kids don't have parents... If you tell then you will get taken away...  And then you won't have parents... Because you were bad.

And now we have no parents.

Quite honestly, I am lost.  I pace the floors all night.  My chest is full with pounding butterflies.  I stare at the food on each plate.  A cold sweat overcomes me with each police car I see.  My mind wanders through each day waiting for that phone call.  The call that makes this all official and I wonder how it will go.  I wonder how I will react.  And what I fear the most is that I will have no reaction whatsoever.

And in that lack of reaction, my badness will commence.

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...

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.