๑ strange love ๑
So... the rape stuff. And the incest stuff. I don't even know what to call it. It seems like two sides of the same box cutter blade. And even at that, there's the violence and absenteeism of my folks woven in there, without which, I can't help believing, neither of the other two things would have happened.
It's all like some malfunctioning unholy trinity at the core of who I am, who I've been: violence, isolation and sex. There's so much tangled up in those three things that the notion of laying it all out into words, into linear strings of ideas... it seems staggering, it seems as if it would take spools and spools of sentences to do it with any totality.
Like, the words are doubtlessly going to come out of me all out of order, issuing almost at random... I see myself on the living room floor with hundreds and hundreds of thin strips of paper, upon each strip, an idea, a recollection, a sentence... me with a glue stick in one hand and a smoke in the other, slowly picking through the black and white spaghetti heap and trying to make smaller piles of like sentences, then addressing each little pile and trying to figure out how to make coherent paragraphs or essays out of them all, paste them all onto pages, line by line...
It's all like some malfunctioning unholy trinity at the core of who I am, who I've been: violence, isolation and sex. There's so much tangled up in those three things that the notion of laying it all out into words, into linear strings of ideas... it seems staggering, it seems as if it would take spools and spools of sentences to do it with any totality.
Like, the words are doubtlessly going to come out of me all out of order, issuing almost at random... I see myself on the living room floor with hundreds and hundreds of thin strips of paper, upon each strip, an idea, a recollection, a sentence... me with a glue stick in one hand and a smoke in the other, slowly picking through the black and white spaghetti heap and trying to make smaller piles of like sentences, then addressing each little pile and trying to figure out how to make coherent paragraphs or essays out of them all, paste them all onto pages, line by line...
Sounds like madness.
I would rather actually be doing that, though, pain-stakingly combing through an already typed-out tangle of words, than be telling you anything about any of this at all.
Things in my mind, they wax and wane and are fluid, only seen in snatches, in vignettes. I can follow a thread, but as I progress, the things I see and understand sort of disintegrate behind me as I move further along. And right now, there is information in those threads that I need. I want to untangle this thing inside me and understand it as thoroughly as I can. I can't do that by simply thinking about it. Too many mysteries explain themselves, then sink back into the dark again.
It's not even just that I want to learn my way around these things... in a way, I want to write about it all because I want... it's like I want to get it out of me, even if only in a pile of words... even if what will come out will only be a rambling word picture, still, I wanna recreate all these pathoses et cetera and just sit back, just look at it all there, in the world outside of my skull, my body. And see that it's Real. Like an image transmitted back by the Cassini Probe... a grainy snapshot of some astronomical phenomenon that was previously only a best guess or theory... dark matter, Bigfoot, the men's room inside the Skull and Bones building.
I would rather actually be doing that, though, pain-stakingly combing through an already typed-out tangle of words, than be telling you anything about any of this at all.
Things in my mind, they wax and wane and are fluid, only seen in snatches, in vignettes. I can follow a thread, but as I progress, the things I see and understand sort of disintegrate behind me as I move further along. And right now, there is information in those threads that I need. I want to untangle this thing inside me and understand it as thoroughly as I can. I can't do that by simply thinking about it. Too many mysteries explain themselves, then sink back into the dark again.
It's not even just that I want to learn my way around these things... in a way, I want to write about it all because I want... it's like I want to get it out of me, even if only in a pile of words... even if what will come out will only be a rambling word picture, still, I wanna recreate all these pathoses et cetera and just sit back, just look at it all there, in the world outside of my skull, my body. And see that it's Real. Like an image transmitted back by the Cassini Probe... a grainy snapshot of some astronomical phenomenon that was previously only a best guess or theory... dark matter, Bigfoot, the men's room inside the Skull and Bones building.
I do know SOME things for certain. That I was raped. Who raped me and where. That my uncle raped my sister and tried to molest me. That my folks were violent and loud or absent. I don't question any of that.
But just like anybody would, I have been protecting myself from those memories, so even now... they exist in a twilight zone where I am continuously, lately, being stunned or even doubtful that those things could have... not that they could have HAPPENED, but that so many repercussions came from them... great big meteors hitting my planet, starting the Ice Age and killing all the dinosaurs...
I didn't block these events out, erase them and suddenly remember them 20 years later. I knew they had happened. And I even knew that they had effected me in different areas of my life as an adult... I mean, it's not as though I never took time and puzzled over them and read up on them and even talked about them at length... it's not like it never occurred to me that the trouble I have with men probably has a lot to do with my uncle, the guy who raped me, the way my dad was so angry and remote, the hatred my mom displayed towards sex and men and my father...
But over the years, I would have realizations- sometimes pretty heavy ones, very enlightening and illuminating insights about myself in regards to these matters- then leave it at that, basically.
There's a Realness missing that has made it possible for me to understand a great deal about how the violence of my childhood has influenced my decisions as an adult and yet only understand those things one notion at a time, never constructing a way up out of this shit... I don't want things to stay disconnected anymore. I want them all together.
I know that doing that, that writing all this shit out, isn't going to magically "fix" things. But one of the most dangerous aspects of the unreality that "protects" me from my past is that it is so thick and dark and suffocating that it for years, it has made, my Now seem unreal, too. It has made my life seem of no lasting consequence in a host of ways...
Right Now can't seem completely real as long as my past is free-floating around in its weird-ass ghostliness. The darkness it all floats around in obscures the most precious thing I have: the present.
But just like anybody would, I have been protecting myself from those memories, so even now... they exist in a twilight zone where I am continuously, lately, being stunned or even doubtful that those things could have... not that they could have HAPPENED, but that so many repercussions came from them... great big meteors hitting my planet, starting the Ice Age and killing all the dinosaurs...
I didn't block these events out, erase them and suddenly remember them 20 years later. I knew they had happened. And I even knew that they had effected me in different areas of my life as an adult... I mean, it's not as though I never took time and puzzled over them and read up on them and even talked about them at length... it's not like it never occurred to me that the trouble I have with men probably has a lot to do with my uncle, the guy who raped me, the way my dad was so angry and remote, the hatred my mom displayed towards sex and men and my father...
But over the years, I would have realizations- sometimes pretty heavy ones, very enlightening and illuminating insights about myself in regards to these matters- then leave it at that, basically.
There's a Realness missing that has made it possible for me to understand a great deal about how the violence of my childhood has influenced my decisions as an adult and yet only understand those things one notion at a time, never constructing a way up out of this shit... I don't want things to stay disconnected anymore. I want them all together.
I know that doing that, that writing all this shit out, isn't going to magically "fix" things. But one of the most dangerous aspects of the unreality that "protects" me from my past is that it is so thick and dark and suffocating that it for years, it has made, my Now seem unreal, too. It has made my life seem of no lasting consequence in a host of ways...
Right Now can't seem completely real as long as my past is free-floating around in its weird-ass ghostliness. The darkness it all floats around in obscures the most precious thing I have: the present.
I think what I want is a map. A map or something like a map... a representation of the shit inside me, something to not only help me navigate the dark psychic continents in myself, but a way to step back and SEE it all. All of it. On the OUTSIDE of my head...
To make it Real to me.
To make it Real to me.
~addendum: What I love about human beings is that I posted this essay on Yahoo 360 and within a couple of hours, had 6 messages from creepy BDSM guys who were wondering would I like to meet them for "dates" where they would do fun stuff like tie me up and sexually torture me. Very sexy.~
๑ what is & what should never be ๑
Child abuse consists of any act or failure to act that endangers a child's physical or emotional health and development. A person caring for a child is abusive if he or she fails to nurture the child, physically injures the child, or relates sexually to the child.
The four major types of child abuse are:
๑ Physical abuse
๑ Emotional abuse
๑ Neglect
๑ Sexual abuse
Not all abuse is deliberate or intended. Several factors in a person's life may combine to move them toward abusing a child:
๑general stress
๑inexperience with a child who has a disability
๑inexperience with a child difficult behaviors
๑inexperience caring for others
๑a personal history of being abused
๑alcohol or drug use
๑marital conflict
๑unemployment
๑ Physical abuse
๑ Emotional abuse
๑ Neglect
๑ Sexual abuse
Not all abuse is deliberate or intended. Several factors in a person's life may combine to move them toward abusing a child:
๑general stress
๑inexperience with a child who has a disability
๑inexperience with a child difficult behaviors
๑inexperience caring for others
๑a personal history of being abused
๑alcohol or drug use
๑marital conflict
๑unemployment
No one has been able to predict which of these factors will cause someone to abuse a child. A significant factor is that abuse tends to be intergenerational - those who were abused as children are more likely to repeat the act when they become parents or caretakers.
In addition, many forms of abuse arise from ignorance, isolation, or benign neglect. Sometimes a cultural tradition leads to abuse, for example, such beliefs as:
๑children are property
๑you have a right to control your children any way you wish
๑toughening children up helps them deal with life's hardships
๑children are property
๑you have a right to control your children any way you wish
๑toughening children up helps them deal with life's hardships
Child abuse can have dire consequences. The child may become someone who lies, resents, fears, and retaliates, rather than loves, trusts, and listens. They may become reclusive, withdrawn and alienated. Abused children have low self-esteem, and are likely to engage in self-destructive behaviors.
An abused child's psychological development and social behavior will be impaired. Since abusiveness is a learned behavior that can cross generations of a family, children who have been abused may, in turn, become abusive to his or her own children. Children of abuse can often have difficulty functioning in a job situation, in social settings, and are at higher risk for criminal behavior.
The results of being abused as a child vary according to the severity of the abuse and the surrounding environment of the child. But all child abuse has the potential to result in serious behavioral, cognitive, emotional, or mental disorders- not only during the victim's in childhood and adolescence, but well into adulthood.
An abused child's psychological development and social behavior will be impaired. Since abusiveness is a learned behavior that can cross generations of a family, children who have been abused may, in turn, become abusive to his or her own children. Children of abuse can often have difficulty functioning in a job situation, in social settings, and are at higher risk for criminal behavior.
The results of being abused as a child vary according to the severity of the abuse and the surrounding environment of the child. But all child abuse has the potential to result in serious behavioral, cognitive, emotional, or mental disorders- not only during the victim's in childhood and adolescence, but well into adulthood.
๑ let's get physical ๑
Physical Abuse~is any non-accidental physical injury to a child. Even if the parent or caretaker who inflicts the injury might not have intended to hurt the child, the injury is not considered an accident if the caretaker's actions were intentional. This injury may be the result of any assault on a child's body, such as:
๑ beating, whipping, punching, or slapping
๑ pushing or shoving
๑ shaking, kicking or throwing
๑ pinching, biting or choking
๑ hair-pulling or burning
๑ hitting with an implement
๑ severe physical punishment that is inappropriate to child's age
Corporal (physical) punishment is distinguished from physical abuse in that physical punishment is the use of physical force with the intent of inflicting bodily pain, but not injury, for the purpose of correction or control. Physical abuse is an injury that results from physical aggression.
However, physical punishment easily gets out of control and can become physical abuse. Corporal punishment is against the law in schools in some states, but not in others. In many families, physical punishment is the norm.
Hundreds of thousands of children are physically abused each year by someone close to them, and thousands of children die from the injuries. For those who survive, the emotional scars are deeper than the physical scars.
A physically abused child is at greater risk of developing the following problems later in life:
๑trouble with intimate personal relationships
๑trouble with physical closeness
๑trouble with intimacy and trust
๑high levels of anxiety
๑depression
๑substance abuse
๑medical illness
๑behavior problems at school or work
๑becoming an abusive parent or caregiver
๑ beating, whipping, punching, or slapping
๑ pushing or shoving
๑ shaking, kicking or throwing
๑ pinching, biting or choking
๑ hair-pulling or burning
๑ hitting with an implement
๑ severe physical punishment that is inappropriate to child's age
Corporal (physical) punishment is distinguished from physical abuse in that physical punishment is the use of physical force with the intent of inflicting bodily pain, but not injury, for the purpose of correction or control. Physical abuse is an injury that results from physical aggression.
However, physical punishment easily gets out of control and can become physical abuse. Corporal punishment is against the law in schools in some states, but not in others. In many families, physical punishment is the norm.
Hundreds of thousands of children are physically abused each year by someone close to them, and thousands of children die from the injuries. For those who survive, the emotional scars are deeper than the physical scars.
A physically abused child is at greater risk of developing the following problems later in life:
๑trouble with intimate personal relationships
๑trouble with physical closeness
๑trouble with intimacy and trust
๑high levels of anxiety
๑depression
๑substance abuse
๑medical illness
๑behavior problems at school or work
๑becoming an abusive parent or caregiver
๑ black irish blues ๑
my mom's old world blues
got nothing much to do
with nations or starvation
the erasure of unwritten native tongue
dead
the language lapsing
though it's death
dear heart
but dear as dead as done
my mother's blues
those blues so night sky deep
like blood beneath the skin
but splitting vivid red
when skin is split
when blood will hit the open air
words and deeds and dire consequences
singing swiftly through those veins
my mom and her mother
locked in black and white
i saw
the one dead father
one dead brother
though invisible
invincible
and those left behind still breathing
flawed and fading
gone as ghosts
and haunted by the perfect man and boy
my mom and her blues as bold as blood
that was the irishness
she bled into me and my sister
that she beat into me and my sister
when we were just kids
o, you'd tell yrself
my darling
that those edges should be dull enough by now
that the careworn swim of time
through turning tides
would take away our girlhoods all used up
you'd like to tell yrself
the wake of all those waves
those waning days
would wear away
would take the bite out of most any sort of blade
but you'd be wrong
{the ghost in you{
"Dissociation: In psychology and psychiatry, a perceived detachment of the mind from the emotional state or even from the body. Dissociation is characterized by a sense of the world as a dreamlike or unreal place and may be accompanied by poor memory of the specific events, which in severe form is known as dissociative amnesia.The term dissociation refers to the act of separating or the state of being separated."
~MedicineNet
"Dissociation is characterized by a 'disruption in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception of the environment.' Its clinical manifestations include amnesia for autobiographical information, depersonalization and derealization, and identity disturbances, which are core features of the dissociative disorders. Moreover, dissociative symptoms also play a prominent role as response to traumatic stress and in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)."
~The Journal of Neuropsychiatry
Some of my Mom's favorite ways of expressing her various unhappy feelings were physical. You know, roughing the kids up to reduce her stress.Yanking me around by the hair, kicking me in the shin, beating me with a kitchen utensil, dragging mr around by the arm and walking fast with those grown-up, much-bigger-than-mine strides. And, of course, the classic torso blows and smacking in the face.
The kitchen utensil that she beat me with was such a success as a terror-inducer, that not only did it take on the weight of becoming a proper noun in our home but also, it become scary enough that all she had to do was mention using it and I would curl up into a well-behaved little bundle of terror. Very effective child-rearing. Skinner would be beaming with delight. For years, just the sight of this particular utensil in our kitchen or any other, absolutely curdled my blood. Well into adulthood.
Although I no longer have that reaction, as you can see, I still can't bring myself to type its name. I tried. But I think because it sort of became a title of something horrible, just naming it, as ordinary as it is, still fills me now with a sense of humiliation that's just nauseating.
Here's a fun little ironic catch-22 I've learned recently. Children who are physically and sexually abused can develop a huge phobia of suffocating. This would certainly explain my weekly hysterical fits and attempts to hide from my Mom when it was time to wash my hair in the kitchen sink. Her method of expressing frustration with my aversion to having my head shoved under water? Dragging me by my scalp to the kitchen from where ever I was hiding, making the water very hot and pulling my hair and hitting me while she lathered up my locks. Which, of course, is abusive, which, of course, produces the reluctance to have my head submerged.
So... by doing that, she inadvertently, you know, made the weekly hair-washing something that much more a thing I would go wild trying avoid.
Nice.
Speaking of suffocating the children, did I mention how much I love true crime? I guess, in part, because -unless it's some crap like The Zodiac Killer or Jack the Ripper- all the books and shows about True Crime end with the bad guy getting busted and getting the chair or going up for ages. I like the sense of resolution that comes with that. The bad guys always tank. The mystery gets solved. Justice is served. And stuff.
I also like how they really want you to hate the perpetrator. That way, you are totally psyched when everything blows up in their faces at the end. Especially Ann Rule- holy shit! She's relentless! I can't help but feel twistedly delighted by how over the top she goes. Not only to make the victim seem angelic, but to drive home, again and again, the inhumanity of the bad guy. It's SO lopsided.
I love it.
I don't care- I know it's stilted. But it makes me grin.
It's not just books, though. I love True Crime TV, too. And as I've started doing the work to contend with, you know, going from victim to survivor (still makes me feel self-conscious just saying that), it seems like every time I'm anywhere NEAR a TV set, there's some special or program about predators or busting pervert pedophiles via the Internet or some screwy serial rapist guy. I'm sure in part, yeah, I'm just NOTICING it more because these are issues on my mind. But, damn. It sure seems the last couple of months like, yo, all these shows are about busting sex criminals.
People around me who are not survivors are concerned: should you be watching something like that right now?
Fuck! At least the guys they go after on TV are getting busted. What could be more satisfying? Legally, there's absolutely nothing I can do to nail my perpetrators. So, really, seeing these guys get crucified... it almost gives me that sense of vindication that watching the Sox win the World Series did.
Plus, I actually find myself learning.
Like, I was watching some show recently about this crazy guy, the Mall Rapist. When he wasn't walking into stores and assaulting cashiers in the back room, he was strolling around the toy sections of department stores with a video camera hidden in a back pack, looking for kids who had stepped away from their parents to look at some game or doll or what not.
He'd set his backpack down on a shelf, aim it at the kid, then go over and take out his penis and fondle them et cetera. He did this to hundreds- HUNDREDS- of kids over the course of 6 years- when they finally busted him, the cops found all these hours of video of all these kids he was rubbing himself all over. And not one report was ever turned in, not a single complaint.
The detective who busted him- she was so fucking good.
When the reporter talking to her expressed amazement that there had never been any complaints from parents about these incidents, she explained that the parents probably had no idea anything had happened. No adults ever witnessed these crimes, and she said, it would be unlikely a child would be able to report what had happened to their folks. She said that because kids are taught to trust adults, when a grown up does something really fucked up physically to them, the kid basically freezes up and goes into a kind of shock. They don't understand what's happening or why they feel afraid or what they are supposed to do. So they just shut off temporarily in their minds. The way a bird seems dead when you pry it out of the jaws of a cat.
This has happened to me since I was very, very small. So finding out it was a normal reaction was validating.
Whenever I was being hit or having somebody bigger than me do anything to fuck with me physically. When the was fear too big for it to fit inside of my tiny being.
There have been so many times in my life from so early on when it wasn't safe to be in my body. I think about scared little animals scrambling away from people, think about them frozen in a rictus of shock, utterly still- that bird in the cat's jaws thing. When animals freeze up like that, in their minds, they are scrambling away. Clawing frantically, unthinking to reach some remote corner inside their mind where they cannot be reached or captured.
Little kids.
Leveled internally to animal terror.
There are flash-bulb moments in my childhood recollection- illuminated in inky darkness, only barest details, blurred auras framing them. Who knows what the incidental drama was that brought on those parental eruptions of rage. Really, since there's never a reason to fill a little human being with the fear of death, I don't think it matters what random thing prompted each incident.
There are hundreds of these snapshot-sized memories.
One time, it was because I left my Bionic Woman doll on the stairs where I had been playing with it. One time, it was because I was in a tent, hiding under a blanket, crying out for help because there was a bee flying around in the tent and bees scared me terribly. One time, it was because I talked back. One time, it was because I ran away from home for 2 hours.
It doesn't really matter why. There is no real why.
