Letters to the Universe

after a point, my own history just ceases to interest me. i mean, it's all so huge and unmanageable that it's hard to keep the panoramic view in sight. although a closer inspection of any single event or time period can be overwhelmingly painful and the residual effects of such an examination can be difficult to shake. once i enter into the memory, flashbacks are inevitable. they leave me breathless with fear and it can take hours to calm myself back down. the other danger is that, at some point in many of my memories, i can fall into that great black void inside where the pain seems unbearable.

it's not easy to live with the certain knowledge that i was never of much value to either of my parents. my father, psychotically narcissitic and sadistic, was never much interested in me. he used me for bolster his own ego and fostered in me a deadly drive to both achieve and die. my intellect and drive for achievement was, in his mind, just a reflection of his own intelligence passed on to me and further evidence of his houdini-like ability to mold me into the perfect child. of course, the molding is never really done and so it also gave him a long term project. even when i was 40, there was plenty of molding left to do.

he also enjoyed hurting me. what a difficult thing to say. what a difficult thing to face. when i was a little girl, he was never happier with me than when he was telling me some sad story about himself and making me cry. i was a compassionate child, but i did not have a compassionate father. he liked to engage in all-day (or longer) torture sessions, whether that torture was physical or psychological or both. he must have found my pain and terror very gratifying. no one is easier to hurt than a little child, especially one's own little child.

my mother was so focused on my father that there really wasn't much left over for me. she was doing her best to survive. i understood at a young age that there was a good possibility my mom wouldn't live long. i was committed to helping her survive. i did my best to distract or defuse rage when i saw it rising in him. i wasn't always successful. i've felt a lot of guilt over my inability to protect her.

my therapist likes to remind me that i was the one who was supposed to be protected. i understand that. however, i knew that if something happened to my mom, the chances of my survival dropped precipitously.

as usual, this line of thought is getting to be unbearably painful. enough for today. here's the quote of the day:
"We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering."~Victor Frankl

america held hostage day 1790
bushism of the day:
"I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well."

website of the day; Enneagram Institute
http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/" title="http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/" target="_blank"http://www.enneagraminstitute...

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thanksgiving was relatively painless this year. i gave up cooking after my dad died, when i decided that i wasn't going to be doing anything any more that didn't entail some fun for me. cooking has ceased to be fun for the time being.

i'm actually having a christmas tree this year. the past several years i've been too tired and/or too depressed to take on the job. i have the ornaments out and the tree up so i'm well on my way. i just hope i can stave off depression until i finish it.

appropos the list of questions i posted earlier, i think i'll start with what frightens me. such an easy question to answer. what frightens me is the prospect of somehow reliving my past. i'm afraid of being alone and terrified with no hope of things improving.

the irony is that i'm always alone. i've always been alone and i probably always will be. it's a choice i make to some extent. some part of it is my extreme introversion. if survival depends on creating a safe haven in your own mind, i think being introverted becomes a survival skill. i think there's some scientific indication that introversion may be an aspect of personality one comes equipped with at birth.

when i was younger, i thought i really wanted to develop a network of friends. by younger, i mean around college age. i could have that now if i wished. i just don't care anymore. i have relationships with others that center around one or two interests that we share. however, i have many, many interests and i haven't found anyone yet who shares more than a couple. (notable exception here is my husband.) that's fine with me.

as for emotional support, no one--not even me--knows the full story of my life. i've related a lot of it here, but there are still things i'm unwilling to write about even in my only anonymity. the people who know bits and pieces of it have absolutely no comparable personal experiences. what i feel is a mystery to them. my world view was shaped under dire circumstances and is not so easy to understand, even when people really try.

that is true existential aloneness. the type i'm still afraid of. the type i live in every day. what a conundrum. i'm afraid of the very life i'm living. it's bearable because i'm not in any ongoing physical danger and because i'm not constantly being bombaarded by traumatic events.

sometimes i think i wish that i could be more connected. but then i think better of it.

here's the quote of the day:
"I write from solitude and I speak from solitude...However I did not seek solitude. I found it. And from my solitude I think, work, and live - and I believe that I write and speak with almost infinite composure and resignation."~ Camilo Jose Cela

america held hostage day 1789
bushism of the day:
"We must all hear the universal call to like your neighbor just like you like to be liked yourself."

website of the day: Edge
http://www.edge.org/" title="http://www.edge.org/" target="_blank"http://www.edge.org/

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i read this just a moment ago and i didn't want to lose it. important questions.

Excerpted from LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE
by Laura Berman Fortgang.

The way to your life blueprint requires asking deeper, more useful
questions in order to get better answers and more effective action.
The questions that will help you do that are access questions, which
I like to call Wisdom Access Questions. These questions access your
innate wisdom to create positive, forward motion.

What do you want?
What are you afraid of?
What is this costing you?
What are you attached to?
What is the dream?
What is the essence of the dream?
What is beyond this problem?
What is ahead?
What are you building toward?
What has to happen for you to feel successful?
What gift are you not being responsible for?

What are your healthy sources of energy?
What's stopping you?
What's in your way?
What would make the biggest difference?
What do you like to do?
What can you do to make you happy right now?
What do you hope to accomplish by having that conversation? What do
you hope to accomplish by doing that?

What's the first step?
What would it be like to experience the excitement and the fear at
the same time? What's important about that?
What would it take for you to treat yourself like your best client/friend?
What benefit/payoff is there in the present situation?
What do you expect to have happen?

What's the ideal?
What's the ideal outcome?
What would it look like?
What's the truth?
What's the right action?
What are you going to do?
What's working for you?
What would you do differently?
What decision would you make from a position of strength?
What other choices do you have?