Sometimes, the only real reason is that it just feels good to hurt somebody who's too small to hurt you back. Maybe it's cathartic. To see little eyes go round and dilate with helpless terror. To beat on something small and living with both fists until yr fury runs its course and yr head clears. To exert power over somebody so totally and make them feel helpless, helpless and so afraid that they shut down inside and freeze.
I guess that feels good. To be able to do that to a kid.
Like, maybe life can kick you around and make you feel small, but you have these tiny, soft, easily overwhelmed human beings on hand who adore you, who you matter to. Who you can pick up and throw across a room.
Then you don't feel so small and so powerless.
You matter again.
I guess.
And then you can forget all about them. And go back to the things that really matter. Things about you. Yr life, yr world. Those little kids, they owe you. Because you feed them and house them and clothe them and go to work to support them. They owe you. You own them. They owe you peace and quiet and obedience and to be quiet and invisible. They owe you the ability to come home and not have to think about them or look at them or hear them making noise or find their toys somewhere ridiculous. They owe you not to cause any trouble, not to ask you anything, to stay out of the way.
They owe you to take on yr grown up sized rage about life, to have that rage turn them numb and split their little consciousness, splinter their minds, bruise their arms and legs, their backs, their faces.
They owe you love.
I guess.
The kitchen utensil that she beat me with was such a success as a terror-inducer, that not only did it take on the weight of becoming a proper noun in our home but also, it become scary enough that all she had to do was mention using it and I would curl up into a well-behaved little bundle of terror. Very effective child-rearing. Skinner would be beaming with delight. For years, just the sight of this particular utensil in our kitchen or any other, absolutely curdled my blood. Well into adulthood.
Although I no longer have that reaction, as you can see, I still can't bring myself to type its name. I tried. But I think because it sort of became a title of something horrible, just naming it, as ordinary as it is, still fills me now with a sense of humiliation that's just nauseating.
Here's a fun little ironic catch-22 I've learned recently. Children who are physically and sexually abused can develop a huge phobia of suffocating. This would certainly explain my weekly hysterical fits and attempts to hide from my Mom when it was time to wash my hair in the kitchen sink. Her method of expressing frustration with my aversion to having my head shoved under water? Dragging me by my scalp to the kitchen from where ever I was hiding, making the water very hot and pulling my hair and hitting me while she lathered up my locks. Which, of course, is abusive, which, of course, produces the reluctance to have my head submerged.
So... by doing that, she inadvertently, you know, made the weekly hair-washing something that much more a thing I would go wild trying avoid.
Nice.
Speaking of suffocating the children, did I mention how much I love true crime? I guess, in part, because -unless it's some crap like The Zodiac Killer or Jack the Ripper- all the books and shows about True Crime end with the bad guy getting busted and getting the chair or going up for ages. I like the sense of resolution that comes with that. The bad guys always tank. The mystery gets solved. Justice is served. And stuff.
I also like how they really want you to hate the perpetrator. That way, you are totally psyched when everything blows up in their faces at the end. Especially Ann Rule- holy shit! She's relentless! I can't help but feel twistedly delighted by how over the top she goes. Not only to make the victim seem angelic, but to drive home, again and again, the inhumanity of the bad guy. It's SO lopsided.
I love it.
I don't care- I know it's stilted. But it makes me grin.
It's not just books, though. I love True Crime TV, too. And as I've started doing the work to contend with, you know, going from victim to survivor (still makes me feel self-conscious just saying that), it seems like every time I'm anywhere NEAR a TV set, there's some special or program about predators or busting pervert pedophiles via the Internet or some screwy serial rapist guy. I'm sure in part, yeah, I'm just NOTICING it more because these are issues on my mind. But, damn. It sure seems the last couple of months like, yo, all these shows are about busting sex criminals.
People around me who are not survivors are concerned: should you be watching something like that right now?
Fuck! At least the guys they go after on TV are getting busted. What could be more satisfying? Legally, there's absolutely nothing I can do to nail my perpetrators. So, really, seeing these guys get crucified... it almost gives me that sense of vindication that watching the Sox win the World Series did.
Plus, I actually find myself learning.
Like, I was watching some show recently about this crazy guy, the Mall Rapist. When he wasn't walking into stores and assaulting cashiers in the back room, he was strolling around the toy sections of department stores with a video camera hidden in a back pack, looking for kids who had stepped away from their parents to look at some game or doll or what not.
He'd set his backpack down on a shelf, aim it at the kid, then go over and take out his penis and fondle them et cetera. He did this to hundreds- HUNDREDS- of kids over the course of 6 years- when they finally busted him, the cops found all these hours of video of all these kids he was rubbing himself all over. And not one report was ever turned in, not a single complaint.
The detective who busted him- she was so fucking good.
When the reporter talking to her expressed amazement that there had never been any complaints from parents about these incidents, she explained that the parents probably had no idea anything had happened. No adults ever witnessed these crimes, and she said, it would be unlikely a child would be able to report what had happened to their folks. She said that because kids are taught to trust adults, when a grown up does something really fucked up physically to them, the kid basically freezes up and goes into a kind of shock. They don't understand what's happening or why they feel afraid or what they are supposed to do. So they just shut off temporarily in their minds. The way a bird seems dead when you pry it out of the jaws of a cat.
This has happened to me since I was very, very small. So finding out it was a normal reaction was validating.
Whenever I was being hit or having somebody bigger than me do anything to fuck with me physically. When the was fear too big for it to fit inside of my tiny being.
There have been so many times in my life from so early on when it wasn't safe to be in my body. I think about scared little animals scrambling away from people, think about them frozen in a rictus of shock, utterly still- that bird in the cat's jaws thing. When animals freeze up like that, in their minds, they are scrambling away. Clawing frantically, unthinking to reach some remote corner inside their mind where they cannot be reached or captured.
Little kids.
Leveled internally to animal terror.
There are flash-bulb moments in my childhood recollection- illuminated in inky darkness, only barest details, blurred auras framing them. Who knows what the incidental drama was that brought on those parental eruptions of rage. Really, since there's never a reason to fill a little human being with the fear of death, I don't think it matters what random thing prompted each incident.
There are hundreds of these snapshot-sized memories.
One time, it was because I left my Bionic Woman doll on the stairs where I had been playing with it. One time, it was because I was in a tent, hiding under a blanket, crying out for help because there was a bee flying around in the tent and bees scared me terribly. One time, it was because I talked back. One time, it was because I ran away from home for 2 hours.
It doesn't really matter why. There is no real why.
Sometimes, the only real reason is that it just feels good to hurt somebody who's too small to hurt you back. Maybe it's cathartic. To see little eyes go round and dilate with helpless terror. To beat on something small and living with both fists until yr fury runs its course and yr head clears. To exert power over somebody so totally and make them feel helpless, helpless and so afraid that they shut down inside and freeze.
I guess that feels good. To be able to do that to a kid.
Like, maybe life can kick you around and make you feel small, but you have these tiny, soft, easily overwhelmed human beings on hand who adore you, who you matter to. Who you can pick up and throw across a room.
Then you don't feel so small and so powerless.
You matter again.
I guess.
And then you can forget all about them. And go back to the things that really matter. Things about you. Yr life, yr world. Those little kids, they owe you. Because you feed them and house them and clothe them and go to work to support them. They owe you. You own them. They owe you peace and quiet and obedience and to be quiet and invisible. They owe you the ability to come home and not have to think about them or look at them or hear them making noise or find their toys somewhere ridiculous. They owe you not to cause any trouble, not to ask you anything, to stay out of the way.
They owe you to take on yr grown up sized rage about life, to have that rage turn them numb and split their little consciousness, splinter their minds, bruise their arms and legs, their backs, their faces.
They owe you love.
I guess.
๑ changing yr mind ๑
~Childhood Abuse Changes the Brain~
A study published in Cerebrum in late 2000 demonstrated that childhood abuse and neglect results in permanent physical changes to the developing human brain. These changes in brain structure appear to be significant enough to cause psychological and emotional problems in adulthood.
Martin Teicher and his colleagues identified four different abnormalities in the brain that were much more prevalent in adult survivors of abuse and neglect than in adults who had not been abused.
Adults abused as children exhibited abnormal development of the left hemisphere of the brain. The researchers reported that these problems may be associated with depression and memory problems.
Abuse survivors failed to integrate the functions of the left and right hemispheres as well as those who had not been abused. The researchers suggest that this may be caused by a decrease in the size of the corpus callosum - the fibers that connect the right and left sides of the brain. There was a difference between males and females in their response to abuse and neglect. Neglect was the more likely factor to reduce the size of the corpus callosum in males, while sexual abuse appeared to have no effect. Sexual abuse was associated with a decrease in the size in females, with neglect having no effect.
Adults who had been abused as children were more likely to experience epileptic seizures caused by changes to the limbic system, a part of the brain that controls emotions. A variety of emotions accompanied these seizures, including sadness, embarrassment, anger, intense laughter without feeling happy, serenity, and fear.
Teicher and his colleagues found that abuse survivors were twice as likely as non-abused to have abnormal electroencephalogram readings (EEGs). The type of abnormality found is reported by the authors to be associated with aggression and self-destructive behavior. Teicher concluded that "the trauma of abuse induces a cascade of effects, including changes in hormones and neurotransmitters that mediate development of vulnerable brain regions." Previous research has shown that stress affects that developing brains of several species of animals. It should not surprise us to find that humans respond the same way.
Martin Teicher and his colleagues identified four different abnormalities in the brain that were much more prevalent in adult survivors of abuse and neglect than in adults who had not been abused.
Adults abused as children exhibited abnormal development of the left hemisphere of the brain. The researchers reported that these problems may be associated with depression and memory problems.
Abuse survivors failed to integrate the functions of the left and right hemispheres as well as those who had not been abused. The researchers suggest that this may be caused by a decrease in the size of the corpus callosum - the fibers that connect the right and left sides of the brain. There was a difference between males and females in their response to abuse and neglect. Neglect was the more likely factor to reduce the size of the corpus callosum in males, while sexual abuse appeared to have no effect. Sexual abuse was associated with a decrease in the size in females, with neglect having no effect.
Adults who had been abused as children were more likely to experience epileptic seizures caused by changes to the limbic system, a part of the brain that controls emotions. A variety of emotions accompanied these seizures, including sadness, embarrassment, anger, intense laughter without feeling happy, serenity, and fear.
Teicher and his colleagues found that abuse survivors were twice as likely as non-abused to have abnormal electroencephalogram readings (EEGs). The type of abnormality found is reported by the authors to be associated with aggression and self-destructive behavior. Teicher concluded that "the trauma of abuse induces a cascade of effects, including changes in hormones and neurotransmitters that mediate development of vulnerable brain regions." Previous research has shown that stress affects that developing brains of several species of animals. It should not surprise us to find that humans respond the same way.
~From Leonard Holmes, PhD
"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
~Benjamin Franklin
Trauma changes the way your brain works. It actually forces the human brain to reroute itself electrochemically in order to take in experiences that are threatening to yr survival.
This is important to understand. Part of what happens to us after traumas like child abuse or rape is that we try to minimize not only the experience itself, but also, we try to minimize the effects that those experiences have. This is part of denial and denial helps to protect us from trauma.
However, when we start trying to acknowledge these traumatic issues, the urge to minimize them- sometimes even as we begin understanding their impact- can get in the way.
For me, one thing that helped me with getting over my impulse to minimize was finding out that the violence of my past -particularly that which occurred as my brain was developing, during childhood and when I was a teenager- had physically changed the way my brain processes things. I went into recovery from these issues with an attitude that I was making "too big a deal" out of them. Even though everything I read about the symptoms of trauma struck familiar chords with me, it was hard to get around my skeptical attitude. As badly as I had searched for explanations for my self-harming, self-defeating behaviors, when I began wondering if there was a connection between those things and having been raped and beaten... I didn't want it to be true.
I didn't want it to be true that my parents had abused me, had neglected me, that people in my family who I loved were sexual abusers. I didn't want it to be true that the first boy I fell in love with was a rapist, was a girl-hater, was violent and abusive.
I loved all of these people. It was one thing to love them and know they were screwed up, difficult to deal with. It was something else entirely to say, think, feel, understand, acknowledge: I loved monsters.
I know... that sounds silly. But that's how I felt. They were monsters and I still loved them. They still mattered to me.
I didn't want that to be true.
And I also didn't want it to be true that things they did had fucked my life up for years and years. I kept wanting that to be something about me, something wrong about me, something unworthy in me, something lacking in my character... anything.
I didn't want it to matter, the stuff that happened when I was a kid. I didn't want any of that stuff to have the power to change me, alter the course of my life.
But it did. It literally changed the way my brain works.
Something with the power to do that was a lot harder to dismiss. A lot harder to minimize. A lot harder to make pretend it was no big deal.
It wasn't that I was making a big deal out of it. It WAS a big deal.
You see what I mean? Even when I try to make pretend, when I tell myself I'm making a big deal out of nothing... I dunno. Something about reading these studies about the brain being physically altered by traumas... I guess it gives me proof. Proof that even I can't dance around. Something objective that I can't change with my attitude, my opinion, my skepticism, my denial, my grief...
I need that sometimes. Because even as I am doing work to alter my behavior, to reverse that damage, to take back my life and learn to circumvent the ways these things in my past have controlled me... even as I do that work, I still often can't believe. I don't want to, sometimes. I want it to all be a made-up story, a silly theory, something I can think away or wish away.
I guess I've gotten so used to thinking I just suck, that I'm just fucked up, that that's why I've done things I've done or not done. So sometimes, I need something outside of the war-zone in my skull to show me: this happened. It's real. It changed you. You can do work to heal those changes. It's real.
This is important to understand. Part of what happens to us after traumas like child abuse or rape is that we try to minimize not only the experience itself, but also, we try to minimize the effects that those experiences have. This is part of denial and denial helps to protect us from trauma.
However, when we start trying to acknowledge these traumatic issues, the urge to minimize them- sometimes even as we begin understanding their impact- can get in the way.
For me, one thing that helped me with getting over my impulse to minimize was finding out that the violence of my past -particularly that which occurred as my brain was developing, during childhood and when I was a teenager- had physically changed the way my brain processes things. I went into recovery from these issues with an attitude that I was making "too big a deal" out of them. Even though everything I read about the symptoms of trauma struck familiar chords with me, it was hard to get around my skeptical attitude. As badly as I had searched for explanations for my self-harming, self-defeating behaviors, when I began wondering if there was a connection between those things and having been raped and beaten... I didn't want it to be true.
I didn't want it to be true that my parents had abused me, had neglected me, that people in my family who I loved were sexual abusers. I didn't want it to be true that the first boy I fell in love with was a rapist, was a girl-hater, was violent and abusive.
I loved all of these people. It was one thing to love them and know they were screwed up, difficult to deal with. It was something else entirely to say, think, feel, understand, acknowledge: I loved monsters.
I know... that sounds silly. But that's how I felt. They were monsters and I still loved them. They still mattered to me.
I didn't want that to be true.
And I also didn't want it to be true that things they did had fucked my life up for years and years. I kept wanting that to be something about me, something wrong about me, something unworthy in me, something lacking in my character... anything.
I didn't want it to matter, the stuff that happened when I was a kid. I didn't want any of that stuff to have the power to change me, alter the course of my life.
But it did. It literally changed the way my brain works.
Something with the power to do that was a lot harder to dismiss. A lot harder to minimize. A lot harder to make pretend it was no big deal.
It wasn't that I was making a big deal out of it. It WAS a big deal.
You see what I mean? Even when I try to make pretend, when I tell myself I'm making a big deal out of nothing... I dunno. Something about reading these studies about the brain being physically altered by traumas... I guess it gives me proof. Proof that even I can't dance around. Something objective that I can't change with my attitude, my opinion, my skepticism, my denial, my grief...
I need that sometimes. Because even as I am doing work to alter my behavior, to reverse that damage, to take back my life and learn to circumvent the ways these things in my past have controlled me... even as I do that work, I still often can't believe. I don't want to, sometimes. I want it to all be a made-up story, a silly theory, something I can think away or wish away.
I guess I've gotten so used to thinking I just suck, that I'm just fucked up, that that's why I've done things I've done or not done. So sometimes, I need something outside of the war-zone in my skull to show me: this happened. It's real. It changed you. You can do work to heal those changes. It's real.
CTA article
HelpGuide Article
Medscape Article
Harvard/Maclean's article
{sticks & stones{
Emotional Abuse~ is any attitude, behavior, or failure to act on the part of the caregiver that interferes with a child's mental health or social development.
Emotional abuse can range from a simple verbal insult to an extreme form of punishment. The following are examples of emotional abuse:
ignoring or rejection
N
lack of physical affection such as hugs
N
lack of praise, positive reinforcement
N
yelling or screaming
N
threatening or frightening
N
negative comparisons to others
N
belittling or name-calling
N
shaming or humiliating
N
habitual scapegoating or blaming
N
parental child abduction
N
using extreme or bizarre forms of punishment, such as confinement to a closet or dark room, tying to a chair for long periods of time, or terrorizing a child
Emotional abuse is almost always present when another form of abuse is found. Some overlap exists between the definitions of emotional abuse and emotional neglect; regardless, they are both child abuse.
Emotional abuse of children can come from adults or from other children:
*parents or caregivers
*teachers or athletic coaches
*siblings
*bullies at school
*rigid peer social cliques
~words of wisdom~
You are just like yr father. Yr father's family never gave a damn about us. I begged yr Uncle Joe for grocery money because yr father's support checks were always late. I had to empty yr birthday money savings account to buy food. I'm going to send you away to a state sponsored farm for delinquents. I don't want you dressing like a boy. You don't need new clothes. Don't you ever repeat anything that is said in this house. If I have to come in there and get you, I will beat you black and blue. We're putting you in a mental hospital. I was raped by a boy who took me to a dance when I was yr age. There are men in this world who are only going to see you as a walking cunt they can stick their dick in. I thought about taking that whole bottle full of Valiums while you were baby-sitting. Have you had an abortion? If you want to know about sex, ask yr friend's mother. You don't need a bra. You don't need to go shopping for bras. You can just wear MY old bras. Yr father left drugs lying all over the house so that people coming to see if they want to buy it would think I was a drug addict. You're fat. You need a bra. You look like you're going to a funeral. You don't know what looks good on you. Yr father wants to sell the house for money so we'll have to move into an apartment. Do you have to shower every day? You can dish it out but you can't take it. Only a lesbian would wear those shoes. You bitch. You think I'm yr maid. Yr sister is frigid. Yr grandparents beat yr uncle. You're just like yr father's sister. They think they're better than me, the whole family.
๑ family values ๑
Traits of Families that Tolerate Incest and Child Abuse
๑Frequently poly-abusive
[Abuse of several kinds are present.]
๑Duplicity, deceit, collective secrets.
[The family hides aspects of its nature to appear "normal" to itself and outsiders.]
๑Rigid and tightly controlled.
๑Demand for blind, absolute loyalty.
๑Poor role definitions.
[Children are forced into the role of an adult to meet the immature emotional, sexual or psychological needs and demands of adults.]
๑Poor boundaries.
[Disrespect for privacy, rights, individuality.]
๑Parents poorly differentiated in their families of origin.
[Parents never became fully mature adults or competent parents.]
๑Conflictual marriage or troubled divorce.
๑Often lots of moving, change, traumatic stress.
[Incest often takes place in chaotic households, in instability. The chaos provides a cover for or distraction from inappropriate behavior.]
๑Low level of appropriate touch.
[Except for sexual or violent contacxt, touching is considered taboo.]
๑Often have a compensating veneer of religiosity.
[Incest perpetrators can hide behind an external religiosity.]
Traits of Healthy Families
๑Individuality is respected.
๑Differences are tolerated.
๑Boundaries and roles are clearly defined.
๑Problem-solving is open and valued.
๑Communication is responsive and accepting.
๑Strong marital bond between parents.
๑Strong ties to extended family, community.
๑Healthy humor, play, fun.
๑Shared spiritual life.
~Based on materials developed by David L. Calof, author of Multiple Personality and Dissociation: Understanding Incest, Abuse, and MPD~
๑ drawing conclusions ๑
Jesus.
I found this book of children's stories that my parents bought when my sister was born. In it were many doodles and scribbles of course. But, man... Maybe other kids drew houses and trees and sunshines and happy happy, but from an artistic as well as a clinical standpoint, the pictures I recognized as having been penned by ME?
God damn. If I had a client show up with these, I would swallow my fucking gum and spurt coffee out my nose, then dial Child Protective.
Okay, here's, uhm, alienation from my age peers. Or, I dunno, perhaps a representation of early Social Anxiety Disorder? Who the fuck knows.
WHAT THE FUCK!?!
I was probably, like 5 when I drew that.
Yikes.
Then here's, uhm... well, I guess this is sexual enticement. You know, the usual thing a first grader is thinking about.
And finally... god damn. Finally, I guess we have bondage, some numbers and what appears to be an angel or scary disembodied weird entity holding me hostage.
God damn.
Jesus.
I found this book of children's stories that my parents bought when my sister was born. In it were many doodles and scribbles of course. But, man... Maybe other kids drew houses and trees and sunshines and happy happy, but from an artistic as well as a clinical standpoint, the pictures I recognized as having been penned by ME?
God damn. If I had a client show up with these, I would swallow my fucking gum and spurt coffee out my nose, then dial Child Protective.
Okay, here's, uhm, alienation from my age peers. Or, I dunno, perhaps a representation of early Social Anxiety Disorder? Who the fuck knows.
WHAT THE FUCK!?!
I was probably, like 5 when I drew that.
Yikes.
Then here's, uhm... well, I guess this is sexual enticement. You know, the usual thing a first grader is thinking about.
And finally... god damn. Finally, I guess we have bondage, some numbers and what appears to be an angel or scary disembodied weird entity holding me hostage.
God damn.
๑ when love is hate ๑
Sexual Abuse of a child is any sexual act between an adult and a child,
including:
touching, or kissing a child's genitals
making the child fondle the adult's genitals
penetration of any kind
incest
rape, oral sex or sodomy
exposure to adult sexuality in any forms
showing sex organs to a child
exposure to sexual acts
showing pornographic material
telling children "dirty" stories or jokes
forcing the child to undress
spying on them in the bathroom/bedroom
sexual exploitation
exposure to Internet pornography
meeting children for sexual liaisons
child prostitution
using a child in the production of pornography
The above acts are considered child abuse when they are committed by a relative or by a caretaker, such as a parent, babysitter, or daycare provider, whether inside the home or apart from the home. If a stranger commits the act, it is called sexual assault.
The legal age of consent for two people to have sexual relations ranges from 12 to 21, and varies by state within the United States and by country. In most states, having sex with a person younger than the legal age of consent is against the law. Even if the two parties agree to the sexual relationship, it is still against the law. Each state is very specific as to its laws about sex with minors.
Sexual abuse is especially complicated because of the power differential between the adult and child, because of the negotiations that must occur between adult and child, and because the child has no way to assimilate the experience into a mature understanding of intimacy. Regardless of the child's behavior or reactions, it is the responsibility of the adult not to engage in sexual acts with children.
Sexual abuse is never the child's fault.
The legal age of consent for two people to have sexual relations ranges from 12 to 21, and varies by state within the United States and by country. In most states, having sex with a person younger than the legal age of consent is against the law. Even if the two parties agree to the sexual relationship, it is still against the law. Each state is very specific as to its laws about sex with minors.
Sexual abuse is especially complicated because of the power differential between the adult and child, because of the negotiations that must occur between adult and child, and because the child has no way to assimilate the experience into a mature understanding of intimacy. Regardless of the child's behavior or reactions, it is the responsibility of the adult not to engage in sexual acts with children.
Sexual abuse is never the child's fault.
๑ disorderly conduct ๑
Conversion disorder is a neurological disorder in which physical symptoms are unconsciously caused by a stressful or traumatic event. An example of this is a person who loses his voice following a situation in which he was afraid to speak. Conversion disorder is one of a group of psychological disorders called somatoform disorders.
Somatoform disorders are psychological disorders which are characterized by physical symptoms that have no apparent physical cause. While potentially difficult to diagnose, conversion disorder is readily treatable. The direct cause of conversion disorder is experiencing a very stressful or traumatic event. The disorder can be considered the way someone copes, or as a psychological expression of the event. Depression and other psychological disorders are commonly seen in patients with conversion disorder.
Everyone who develops conversion disorder was exposed to a traumatic event. However, there are other factors that may increase the likelihood of developing the disorder, including a previous history of personality or psychological disease and/or physical or sexual abuse, particularly in children.
It is important to understand that the symptoms of conversion disorder are involuntary, that is, the person does not consciously act out, or pretend that they have the symptoms. Some of the most common symptoms include:
Somatoform disorders are psychological disorders which are characterized by physical symptoms that have no apparent physical cause. While potentially difficult to diagnose, conversion disorder is readily treatable. The direct cause of conversion disorder is experiencing a very stressful or traumatic event. The disorder can be considered the way someone copes, or as a psychological expression of the event. Depression and other psychological disorders are commonly seen in patients with conversion disorder.
Everyone who develops conversion disorder was exposed to a traumatic event. However, there are other factors that may increase the likelihood of developing the disorder, including a previous history of personality or psychological disease and/or physical or sexual abuse, particularly in children.
It is important to understand that the symptoms of conversion disorder are involuntary, that is, the person does not consciously act out, or pretend that they have the symptoms. Some of the most common symptoms include:
๑Impaired coordination and balance
๑Paralysis of an arm or leg
๑Loss of sensation in a part of the body
๑Loss of a sense, such as blindness or deafness
๑Difficulty swallowing or a sensation of a lump in the throat
๑Loss of sense of pain
๑Tingling or crawling sensations
๑Paralysis of an arm or leg
๑Loss of sensation in a part of the body
๑Loss of a sense, such as blindness or deafness
๑Difficulty swallowing or a sensation of a lump in the throat
๑Loss of sense of pain
๑Tingling or crawling sensations
Diagnosis of conversion disorder may be difficult initially because physical symptoms are most often caused by a physical disorder.
In some cases, patients may begin to recover spontaneously. After physical causes for the symptoms have been ruled out, patients may begin to feel better and symptoms may begin to fade. In some cases, patients may need assistance in recovering from their symptoms.
In some cases, patients may begin to recover spontaneously. After physical causes for the symptoms have been ruled out, patients may begin to feel better and symptoms may begin to fade. In some cases, patients may need assistance in recovering from their symptoms.
~by Maria Borowski, MA
NYU Medical Center
๑ one thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside ๑
NYU Medical Center
๑ one thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside ๑
will she ever write about it? there was a year...or what felt like a year... when she was paralyzed. it happened almost overnight... or maybe that's another memory trick and it was gradual... all i know for sure is she started having trouble walking; they took her to doctors; they had her tested; they paid attention to her...finally... it wasn't exactly that she lost all use of her legs, but she lost a lot of her range of motion; enough to make walking a time-consuming chore... the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with her body...i was too little to be included in any medical discussions; if she and i talked about it, ever, those exchanges are lost now...then, as mysteriously as it came along, it went away; why? what changed? it lasted for months, long enough for them to make slight accommodations for her access, long enough for me to get used to it...then it stopped. not only stopped, but was never discussed, never mentioned again. i asked her about it only once, when we were in our teens, in high school. she got angry- embarrassed, i think- and told me to shut up... much later, in college, i ran across conversion disorder... i had mentioned her paralysis to a csw i knew and she was astonished, asked a lot of questions, though i knew little more than i've told you now... she gave me the name for it. "it's very rare... was there some kind of trauma that predated the onset of her legs not working?" yes. she was raped by my uncle, she tried to tell a grown up, but it was my grandmother and my grandmother was obsessed with my uncle, so they sat her down, her, my uncle and another uncle, and when they were done with her, she never talked about it again. but why i am amazed by her is that even after they silenced her so cruelly... she still tried to tell...to tell everybody...with her body...it wasn't fake; she really couldn't walk...her mind fought that hard to tell the truth...did any grown up's ever recognize that truth as they examined her for some physical cause of her body's betrayal? if they did, did they ever ask her? ever ask my folks? did my folks figure it out? they were medical professionals, themselves, after all... they left us alone with monsters...they weren't around to tell...they had found other things to do that were more important than us...somebody should have figured it out. somebody should have been there. somebody should have. all i know is she was amazing for doing that, for trying to tell the world: they left us alone with monsters and something is wrong and i can't be at home in my body anymore- look at me. LOOK. AT. ME.
๑ disappearer ๑
When I began studying psychology in college, I remember being both relieved and mortified to discover that there was a term for that secret way that, as a kid, I'd had of escaping danger and sorrow. Dissociation. Such an official yet pleasant-sounding word. It makes it seem so mild- as though you are taking stock of a situation, crossing yr arms, turning yr head away and simply displaying yr disapproval. "I absolutely refuse to be associated with this sort of nonsense."
It is a fascinating little feature of the human psyche, dissociation, intended to enable you to cope with stress. In ordinary settings, its function is to help yr brain glide through rough spots you may encounter whilst moseying on about reality. Daydreaming in a boring class or that goofy trick where you focus on a spot on the back of the room while giving a speech to an audience in order to bypass stagefright.
Under less than ideal circumstances- let's say having a gigantic, red-faced, hideously grimacing adult man crouch down about an inch from yr face and scream like a fucking animal at you because you're 5 and did some perfectly ordinary thing a 5 year old would do- dissociation is sort of forced into a far more amped-up version of itself. It supercharges its own wattage in accordance to how rough those rough spots you encounter are.
This is some of how people managed to keep their shit together during things like living in a Nazi slave labor death camp.
Unfortunately, though, if you have to dissociate in that ultra-intense mode for a long period of time or frequently enough, some screwy things can happen in the circuitry of yr brain functions. Like when Dave Navarro watched as his mother's boyfriend murder her and his aunt. Or, even more extreme, when Sybil's mother raped her with a small, hooked implement that was actually intended to fasten those old time shoes that button up the sides.
In the instance of something like that, dissociation can kind of max itself out. You might create a sort of strong box that yr mind can put that experience in and lock it up nice and tight so it doesn't destroy yr ability to continue functioning. That's called repression. Or you might have to compartmentalize that experience so completely, as happened to Sybil, that you actually split off from yr own consciousness completely.
That's how she ended up with all those personalities. Each one represented a sort of off-ramp from the main road of her identity. Her mind created entire other consciousnesses to keep certain incredibly hideous memories away from her.
But I digress.
Some people theorize that dissociation is a form of naturally-occurring self-hypnosis. That sounds plausible to me. One of the things that started happening to me as a kid was that I dissociated so regularly in response to the stress at home that I started doing it spontaneously, even when nothing was happening that was all that terrifying or violent. I brought home many a concerned or irritated note from teachers- going as far back as kindergarten- regarding my tendency to "daydream" in class- or, as one teacher put it, the way I often seemed to be "off in my own little world".
At the time (and it's probably still this way for the most part, unfortunately), this "spacing out" wasn't widely recognized -even by people who worked with kids- as a possible sign of child abuse or neglect. They were pretty much only keeping an eye out for crap like bruises and shoelessness. So, of course, me being lost in space all the time seemed like something that could, I dunno, be resolved by my mom giving me a good stern talking to. Or by making me practice my numbers and letters off to one side while the rest of the class had recess.
It is a fascinating little feature of the human psyche, dissociation, intended to enable you to cope with stress. In ordinary settings, its function is to help yr brain glide through rough spots you may encounter whilst moseying on about reality. Daydreaming in a boring class or that goofy trick where you focus on a spot on the back of the room while giving a speech to an audience in order to bypass stagefright.
Under less than ideal circumstances- let's say having a gigantic, red-faced, hideously grimacing adult man crouch down about an inch from yr face and scream like a fucking animal at you because you're 5 and did some perfectly ordinary thing a 5 year old would do- dissociation is sort of forced into a far more amped-up version of itself. It supercharges its own wattage in accordance to how rough those rough spots you encounter are.
This is some of how people managed to keep their shit together during things like living in a Nazi slave labor death camp.
Unfortunately, though, if you have to dissociate in that ultra-intense mode for a long period of time or frequently enough, some screwy things can happen in the circuitry of yr brain functions. Like when Dave Navarro watched as his mother's boyfriend murder her and his aunt. Or, even more extreme, when Sybil's mother raped her with a small, hooked implement that was actually intended to fasten those old time shoes that button up the sides.
In the instance of something like that, dissociation can kind of max itself out. You might create a sort of strong box that yr mind can put that experience in and lock it up nice and tight so it doesn't destroy yr ability to continue functioning. That's called repression. Or you might have to compartmentalize that experience so completely, as happened to Sybil, that you actually split off from yr own consciousness completely.
That's how she ended up with all those personalities. Each one represented a sort of off-ramp from the main road of her identity. Her mind created entire other consciousnesses to keep certain incredibly hideous memories away from her.
But I digress.
Some people theorize that dissociation is a form of naturally-occurring self-hypnosis. That sounds plausible to me. One of the things that started happening to me as a kid was that I dissociated so regularly in response to the stress at home that I started doing it spontaneously, even when nothing was happening that was all that terrifying or violent. I brought home many a concerned or irritated note from teachers- going as far back as kindergarten- regarding my tendency to "daydream" in class- or, as one teacher put it, the way I often seemed to be "off in my own little world".
At the time (and it's probably still this way for the most part, unfortunately), this "spacing out" wasn't widely recognized -even by people who worked with kids- as a possible sign of child abuse or neglect. They were pretty much only keeping an eye out for crap like bruises and shoelessness. So, of course, me being lost in space all the time seemed like something that could, I dunno, be resolved by my mom giving me a good stern talking to. Or by making me practice my numbers and letters off to one side while the rest of the class had recess.
Bad, bad little far out girl.
~Me, off in Electric Catieland~
~Me, off in Electric Catieland~
๑ you belong to me ๑
BEFORE YOU FINISH READING THIS ANOTHER WOMAN WILL BE RAPED
Somewhere in America, a woman is raped every 2 minutes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
In 1996, 307,000 women were the victim of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. [National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 1997.]
Between 1995 and 1996, more than 670,000 women were the victim of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. [National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 1997.]
One of the most startling aspects of sex crimes is how many go unreported. The most common reasons given by women for not reporting these crimes are the belief that it is a private or personal matter and that they fear reprisal from the assailant.
In 1996, only 31% of rapes and sexual assaults were reported to law enforcement officials - less than one in every three. [National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 1997.]
Approximately 68% of rape victims knew their assailant. [Violence against Women. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1994]
Approximately 28% of victims are raped by husbands or boyfriends, 35% by acquaintances, and 5% by other relatives. [Violence against Women. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1994]
According to the U.S. Department of Justice:
One of every four rapes take place in a public area or in a parking garage.
29% of female victims reported that the offender was a stranger.
68% of rapes occur between the hours of 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.
At least 45% of rapists were under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
In 29% of rapes, the offender used a weapon.
In 47% of rapes, the victim sustained injuries other than rape injuries.
75% of female rape victims require medical care after the attack.
Family violence and abuse are among the most prevalent forms of interpersonal violence against women and young children - both boys and girls. The sexual abuse of a child should never be "just a family matter," but many children are afraid to report an incident to the police because the abuser is often a family friend or relative.
In 1995, local child protective service agencies identified 126,000 children who were victims of either substantiated or indicated sexual abuse; of these, 75% were girls. Nearly 30% of child victims were between the ages of 4 and 7. [Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Child Maltreatment, 1995.]
Approximately one-third of all juvenile victims of sexual abuse cases are children younger than 6 years of age. [Violence and the Family. Report of the American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family, 1996.]
According to the Justice Department, one in two rape victims is under age 18; one in six is under age 12. [Child Rape Victims, 1992. U.S.Department of Justice.]
About 81% of rape victims are white; 18% are black; 1% are of other races. [Violence against Women, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, 1994.]
While 9 out of 10 rape victims are women, men and boys are also victimized by this crime. In 1995, 32,130 males age 12 and older were victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. [National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 1996.]
Teens 16 to 19 were three and one-half times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. [National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 1996.]
Those with a household income under $7,500 were twice as likely as the general population to be victims of a sexual assault. [National Crime Victimization Survey. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, 1996.]
~information from: feminist.com
{first love{
The guy who raped me is named George Tork. He lives on Mildred Avenue in Syracuse, NY. It's a five minute drive from where I live right now.
He was my first real boyfriend, the first guy I ever had sex with and I went out with him until I graduated high school. Literally, I broke up with him about an hour after I had my diploma handed to me. June 21, 1986. It was also his birthday.
That wasn't the last time I heard from him, though. The summer after I graduated, and for an indefinite amount of time after that, George stalked me. He bothered the people I had been friends with, went to places and events where he thought I might go, had the garage windows shot out of the house where I lived and also had our house broken into and burglarized.
He dated girls who looked like me and beat them. At one point, he lured me away from my friends at an outdoor concert when I was tripping on acid and I was missing for several hours, during which time he tried to convince me I was too unstable to function in the real world without him, then tried to force himself on me sexually.
Back then, people didn't talk about these things, really. The word 'stalking' wasn't in common use and there weren't really any laws specifically aimed at stopping these kinds of crimes against personal safety. I didn't know that this behavior was abusive. I had only a thin understanding that I was actually in any kind of danger. All I knew was that I had been tremendously unhappy for many months before I finally got over my fear of being signal and my guilt about leaving somebody I loved who had been such a big part of my life for so long. I wasn't even sure, really, what it was that had changed, because things between us seemed to have changed so slowly over time, becoming more and more suffocating and less and less fun, loving and meaningful.
I didn't even understand that I had been raped. I didn't know it could be rape if it was yr boyfriend. If it was somebody you had had sex with already.
There was a lot I didn't know.
When we were dating, George slowly isolated me from my girlfriends. They weren't as smart as me, as deep as me, as creative as me. They didn't really get me. Then there was my family. My father was a hypocrite; my sister was jealous of me.
Everybody wants to feel special. Especially when they're a teenager and kind of a misfit. Okay, not just kind of one.
But the more time I spent with George and George's friends, doing things George felt were important, listening to the music George said was worthwhile, spending less and less time alone or with my friends or with my family, the more it turned out that I was just as inadequate as everybody else in my life. Special, yes. But woefully flawed. An airhead with a 170 IQ. A ditz who read Kafka. A space cadet who wrote her first novel at 13.
I needed somebody with more sense than me to make sure all that potential didn't go to waste.
After I broke up with George, I made a LOT of friends. Writers, painters, photographers, musicians, activists, deejays, skaters, film-makers, students, teachers. I started painting, making music, writing again, making my own clothes, learned how to dance, saw some of the most important bands and movies on the planet at the time, started reading again.
I started to live a life.
Most of my friends were Punk Rockers who at least LOOKED intimidating, even if they were pretty much harmless. They were at least sufficiently worrisome enough to George to cause him to refrain from assaulting me or having me assaulted.
When I began trying to go to college,though, he was a student there and had mutual acquaintances of ours spy on me. It bothered me enough, finally, for me to say something to my best guy friend, a boy who, unlike most guys I knew on the Underground Music Scene, was not only physically imposing, but had a lot of common sense.