What do you really, really want?
What if there were no limits?
What haven't I asked that I should ask?
What needs to be said that has not been said?
What are you not saying?
What else do you have to say about that?

What is left to do to have this be complete?
What do you have invested in continuing to do it this way?
What is that?
What come first?
What consequences are you avoiding?
What is the value you received from this meeting/conversation?
What is motivating you?
What has you hooked?
What is missing here?

What does that remind you of?
What do you suggest?
What is underneath that?
What is this person contributing to the quality of your life?
What is it that you are denying yourself right now?
What do you need to put in place to accomplish this?
What is the simplest solution here?
What would help you know I support this/you completely?
What happened?

What are you avoiding?
What is the worst that could happen?
What are you committed to?
What is your vision for yourself and the people around you?

What don't you want?
What if you knew?
What's your heart telling you?

What are you willing to give up?
What might have you done differently?
What are you not facing?
What does this feeling remind you of?

What would you do differently if you tapped into your own wisdom?
What does your soul say?

more later.

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after my father's marriage was over, he started taking medication. this may have been a result of the arrest for child kidnapping (and whatever else). he did go through a period when we all had to regularly go to the emergency room with him because he thought he was having a heart attack. i'm talking twice a weekend, every weekend, at least. sometimes more. it's possible that they made the suggestion. otherwise, i can't imagine him even acknowledging he had a problem. the medication seemed to diminish his proclivity for violence, but we were engaged in a cold war. i had to spend time in the same room with my father, but i wasn't interested in engaging in any kind of dialog with him.

he had regularly scheduled visitation with his daughter. of course, i was fearful that all of this contact might result in the return of his wife to my life. fortunately, that didn't happen. many years later, i learned that he'd given his daughter up for adoption to whatever man his ex-wife married. they moved to minnesotta, i think.

backing up a bit, i started dating when i was a junior in high school. that year i went to various school dances, but never had a relationship of any sort with my dates. they were all in acelerated classes and, even though i might have found their minds interesting, i wasn't interested at all in their hearts or bodies. i didn't have any particular interest in relationships until around Christmas of my junior year when i just woke up one day and decided i was in love with someone who participated in the literary magazine. he was not interested. i pined away for him for the rest of the year.

michael and i did get together the following christmas and started dating as regularly as possible. he was attending college in another city about 5 hours away. the problem with michael was that he was a lot more interested in my body than my mind. however, he was making a valiant stab at improving my mind, too, by sending me books to read. i was not charmed by that behavior. i knew that i was his intellectual equal, whether he knew it or not. also, i believe(d) that sort of relationship was inherently unequal. i'd had a pretty good look at unequal relationships in which one party believed themselves to be brighter than the other half and i had absolutely no intention of having that kind of relationship with michael or anyone else.

since he was away at school, i started hanging out with some guys who were also in my litereary magazine meetings. i had something of a romantic relationship with one of them, but i think my motivation was simply to see if i could make someone fall in love with me.

thus began the practice of having two boyfriends, one in the city where i lived and one who lived somewhere else. it wasn't until just recently that i came to see the parallels to my father's relationships. there were some profound differences, though. i only slept with one person at a time, usually the one who lived out of town. i didn't play them against each other and i was very open about the fact that i had a "serious" boyfriend with the person i was having a non-sexual relationship with. there was no violence in my relationships.

at the end of my senior year, i broke up with michael. i could see that, the way things were going, we'd be having sex by the end of the summer. i was very aware of the possible ramifications from my sexual abuse. i was afraid that if we had sex, i would hate him. in the meantime, my other boyfriend had found greener pastures. i worked and prepared to leave for college in the fall.

i think i've now come full circle from where i started this history. i may continue to tell the tale a bit more, because my childhood never ends. it's a living part of my life even now and i suppose it would be silly for me to assume it would ever be otherwise. that's for another day, though.

since it's thanksgiving tomorrow, here are some of the things i'm grateful for today. i'm grateful for sunshine (it stopped raining finally yesterday). i'm grateful for all of the people who have loved me or been kind to me. i'm grateful for all of the opprotunities i've had to love other people. i'm grateful for hitting the genetic jackpot and surviving my hellhole childhood. i'm grateful for being able to hang on to compassion. probably enough for today.

so here's the quote of the day:
"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."~Albert Schweitzer

america held hostage day 1784
bushism of the day:
"Our nation must come together to unite."

website of the day; Disaster News Network
http://www.disasternews.net/index3.php" title="http://www.disasternews.net/index3.php" target="_blank"http://www.disasternews.net/i...

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after the ninth grade, i transferred to another school. my dad insisted that i do it because, he said, it was a better school. i thought it was because he wanted to get me away from my friend. as much as i hate to admit it, he was right, it was a better school.

i made a couple of new friends after i'd been going there for a couple of months. we weren't particularly like one another, but then none of my friends had ever been very much like me.

my home life was just the same as always. dad still married to the girl, mom still sleeping with me. no furniture. by that time, i had devoted myself to school work because it meant i could phase out and forget how it felt to be living my life. i didn't want to be around my father or his wife. the smell of baby shit depressed the fuck out of me. furthermore, if my father could see me, there was a good possibility he'd start harassing me.

occasionally, he'd make me hang out with him. i always wondered why. i assumed he was aware of how much i hated him. i don't know why i thought that; i did my dead level best to keep my feelings to myself. to this day, when i'm angry i frequently adopt a distant, preoccupied look. i was never aware of it until my therapist mentioned it.

by the time i was a junior, i had found a true friend. she was my english teacher. i met her because i wanted to be in the accelerated english program. i went to speak with her and she encouraged me to give it a try. i was also submitting poetry to the high school literary magazine she sponsored. she came to give me safe haven when i couldn't stand mylife anymore. she kept me alive when i was suicidal. she gave me hope. she loved me. the world was a little less lonely.

somewhere before christmas of my senior year, my father's wife once again decided she'd had enough. she left and i believe she took her daughter with her. somehow my father got her in his clutches and absconded with her. he finally had to acknowledge she was his chiold. even though i already knew that, his admission just further enraged me.

my dad left the state with the child and went to see his mom. i don't recall how long he stayed there, but i'm sure it wasn't long enough as far as i was concerned. i actually hoped never to see him again. wrong again. he decided the coast was clear, apparently, and returned with his mother and child in tow to a small town not far away from where we lived. my mother started visiting him (brilliant, right?), but i refused.

at some point in that period of time, my father's wife, her brother and sister and maybe a couple of other people broke into our house in the middle of the night. they were fortunate that i was unable to get to the gun i knew was in the house. i was also fortunate because i might well have killed someone. we left the house and returned another day to find that all of my stuff had been taken. since there wasn't much else in the house, they just decided to steal things from me. i've always read a lot and kept those books which were meaningful to me for one reason or another. they took my books. trust me, they did not take them to read them. no one in her family was bright enough to read them. my mom and i moved into a garage apartment.

also about that time, they would show up at my school in the afternoons. i lived outside the area the school bus served, so i would wait for my mom till she got off of work. walking out to my car, they would surround me and threaten me.

all of that ended when they figured out where my dad was. he was arrested and put in jail. my mother and i were required to show up for his court date. i'm not sure what good that was supposed to do, but i didn't have any control over the situation, as usual. once again, i was humiliated by the circumstances in which i lived.

here's the quote of the day:
"Lying is done with words and also with silence."~Adrienne Rich

america held hostage day 1783
bushism of the day:
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee...that says, fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again."

website of the day: The deCode Project
http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/biotech/iceland/" title="http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/biotech/iceland/" target="_blank"http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/...

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it's still raining. it's been raining off and on all weekend. i'm talking downpours. right now there's a break in the rain, but the skies are still gray and there's more rain to come.

so when i was 13 i met two friends. i actually had a couple of other friends, but only two with whom i was very close and knew about my home life (to some extent). i later learned that my friend gale had been sexually abused by her father for years and years. she was also a jehovah's witness, which ddidn't matter to me, but became a means to an end for my father.

gale had a kind and gentle heart. she was also hilarious and far more outgoing than i. of course, even then i brought new meaning to the word "introverted." i can't tell you how it cheered me up that she thought i was worthy of being her friend. remember that i had had no friends for quite some time. at that point, i was just pleased that people would allow me to sit in the same room with them. i think of gale frequently even now, hoping she's found a safe and loving place to be.

i was also hanging out with another girl, kathryn, who had a very bad reputation. it was 1967 and she was a hippie. i smile now to think about it. she was pretty comfortable with broadcasting around the school that she had a lover, a 13-year old boy named clifford. clifford was kind of a mess. in retrospect, he was quite clearly a neglected child and, perhaps abused in other ways, too. given the fact that she was sexuslly active so early, i'd be willing to bet anything that she was sexually abused, too.

one of my favorite things about her, aside from her intelligence and artistic abilities, was that she was rebellious. i had worked up a serious distaste for virtually every adult i met. i just wasn't as vocal about it as kathryn. with her, i could allow that part of myself to come out and play.

i remember once in algebra class, my teacher told me that i should pick my friends more carefully because it was on the basis of my friends that people judged me. once again, this information was imparted in front of everyone in the class. thanks, dickhead. he seemed to believe i could just pick and choose who i hung out with. the "nice" kids didn't want to have anything to do with me. what the hell was i supposed to do, just continue to be completely alone so that the idiotic adults around me would think better of me? i was contemptuous.

the problem with gale began in the summer of the seventh grade. my father had done something that enraged me--i no longer know what it was. i wrote a letter to gale in which i told her i thought he was insane. before i had a chance to send it, he managed to read the letter. he was enraged with me because i had hit upon the truth and he knew it. he forbade me to have any further contact.

once again, i was totally isolated. worse yet, he decided not to speak to me for the rest of the summer. you would think that would have been a good thing, but when my dad wasn't talking to you, there was no telling when things might escalate into a situation where i could be physically hurt. i had already decided that i'd had about enough of the hitting and that the next time he hit me would be the last. i have no idea what i thought i would do. i had considered running away from home, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that wasn't a workable plan. i had nowhere to go, no money, no friends. leaving was out of the question. luckily, the need never arose because he never hit me again.

nonetheless, it was like living in a prison. my father was not a guy who could let things go. i wasn't in much of a mood to apologize and it wouldn't have done me any good anyway. he wanted me to believe that the reason he didn't want me to see gale was because he was afraid i would become a jehovah's witness. i recognized that for exactly what it was. a lie. the latest self-serving lie in a long line of them.

i just learned how to be a little sneakier. i appeared to comply, but i continued to see my friend. that incident marked a further deterioration in my relationship with him.

here's the quote of the day:
"You can have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power."~Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

america held hostage day 1782
bushism of the day:
"There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug and that's me and I know what it's like."

website of the day:
ikosmos: Portal for Cultural Creativity
http://www.ikosmos.com/" title="http://www.ikosmos.com/" target="_blank"http://www.ikosmos.com/

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"It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake."~ H.L. Mencken

Before I begin my continuing litany of what went wrong with my life, just an update on what's going wrong now. My hubby is somewhat bipolar, I think, and he's in the midst of a slight upswing into the manic mode. Unfortunately, this is not the type of mania that leads to euphoria. He's been in a bad mood for at least a couple of days now. I'm much better about dealing with it than ever before. I pretty much leave him alone to work out his own mood disorder. I try not to get anxious. Unfortunately, he has this nasty habit of slamming doors when he's irritable. Every time he does it, I can feel a tremor run through my nervous system. I consider it a triumph that I'm able to recognize what's going on and detach from it a little. I guess this is really just desserts after my little tirade about triggers yesterday. Yes, boys and girls, I do have triggers. I have many. I generally just manage to carry on, nonetheless. As i am doing now. It's just a little blip on the radar screen of unpleasantness. It is unpleasant, though, and maybe a little scary.