It doesn't really matter what it was that my friend took it upon himself to do or say to George. I knew nothing about it, but apparently, my friend had a chat with him and made it plain that it would be a very bad idea to look at me, speak to me or even walk down the same side of the street as me.
After that, things got better, though at the time I had no idea why.
Over the years, I have run into women who had involvement with him, minor or major. Without exception, these girls report that his instability, girl-hatred, drug-abuse and violence towards females has only increased since I knew him.
The place where he raped me when he was my boyfriend was in a playground in the apartment complex where I lived when the first few years after my family moved to Syracuse from Boston. Every day after that, on my way to school or to anywhere else, I had to pass this sight.
I broke up with George Tork 20 years ago this month.
He was my first real boyfriend, the first guy I ever had sex with and I went out with him until I graduated high school. Literally, I broke up with him about an hour after I had my diploma handed to me. June 21, 1986. It was also his birthday.
That wasn't the last time I heard from him, though. The summer after I graduated, and for an indefinite amount of time after that, George stalked me. He bothered the people I had been friends with, went to places and events where he thought I might go, had the garage windows shot out of the house where I lived and also had our house broken into and burglarized.
He dated girls who looked like me and beat them. At one point, he lured me away from my friends at an outdoor concert when I was tripping on acid and I was missing for several hours, during which time he tried to convince me I was too unstable to function in the real world without him, then tried to force himself on me sexually.
Back then, people didn't talk about these things, really. The word 'stalking' wasn't in common use and there weren't really any laws specifically aimed at stopping these kinds of crimes against personal safety. I didn't know that this behavior was abusive. I had only a thin understanding that I was actually in any kind of danger. All I knew was that I had been tremendously unhappy for many months before I finally got over my fear of being signal and my guilt about leaving somebody I loved who had been such a big part of my life for so long. I wasn't even sure, really, what it was that had changed, because things between us seemed to have changed so slowly over time, becoming more and more suffocating and less and less fun, loving and meaningful.
I didn't even understand that I had been raped. I didn't know it could be rape if it was yr boyfriend. If it was somebody you had had sex with already.
There was a lot I didn't know.
When we were dating, George slowly isolated me from my girlfriends. They weren't as smart as me, as deep as me, as creative as me. They didn't really get me. Then there was my family. My father was a hypocrite; my sister was jealous of me.
Everybody wants to feel special. Especially when they're a teenager and kind of a misfit. Okay, not just kind of one.
But the more time I spent with George and George's friends, doing things George felt were important, listening to the music George said was worthwhile, spending less and less time alone or with my friends or with my family, the more it turned out that I was just as inadequate as everybody else in my life. Special, yes. But woefully flawed. An airhead with a 170 IQ. A ditz who read Kafka. A space cadet who wrote her first novel at 13.
I needed somebody with more sense than me to make sure all that potential didn't go to waste.
After I broke up with George, I made a LOT of friends. Writers, painters, photographers, musicians, activists, deejays, skaters, film-makers, students, teachers. I started painting, making music, writing again, making my own clothes, learned how to dance, saw some of the most important bands and movies on the planet at the time, started reading again.
I started to live a life.
Most of my friends were Punk Rockers who at least LOOKED intimidating, even if they were pretty much harmless. They were at least sufficiently worrisome enough to George to cause him to refrain from assaulting me or having me assaulted.
When I began trying to go to college,though, he was a student there and had mutual acquaintances of ours spy on me. It bothered me enough, finally, for me to say something to my best guy friend, a boy who, unlike most guys I knew on the Underground Music Scene, was not only physically imposing, but had a lot of common sense.
It doesn't really matter what it was that my friend took it upon himself to do or say to George. I knew nothing about it, but apparently, my friend had a chat with him and made it plain that it would be a very bad idea to look at me, speak to me or even walk down the same side of the street as me.
After that, things got better, though at the time I had no idea why.
Over the years, I have run into women who had involvement with him, minor or major. Without exception, these girls report that his instability, girl-hatred, drug-abuse and violence towards females has only increased since I knew him.
The place where he raped me when he was my boyfriend was in a playground in the apartment complex where I lived when the first few years after my family moved to Syracuse from Boston. Every day after that, on my way to school or to anywhere else, I had to pass this sight.
I broke up with George Tork 20 years ago this month.
๑thela hun ginjeet๑
Who commits sexual assaults?
Any sort of sexual activity between two or more people in which one of the people is involved against his or her will. The sexual activity involved in an assault can include many different experiences. Women can be the victims of unwanted touching, grabbing, oral sex, anal sex, sexual penetration with an object, and/or sexual intercourse.
There are a lot of ways that women can be involved in sexual activity against their will. The force used by the aggressor can be either physical or non-physical. Some women are forced or pressured into having sex with someone who has some form of authority over them (e.g., doctor, teacher, boss). Women can be bribed or manipulated into sexual activity against their will. Others may be unable to give their consent because they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In some cases, the sexual aggressor threatens to hurt the woman or people that she cares about. Finally, some assaults include physical force or violence.
Who commits sexual assaults?
Often, when we think about who commits sexual assault or rape, we imagine the aggressor is a stranger to the victim. Contrary to popular belief, sexual assault does not typically occur between strangers. The National Crime Victimization Survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, found that 76% of sexually assaulted women were attacked by a current or former husband, cohabitating partner, friend, or date.
On average, only 18% of survivors report their assaults were commit by strangers.
How often do sexual assaults happen?
Estimating rates of sexual violence against women is a difficult task. Many factors stop women from reporting these crimes to police or disclosing them to interviewers. They feel it is is such a personal experience, they blame themselves, they are afraid of how others may react, they do not think it is useful to make such a report... However, there are statistics that demonstrate the magnitude of this problem in our country. For instance, a large-scale study conducted on several college campuses found that 20% of women reported that they had been raped in their lifetime.
That is: 1 out of every 5 women in a class with you.
The National Crime Victimization Survey estimated that 500,000 sexual assaults occurred in the US from 1992 to 1993. Of those assaults, about 28% were attempted rapes.
What happens to women after they are sexually assaulted?
After a sexual assault, women can experience a wide range of reactions. It is extremely important to note that there is no one pattern of response. Some women respond immediately, others may have delayed reactions. Some women are affected by the assault for a long time whereas others appear to recover rather quickly.
In the early stages, many women report feeling shock, confusion, anxiety, and/or numbness. Sometimes women will experience feelings of denial. In other words, they may not fully acknowledge what has happened to them or they may downplay the intensity of the experience.
This reaction may be more common among women who are assaulted by someone they know.
What are some early reactions to sexual assault?
In the first few days and weeks following the assault, it is very normal for a woman to experience intense and sometimes unpredictable emotions. She may have repeated strong memories of the event that are difficult to ignore, and nightmares are not uncommon. Women also report having difficulty concentrating and sleeping, and they may feel jumpy or on edge. While these initial reactions are normal and expected, some women may experience severe, highly disruptive symptoms that make it incredibly difficult to function in the first month following the assault.
When these problems disrupt the woman's daily life, and prevent her from seeking assistance or telling friends and family members, the woman may have Acute Stress Disorder (ASD).
Symptoms of ASD include:
feeling numb and detached, like being in a daze or a dream
feeling that the world is strange and unreal
difficulty remembering important parts of the assault
reliving the assault through repeated thoughts, memories, or nightmares
avoidance of things that remind the woman of the assault
anxiety, difficulty sleeping, concentrating, etc.
What are some other reactions that women have following a sexual assault?
~Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a common reaction following sexual assault. Symptoms of MDD can include a depressed mood, an inability to enjoy things, difficulty sleeping, changes in patterns of sleeping and eating, problems in concentration and decision-making, feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and decreased self-esteem.
~Research suggests that almost 1/3 of all rape victims have at least one period of MDD during their lives. And for many of these women, the depression can last for a long period of time. Thoughts about suicide are also common. Studies estimate that 1/3 of women who are raped contemplate suicide, and 17% of rape victims actually attempt suicide.
~Many victims of sexual assault report struggling with anger after the assault. Although this is a natural reaction to such a violating event, there is some research that suggests that prolonged, intense anger can interfere with the recovery process and further disrupt a woman's life.
~Shame and guilt are common reactions to sexual assault. Some women blame themselves for what has happened or feel shameful about being an assault victim. This reaction can be even stronger among women who are assaulted by someone that they know, or who do not receive support from their friends, family, or authorities, following the incident. Shame and guilt can also get in the way of a woman's recovery by preventing her from telling others about what happened and getting assistance.
~Social problems can sometimes arise following a sexual assault. A woman can experience problems in her marital relationship or in her friendships. Sometimes an assault survivor will be too anxious or depressed to want to participate in social activities. Many women report difficulty trusting others after the assault, so it can be difficult to develop new relationships. Performance at work and school can also be affected.
~Sexual problems can be among the most long-standing problems experienced by women who are the victims of sexual assault. Women can be afraid of and try to avoid any sexual activity; they may experience an overall decrease in sexual interest and desire.
~Alcohol and drug use can sometimes become problematic for women who are the victims of assault. A large-scale study found that compared to non-victims, rape survivors were 3.4 times more likely to use marijuana, 6 times more likely to use cocaine, and 10 times more likely to use other major drugs. Often, women will report that they use these substances to control other symptoms related to their assault.
~Post-traumatic Stress Disorder may develop. PTSD involves a pattern of symptoms that some individuals develop after experiencing a traumatic event such as sexual assault.
Symptoms of PTSD include:
repeated thoughts of the assault
memories and nightmares
avoidance of thoughts, feelings, and situations related to the assault
difficulty sleeping and concentrating
jumpiness, irritability
One study that examined PTSD symptoms among women who were raped found that 94% of women experienced these symptoms during the two weeks immediately following the rape. Nine months later, about 30% of the women were still reporting this pattern of symptoms. The National Women's Study reported that almost 1/3 of all rape victims develop PTSD sometime during their lives and 11% of rape victims currently suffer from the disorder.
Any sort of sexual activity between two or more people in which one of the people is involved against his or her will. The sexual activity involved in an assault can include many different experiences. Women can be the victims of unwanted touching, grabbing, oral sex, anal sex, sexual penetration with an object, and/or sexual intercourse.
There are a lot of ways that women can be involved in sexual activity against their will. The force used by the aggressor can be either physical or non-physical. Some women are forced or pressured into having sex with someone who has some form of authority over them (e.g., doctor, teacher, boss). Women can be bribed or manipulated into sexual activity against their will. Others may be unable to give their consent because they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In some cases, the sexual aggressor threatens to hurt the woman or people that she cares about. Finally, some assaults include physical force or violence.
Who commits sexual assaults?
Often, when we think about who commits sexual assault or rape, we imagine the aggressor is a stranger to the victim. Contrary to popular belief, sexual assault does not typically occur between strangers. The National Crime Victimization Survey, conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, found that 76% of sexually assaulted women were attacked by a current or former husband, cohabitating partner, friend, or date.
On average, only 18% of survivors report their assaults were commit by strangers.
How often do sexual assaults happen?
Estimating rates of sexual violence against women is a difficult task. Many factors stop women from reporting these crimes to police or disclosing them to interviewers. They feel it is is such a personal experience, they blame themselves, they are afraid of how others may react, they do not think it is useful to make such a report... However, there are statistics that demonstrate the magnitude of this problem in our country. For instance, a large-scale study conducted on several college campuses found that 20% of women reported that they had been raped in their lifetime.
That is: 1 out of every 5 women in a class with you.
The National Crime Victimization Survey estimated that 500,000 sexual assaults occurred in the US from 1992 to 1993. Of those assaults, about 28% were attempted rapes.
What happens to women after they are sexually assaulted?
After a sexual assault, women can experience a wide range of reactions. It is extremely important to note that there is no one pattern of response. Some women respond immediately, others may have delayed reactions. Some women are affected by the assault for a long time whereas others appear to recover rather quickly.
In the early stages, many women report feeling shock, confusion, anxiety, and/or numbness. Sometimes women will experience feelings of denial. In other words, they may not fully acknowledge what has happened to them or they may downplay the intensity of the experience.
This reaction may be more common among women who are assaulted by someone they know.
What are some early reactions to sexual assault?
In the first few days and weeks following the assault, it is very normal for a woman to experience intense and sometimes unpredictable emotions. She may have repeated strong memories of the event that are difficult to ignore, and nightmares are not uncommon. Women also report having difficulty concentrating and sleeping, and they may feel jumpy or on edge. While these initial reactions are normal and expected, some women may experience severe, highly disruptive symptoms that make it incredibly difficult to function in the first month following the assault.
When these problems disrupt the woman's daily life, and prevent her from seeking assistance or telling friends and family members, the woman may have Acute Stress Disorder (ASD).
Symptoms of ASD include:
feeling numb and detached, like being in a daze or a dream
feeling that the world is strange and unreal
difficulty remembering important parts of the assault
reliving the assault through repeated thoughts, memories, or nightmares
avoidance of things that remind the woman of the assault
anxiety, difficulty sleeping, concentrating, etc.
What are some other reactions that women have following a sexual assault?
~Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a common reaction following sexual assault. Symptoms of MDD can include a depressed mood, an inability to enjoy things, difficulty sleeping, changes in patterns of sleeping and eating, problems in concentration and decision-making, feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and decreased self-esteem.
~Research suggests that almost 1/3 of all rape victims have at least one period of MDD during their lives. And for many of these women, the depression can last for a long period of time. Thoughts about suicide are also common. Studies estimate that 1/3 of women who are raped contemplate suicide, and 17% of rape victims actually attempt suicide.
~Many victims of sexual assault report struggling with anger after the assault. Although this is a natural reaction to such a violating event, there is some research that suggests that prolonged, intense anger can interfere with the recovery process and further disrupt a woman's life.
~Shame and guilt are common reactions to sexual assault. Some women blame themselves for what has happened or feel shameful about being an assault victim. This reaction can be even stronger among women who are assaulted by someone that they know, or who do not receive support from their friends, family, or authorities, following the incident. Shame and guilt can also get in the way of a woman's recovery by preventing her from telling others about what happened and getting assistance.
~Social problems can sometimes arise following a sexual assault. A woman can experience problems in her marital relationship or in her friendships. Sometimes an assault survivor will be too anxious or depressed to want to participate in social activities. Many women report difficulty trusting others after the assault, so it can be difficult to develop new relationships. Performance at work and school can also be affected.
~Sexual problems can be among the most long-standing problems experienced by women who are the victims of sexual assault. Women can be afraid of and try to avoid any sexual activity; they may experience an overall decrease in sexual interest and desire.
~Alcohol and drug use can sometimes become problematic for women who are the victims of assault. A large-scale study found that compared to non-victims, rape survivors were 3.4 times more likely to use marijuana, 6 times more likely to use cocaine, and 10 times more likely to use other major drugs. Often, women will report that they use these substances to control other symptoms related to their assault.
~Post-traumatic Stress Disorder may develop. PTSD involves a pattern of symptoms that some individuals develop after experiencing a traumatic event such as sexual assault.
Symptoms of PTSD include:
repeated thoughts of the assault
memories and nightmares
avoidance of thoughts, feelings, and situations related to the assault
difficulty sleeping and concentrating
jumpiness, irritability
One study that examined PTSD symptoms among women who were raped found that 94% of women experienced these symptoms during the two weeks immediately following the rape. Nine months later, about 30% of the women were still reporting this pattern of symptoms. The National Women's Study reported that almost 1/3 of all rape victims develop PTSD sometime during their lives and 11% of rape victims currently suffer from the disorder.
๑ all i want ๑
i want you
to put yr hands
hard on this place
where i become
unbeautiful
too wide
the bend of hips
that shake my wicked walk
the curving of my impotence
the hollow where all memory
is borne and born again
and i want you
to change my mind
about this body find me out my soul
withholding something so supreme
o sweetheart drag me home
i want you to
forgive me there
where i am torn in two
draw all that poison out
with kisses so convincing
pull me down out of the stars the stolen stratosphere
and anchor me back to
the swell of my stomach
the small of my back
where i become unwhole
save me somehow always thinking
something better someone somewhere else
some other time some day some fucking how
it's killing my life here
and i wanna get back to this planet
now
where all my living begins
unwelcomed anywhere
i am unwomanly
even to me
and twisting
in the sheets
where i hide after eden breaks
stuck cursing my own womb
๑ some things are hard to swallow ๑
Victims of sexual child abuse most often develop "coping mechanisms" to survive the memories of the abuse. Among the MANY coping (and not coping so well) mechanisms are the ones listed below:
Compulsive Eating Disorder
Bulimia
Bulimia Nervosa Eating Disorder
Binge Eating Disorders
Anorexia
Alcoholism
Drug Addiction
Suicide Attempts
Gambling
~from the joshua children's foundation
Victims of sexual child abuse most often develop "coping mechanisms" to survive the memories of the abuse. Among the MANY coping (and not coping so well) mechanisms are the ones listed below:
Compulsive Eating Disorder
Bulimia
Bulimia Nervosa Eating Disorder
Binge Eating Disorders
Anorexia
Alcoholism
Drug Addiction
Suicide Attempts
Gambling
~from the joshua children's foundation
A total of 83% of Binge Eating Disorder (BED) patients reported some form of childhood maltreatment.
A total of 59% of BED patients reported emotional abuse.
36% reported physical abuse.
30% reported sexual abuse.
69% reported emotional neglect.
49% reported physical neglect.
There were no differences in the distribution of any form of childhood maltreatment by gender or by obesity status. The different forms of maltreatment were not associated with variability in current body mass index, binge eating, or in the attitudinal features of eating disorders.
Only one of the five forms of maltreatment (physical neglect) was associated with dietary restraint in women. Emotional abuse was significantly associated with greater body dissatisfaction, higher depression, and lower self-esteem in men and women and sexual abuse was associated with greater body dissatisfaction in men. The different forms of maltreatment were unrelated to the age at onset of overweight, dieting, or binge eating.
A total of 59% of BED patients reported emotional abuse.
36% reported physical abuse.
30% reported sexual abuse.
69% reported emotional neglect.
49% reported physical neglect.
There were no differences in the distribution of any form of childhood maltreatment by gender or by obesity status. The different forms of maltreatment were not associated with variability in current body mass index, binge eating, or in the attitudinal features of eating disorders.
Only one of the five forms of maltreatment (physical neglect) was associated with dietary restraint in women. Emotional abuse was significantly associated with greater body dissatisfaction, higher depression, and lower self-esteem in men and women and sexual abuse was associated with greater body dissatisfaction in men. The different forms of maltreatment were unrelated to the age at onset of overweight, dieting, or binge eating.
~Secret Diet Disasters of Trauma Survivors by Dr A Panos, PhD
Eating disorders are not about food, but food is what people with eating disorders abuse.
The term 'eating disorders' refers to anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating. These syndromes are characterized by extreme disruptions in eating and intense anxiety over body weight and appearance. Sometimes these disorders can overlap.
Eating disorders are psychological disorders which have physical manifestations. In fact, severe medical complications which can sometimes even be life-threatening occur.
~Eating Disorders and Sexual Abuse
Eating disorders are common for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse and for survivors of sexual assaults as adults. Some studies indicate that almost 30% of women suffering from bulimia were raped at some point in their lives. Girls who are sexually abused appear to be at a double risk for eating disorders.
Food can often become an area where a survivor can exert control by:
๑Deciding when and if they can eat
๑How much and what they eat
๑Denying themselves when they are hungry
๑'Punishing' themselves for feelings or memories they have about the abuse, by not eating or by eating and then purging
๑Working through the hunger
๑Surviving on very little amounts of food
Accomplishing these things can feel like victories in gaining control over their lives and bodies after sexual assault or abuse took that control and choice away. As with self-injury, it is the survivor who controls the behavior, and not the assailant. Some survivors may deny themselves food in order to become thin and lose any resemblance of a female figure. Other survivors may want to gain weight to cover or hide areas of their body, or to attempt to make themselves unattractive.