It's been raining here for two days now. The sun has been out for about half an hour now and I'm so thrilled to see it. Relentlessly gray skies wear me down emotionally. It's supposed to be clear for a couple of days, so maybe I can regain my emotional equilibrium.

Okay, so where was I in the saga of trauma? Oh yeah, the baby. When i was around 13, I noticed what appeared to be a growing pregnancy in my father's wife (yes, that would be the 15 year old). There was, of course, general denial, although I don't think I ever actually mentioned it to anyone. You know, what would have been the point? After the baby was born and returned to my house, my dad told me it was someone else's kid. Yes, this pisses me off even today. I endured. what else can I say? I was enraged and contemptuous of him. Somewhere in there, before the whole baby thing, my father decided he'd found someone else he liked more than me.

We went to visit his family in Hillbilly USA because, I guess, he wanted to demonstrate to his mother and siblings what a cool thing he was doing. He took the wife with us, along with my mom. If you'd buried me in a hill of fire ants, you could not have caused me any more torture than sitting in a fucking car with all of them for a good 7 hours (one way). While we were visiting the folks, my father dropped in on his oldest sister at her house. She had several kids, including a girl who was my age. Se seemed to hit it off. Of course, it's easy to hit it off when you're looking for any distraction available so you don't have to think about what a huge fucking mess your life is through no fault of your own.

My dad's great idea was to bring her back with us for a visit. I don't know how long the visit was supposed to last, but in retrospect, it seems like several months. Well, guess what? Once she got there, my dad used every opportunity to point out how she was better than I was. She dressed better. She had less acne. She was smarter. Goddamn it. Just in case I wasn't getting the message already that he thought I was just a huge piece of shit, here was further evidence.

Have i mentioned how much I hated him? I worked up a pretty fair hatred of my cousin, too. By the time she left, I never wanted to see her again and, in fact, I never have. I understand that she's been living with another cousin of ours for about the past 15 years or so. Just to be clear, the cousin is a male and yes, they're having a sexual relationship. No children, luckily. It's the scandal of the family. That would make me laugh if it weren't so grim. Let's see now. We have a father (my grandfather) who definitely sexually abused at least one of his daughters, but I'm guessing all of them. He also allegedly sexually abused his sons. It's my own personal guess that his wife (my grandmother) also sexually abused the boys.

I have at least one uncle who sexually abused at least three of his nieces. he may or may not have raped someone. He definitely sexually abused his own daughter. I have a father who's also a pedophile and a sadist. My father said that he once caught his mother in bed with some guy who wasn't his dad. I don't know about that...it's definitely possible, but with my dad you could just never be sure whether he imagined it. He also told me he'd interrupted a conversation between my grandmother and one of my aunts about murdering my grandfather. My personal take on this is, wouldn't you? So given all of this, they all consider it surprising and scandalous that my two cousins are cohabitating? I also have a cousin who's gay. He's been officially excommunicated from the family. He might actually be one of the lucky ones. There are more fun stories from my father's family, but no time now to delve into them.

This seems like about enough for today.

american held hostage day 1660
bushism of the day
"If you find a neighbor in need, you're responsible for serving that neighbor in need, you're responsible for loving a neighbor just like you'd like to love yourself."

webiste of the day:
CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, is an international network of associations of scholars working in the field of new religious movements.
http://www.cesnur.org/default.htm" title="http://www.cesnur.org/default.htm" target="_blank"http://www.cesnur.org/default...

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i can't believe how mean spirited i was being about people suffering from ptsd. it must be the root canal talking....

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i had part 2 of the root canal today, so i'm feeling a little worn out already and it's only mid-afternoon.

i've been reading some more messages from folks in my complex post traumatic stress disorder group. i'm once again struck by how many of them have found themselves completely unable to function normally. (whatever "normal" means.) a few of them have been homeless off and on, most are unable to hold a regular job. it sort of takes my breath away. i mentioned this to my therapist a couple of weeks ago and she was also surprised at the number of people who've given up.

even though i can appreciate the extreme difficulty of finding and keeping a job, there is defintely some part of me that thinks people should just pull themselves together and try hard to function. they speak of being triggered on a regular basis. hell, life itself is triggering. i mean, sometimes the way light fills a room can trigger flashbacks or dissociation for me. people being angry is triggering. people startling me is triggering. anyting and everything carries some terrible memory; nothing is untouched.

nonetheless, i've been employed for most of my adult life. furthermore, i've been employed in highly demanding jobs. i never thought there was an option. i need to eat and i'd prefer not to live under a bridge somewhere. i'm incredibly independent and would never be able to tolerate depending on someone else's charity. (several of the people are staying with friends while they await word on their disability status.)

i know this sounds like i'm denigrating people who are in more difficult places in their lives. i guess maybe i am, as much as i hate to admit it. i'm a very compassionate person and i'm a little surprised at my reaction. i know it's exhausting to continually push yourself forward when all you want to do is lie down somewhere and sleep for about a decade. if you decide to give up, though, there's no hope you'll ever be able to care for yourself. caring for one's self is critical. if you depend on others, you invite continued abuse (of many different types).

they also tend to discount what "normal" people say because they believe that no one understands ptsd unless they've lived through it. well, okay. i suppose it's true that most people don't know what it feels like to have images of incredible violence arise in their heads because they just picked up a stick from their front yard. do i need for them to understand? it would probably be nice, but it's certainly not mandatory for adequate treatment. when their therapists tell them to buck up, they get really pissed off about it. when their psychiatrists prescribe anti-depressants/anti-anx iety/anti-whatever, it pisses them off that the doctor is only "masking" the underlying pain. hey, take what you can get. if masking the pain helps you to get out of bed and go to work, then use it.

i know i've been blessed with an extremely hardy constitution and an iron will. they've propelled me through life and helped me to live a normal life even though deep inside i'm in great pain. my compadres talk about wanting to be strong and independent...but only if they can be on ssi. i wish them luck, but i don't think that's how it works. instead of being dependent on family and friends, they're dependent on THE STATE. that might be even worse.

well i'm clearly not feeling very charitable today and i'm in no mood to go traipsing through old memories. that being the case, this is the quote of the day:
"I seldom think of my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers."~Helen Keller

america held hostage day 1659
bushism of the day:
"The law I sign today directs new funds and new focus to the task of collecting vital intelligence on terrorist threats and on weapons of mass production."

website of the day: CTheory.net
http://www.ctheory.net" title="http://www.ctheory.net" target="_blank"http://www.ctheory.net

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i had a root canal on thursday afternoon and i'm just now feeling better. i haven't been able to open my mouth more than about half an inch all weekend...makes it a little difficult to eat. i have part two tomorrow at 11:00, so i may be missing a couple of days this week, too.

when i saw my therapist on friday, we spent most of the session talking about my early sexual abuse. sexual abuse in my life came in many forms, but we were specifically addressing that perpetrated by my uncle.

i noticed sometime last week (maybe wednesday) that whenever there were moments that my mind wasn't actively engaged, a nasty little internal voice would jump right in with, "i hate myself" "i'm a terrible person." you get the drift. when i noticed it happening, i tried to counter it with more loving messages. they were completely ineffective. my brain just completely disregarded those thoughts in favor of the destructive ones. i also noticed at some point that i seemed to be disengaged from my body. the feeling was somewhat different from my usual dissociative state. it's difficult to really describe the difference.

once i realized i was slipping into a sort of hypnotic state, i was able to shake it off for the most part. i had to force myself to really focus on the physical surroundings, in addition to focusing on re-establishing the mind/body connection. i've never noticed any similar states of mind.

my therapist suggested that it sounded like it might be related to my sexual abuse. any mention of traumatic episodes guarantees that i'll have some flashbacks. we spoke about those flashbacks as they arose. it's been a very long time since i've discussed those memories with anyone. just talking about it makes me feel like i'm going to implode.

my stepson and his wife were in town briefly on sunday. they came by to have lunch, but i was doing grocery shopping for the week. i only got to see them for about ten minutes. just as well, really. i'm very ambivalent about that relationship at the moment, but i need to be able to conceal my distrust and anger with my daughter-in-law. she told my step-son that she'd divorce him if he doesn't address his alcohol problem. my husband and i never knew about him abusing alcohol, but both of us support her decision.

since that time, she's taken a couple of trips out of town. the critical information here is that, before she married my stepson, she was married to someone else. my stepson and she began dating while she was still married. her behavior now is very similar to her behavior then. if she doesn't wish to be married to my stepson, i can understand and accept that. i'm just having some difficulty trusting her at the moment.

of course, since this is completely between her and my stepson, all i can do is pray for them both. i don't wish to betray my feelings to either of them.

okay, i'm actually boring myself at this point. must be time to for the quote of the day:
"Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement."~Alfred Adler

america held hostage day 1658
bushism of the day:
"The administration I'll bring is a group of men and women who are focused on what's best for America, honest men and women, decent men and women, women who will see service to our country as a great privilege and who will not stain the house."

website of the day:
http://thecropcirclewebsi te.50megs.com/" title="http://thecropcirclewebsi te.50megs.com/" target="_blank"http://thecropcirclewebsi te.5...

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"If you're going through hell, keep going."~Winston Churchill

Well I might as well just get on with this. I'm already actively depressed, so what the hell. Actively depressed means I recognize that I'm feeling sad and maybe worthless. I'm depressed a lot and don't even recognize it.) I actually watched the news this morning for the first time since the Bush debacle. Of course, I was getting dressed for work etc., so they may have had something about him, but I missed it. i don't wish to look at him and I certainly do not wish to hear him. I know this guy really well. He's just like hundreds of other good old boys I've met before. A lot of those good old boys were just a rich as W, but without the long record of abject failure that propels someone into politics. Remember that old axiom, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach?" It actually really applies to politics.

Now the hard stuff. I'm not sure exactly where in time these events occurred. I know that they were sometime between the ages of 13 and 15. As I said before, time is quite mutable when you're living in hell. i may have neglected to say that my father's wife had been getting beaten up for a couple of years on a fairly regular basis. if there was an up side to this whole situation, it was that my dad no longer beat up my mom. ( also recognize that 've neglected to talk about the actual wedding between my dad and his 13 year old girlfriend. that will take some working up to, but eventually I hope to steel myself enough to write about it.)

At some point, I guess she got tired of it or maybe she thought he might kill her (that would have been a reasonable fear). She went back to her mother's house and everything was in chaos. My father knew it was wrong to hit women. In addition to being actively psychotic, he just didn't give a shit.