~Columbia University Health Services
Coping Mechanisms in PTSD can also be described as Survival Strategies. These strategies have been utilized by survivors in the past, or they are using them at present to help numb the pain of the abuse. They are also used to control feelings, which may threaten to overwhelm survivors. Survivors may have experienced or are presently experiencing problems associated with drugs, alcohol, food/eating, and/or self-injury.
~from cresecentlife.com
๑ now you see me, now you don't๑
Before you read this, I want you to take a good look at this photo of what I looked like the last 2 years.
Got me?
So, dig:
Now that the weight is coming off of me, the Guy Thing is starting to happen again with its old, obvious, predictability. I'm still pretty much the same girl that I've been for the last 2 years, but all of a sudden, clearly, I Rate. This started to happen in the spring and I stopped it dead. I hung onto myself and walked through weight loss for all of 3 months and then went back to re-installing my armor of fat. The difference that my emerging skinniness was making in the way guys reacted to me was too nauseating.
It's hard to talk to other girls about fatness and food, even girlfriends like mine, who always manage to speak with great candor and bravery about any number of taboo topics. What makes the unexplored continents of our bodies so unchartable a brand of wilderness is that it's difficult to find females who've managed to rise above the tiger-traps that have always caught us. Even the most radical, willing, bad-assest she-warriors and kooky angels in my tribe seem to fall for those seemingly undeniable notions of what our fat is, what it means to guys, what it means to us, what it is to be sexy or beautiful and to enjoy that female power that's ever-been the only booby-prize of sexist crapola: You can navigate innumerable circles around guys of every stripe if you fit into the day-dream masturbatory mold of their desired physical specs.
I've watched the most astounding women I know vomit and starve themselves into a version of willowy, or bury their shapes under poundage, all in an effort to find a comfortable spot under the burn of the constant male gaze. They all want to be loved for who they are. They all have radiant minds and steadfast hearts and thousands of facets to them. They all cave right in. Just like me.
Myra edits a newspaper, indie publishes and does spoken word, then throws up, does yoga and belly dances. She was raped. When we were children. By family.
My old sponsor Audrey earned her degree, struck out on her own, away from everything familiar and now writes articles about improving education while she teaches poor children in the rural South and works with recovering junkies; at night, she goes home and sits in her great big bed all alone, correcting papers and eating Ben and Jerry's until her stomach aches, then she puts on Elvis Costello and cries her eyes out; her weight hasn't dropped below 200 pounds even once since grad school. Long before I met her, she was beaten daily for years by a guy who would later play guitar in my room mate's band.
I could go on.
Guys that kick it to me, I can often rest assured, would have absolutely no idea what to do with or for a female like Cate Smith. Sexually, intellectually, spiritually, politically, culturally, emotionally, conversationally, nothing. They are generally quite literate, have off-key tastes, alternahunk or alternanerd senses of style, play music, run businesses, love art and film and culture, embrace activism for the underdog in some way, and in general, would look good hung on my arm strolling out to a club or a reading or party or diner. They get my jokes, obscure references, are familiar with or share my obsessions, and mostly manage not to annoy my friends.
They're nice, but generally, no, not my equals. Close, sorta, kinda, but Nope.
Or else they don't share anything in common with me beyond having a pulse, but somehow imagine that I would be thrilled about blowing them or letting them see my tits, maybe about sequestering myself in a house where I would find total fulfillment washing their laundry, cooking their dinner and watching "America's Most Wanted" every Saturday night with them in this postage stamp town for the rest of my natural life.
Or they just want to fuck me doggie style and maybe take me to Denny's afterwards, because I have tattoos, an attitude and a nose ring and somehow, in their pedestrian world-view, these items indicate that I would be deliciously unconventional in the sack. If one is pedestrian enough to consider doggie style unconventional, I suppose.
Not nice at all, not equal in any sense, not really even men. They're just Guys.
When I am fat, I am sexually invisible to all of these people and what makes them sit up and take notice of me, in my fatness, is what I do, who I am and what I say and stand for.
All of that starts jumping out the window like teenaged seamstresses exiting the Triangle Shirt Factory fire when my curves start becoming intriguing.
Of course I want to be sexy. Of course I want respect. Of course. Of course. Of course.
It's always been nearly impossible for me to get my head around my own sexiness. There's something smart-mouthed and cynical to it, and on some levels, there have been times when I've been able to celebrate it, though I'd be hard-pressed to describe it without poking fun. All I know for sure is that I've always had good-looking men that other girls were bewildered over me getting. And I've always been bewildered as well. And my bewilderment doesn't come from any kind of humility: I'm an ego maniac and there for, in my own grandiosity, say: Of course hot guys want me.
But the prettiness and cool of the guys who go for me has always seemed way out of proportion with my own looks, my own prettiness.
I've mostly been convinced that I was an exception to the standard beauty criteria of these guys, a fluke, some odd one-off, especially when I get a look at the other women they've been with: skinny, faces of angels, accomplished, poised, the object of much male desire. And then there's me: short, surly and overwhelming, complicated and cute- but not heart-stopping.
I've always theorized that these guys go for me in spite of the package. I get to be the hot water music in their chill, but unremarkable, cold shower life. Yippee. They go for me, but it's kinda how they go for other inexplicable, oddball looking girls. They seem to find me sexy like how they find Poly Styrene sexy or Lilly Taylor as the girl who Shot Andy Warhol or Thora Birch when she still had her baby fat. Or Velma from the Scooby-Doo cartoons. Or Wednesday Addams.
I see the difference in the way they react to me and the way they react to those girlfriends of mine like Nella, who has a master's in Chemistry and looks like Gwen Stefani to the untrained eye. Or Jen who teaches illiterate adults how to read and write, and could easily pass as a stand-in for Gretta Garbo at 25.
In my mind, THESE WOMEN are what qualifies as Beautiful. When I stand beside either of these two girls, even when I've been at my skinniest, I am still rendered invisible, and free to sit back and watch old men, young boys, waiters, bands, store clerks, professors, strangers passing in cars and on bicycles, cops, fathers of our friends, frat guys, crack-heads, the mailman and literally every being that responds sexually to a female go completely to pieces trying to make themselves be seen by or to interact with these women in absolutely any way possible or impossible.
Or I look at the women I know who are stunning misanthropists, who are so vacant upstairs and in their hearts that if you blew in their ear, their heads would whistle like tea kettles. Either they really enjoy twisting up anybody who falls for them or they seem to drift blithely along, never noticing the twenty-car pile-ups of pursuers that collect on the streets in their wake. I've watched my guy friends, not just the thugs, but even those guys who otherwise seem completely centered or sort of evolved, turn into monosyllabic primates over these women's hatred or sweet-tempered emptiness, just exactly the same as they do over Nella and Jen who are both, at least, astounding inside and out.
Geniuses or empty canyons, humanitarians or man-hating minxes, because of the packaging, in the eyes of all kinds of guys, these bitches are equally worthy of a complete male cerebral meltdown, and interchangeably so.
In the Animal Kingdom of What is Sexy, this is just how it be's.
Sometimes, this leads me to suspect that even if I sucked, if I were dumb as a post and/or manipulative and cold-hearted, if I had a doctorate in linguistics, rescued crack babies, worked with children dying of cancer, if I drank like a fish, stole yr wallet, never put out, put out like my pussy had a drive-thru window, had never read a book outside of Stephen King's massive body of work, could explain quantum physics to a toddler, shot dope, drove a cab, was an heiress, ran a meth lab out of a barn in Chittenango and or was a lifetime member of the John Birch Society, NOW and the NRA, all I would have to do to make most guys into automatic members of my obedient flying monkey army would be to look the classic American version of "hot". Flat belly, long hair, sculpted cheekbones, that come-fuck-me or ice princess demeanor of unattainable, possibly attainable Femaleness.
But even though I don't Rate like that and never, ever will, the skinnier I get, the more the guys around me are starting to get weird and act goofy.
Maybe somehow, despite who I think I so obviously am, on its own, the melting away of my fat, while it doesn’t put me in the textbook category of "hottie", while it won't ever make me tall or make me suddenly ethereal and haunting, render me breath-taking or cause guys to place me upon a pedestal like a story-book princess to be stricken dumb over, or give me even a fraction of the giant psychosexual clout of those impossibly gorgeous looking women, losing my fat DOES redefine me in the eyes of guys. As cute. As obtainable. As suddenly female in some way I wasn't to them months ago.
Regardless of who I so obviously am.
I took a vow, which I never do lightly about anything. About letting go of my fat, my invisibility. Though it will never make me as sexually powerful as those uber-hotties, the fact is that it's still time for my fat to go, simply because of the way it allows me to feel and think about my self, my safety, my value. It has to go simply because losing that weight scares the hell out of me and makes me want to stand behind sexier women who can give me back my invisible status by overshadowing my cuteness with their stunning goddess looks. That's just not how I want to keep living any more. Even if it does makes me mad that losing weight gets attention I wasn't getting by simply being Cate Smith.
Because I'm tired of wearing my fear. I'm tired of not recognizing myself in the mirror. I'm tired of having my fat to blame for so many things I don't get to have. I'm tired of putting food in my mouth every time I get the urge to say something secret about me. I'm tired of being disconnected. And I'm tired of the way it makes me see men, other women and myself. None of that bullshit reflects my true heart or the shit that I stand for, the things about me that matter the most. To me.
I'm just tired of the way I've knuckled under to all the teenaged male ideas about my significance and of how I've turned on my own body. My own self-image. Somewhere in the precise, if not statuesque, curves and contours of what I look like in my mind's eye is a peace and sexiness and acceptance and power that brings together all of me as the female that I am.
I want to know what it feels like, not just to look like myself again, but to actually stay in my body, even when that body catches ridiculous attention that leaves me wondering about the meaning of true love and my value, the things I find valuable about me as a human being. I want to slip into my grey velvet dress and put my curls up some ornate way and draw my lips on in dark brown-red and let my eyes glow, and not be infuriated or serve as Velma to anyone's Daphne. I wanna get free and get over my enraged terror of being all that I am, short, cute, smart, unwavering, unique, brainy, mouthy, sexy, atypical, obsessive, curvaceous, curious, strong, female and unlike anybody anywhere. I want to lose the long invisible chain that my self-hatred and body-fear has forged in the years since sexuality first became part of the story for me. I want to stand naked and unflinching in front of my lover and let him whistle like a truck driver, then let him worship me with unholy abandon.
It's hard to talk to other girls about fatness and food, even girlfriends like mine, who always manage to speak with great candor and bravery about any number of taboo topics. What makes the unexplored continents of our bodies so unchartable a brand of wilderness is that it's difficult to find females who've managed to rise above the tiger-traps that have always caught us. Even the most radical, willing, bad-assest she-warriors and kooky angels in my tribe seem to fall for those seemingly undeniable notions of what our fat is, what it means to guys, what it means to us, what it is to be sexy or beautiful and to enjoy that female power that's ever-been the only booby-prize of sexist crapola: You can navigate innumerable circles around guys of every stripe if you fit into the day-dream masturbatory mold of their desired physical specs.
I've watched the most astounding women I know vomit and starve themselves into a version of willowy, or bury their shapes under poundage, all in an effort to find a comfortable spot under the burn of the constant male gaze. They all want to be loved for who they are. They all have radiant minds and steadfast hearts and thousands of facets to them. They all cave right in. Just like me.
Myra edits a newspaper, indie publishes and does spoken word, then throws up, does yoga and belly dances. She was raped. When we were children. By family.
My old sponsor Audrey earned her degree, struck out on her own, away from everything familiar and now writes articles about improving education while she teaches poor children in the rural South and works with recovering junkies; at night, she goes home and sits in her great big bed all alone, correcting papers and eating Ben and Jerry's until her stomach aches, then she puts on Elvis Costello and cries her eyes out; her weight hasn't dropped below 200 pounds even once since grad school. Long before I met her, she was beaten daily for years by a guy who would later play guitar in my room mate's band.
I could go on.
Guys that kick it to me, I can often rest assured, would have absolutely no idea what to do with or for a female like Cate Smith. Sexually, intellectually, spiritually, politically, culturally, emotionally, conversationally, nothing. They are generally quite literate, have off-key tastes, alternahunk or alternanerd senses of style, play music, run businesses, love art and film and culture, embrace activism for the underdog in some way, and in general, would look good hung on my arm strolling out to a club or a reading or party or diner. They get my jokes, obscure references, are familiar with or share my obsessions, and mostly manage not to annoy my friends.
They're nice, but generally, no, not my equals. Close, sorta, kinda, but Nope.
Or else they don't share anything in common with me beyond having a pulse, but somehow imagine that I would be thrilled about blowing them or letting them see my tits, maybe about sequestering myself in a house where I would find total fulfillment washing their laundry, cooking their dinner and watching "America's Most Wanted" every Saturday night with them in this postage stamp town for the rest of my natural life.
Or they just want to fuck me doggie style and maybe take me to Denny's afterwards, because I have tattoos, an attitude and a nose ring and somehow, in their pedestrian world-view, these items indicate that I would be deliciously unconventional in the sack. If one is pedestrian enough to consider doggie style unconventional, I suppose.
Not nice at all, not equal in any sense, not really even men. They're just Guys.
When I am fat, I am sexually invisible to all of these people and what makes them sit up and take notice of me, in my fatness, is what I do, who I am and what I say and stand for.
All of that starts jumping out the window like teenaged seamstresses exiting the Triangle Shirt Factory fire when my curves start becoming intriguing.
Of course I want to be sexy. Of course I want respect. Of course. Of course. Of course.
It's always been nearly impossible for me to get my head around my own sexiness. There's something smart-mouthed and cynical to it, and on some levels, there have been times when I've been able to celebrate it, though I'd be hard-pressed to describe it without poking fun. All I know for sure is that I've always had good-looking men that other girls were bewildered over me getting. And I've always been bewildered as well. And my bewilderment doesn't come from any kind of humility: I'm an ego maniac and there for, in my own grandiosity, say: Of course hot guys want me.
But the prettiness and cool of the guys who go for me has always seemed way out of proportion with my own looks, my own prettiness.
I've mostly been convinced that I was an exception to the standard beauty criteria of these guys, a fluke, some odd one-off, especially when I get a look at the other women they've been with: skinny, faces of angels, accomplished, poised, the object of much male desire. And then there's me: short, surly and overwhelming, complicated and cute- but not heart-stopping.
I've always theorized that these guys go for me in spite of the package. I get to be the hot water music in their chill, but unremarkable, cold shower life. Yippee. They go for me, but it's kinda how they go for other inexplicable, oddball looking girls. They seem to find me sexy like how they find Poly Styrene sexy or Lilly Taylor as the girl who Shot Andy Warhol or Thora Birch when she still had her baby fat. Or Velma from the Scooby-Doo cartoons. Or Wednesday Addams.
I see the difference in the way they react to me and the way they react to those girlfriends of mine like Nella, who has a master's in Chemistry and looks like Gwen Stefani to the untrained eye. Or Jen who teaches illiterate adults how to read and write, and could easily pass as a stand-in for Gretta Garbo at 25.
In my mind, THESE WOMEN are what qualifies as Beautiful. When I stand beside either of these two girls, even when I've been at my skinniest, I am still rendered invisible, and free to sit back and watch old men, young boys, waiters, bands, store clerks, professors, strangers passing in cars and on bicycles, cops, fathers of our friends, frat guys, crack-heads, the mailman and literally every being that responds sexually to a female go completely to pieces trying to make themselves be seen by or to interact with these women in absolutely any way possible or impossible.
Or I look at the women I know who are stunning misanthropists, who are so vacant upstairs and in their hearts that if you blew in their ear, their heads would whistle like tea kettles. Either they really enjoy twisting up anybody who falls for them or they seem to drift blithely along, never noticing the twenty-car pile-ups of pursuers that collect on the streets in their wake. I've watched my guy friends, not just the thugs, but even those guys who otherwise seem completely centered or sort of evolved, turn into monosyllabic primates over these women's hatred or sweet-tempered emptiness, just exactly the same as they do over Nella and Jen who are both, at least, astounding inside and out.
Geniuses or empty canyons, humanitarians or man-hating minxes, because of the packaging, in the eyes of all kinds of guys, these bitches are equally worthy of a complete male cerebral meltdown, and interchangeably so.
In the Animal Kingdom of What is Sexy, this is just how it be's.
Sometimes, this leads me to suspect that even if I sucked, if I were dumb as a post and/or manipulative and cold-hearted, if I had a doctorate in linguistics, rescued crack babies, worked with children dying of cancer, if I drank like a fish, stole yr wallet, never put out, put out like my pussy had a drive-thru window, had never read a book outside of Stephen King's massive body of work, could explain quantum physics to a toddler, shot dope, drove a cab, was an heiress, ran a meth lab out of a barn in Chittenango and or was a lifetime member of the John Birch Society, NOW and the NRA, all I would have to do to make most guys into automatic members of my obedient flying monkey army would be to look the classic American version of "hot". Flat belly, long hair, sculpted cheekbones, that come-fuck-me or ice princess demeanor of unattainable, possibly attainable Femaleness.
But even though I don't Rate like that and never, ever will, the skinnier I get, the more the guys around me are starting to get weird and act goofy.
Maybe somehow, despite who I think I so obviously am, on its own, the melting away of my fat, while it doesn’t put me in the textbook category of "hottie", while it won't ever make me tall or make me suddenly ethereal and haunting, render me breath-taking or cause guys to place me upon a pedestal like a story-book princess to be stricken dumb over, or give me even a fraction of the giant psychosexual clout of those impossibly gorgeous looking women, losing my fat DOES redefine me in the eyes of guys. As cute. As obtainable. As suddenly female in some way I wasn't to them months ago.
Regardless of who I so obviously am.
I took a vow, which I never do lightly about anything. About letting go of my fat, my invisibility. Though it will never make me as sexually powerful as those uber-hotties, the fact is that it's still time for my fat to go, simply because of the way it allows me to feel and think about my self, my safety, my value. It has to go simply because losing that weight scares the hell out of me and makes me want to stand behind sexier women who can give me back my invisible status by overshadowing my cuteness with their stunning goddess looks. That's just not how I want to keep living any more. Even if it does makes me mad that losing weight gets attention I wasn't getting by simply being Cate Smith.
Because I'm tired of wearing my fear. I'm tired of not recognizing myself in the mirror. I'm tired of having my fat to blame for so many things I don't get to have. I'm tired of putting food in my mouth every time I get the urge to say something secret about me. I'm tired of being disconnected. And I'm tired of the way it makes me see men, other women and myself. None of that bullshit reflects my true heart or the shit that I stand for, the things about me that matter the most. To me.
I'm just tired of the way I've knuckled under to all the teenaged male ideas about my significance and of how I've turned on my own body. My own self-image. Somewhere in the precise, if not statuesque, curves and contours of what I look like in my mind's eye is a peace and sexiness and acceptance and power that brings together all of me as the female that I am.
I want to know what it feels like, not just to look like myself again, but to actually stay in my body, even when that body catches ridiculous attention that leaves me wondering about the meaning of true love and my value, the things I find valuable about me as a human being. I want to slip into my grey velvet dress and put my curls up some ornate way and draw my lips on in dark brown-red and let my eyes glow, and not be infuriated or serve as Velma to anyone's Daphne. I wanna get free and get over my enraged terror of being all that I am, short, cute, smart, unwavering, unique, brainy, mouthy, sexy, atypical, obsessive, curvaceous, curious, strong, female and unlike anybody anywhere. I want to lose the long invisible chain that my self-hatred and body-fear has forged in the years since sexuality first became part of the story for me. I want to stand naked and unflinching in front of my lover and let him whistle like a truck driver, then let him worship me with unholy abandon.
I want my body back.
๑ childhood living is easy to do ๑
They used to have these public service ads on TV that showed a guy running from the cops in slow motion while the voice-over grimly declared, 'Nobody ever says, 'When I grow up, I want to be a junkie.'
I'd always smirk when this ad came on because, of course, when I was a kid, I wanted to be exactly that- from the time I was 12 on, I wanted to be Keith Richards.
It's true.
My fascination with him began when my Mom ordered me a subscription to Rolling Stone-she was NOT in her right mind when she did it and, I'm certain, as each new issue arrived in our mailbox, she regretted this decision more and more. But my Mom, she has this thing where, when she'd be feeling really messed up, other adults frightened her. So she'd try to get her allotment of human contact from all kinds of ridiculous places. Me, for instance. Nothing more fun than having yr Mom disclose awful crap about yr Dad and his entire psycho family as she gets plastered at the kitchen table with a menthol in one hand. Especially when you're 11. Or, sometimes, she'd try to become pals with random teenaged girls. One summer, it was our baby sitter. Then it was a girl who sold her a vacuum cleaner door-to-door. And then there was the girl hustling magazine subscriptions to make money for college. Hence: Rolling Stone for me, People for my Mom and some crap about animals for my sister, who's only friends were plushy toys and our cats.
Anyway, so on the cover of, maybe, the third issue I got, the Rolling Stone Interview was with Keith.
Wouldn't you?
๑ if then why ๑
I'm thinking that maybe the hole in your memory...you know; the blank feeling that always comes with the visualization of an early morning gray haze...wintertime optional...I'm thinking that maybe there is no memory. There's nothing at all. Just Mick and Keith singing "The sunshine bores the daylights out of me". Consequently, we always end up saying "Yeah"...or "exactly"...because it's just too cool of a line to possibly disagree with, and remember, we are once again guilty of bringing all things "down to rock and roll". Don't you ever get accused of that? I accept it...and most of the time I even agree. How can I live with myself if I hurt the other person's feelings by stating "Well, that's because the world in my record collection is more interesting and wonderful than the world I'm living in, now"? Is it such a bad thing that Jimi Hendrix's memories seem to be a helluva lot more fun than my own. Probably. I never said I had all the answers.
Oh, isn't it nice...when your heart is made out of ice?
Matthew
I'd always smirk when this ad came on because, of course, when I was a kid, I wanted to be exactly that- from the time I was 12 on, I wanted to be Keith Richards.
It's true.
My fascination with him began when my Mom ordered me a subscription to Rolling Stone-she was NOT in her right mind when she did it and, I'm certain, as each new issue arrived in our mailbox, she regretted this decision more and more. But my Mom, she has this thing where, when she'd be feeling really messed up, other adults frightened her. So she'd try to get her allotment of human contact from all kinds of ridiculous places. Me, for instance. Nothing more fun than having yr Mom disclose awful crap about yr Dad and his entire psycho family as she gets plastered at the kitchen table with a menthol in one hand. Especially when you're 11. Or, sometimes, she'd try to become pals with random teenaged girls. One summer, it was our baby sitter. Then it was a girl who sold her a vacuum cleaner door-to-door. And then there was the girl hustling magazine subscriptions to make money for college. Hence: Rolling Stone for me, People for my Mom and some crap about animals for my sister, who's only friends were plushy toys and our cats.
Anyway, so on the cover of, maybe, the third issue I got, the Rolling Stone Interview was with Keith.
God damn.
I was so little, it hadn't even occurred to me that there WERE other people in the Stones besides Mick Jagger.
I had never seen anything that looked like Keith. I MEMORIZED that stupid interview- too bad it was with Kurt Loder, but, you know, who knows the difference in jr high?
And then I hunted down every article or book I could find about him.
Because that's what I wanted to be.
Even at 12, I could look at Keith Richards and totally project upon him one very crucial presumption: nobody fucks with this person. He's...WRONG.
I didn't want to be fucked with. I already felt I happenstantially had stumbled into Wrongness. Ergo: I wanted to be Keith Richards.
That was pretty much the birth of my cool, yo.
I was so little, it hadn't even occurred to me that there WERE other people in the Stones besides Mick Jagger.
I had never seen anything that looked like Keith. I MEMORIZED that stupid interview- too bad it was with Kurt Loder, but, you know, who knows the difference in jr high?
And then I hunted down every article or book I could find about him.
Because that's what I wanted to be.
Even at 12, I could look at Keith Richards and totally project upon him one very crucial presumption: nobody fucks with this person. He's...WRONG.
I didn't want to be fucked with. I already felt I happenstantially had stumbled into Wrongness. Ergo: I wanted to be Keith Richards.
That was pretty much the birth of my cool, yo.
I fell for Rock and Roll at the worst time of my young life and I know that it saved me. There was very little left of whatever had been precious about childhood. My mother lost the baby. She had a hysterectomy and went into an immediate depression where she stayed in a darkened bedroom all day and night, laid out, on drugs, smoking and watching TV in silence. My father moved away, then moved back in, then moved away, then moved back in. He started cheating. We took in my teenaged uncle who was being beaten by my grandparents, then my father and all the other uncles drove him out to the middle of nowhere and told him if he didn't go to college or join the military, they were going to put him in a hospital. He became a Marine. My grandfather started sundowning from the early stages of Alzheimer's. My mother went back to work and left us with my grandmother. My youngest uncle stopped being my buddy and started beating the crap out of me whenever he felt like it. I turned into a little pathological liar and began getting my ass kicked at school every day. My sister became the neighborhood weirdo, going to school dressed in a black polyester zip-up house dress with white trim and telling everybody she wanted to become a nun. My mother started dragging us to church all the time because, as it turned out, in my dad's absence, she had developed a school girl crush on one of the priests. She forced me and my sister to kneel and say the Rosary every night in the hopes, I guess, that god would save our family. I lost all of my friends from grammar school because the town closed down the other Jr High and consolidated and somehow I ended up in a class with kids from the other side of town who had grown up together instead of with kids who I knew.
And then, in the middle of all that, John Lennon was murdered and I started reading Rolling Stone. Rock and Roll became the only sane, fun, meaningful, validating, safe, compelling thing in my entire 12 year old world.
Instead of going to school, I'd just go off into one of the many wooded areas around where we lived, find a nice tree, climb up into it's arms and read all day or write in my diary. And think about Rock and Roll.
And then, in the middle of all that, John Lennon was murdered and I started reading Rolling Stone. Rock and Roll became the only sane, fun, meaningful, validating, safe, compelling thing in my entire 12 year old world.
Instead of going to school, I'd just go off into one of the many wooded areas around where we lived, find a nice tree, climb up into it's arms and read all day or write in my diary. And think about Rock and Roll.
Wouldn't you?
๑let me clip yr dirty wings๑
Many of us who experience violence find no outlet for the feelings associated with the trauma and may self-medicate with alcohol or drugs to help cope with overwhelming feelings of terror, grief, and anger. This can lead to addiction and the need for help with a substance abuse problem. Survivors in treatment may find that the feelings related to the violence come up when they stop relying on the substance. If this happens, it is essential to have support for the feelings connected to the abuse and violence and for recovery from substance abuse.
It is not unusual for individuals to have more than one problem at the same time. Individuals with PTSD or other mental health problems frequently turn to drugs or alcohol for comfort. One recent study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that half of the drug or alcohol abusers in the United States have a mental illness. Sometimes, the problems associated with substance abuse mask the symptoms of PTSD.
There is a well-known link between childhood trauma and adult alcoholism, particularly among women. Dr. Herman describes alcoholism and other drug addictions as among the common traits found in survivors of childhood abuse, along with insomnia, sexual dysfunction, dissociation, anger, suicidality, and self-mutilation. She describes excess use of alcohol and drugs as a method of dissociation and constriction that many trauma victims employ when they are unable to achieve these protective altered states spontaneously.
While abuse of alcohol and drugs is a frequent sequel of trauma, the experience of being addicted to alcohol can be a kind of trauma in its own right. The realization that one is trapped in a joyless cycle of chemical self-destruction is authentically terrifying. I remember well those many mornings when I looked in the mirror and saw a slave. In those days, neither resistance nor escape availed. The experience of powerlessness is ingrained in the life of an active addict. And so, with that background, I began to read Dr. Herman's book, just as Craig did, as a book about surviving and recovering from a trauma called addiction.
While abuse of alcohol and drugs is a frequent sequel of trauma, the experience of being addicted to alcohol can be a kind of trauma in its own right. The realization that one is trapped in a joyless cycle of chemical self-destruction is authentically terrifying. I remember well those many mornings when I looked in the mirror and saw a slave. In those days, neither resistance nor escape availed. The experience of powerlessness is ingrained in the life of an active addict. And so, with that background, I began to read Dr. Herman's book, just as Craig did, as a book about surviving and recovering from a trauma called addiction.
Women who are sexually abused during childhood are at increased risk for drug abuse as adults, according to NIDA-supported research conducted at the Medical College of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. Using data gathered from interviews of 1,411 adult twins, Dr. Kenneth Kendler and his colleagues assessed the association between three levels of childhood sex abuse (nongenital, genital, and intercourse) and six adult disorders -- major depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, bulimia nervosa, alcohol dependence, and drug dependence. Women who experienced any type of sexual abuse in childhood were roughly three times more likely than unabused girls to report drug dependence as adults.
National Institute on Drug Abuse
PTSD and alcohol problems often occur together. People with PTSD are more likely than others with similar backgrounds to have alcohol use disorders both before and after being diagnosed with PTSD, and people with alcohol use disorders often also have PTSD. Being diagnosed with PTSD increases the risk of developing an alcohol use disorder. Women exposed to trauma show an increased risk for an alcohol use disorder even if they are not experiencing PTSD. Women with problematic alcohol use are more likely than other women to have been sexually abused at some point in their lives.
Men and women reporting sexual abuse have higher rates of alcohol and drug use disorders than other men and women. Twenty-five to seventy-five percent of those who have survived abusive or violent trauma also report problems with alcohol use.
Men and women reporting sexual abuse have higher rates of alcohol and drug use disorders than other men and women. Twenty-five to seventy-five percent of those who have survived abusive or violent trauma also report problems with alcohol use.
๑ if then why ๑
Something about bleakly bright city mornings late in the winter, mornings like this one, something in the feel of them nags me. It only ever takes away as much attention as I pay it, that nagging, but even so, it leans on me a little.
Like I stop by the huge living room window and I hang there absently, hypnotized. My brain goes blank as I stare, like I'm waiting for something to burst vividly to mind. Some memory that doesn't turn up where one ought to be. It's like something about just the sight of these overcast, glowing grey mornings is supposed to automatically grab a file crammed with psychic snapshots and bits of dialogue and throw it all into the front of my skull in a rush. But it won't. It never does, no matter how many minutes I hang around there, gawking like a zombie.
Every year around now, I'll do this a bunch of times, usually on a Sunday morning. Nothing tangible ever comes of it.
Eventually, I sigh and goad myself to walk the rest of the way into the kitchen, get my coffee. Kevin smiles all sleepy as I amble in and I grab his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. He's got the NME spread across the kitchen table and Etta James gliding voluptuously from the stereo, her big, curling voice filling the apartment even at this tempered volume. I feel his dark blue eyes studying me as I mechanically tinker with my joe.
It throws me off to drink coffee made by anybody but me or a tiny list of trusted others who make it as poisonously strong as I do. Poor sweet Kevin, good as he is, is not among those knowing few. Anything less than an almost Guinness-like potency leaves me trying to work some impossible compensation with sweetener and half and half.
I've just had to learn to accept this about humankind.
My AA sponsor once barred me for life from ever volunteering to fill the post of group coffee maker, explaining that the High Test I concoct has enough caffeine in it to count as a relapse for everyone who drinks it. I flipped her off, but not even a year later, I realized that all my using dreams had become coffee dreams, where, instead of questing for dope, I dreamt myself desperately phone calling and driving around the city for hours searching for a cartoonishly huge, pillow-case sized sack of Hawaiian Kona.
Kevin's slept-on, chestnut hair wreaths his pale face in a pleasing tangle of curls. I give up screwing around with my coffee and turn his way, leaning back against the counter, tepidly sipping at my cup and taking him in as he flips to the next giant page of the British music paper. Feeling my gaze, he looks up and then laces his fingers together, leaning his elbows on the table and beaming dreamily back at me.
My head feels still too stuck in the thick muddiness of prematurely interrupted sleep. I pin back my cheeks in what must be the emptiest smile ever and he cocks one skeptical eyebrow in reply.
"Is it that bad?" he asks.
"Is what?"
"The coffee. I used twice what I normally do."
"Oh- no, no," I say, taking a demonstratively huge swallow. "No. It's my brain. It still thinks I'm in bed."
He looks unconvinced and shakes his head, still grinning, his hands unlacing and smoothing the pages before him as he goes back to reading.
"Seriously!" I assure him, which only gets me a quick flash of those dark blue eyes and more smiling, more head-shaking.
I warn him not to make me come over there and sit on his terrifically expensive Rock periodical, a threat that does not seem to intimidate him, but then I realize I'm not really in the mood to fool around, and really, how can sitting on a kitchen table not lead to exactly that? It's not like I'm already off my verve for the guy, but right now, I'm just kinda there and not really all there and I don't want him to take it personal.
Briefly, I half imagine attempting to tell him about the Winter Morning Thing, but it just seems like it'd be too much effort to explain something I kinda don't exactly understand myself. Since my last romance ended, I've noticed myself grown far more circumspect about my frequent urges to stream of consciousness at my boyfriends about all the random crap that crosses my mind. So I just stand there, giving him a saucy look until he sighs and tells me, "You liberals, you're all talk."
Then he goes back to reading again.
The phone rings and it's Ara. She's why I'm awake. I mosey out of the kitchen so Kevin can enjoy his Etta and his NME and his non-lethal coffee in peace. For my considerate gesture, I get my fanny smacked as I wander past him.
Ara and I are escorting this girl Liz to the train station in an hour or so. It is the last in a string of acts imposed on us three by Liz's still-raging addiction, which, though it has slightly loosed its stranglehold on her in some ways, is still clawing tight enough that even Ara and I have almost spent our sizeable repertoire of trusty ideas.
In this matter, too, I've noticed a kind of prudence in myself that surprises me. It's not a lack of compassion, it's not frustration, it's not disappointment. But it's definitely SOMETHING. When we deal with Liz, I operate from this place of pragmatic detachment, because I know she just can't stay clean for more than a few days in a row. I have no idea if her carting herself off to New York to stay with a relative will work any better than any other options she's considered, but I also don't know that it won't. And I do know that her living in her old neighborhood, surrounded by dealers doesn't seem to be getting her anywhere.
As Ara lays out the morning's plan, I drift back over to that giant window full of January morning and again make a stab at provoking to mind whatever long-lost memory thing it is that feels to be missing whenever I reach this part of the winter and it looks like it does outside just now. The only thing I really want from her is the ETA, so I can at least have boots and a sweater on over my tee shirt and pajama pants when she rolls up at my building. So that's really the only thing I retain from our chat when I hang up.
Then I just loiter there, window-side, like I'd been before, watching as big, fat, fluffy movie snow starts coming down on the city below. I take another sip of my coffee and suddenly am so inexplicably angry at its weakness that I just give up and set it down on the sill, the phone beside it.
Over the years, I've mostly gotten used to the holes in my memory. I've even kinda gotten used to the way some of my memories will play themselves back in several different, even contradictory versions. When I was a kid and had just a few years clean, this unpredictability really infuriated me. After all, you'd like to kinda think you have the right to your own past, even if in that past, you expended intense ferocity basically obliterating your experiences as they happened. I think it kinda frightened me that I had eaten away at the fabric of my life so permanently. It used to scare the living shit out of me.
A lot of recollections that were seemingly deleted have eventually returned since those days, sometimes dimly, gradually, sometimes with arbitrary suddenness and clarity. At some point, I just had to cut my losses and realize there will always be certain chunks of missing time. I worked very diligently in my active addiction to earn those erasures. I was very good at what I did.
So it's disquieting to keep returning to this one blank spot, to still have it kinda piss me off. To annually go through a few weeks or a couple of months trying with varying determination to pull up whatever it is that these kinds of days must have meant to me once upon a time. Was it just one particular grey-white morning, did anything of any interest at all even happen that day or hour or month, or was it just some pocket of feeling that came one winter and stuck around until spring? Did I get jumped or was I homeless? Did I just have a really great bag of dope one morning and decide to get high and go stroll out in the stark empty day on pedestrian auto-pilot, down memorized city streets? Was I listening to the Furs on my Walkman, wearing some Old Man coat and my feet going numb inside duct-taped combat boots or was I sitting shotgun in a snug, old boat with incongruous Hard Core cranked full blast on the way to a diner for breakfast with my best guy friend?
What used to go here that's gone now and what was so important about it that it continues to nag all these years later? I often daydream that one of these tries, it will all come back to me and won't be much of anything at all. A walk to get cigarettes by myself or coming home to wherever I was staying and realizing I'd forgotten my keys, so I just sat outside and smoked in the cold, bored and thus intensely observing all the common place nonsense around me just for something to do while I waited for a room mate to materialize. Or I could have been inside, like now, watching for a ride to arrive.
Ara and Liz swing by and I jump in the back of Ara's maroon import and we high-tail it to the Farmer's Market to eat in the diner there. The joint is huge, busy and full of yuppies, hipsters, white trash families and farmers. Liz seems a little more relaxed than usual and I keep them both giggling with one ridiculous story after another or running commentaries about the stray mix of people around us. I just wish the fucking coffee was stronger. Basically, I ordered it as a way to justify my presence in the booth to our harried waitron, just to have something to do with my hands while Liz and Ara try to eat.
I can't eat. All I wanna do is either be fast asleep or drink good coffee and smoke a million cigarettes in total solitude. I'm over-tired and unable to do anything but keep making Liz and Ara laugh, but it's okay. I haven't ever seen Liz laugh all that much. I know I'm probably memorizing it, her sitting by me laughing over album-sized diner pancakes with Ara, because with addicts, any time you say goodbye, there's always a real possibility you'll never lay eyes on them again.
At the train station, it turns out Liz forgot her wallet, has no ID, no idea what name her father purchased her tickets under and can do little more to help the ticket guy besides telling him her phone number, then shoving a crumpled, out-of-date temporary library card under the bullet-proof glass at his cubicle. Somehow, though, he not only believes she's who she claims to be, but after pecking away at his computer a bit, he finds proof that her dad did indeed buy her a train ride to Penn Station with his Visa card over the Internet.
We walk her out to the platform and a lady who looks like a gnarled troll in an Amtrak jacket barks at us to quit hugging and board. Though the long, narrowish windows to her car are darkly tinted, me and Ara are able to follow Liz's progress as she lugs her huge suitcase down the aisle and finds a seat. Then I lick my finger and in the dirty window, I write "WE HEART LIZ" backwards and put X's and O's all around it so she can look at it the whole trip to the city, whenever she's not lost in the Vonnegut book I gave her or falling asleep from sheer nervous exhaustion. We stay on the platform making goofy faces at her until the train finally starts to move. Then we just stand there watching until it disappears. Then we just stand there.
On purpose, I stayed up until 5 this morning, then cat-napped for a couple of hours. I got home at 1 and sat up writing letters, doing homework, screwing around online. I wanted to be numb with fatigue when I woke up this morning, because I think I used all my detached compassion up watching Liz kick all week. I was almost out of psychic stamina, and I know my personal biochemistry well enough that in a pinch, being over-tired can stunt-double for external cheer and internal disconnect. But only for an hour or so.