I remember riding in his truck with him around this time and he was urging me to lie on his behalf. I clearly remember him saying that we needed to "stick together." I think he may have even cried. He did that a lot when he was afraid, but I never saw him cry for anyone other than himself. I'd already determined that he was my enemy, so I was not feeling very much like doing anything for him. However, I realized that letting him see how I felt could be dangerous.

After she'd been gone for several days, I was actually starting to cheer up. I thought maybe we could go back to being "normal" again. (That's just sad, isn't it?) But then she came back. My father broke the news to me in the garage. I have no idea what the deal was with his family and garages. Anyway, I just completely fell apart. I started crying hysterically and I couldn't stop. I almost fainted, but my dad caught me before I could injure myself falling on the concrete floor.

Leave it to my father to come up with the perfect antidote to my despair. He asked me if I'd like to go get an ice cream cone. (Let's just pause for a moment and contemplate the sheer lunacy of that suggestion.) This is one of those many fragmented memories and I don't remember how the garage scene ended, but I know it didn't end with ice cream. She stayed and I focused my energies on not killing myself or anyone else.

I was going to talk about the baby, but I just can't manage that today. I'm feeling a strong need to start screaming and breaking things. Of course, I won't. I'm going to need to calm myself down now, so I'll continue this dreary tale tomorrow.

america held hostage day 1657
bushism of the day:
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."

website of the day: Crimespider.com
http//www.crimespider.com
Crime Spider crawls the web for the best crime and law enforcement sites

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i rarely remember my dreams, so when i do, i think there must be powerful meaning behind it. last night i dreamed my husband and i were going over a very high bridge. he was driving. once we got on the bridge, a dense fog wrapped around us, making it impossible to see anything. i was very afraid. it seemed to me that we were driving in a straight line, but i couldn't be sure. i recall trying to sense with my physical being how far we had come and how far we had left to go.

there is no end to this dream. i think i must have been so frightened that i woke up briefly, which would explain why i remember the dream.

i've dreamed of bridges for as long as i can remember. bridge dreams generally follow the same trajectory. i'm driving up a tall bridge, but when i arrive at the top, i find that the bridge ends and i fall into empty space. one of the dreams i frequently had as a child involved arriving at my home to find that my parents had moved out. they did not leave a note saying where they went or why they left. i would set off on foot to find them and, inevitably, have to cross a tall bridge. the bridge ended at the top and i would begin a freefall.

i can think of several interpretations to my dream last night, but i'm going to meditate upon it for a while. solmetimes things are not as simple as they appear.

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i guess it's worth mentioning here that all this old stuff i'm dredging up is making me depressed as hell. my therapist suggested that it might be why i've been so down lately. oddly enough, i hadn't considered that.

i had also not considered that one of the (many) sources of my depression is my recognition that no one ever considered my needs important. sometimes i felt like athena, sprung from my father's forehead. he thought me into existence. when i was younger, i had a lot of trouble determining what i might be other than what my parents wished me to be. of course, i've figured it out since then.

nonetheless, i have to acknowledge that neither of my parents--for different reasons, probably--was capable of seeing me as a small human. if they told me i was supposed to sit somewhere, they expected to find me there when they came back, irrespective of how long they stayed away. i was like a doll for them. they were actually the only important people, only their needs and desires were worth noting.

do i find that depressing? well, i guess so. the problem is that one can only have one's own life. had i had a different, better life before i lived with my family, i'm certain i would have recognized the problem for what it was. i have some friends who had good childhoods, but i can't really compare. i have no real idea what it is to have a sane family. i have no idea what it must be like to have a mother and father who acknowledge your humanity on a daily basis. i have no clue as to what it would be like to have my parents do something for me when they couldn't see how it would directly benefit them.

that's about enough for today. here's the quote:
"The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants."~William Shakespeare

american held hostage day 1771
bushism of the day:
"There's only one person who hugs the mothers and the widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug and that's me and I know what it's like."

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"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved."~Helen Keller

When my therapist and I got together on Friday, we talked at length about why I hate birthdays (and Christmas and all other gift-receiving events). It has nothing to do with age.

Whenever I received a gift from my parents, I always tried to seem as grateful as possible. If I hated the gift, I lied. (And I often hated the gift, because my dad always bought gifts that he wanted as a child.) Despite my efforts at expressing my gratitude, my father would say,"You didn't say thank you for your present." Well, of course I had said thanks...I'd practically carved "thank you" on my forehead. But I said thank you again. All day throughout the day, I was reminded that I hadn't said thank you for the gift. Sometimes I was reminded for days on end. Thank you thank you thank you fucking thank you.

When I receive gifts now, I can't figure out what's enough and what's too much. I don't want to express gratitude too effusively; people might not believe I really like the gift. On the other hand, I don't want to seem ungrateful by not thanking enough. I end up getting so confused that I'd rather people just didn't give me anything.

There was usually the mandatory photo of my on my birthday (Christmas, Easter, etc.). That meant that without a doubt I was going to be hit at least several times. Pose me, hit me, trying hard to hold the correct pose. Hit me, pose me. I valiantly tried to stay completely still so I could hang on to the exact pose my dad demanded. He generally didn't like the way I smiled, either. If you wish for someone to smile broadly the obvious answer is to just to hit them. Yhat'll make them smile.

My therapist pointed out to me that there's isn't even a small corner of my life that hasn't been tainted by my past. I never think of my life that way. I think viewing my life in its totality is just too overwhelming. That is what i'm trying to do here. There are many years for which I have no memories or maybe just one or two memories. I'm fine with that. If there are any memories buried because they're too painful to remember, I really don't want to know what they are. I suspect many memories aren't available because it was just more of the same. It's difficult to pinpoint specific incidents of abuse when the abuse occurs daily. I also think perhaps it's related to the fact that I knew there was no escape so I retreated into my head just so I could bear to get up every day and go on.

I think when I left off, I was talking about the fifth grade, but I think I've covered the high points. The entire sixth grade is missing from my memory. I'm certain I had no friends. I'm also certain that I was enraged at virtually every adult in my life for not taking care of me. I tried hard to get good grades and stay under the radar at school.

The summer before the seventh grade, I withdrew. I had no intention of talking to my father's 15 year old wife. I hated her. My solution was to sleep. I must have been sleeping 19 hours a day. I would get up when my mom got home from work. I was required to eat dinner with everyone. I wasn't allowed that respite for long.

My father made me get up and get out of my (and my mom's) bedroom. I hated my father a little more. So i was out of my room, but I never acknowledged her presence in any way. I win again, even though it was a hollow victory.

When I started the 7th grade, I became obsessed with not being like my father. If he liked something, I was guaranteed to hate it. I discounted everything he said to me because I believed he knew absolutely nothing about me.

america held hostage day 1770
bushism of the day:
"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history."

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Traveling incognito, I seem to belong to this world of middle class worries and conceits. The people around me find me infinitely amusing and sage. They believe they know me. They believe they understand me. It's a testament to my great powers of disguise and assimilation. In fact, I live in another country from those who think they've defined me.

I have seen things others have not and I have lived through my own concentration camp. I know what it means to entertain your captors so they will spare your life. Have no doubt about it; I could have died at any time, either by my father's hand or by any of the people he brought into my life. I know how it feels to be hungry and cold and all alone with no hope in sight. I know how to continue in the midst of despair.

I've watched people's faces as I've revealed bits and pieces of my life and understand that most people don't have the courage or fortitude to hear it all. Sometimes it's too easy to recognize the revulsion they're trying to hide. They find my past disgusting, but like a twelve year old boy at a slasher movie, they just can't seem to look away. They'd like for me to believe in their compassion, but I know it's less a matter of compassion than an opportunity for self congratulation. They're too good to ever allow themselves to walk into the darkness in which I lived for so long. It's a different universe. I'm from the other side. I've studied the manners and customs in this alien land. Unless I choose to reveal it, no one ever guesses that iIm not as simple as I lead them to believe. Therein lies the problem.

I am still, after so long, alone. I've been alone ever since I can remember. It feels so familiar that I rarely even notice it now. No matter how practiced I become at blending in (and I am very, very good at it), I know that I'll always be separate from the people I come into contact with every day. I could have chosen to embrace the darkness, like many of my relatives, but I would be alone even then.

The problem is that, though I'm intimately connected to depravity, I'm unable to accept it as a way of life. I see it for what it is, a predictable end to a troubled life. My cousins haven't such a clear understanding. They engage in adulterous affairs leading to murder on occasion, they abuse substances, they believe violence is the perfect way to express one's unhappiness. It's normal for them, just as being alone is normal for me. None of us have any choice about that. They're unable to free themselves from the past and so am i. At least they have plenty of company; a lot of people live at the end of line. Check out any bar on any given Friday night and you'll find at least one person reveling in going as far down as they can possibly go.

I used to reach out to people, believing that if I just kept searching, I would find my own milieu. As it turns out, there probably isn't one. I'm still standing over here on the far shore, smiling and waving at all of you on the other side of the ocean.

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okay. birthday roundup. my mom and i had lunch yesterday and she gave me two sets of earrings...very pretty. after work, my husband was ready to take me some place special, but i just wasn't in the mood. i decided we could wait to celebrate this weekend. we went to jason's deli for dinner, i came home and did a pilates workout and did some laundry. i guess that's how you know you're getting old...you don't even mind doing laundry on your birthday. hubby gave me a lapis necklace. we had cake today at work and, since my boss wasn't in, we all had a pretty good time. my boss always either insults people or he starts talking about how none of us are going to have a job soon. he's also been known to launch into subjects he knows will gross everyone out. one of my coworkers once asked for a cheesecake with a praline topping. my boss pointed out ad nauseum that the pecans looked like dead flies. what a funny guy.

i met my husband thirty years ago on my birthday. i'd had friends in from out of town to celebrate and we had a little party. later on, a male friend of mine from high school came by and we went to an anne sexton reading downtown. sitting in front of me was this guy with a tee shirt on that said "riot squad ballet" on the back. i think at some point he turned around and asked me for a cigarette (back in the days when one could smoke whether it bothered people or not). of course i had one. i asked about the tee shirt and he told me it was the name of a play he'd written. we may have made some small talk between poems. i had to leave early because i had a 7:45 hebrew class the next day. as we left, my friend commented, "he really likes you." i had no idea how he could possibly know that.

on a campus of 40,000 students, my hubby and i kept running into each other. i ran into him late one afternoon when i was delivering a paper for my shakespeare class. i looked really ratty; i'd had an ear infection and was up late working on my paper. suddenly, there he was. we stopped and chatted and he invited me to a reading on sunday where he was going to be reading some of his poetry. i didn't really plan to attend, but when sunday came, i decided to go. after he finished his reading, we went over to the apartment of a couple he knew and then he took me home.

the really funny thing was that i wasn't even sure i was attracted to him. he's got very light brown hair and hazel eyes and i was more into men with dark hair and dark eyes. he sort of grew on me, i guess. thirty years later, he still makes me laugh and he's still the most interesting guy i've ever met. he's had several nonfiction books published and i get to benefit from the research he did while writing them. i get the knowledge without having to do the work, really.