After we pull out of the train station parking lot, Ara asks me if I was just gonna go back to my flat and I say, "Only after we find me some mother fucking coffee that I can actually TASTE, yo."
So here I am, with my coffee at my desk, smoking a million cigarettes and stopping now and then to watch it snow like mad. I wish it would snow even harder so I'm not even able to see the high-rise across the parking lot from my building, so the street below stays white despite the traffic cruising up and down it. I want all the blacktop below to disappear under white and for the horizon to fade into the white grey of the sky above until I can only just barely distinguish it.
Kevin is gone to work. He left behind a note telling me I should sleep all day so I am ready for hot, frantic manlove all night. He signed it with X's and O's.
Sitting here, I pick up the note and without giving it much thought, I press it to my cheek.
I realize now that how come I guess I'm telling you all this is because I wanted to try and put something into that blank spot in my memory where winter mornings like today go. I know it's not whatever used to go here, but at least it's something now besides blankness.
Like I stop by the huge living room window and I hang there absently, hypnotized. My brain goes blank as I stare, like I'm waiting for something to burst vividly to mind. Some memory that doesn't turn up where one ought to be. It's like something about just the sight of these overcast, glowing grey mornings is supposed to automatically grab a file crammed with psychic snapshots and bits of dialogue and throw it all into the front of my skull in a rush. But it won't. It never does, no matter how many minutes I hang around there, gawking like a zombie.
Every year around now, I'll do this a bunch of times, usually on a Sunday morning. Nothing tangible ever comes of it.
Eventually, I sigh and goad myself to walk the rest of the way into the kitchen, get my coffee. Kevin smiles all sleepy as I amble in and I grab his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. He's got the NME spread across the kitchen table and Etta James gliding voluptuously from the stereo, her big, curling voice filling the apartment even at this tempered volume. I feel his dark blue eyes studying me as I mechanically tinker with my joe.
It throws me off to drink coffee made by anybody but me or a tiny list of trusted others who make it as poisonously strong as I do. Poor sweet Kevin, good as he is, is not among those knowing few. Anything less than an almost Guinness-like potency leaves me trying to work some impossible compensation with sweetener and half and half.
I've just had to learn to accept this about humankind.
My AA sponsor once barred me for life from ever volunteering to fill the post of group coffee maker, explaining that the High Test I concoct has enough caffeine in it to count as a relapse for everyone who drinks it. I flipped her off, but not even a year later, I realized that all my using dreams had become coffee dreams, where, instead of questing for dope, I dreamt myself desperately phone calling and driving around the city for hours searching for a cartoonishly huge, pillow-case sized sack of Hawaiian Kona.
Kevin's slept-on, chestnut hair wreaths his pale face in a pleasing tangle of curls. I give up screwing around with my coffee and turn his way, leaning back against the counter, tepidly sipping at my cup and taking him in as he flips to the next giant page of the British music paper. Feeling my gaze, he looks up and then laces his fingers together, leaning his elbows on the table and beaming dreamily back at me.
My head feels still too stuck in the thick muddiness of prematurely interrupted sleep. I pin back my cheeks in what must be the emptiest smile ever and he cocks one skeptical eyebrow in reply.
"Is it that bad?" he asks.
"Is what?"
"The coffee. I used twice what I normally do."
"Oh- no, no," I say, taking a demonstratively huge swallow. "No. It's my brain. It still thinks I'm in bed."
He looks unconvinced and shakes his head, still grinning, his hands unlacing and smoothing the pages before him as he goes back to reading.
"Seriously!" I assure him, which only gets me a quick flash of those dark blue eyes and more smiling, more head-shaking.
I warn him not to make me come over there and sit on his terrifically expensive Rock periodical, a threat that does not seem to intimidate him, but then I realize I'm not really in the mood to fool around, and really, how can sitting on a kitchen table not lead to exactly that? It's not like I'm already off my verve for the guy, but right now, I'm just kinda there and not really all there and I don't want him to take it personal.
Briefly, I half imagine attempting to tell him about the Winter Morning Thing, but it just seems like it'd be too much effort to explain something I kinda don't exactly understand myself. Since my last romance ended, I've noticed myself grown far more circumspect about my frequent urges to stream of consciousness at my boyfriends about all the random crap that crosses my mind. So I just stand there, giving him a saucy look until he sighs and tells me, "You liberals, you're all talk."
Then he goes back to reading again.
The phone rings and it's Ara. She's why I'm awake. I mosey out of the kitchen so Kevin can enjoy his Etta and his NME and his non-lethal coffee in peace. For my considerate gesture, I get my fanny smacked as I wander past him.
Ara and I are escorting this girl Liz to the train station in an hour or so. It is the last in a string of acts imposed on us three by Liz's still-raging addiction, which, though it has slightly loosed its stranglehold on her in some ways, is still clawing tight enough that even Ara and I have almost spent our sizeable repertoire of trusty ideas.
In this matter, too, I've noticed a kind of prudence in myself that surprises me. It's not a lack of compassion, it's not frustration, it's not disappointment. But it's definitely SOMETHING. When we deal with Liz, I operate from this place of pragmatic detachment, because I know she just can't stay clean for more than a few days in a row. I have no idea if her carting herself off to New York to stay with a relative will work any better than any other options she's considered, but I also don't know that it won't. And I do know that her living in her old neighborhood, surrounded by dealers doesn't seem to be getting her anywhere.
As Ara lays out the morning's plan, I drift back over to that giant window full of January morning and again make a stab at provoking to mind whatever long-lost memory thing it is that feels to be missing whenever I reach this part of the winter and it looks like it does outside just now. The only thing I really want from her is the ETA, so I can at least have boots and a sweater on over my tee shirt and pajama pants when she rolls up at my building. So that's really the only thing I retain from our chat when I hang up.
Then I just loiter there, window-side, like I'd been before, watching as big, fat, fluffy movie snow starts coming down on the city below. I take another sip of my coffee and suddenly am so inexplicably angry at its weakness that I just give up and set it down on the sill, the phone beside it.
Over the years, I've mostly gotten used to the holes in my memory. I've even kinda gotten used to the way some of my memories will play themselves back in several different, even contradictory versions. When I was a kid and had just a few years clean, this unpredictability really infuriated me. After all, you'd like to kinda think you have the right to your own past, even if in that past, you expended intense ferocity basically obliterating your experiences as they happened. I think it kinda frightened me that I had eaten away at the fabric of my life so permanently. It used to scare the living shit out of me.
A lot of recollections that were seemingly deleted have eventually returned since those days, sometimes dimly, gradually, sometimes with arbitrary suddenness and clarity. At some point, I just had to cut my losses and realize there will always be certain chunks of missing time. I worked very diligently in my active addiction to earn those erasures. I was very good at what I did.
So it's disquieting to keep returning to this one blank spot, to still have it kinda piss me off. To annually go through a few weeks or a couple of months trying with varying determination to pull up whatever it is that these kinds of days must have meant to me once upon a time. Was it just one particular grey-white morning, did anything of any interest at all even happen that day or hour or month, or was it just some pocket of feeling that came one winter and stuck around until spring? Did I get jumped or was I homeless? Did I just have a really great bag of dope one morning and decide to get high and go stroll out in the stark empty day on pedestrian auto-pilot, down memorized city streets? Was I listening to the Furs on my Walkman, wearing some Old Man coat and my feet going numb inside duct-taped combat boots or was I sitting shotgun in a snug, old boat with incongruous Hard Core cranked full blast on the way to a diner for breakfast with my best guy friend?
What used to go here that's gone now and what was so important about it that it continues to nag all these years later? I often daydream that one of these tries, it will all come back to me and won't be much of anything at all. A walk to get cigarettes by myself or coming home to wherever I was staying and realizing I'd forgotten my keys, so I just sat outside and smoked in the cold, bored and thus intensely observing all the common place nonsense around me just for something to do while I waited for a room mate to materialize. Or I could have been inside, like now, watching for a ride to arrive.
Ara and Liz swing by and I jump in the back of Ara's maroon import and we high-tail it to the Farmer's Market to eat in the diner there. The joint is huge, busy and full of yuppies, hipsters, white trash families and farmers. Liz seems a little more relaxed than usual and I keep them both giggling with one ridiculous story after another or running commentaries about the stray mix of people around us. I just wish the fucking coffee was stronger. Basically, I ordered it as a way to justify my presence in the booth to our harried waitron, just to have something to do with my hands while Liz and Ara try to eat.
I can't eat. All I wanna do is either be fast asleep or drink good coffee and smoke a million cigarettes in total solitude. I'm over-tired and unable to do anything but keep making Liz and Ara laugh, but it's okay. I haven't ever seen Liz laugh all that much. I know I'm probably memorizing it, her sitting by me laughing over album-sized diner pancakes with Ara, because with addicts, any time you say goodbye, there's always a real possibility you'll never lay eyes on them again.
At the train station, it turns out Liz forgot her wallet, has no ID, no idea what name her father purchased her tickets under and can do little more to help the ticket guy besides telling him her phone number, then shoving a crumpled, out-of-date temporary library card under the bullet-proof glass at his cubicle. Somehow, though, he not only believes she's who she claims to be, but after pecking away at his computer a bit, he finds proof that her dad did indeed buy her a train ride to Penn Station with his Visa card over the Internet.
We walk her out to the platform and a lady who looks like a gnarled troll in an Amtrak jacket barks at us to quit hugging and board. Though the long, narrowish windows to her car are darkly tinted, me and Ara are able to follow Liz's progress as she lugs her huge suitcase down the aisle and finds a seat. Then I lick my finger and in the dirty window, I write "WE HEART LIZ" backwards and put X's and O's all around it so she can look at it the whole trip to the city, whenever she's not lost in the Vonnegut book I gave her or falling asleep from sheer nervous exhaustion. We stay on the platform making goofy faces at her until the train finally starts to move. Then we just stand there watching until it disappears. Then we just stand there.
On purpose, I stayed up until 5 this morning, then cat-napped for a couple of hours. I got home at 1 and sat up writing letters, doing homework, screwing around online. I wanted to be numb with fatigue when I woke up this morning, because I think I used all my detached compassion up watching Liz kick all week. I was almost out of psychic stamina, and I know my personal biochemistry well enough that in a pinch, being over-tired can stunt-double for external cheer and internal disconnect. But only for an hour or so.
After we pull out of the train station parking lot, Ara asks me if I was just gonna go back to my flat and I say, "Only after we find me some mother fucking coffee that I can actually TASTE, yo."
So here I am, with my coffee at my desk, smoking a million cigarettes and stopping now and then to watch it snow like mad. I wish it would snow even harder so I'm not even able to see the high-rise across the parking lot from my building, so the street below stays white despite the traffic cruising up and down it. I want all the blacktop below to disappear under white and for the horizon to fade into the white grey of the sky above until I can only just barely distinguish it.
Kevin is gone to work. He left behind a note telling me I should sleep all day so I am ready for hot, frantic manlove all night. He signed it with X's and O's.
Sitting here, I pick up the note and without giving it much thought, I press it to my cheek.
I realize now that how come I guess I'm telling you all this is because I wanted to try and put something into that blank spot in my memory where winter mornings like today go. I know it's not whatever used to go here, but at least it's something now besides blankness.
I'm thinking that maybe the hole in your memory...you know; the blank feeling that always comes with the visualization of an early morning gray haze...wintertime optional...I'm thinking that maybe there is no memory. There's nothing at all. Just Mick and Keith singing "The sunshine bores the daylights out of me". Consequently, we always end up saying "Yeah"...or "exactly"...because it's just too cool of a line to possibly disagree with, and remember, we are once again guilty of bringing all things "down to rock and roll". Don't you ever get accused of that? I accept it...and most of the time I even agree. How can I live with myself if I hurt the other person's feelings by stating "Well, that's because the world in my record collection is more interesting and wonderful than the world I'm living in, now"? Is it such a bad thing that Jimi Hendrix's memories seem to be a helluva lot more fun than my own. Probably. I never said I had all the answers.
Oh, isn't it nice...when your heart is made out of ice?
Matthew
๑ take me to the river ๑
"One of the most difficult things for human beings, in general, is not knowing something with 100% certainty. We are often afraid to trust because we are fearful of disappointment and hurt. Therefore, we go through extreme contortions to try to protect ourselves from the possibility of loss and pain. Yet, these attempts to protect ourselves may actually be the means with which we destroy that which we are trying to preserve.
When we have experienced profound loss from which we haven't had an opportunity to recover, we may develop an extreme fear and avoidance reaction to similar circumstances. However, as indicated earlier, this avoidance may bring about the abandonment that we fear.
A fear of vulnerability is the inability to let our guard down, to let another person know us completely. This fear usually derives from a fear of rejection due to the belief that if we let someone else truly know us, we will ultimately be rejected. Again, the fallacy in this belief, is that if we don't allow ourselves to be known, if we don't allow ourselves to be vulnerable, we are preventing the development of emotional intimacy which is essential to life and truly living."
~Hole in Your Soul
One of the ways that abusive people operate is to isolate the person they are going to abuse. Removed from outside influences, you're basically stuck with only the abuser as a source of reference. There's nobody around to challenge whatever the rules are in the abusive relationship. The next step is to emotionally and psychologically wear or beat you down so you start to see things within those crazy rules by which the abuser wants you to live.
You lose context.
You start to forget it was ever any other way than how it is.
Among the 10 million ironies of abuse is that after coming out of it, the urge to avoid others is ingrained into you as a defense against ending up in another abusive situation.
But I need people, I need that flow of energy zooming through my days, my life, lighting up the dark insides of my cavernous skull...
The most painful aspect of growing up with abuse is, to me, that horrible ambivalence about Others. My innate drive to connect and be electrified, to have my ideas roll off of inspiration via the basic, beautiful sparking of being out in the world, moving along through a river of people- friends and strangers- that revving in my heart that comes naturally out of human contact.
And the opposite of that: stagnation, sameness, stillness, invisibility, silence, isolation.
It horrifies me how I slump into solipsism and go numb within its familiar restraining embrace. It yawns open and swallows me like a grave.
This is the lullaby of dope and frozen junk life. Solitude, absolute emptiness, the wide-awake sleepwalk, the way yr world can be drawn down to no broader a horizon than the confines of a single. To shut Others outside and myself in. To have every day run into the next in one long flat string of months. To be completely safe from anything ever. Anything. Love, hate, change, fluctuation, sunshine, arguments, new music, weather, cops, friendship, rapists, flowers, the future, a family, thinking...
It is a wicked thing to have yr insides twisted up thus. To come to feel at home in nothingness.
If I could show you how many hours and days and months I have spent almost asleep this way, alone this way, stone-still... it is a wicked thing to fall in love with something so much like being dead.
Every day, still, I have to push off from this bottom and claw my way towards the surface. Push away from isolation. Force myself out the door. It's not so bad out in the world. I keep forgetting I belong there.
It is a wicked thing to not feel at home on the planet, to hold yrself hostage when you've been sprung.
But I feel less and less at home in the jail cell of my room and more and more okay about rejoining the fucking world. I know, I know, I know the nature of my heart, my planet-sized heart is to belong everywhere, to shine, to flow, to be out in creation, to move. I know it.
So slowly, so so slowly, I am pushing off from the bottom of this river. Every fucking day.
I want to live in the world outside of my skull. I want to flow.
You lose context.
You start to forget it was ever any other way than how it is.
Among the 10 million ironies of abuse is that after coming out of it, the urge to avoid others is ingrained into you as a defense against ending up in another abusive situation.
But I need people, I need that flow of energy zooming through my days, my life, lighting up the dark insides of my cavernous skull...
The most painful aspect of growing up with abuse is, to me, that horrible ambivalence about Others. My innate drive to connect and be electrified, to have my ideas roll off of inspiration via the basic, beautiful sparking of being out in the world, moving along through a river of people- friends and strangers- that revving in my heart that comes naturally out of human contact.
And the opposite of that: stagnation, sameness, stillness, invisibility, silence, isolation.
It horrifies me how I slump into solipsism and go numb within its familiar restraining embrace. It yawns open and swallows me like a grave.
This is the lullaby of dope and frozen junk life. Solitude, absolute emptiness, the wide-awake sleepwalk, the way yr world can be drawn down to no broader a horizon than the confines of a single. To shut Others outside and myself in. To have every day run into the next in one long flat string of months. To be completely safe from anything ever. Anything. Love, hate, change, fluctuation, sunshine, arguments, new music, weather, cops, friendship, rapists, flowers, the future, a family, thinking...
It is a wicked thing to have yr insides twisted up thus. To come to feel at home in nothingness.
If I could show you how many hours and days and months I have spent almost asleep this way, alone this way, stone-still... it is a wicked thing to fall in love with something so much like being dead.
Every day, still, I have to push off from this bottom and claw my way towards the surface. Push away from isolation. Force myself out the door. It's not so bad out in the world. I keep forgetting I belong there.
It is a wicked thing to not feel at home on the planet, to hold yrself hostage when you've been sprung.
But I feel less and less at home in the jail cell of my room and more and more okay about rejoining the fucking world. I know, I know, I know the nature of my heart, my planet-sized heart is to belong everywhere, to shine, to flow, to be out in creation, to move. I know it.
So slowly, so so slowly, I am pushing off from the bottom of this river. Every fucking day.
I want to live in the world outside of my skull. I want to flow.
๑ no fairy godmothers, no magick wands ๑
Not to get all Freudian and crap, but I always liked this fairy tale because it makes me think about when I've got something bothering me and I have no idea what it might be- you know. The pea is the irksome bothering thing, the mattresses are the layers of crap piled on top of it, keeping it hidden in my subconscious mind.
Like I said at the start of this web log, I knew I had been raped. But I also kinda didn't. Because, since we never talked about sex or how to be safe or anything useful like that in my home, to me, as a teenager, rape was this thing where a guy jumped out of an alley and beat the crap out of you and forced his dick on you. So it was a few years after I got raped before I heard that, O, yeah, you can get raped by somebody you know. Never mind, O, yeah, it doesn't have to be this thing where there's a great big grappling struggling fistfight type scenario.
The boy I dated when I was 20, Andrew, he told me. He was the first person I ever said anything to about how, sometimes, I would "go away" during sex. Thank fucking god he was a kick-ass feminist, because instead of letting that slide or saying, "That's fucking weird," he actually had a conversation with me about it, asked me about when I'd first started "going away", was it only during sex, stuff like that.
So I started telling him about George, my first boyfriend, and how by the time we broke up, I hated sex and but I would force myself to have it with him because he would cry and say I didn't love him anymore or get all angry and accuse me of cheating. And in the telling of that, I mentioned the time he had held me down in the playground when we were stoned and I was crying and saying I really didn't want to have sex...
And Andrew said, really gently, "Honey, that's rape."
I didn't believe him.
I thought he misunderstood what I was describing, so I described it further, saying, "Nah. It's not like he jumped on me and there was some big throw down and bla bla bla..."
And Andrew was like, "Honey, how are you supposed to put up a big throw down when you left your body? Who has sex with somebody when they're crying and saying they don't WANT to?"
I was kinda stunned.
He said, "If you start to go away when we're having sex, will you try to tell me? So we can stop? And just, you know, chill?"
I thought that sounded ridiculous.
"And don't ever be afraid to tell me you don't feel like having sex, okay?"
Yeah. Right.
I was a tough nut at 20.
The thing is, even after that conversation, and even after getting into riot grrrl and rape awareness and feminism and Take Back the Night and doing a bunch of enlightening in my early 20's...