things haven't always been great; when i was younger i could be quite difficult to be in a relationship with. my history of abuse was the source of some problems when i was younger. i still have a lot of problems with other men...power issues, competitiveness, anger. i've worked through most of that with my husband, though. he's a very special person. my therapist thinks i don't share enough of what's going on in my head, but there's always so much going on in my head that i'm not sure anyone could really tolerate knowing about it. self-revelation is definitely something i haven't figured out how to do. i honestly don't even think about sharing with anyone. the only reason my therapist knows is because she's my therapist and i know she's supposed to know.

it's started to get a little cooler here and the trees are losing their leaves. as i look out my window at work, i can see my little squirrel friend that i keep track of all winter. he likes to lie on a branch and nap in the late afternoons. right now he's busy burying nuts, which he won't be able to find when he looks for them. they don't have any way of knowing where they've buried things, i read not too long ago. it's all just dumb luck if they start digging and actually find something.

here's the quote of the day:

"Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." ~Carl Jung

bushism of the day:
"I understand small business growth. I was one."

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george bush for another four years. god help us.

just a brief update. my stepson and his wife are still having problems. he just got out of the hospital after having an emergency operation. my husband spoke with his wife during the extended period of time they were trying to find out what was wrong with my stepson. she seemed to be oopen to continuing the relationship, but now my stepson tells him that she seems very distant. i think she's very concerned about expenses; her health insurance may not pay for much of the surgery. i'm just hoping for the best for both of them. i don't pretend to know what that might be.

it's my birthday today. i had lunch with my mom and then we came back to my office and hung out with the boys (my beloved kitties). i felt a little guilty about letting my mom take me out to lunch because i know she doesn't have much cash. as i said yesterday, sometimes it's a gift to allow someone to give something to you. i'm trying to remember that.

i think my husband and i will celebrate my birthday this weekend. it will also be the anniversary of the day we met, 30 years ago.

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a fair number of people know about parts of my early life. other than my therapist, no one knows everything. actually, i probably don't know everything myself at this point. i provide information based on my intuitive judgment of how much people are capable of dealing with. some people cry. when people start to cry, i know i've gone too far. i've also had a number of people give me that train wreck look, like it's too horrible to continue to listen, but they can't bring themselves to stop. when i see that look, i stop it for them. it's a little akin to disgust. i take this very personally. once someone has reacted that way, all of my protective barriers go up immediately and they never come back down. i'm sure at least some people don't believe me. i start to worry that they think i'm crazy. there's not much i can do about it if they do.

many of the people who've been able to tolerate hearing about my life believe that i've made choices which have kept me from becoming the person i probably should be--an alcoholic, drug-addicted prostitute who gets beaten up regularly. i tend to get impatient with those people who give me far too much credit.

i believe that i came here endowed with innate abilities which have allowed me to thrive under such destructive and barren conditions. several weeks ago, i wrote about the seven qualities of people who are phoenixes. they are: independence, initiative, humor, morality, the ability to develop relationships, insight and creativity. in my opinion, these are not qualities one can choose to develop. i suppose that people do have a choice betwen seeing the humor in difficult situations and being negative. i think people can develop some creativity if they don't come equipped with it, but i don't think it can be conjured from thin air. just as an aside, i read recently that people with high iq's generally tend to have a sense of humor. i'm not sure i believe that's always true.

as for independence, i was raised as an only child, though i have a half brother and half sister. i've never met my half brother and i have absolutely no desire to. i knew my half sister until she was about five years old, but i haven't seen her in over 30 years. not much interested in renewing the relationship. she was born when i was 15. my parents were always distracted by their own bullshit, so i really didn't have much choice in the matter. independence was thrust upon me. i became very, very good at it...some people would say that i'm too independent. it certainly makes me less tolerant of people who don't think for themselves or are emotionally clingy.

i have a number of cousins on my father's side, none of which have fared well. it leads me back to the nature/nurture debate, but i'm guessing it's a little of both. i think most of them have never questioned whether their families created a lot of their own difficulties. for as long as i can remember, i've been noting the consequences of my parents' emotional issues and the choices they've made in their lives. it seemed pretty clear to me that allowing your life to be guided by emotion isn't going to result in a very happy life. sleeping with people you're not married to, for instance. after the age of about 20, doesn't it become abundantly clear that that behavior will consistently result in heart break. so why do it? it just ends up making your life more difficult. insight and a sense of morality did help me understand that lesson. i don't understand why i was able to see it and the rest of my dad's family wasn't.

i'm infinitely grateful for all of the qualities that have helped me to survive and i refuse to accept the idea that i've somehow developed those qualities on my own. it feels like a great gift i've been given and i try to be worthy of it every day. some days i'm more worthy than others, of course. i remember people who've helped me along the way and i try to pass that help along whenever i can. assisting other people (to whatever extent i'm capable) is a way to pay back those gifts in the name of the people who helped me survive.

here's the quote of the day:
"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."
~Albert Schweitzer quotes (German medical missionary, theologian, musician and philosopher. 1952 Nobel Peace Prize, 1875-1965)

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when i saw my therapist on friday, she suggested to me that i might want to take a break from my excursions into the past. it's been a really dark couple of weeks and this one doesn't seem to be starting out much better. too many anniversaries.

my birthday is this week. my co-workers are pretty excited about it; they never miss an opportunity to have cake. i hate birthdays. it has nothing to do with getting older; i've hated them most of my life. i would offer explanations, but that would mean talking about the past. i know birthday celebrations are important to other people, though. i've come to believe that allowing others to give you gifts is actually a gift to them. since i've come to that realization, i try to be as celebratory as possible.

i find myself too down really to write about anything. i may be able to muster some interest in something tomorrow. until then, here's the quote of the day:

"Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these" ~Susan B. Anthony

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