I still somehow only sorta Got It.
Like, I would read about the after-effects that sexual violence can have on a person, know I did those things or showed those exact behaviors and patterns... and still not Get It.
I mean, I got it if YOU were telling me. "Sometimes, I feel like somebody's watching me at night if I'm home alone and I keep having to get up and make sure everything's locked a million times." Or whatever. I'd know: that's from being assaulted. It's called Hypervigilence.
In my mind, even when I could TELL somebody that I had been raped, I couldn't stop and think about how that might be effecting the way I feel about myself, the way I harmed myself, the attitudes I had about men and sex and people and my life.
Even when I was diligently endeavoring to work on myself, to better myself, I really couldn't completely take seriously the correlation between how I grew up, crazy child molesters in my family, being raped and the things I was experiencing as an adult that were bringing me incredible pain- and bringing it to me no matter how hard I fought to make my life work.
Like I said at the start of this web log, I knew I had been raped. But I also kinda didn't. Because, since we never talked about sex or how to be safe or anything useful like that in my home, to me, as a teenager, rape was this thing where a guy jumped out of an alley and beat the crap out of you and forced his dick on you. So it was a few years after I got raped before I heard that, O, yeah, you can get raped by somebody you know. Never mind, O, yeah, it doesn't have to be this thing where there's a great big grappling struggling fistfight type scenario.
The boy I dated when I was 20, Andrew, he told me. He was the first person I ever said anything to about how, sometimes, I would "go away" during sex. Thank fucking god he was a kick-ass feminist, because instead of letting that slide or saying, "That's fucking weird," he actually had a conversation with me about it, asked me about when I'd first started "going away", was it only during sex, stuff like that.
So I started telling him about George, my first boyfriend, and how by the time we broke up, I hated sex and but I would force myself to have it with him because he would cry and say I didn't love him anymore or get all angry and accuse me of cheating. And in the telling of that, I mentioned the time he had held me down in the playground when we were stoned and I was crying and saying I really didn't want to have sex...
And Andrew said, really gently, "Honey, that's rape."
I didn't believe him.
I thought he misunderstood what I was describing, so I described it further, saying, "Nah. It's not like he jumped on me and there was some big throw down and bla bla bla..."
And Andrew was like, "Honey, how are you supposed to put up a big throw down when you left your body? Who has sex with somebody when they're crying and saying they don't WANT to?"
I was kinda stunned.
He said, "If you start to go away when we're having sex, will you try to tell me? So we can stop? And just, you know, chill?"
I thought that sounded ridiculous.
"And don't ever be afraid to tell me you don't feel like having sex, okay?"
Yeah. Right.
I was a tough nut at 20.
The thing is, even after that conversation, and even after getting into riot grrrl and rape awareness and feminism and Take Back the Night and doing a bunch of enlightening in my early 20's...
I still somehow only sorta Got It.
Like, I would read about the after-effects that sexual violence can have on a person, know I did those things or showed those exact behaviors and patterns... and still not Get It.
I mean, I got it if YOU were telling me. "Sometimes, I feel like somebody's watching me at night if I'm home alone and I keep having to get up and make sure everything's locked a million times." Or whatever. I'd know: that's from being assaulted. It's called Hypervigilence.
In my mind, even when I could TELL somebody that I had been raped, I couldn't stop and think about how that might be effecting the way I feel about myself, the way I harmed myself, the attitudes I had about men and sex and people and my life.
Even when I was diligently endeavoring to work on myself, to better myself, I really couldn't completely take seriously the correlation between how I grew up, crazy child molesters in my family, being raped and the things I was experiencing as an adult that were bringing me incredible pain- and bringing it to me no matter how hard I fought to make my life work.
๑ the long goodbye ๑
"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows."
~Epictetus
He is only an arm's length away, turned on his side, and the sheets clutched to his chest, tucked under his pale, bare arm. The slope of his shoulder barely stirs with the tide of his breathing, tempered by sleep. He is turned away from me and I consider him there, so close by; how he has come into my life from a million miles away.
It astonishes me.
I am memorizing him. I wish I wasn't, but I can't help myself. I wish I wasn't because I know I'm memorizing him because I still cannot get my head around the idea that anybody comes along and stays. That a man could. That anything good can last. My mind can't take that idea in all at once... only slowly... an hour at a time...
So out of habit, I am memorizing him. Because nobody stays forever. And I want to be able to remember what it was like when he was here and thought he would always be.
He showed me the photo almost as soon as we began to know each other.
I can see it when I close my eyes or even when they're open. The first time I saw it, it took a second to register what I was looking at. It didn't make any sense. It was a plane flying into the side of a building- seen looking up from the sidewalks below. A clear blue sky, grey building, white plane.
It looked so familiar. Even that moment of confusion was familiar, that thought: What I'm seeing doesn't make any sense. It was the same thought I'd had when I was watching it happen. I watched it happen the same instant he had watched it happen, had been snapping that picture. I just hadn't been seeing it from that perspective. I just hadn't been standing that close.
He is a memory now and so is the picture.
We write. Sometimes every day. We talk on the phone, but not as often as we write.
He is a million miles away again. I memorized him and so I see him in my dreams sometimes and don't realize that I am still asleep. I reach for his strong arms, reach over just to run my hand down the line of his back to reassure myself my life could be this good.
I wake up alone. My life is what it is. Without him.
I think about him standing under that building.
I didn't know him then.
He could have died and I would never have known.
Never known my heart had died inside of a boy I'd never met.
For what seemed like a long time, I wanted to make it safe. Make it safe so he could come home. Come back home and have it be so much better than it was before. No matter how hard I tried, it was never good enough for him. Never.
I told him at the start: some bad things happened to me and it seems like it gets in the way whenever I try to love a man. But that was all I did was tell him that. I needed to get help. I didn't. I thought the problem was something outside of me. That's what I believed and that's what I told him. That if he wanted to be with me, he'd have to make it safe for me. Because bad things had happened to me. He had to make it safe.
He tried.
It was never good enough.
Never.
I really didn't understand.
We never understood.
I think about him standing under that building. So close to dying. Bright blue sky and dark grey building, white plane. I think about him asleep, there, laying on his side, turned away from me. So close that I could reach across and squeeze his shoulder. He would stir and roll on his back and turn my way, tangle himself around me, warm with sleep, pull me into him in bedroom shadows thrown by the bright blue of morning's light.
It astonishes me.
I am memorizing him. I wish I wasn't, but I can't help myself. I wish I wasn't because I know I'm memorizing him because I still cannot get my head around the idea that anybody comes along and stays. That a man could. That anything good can last. My mind can't take that idea in all at once... only slowly... an hour at a time...
So out of habit, I am memorizing him. Because nobody stays forever. And I want to be able to remember what it was like when he was here and thought he would always be.
He showed me the photo almost as soon as we began to know each other.
I can see it when I close my eyes or even when they're open. The first time I saw it, it took a second to register what I was looking at. It didn't make any sense. It was a plane flying into the side of a building- seen looking up from the sidewalks below. A clear blue sky, grey building, white plane.
It looked so familiar. Even that moment of confusion was familiar, that thought: What I'm seeing doesn't make any sense. It was the same thought I'd had when I was watching it happen. I watched it happen the same instant he had watched it happen, had been snapping that picture. I just hadn't been seeing it from that perspective. I just hadn't been standing that close.
He is a memory now and so is the picture.
We write. Sometimes every day. We talk on the phone, but not as often as we write.
He is a million miles away again. I memorized him and so I see him in my dreams sometimes and don't realize that I am still asleep. I reach for his strong arms, reach over just to run my hand down the line of his back to reassure myself my life could be this good.
I wake up alone. My life is what it is. Without him.
I think about him standing under that building.
I didn't know him then.
He could have died and I would never have known.
Never known my heart had died inside of a boy I'd never met.
For what seemed like a long time, I wanted to make it safe. Make it safe so he could come home. Come back home and have it be so much better than it was before. No matter how hard I tried, it was never good enough for him. Never.
I told him at the start: some bad things happened to me and it seems like it gets in the way whenever I try to love a man. But that was all I did was tell him that. I needed to get help. I didn't. I thought the problem was something outside of me. That's what I believed and that's what I told him. That if he wanted to be with me, he'd have to make it safe for me. Because bad things had happened to me. He had to make it safe.
He tried.
It was never good enough.
Never.
I really didn't understand.
We never understood.
I think about him standing under that building. So close to dying. Bright blue sky and dark grey building, white plane. I think about him asleep, there, laying on his side, turned away from me. So close that I could reach across and squeeze his shoulder. He would stir and roll on his back and turn my way, tangle himself around me, warm with sleep, pull me into him in bedroom shadows thrown by the bright blue of morning's light.
I don't really know how come anything happens in this life.
I thought that I could make it safe and then he would come home. We write almost every day. He is a million miles from me. And neither one of us is ever coming home again.
I thought that I could make it safe and then he would come home. We write almost every day. He is a million miles from me. And neither one of us is ever coming home again.
~FOR MY KIDS~
I want you to know, more than anything, really, that I love you, always, always have. But looking at the ugly fact that you will never be born, that's gotta be pretty much impossible for you to believe. If I loved you so damn much for so, so long, why wouldn't I want you in my life, want to bring you here, bring you to where I am, where everything is, make our home, bring you up.
So that's what I want to talk about, because if I was you, I'd want an explanation.
What I felt was best would have been for you to have things that I didn't, things that make a gigantic difference later on. First, I needed to know that you would be safe from me, from all the rage and aching inside of me. I needed to do a lot of work to change who I grew up into. The person I was raised to be would not have been safe. I would have beaten you. I would have sent you away. I would have forced you to know about adult stuff that little kids never ever need to know about- hear about my grown up problems, my resentments, my opinions about yr dad, his family, men, relationships... I would have taken from you emotionally and terrorized you physically. I had to find a way to unlearn being that. It took a long long time.
Second, I needed to find you a good dad and I haven't. I needed him to be the kind of man who doesn't run away or keep ugly secrets. I neeed him to be someone strong who wasn't going to beat the hell out of you or beat me in front of you or fuck around with other women. I couldn't find anybody like that. Somebody kind and real and devoted, understanding and gentle. I looked. But I want you to know that it isn't because there aren't men like that in the world. There are. I found many, it's just that I was still trying to change out of that asshole person I had been raised to be. And even though I eventually learned how not to be a bully to kids, it took so long that by the time I really started learning how to not be a bully to men... well... there's only so long in a lifetime where a woman's body can make babies. The truth is that I have pretty much run out of time. I'm 37 and when you get to be my age, even though you can still get pregnant, it's not such a great idea. Every year that goes by after 35, it becomes less and less of a good idea. Because the raw materials degrade and it gets riskier and riskier for the health of the kids you have.
I know that often, women don't take all this stuff into consideration. They just get knocked up and hope for the best. But I just... I wanted you to have a real chance. A real childhood. A real mom and dad there for you. A real home. I wanted it to be safe.
Maybe if I had fought harder, started fighting sooner, had been less of a coward, had had more faith in myself or in general... maybe all that I've said here just sounds like I was expecting things to be perfect. I really wasn't, but maybe it sounds like a bunch of excuses and that the truth is I was never going to be satisfied. Maybe you think that deep down inside, I just didn't want you, didn't want to be a mom, didn't want all the work or responsibility.
You don't have any reason to believe me when I tell you this, but it's the truth and I need to say it. I wanted you. I wanted you here. With me. I wanted to be responsible for you. I wanted to do all that work. I always, always wanted you. But this is something that couldn't just be about what I wanted. It had to be about you and what would be the best things for you. And having to realize I didn't pull it off... it's maybe the hardest thing about being alive that I'll ever have to accept. That I never get to meet you. I never get to show you all this love that I've been nursing inside myself almost my whole life just for you.
I needed it to be safe. And I failed. And I'm so sorry, honey. All I can really say in my defense is that I tried so hard- to grow up, to unlearn, to find the things for you that I went without... I knew it was going to be kind of impossible, but you were worth defying impossible for to me. Always.
I've seen yr faces in my dreams. I see you in little kids of all ages, in all kinds of situations. And felt that gigantic love inside that was always meant to be given to you. If I was wrong not to go ahead and get pregnant and hope for the best, I hope you can forgive me. But I never wanted you to know what I knew growing up, be destroyed inside the way that I was every day. I wanted you to get to be a kid and feel loved and be free.
I waited my whole life for you.
I'm sorry.
I love you.
I'll see you in my dreams.
So that's what I want to talk about, because if I was you, I'd want an explanation.
What I felt was best would have been for you to have things that I didn't, things that make a gigantic difference later on. First, I needed to know that you would be safe from me, from all the rage and aching inside of me. I needed to do a lot of work to change who I grew up into. The person I was raised to be would not have been safe. I would have beaten you. I would have sent you away. I would have forced you to know about adult stuff that little kids never ever need to know about- hear about my grown up problems, my resentments, my opinions about yr dad, his family, men, relationships... I would have taken from you emotionally and terrorized you physically. I had to find a way to unlearn being that. It took a long long time.
Second, I needed to find you a good dad and I haven't. I needed him to be the kind of man who doesn't run away or keep ugly secrets. I neeed him to be someone strong who wasn't going to beat the hell out of you or beat me in front of you or fuck around with other women. I couldn't find anybody like that. Somebody kind and real and devoted, understanding and gentle. I looked. But I want you to know that it isn't because there aren't men like that in the world. There are. I found many, it's just that I was still trying to change out of that asshole person I had been raised to be. And even though I eventually learned how not to be a bully to kids, it took so long that by the time I really started learning how to not be a bully to men... well... there's only so long in a lifetime where a woman's body can make babies. The truth is that I have pretty much run out of time. I'm 37 and when you get to be my age, even though you can still get pregnant, it's not such a great idea. Every year that goes by after 35, it becomes less and less of a good idea. Because the raw materials degrade and it gets riskier and riskier for the health of the kids you have.
I know that often, women don't take all this stuff into consideration. They just get knocked up and hope for the best. But I just... I wanted you to have a real chance. A real childhood. A real mom and dad there for you. A real home. I wanted it to be safe.
Maybe if I had fought harder, started fighting sooner, had been less of a coward, had had more faith in myself or in general... maybe all that I've said here just sounds like I was expecting things to be perfect. I really wasn't, but maybe it sounds like a bunch of excuses and that the truth is I was never going to be satisfied. Maybe you think that deep down inside, I just didn't want you, didn't want to be a mom, didn't want all the work or responsibility.
You don't have any reason to believe me when I tell you this, but it's the truth and I need to say it. I wanted you. I wanted you here. With me. I wanted to be responsible for you. I wanted to do all that work. I always, always wanted you. But this is something that couldn't just be about what I wanted. It had to be about you and what would be the best things for you. And having to realize I didn't pull it off... it's maybe the hardest thing about being alive that I'll ever have to accept. That I never get to meet you. I never get to show you all this love that I've been nursing inside myself almost my whole life just for you.
I needed it to be safe. And I failed. And I'm so sorry, honey. All I can really say in my defense is that I tried so hard- to grow up, to unlearn, to find the things for you that I went without... I knew it was going to be kind of impossible, but you were worth defying impossible for to me. Always.
I've seen yr faces in my dreams. I see you in little kids of all ages, in all kinds of situations. And felt that gigantic love inside that was always meant to be given to you. If I was wrong not to go ahead and get pregnant and hope for the best, I hope you can forgive me. But I never wanted you to know what I knew growing up, be destroyed inside the way that I was every day. I wanted you to get to be a kid and feel loved and be free.
I waited my whole life for you.
I'm sorry.
I love you.
I'll see you in my dreams.
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Tuesday, October 31, 2006
๑spirit animal๑
Trauma survivors with PTSD often struggle with intense anger or rage, and can have difficulty coping with an impulse to lash out verbally or physically -- especially if their trauma involved physical abuse or assault, war, domestic or community violence, or being humiliated, shamed and betrayed by people they needed to trust. Family members can feel frightened of and betrayed by the survivor, despite feeling love and concern.
Even if the trauma occurred decades ago, survivors may act -- and family members may feel -- as if the trauma never stops happening. They may feel as if they're living in a warzone or a disaster if the survivor is excessively on-guard, tense, or easily startled or enraged. Family members can find themselves avoiding activities or people and becoming isolated from each other and from friends outside the family. They may feel that they have no one to talk to, and that no one that can understand.
They may find it very difficult to have a cooperative discussion with the survivor about important plans and decisions for the future, because s/he feels there is no future to look forward to, because s/he has difficulty listening and concentrating without becoming distracted, tense, or anxious, or because s/he becomes angry and overly suspicious toward the family member or toward others (hypervigilant).
They may find it very difficult to discuss personal or family problems, because the survivor becomes either controlling, demanding, or overprotective, or unreasonably anxious and fearful about problems becoming terrible catastrophes.
Feeling irritable, on-guard, easily startled, worried, or anxious may lead survivors to be unable to relax, socialize, or be intimate without being tense or demanding. Significant others may feel pressured, tense, and controlled as a result.
Difficulty falling or staying asleep and severe nightmares prevent both the survivor and partner from sleeping restfully, and may make sleeping together difficult.
Trauma memories, trauma reminders or flashbacks, and the attempt to avoid such memories or reminders, can make living with a survivor feel like living in a war zone or living in constant threat of vague but terrible danger. Living with an individual who has PTSD does not automatically cause PTSD; but it can produce "vicarious" or "secondary" traumatization, which is almost like having PTSD.
Reliving trauma memories, avoiding trauma reminders, and struggling with fear and anger greatly interferes with survivors' abilities to concentrate, listen carefully, and make cooperative decisions -- so problems often go unresolved for a long time. Significant others may come to feel that dialogue and teamwork are impossible.
Survivors of childhood sexual and physical abuse, rape, domestic violence, combat, or terrorism, genocide, torture, kidnapping or being a prisoner of war, often report feeling a lasting sense of terror, horror, vulnerability and betrayal that interferes with relationships.
Feeling close, trusting, and emotionally or sexually intimate may seem a dangerous "letting down of my guard" because of past traumas -- although the survivor often actually feels a strong bond of love or friendship in current healthy relationships.
Having been victimized and exposed to rage and violence, survivors often struggle with intense anger and impulses that usually are suppressed by avoiding closeness or by adopting an attitude of criticism or dissatisfaction with loved ones and friends. Intimate relationships may have episodes of verbal or physical violence.
Survivors may be overly dependent upon or overprotective of partners, family members, friends, or support persons (such as healthcare providers or therapists).
You have experienced a traumatic event. Even though the event may be over, you may now be experiencing or may experience later some strong emotional or physical reactions. It is very common, in fact quite normal, for people to experience emotional aftershocks when they have passed through a horrible event.
Sometimes the emotional aftershocks (or stress reactions) appear immediately after the traumatic event. Sometimes they may appear a few hours or a few days later. And, in some cases, weeks or months may pass before the stress reactions appear.
The signs and symptoms of a stress reaction may last a few days, a few weeks or a few months and occasionally longer depending on the severity of the traumatic event. With the understanding and the support of loved ones, stress reactions usually pas more quickly. Occasionally, the traumatic event is so painful that professional assistance from a counselor may be necessary. This does not imply craziness or weakness. It simply indicates that the particular trauma was just too powerful to manage without help.
Here are some very common signs and signals of a stress reaction:
COGNITIVE SIGNS
Blaming someone
Confusion
Poor attention
Poor decisions
Heightened or lowered alertness
Poor concentration
Memory problems
Hypervigilance
Difficulty identifying familiar objects or people
Increased or decreased awareness of surroundings
Poor problem solving
Poor abstract thinking
Loss of time, place, or person orientation
Disturbed thinking
Nightmares
Intrusive images
EMOTIONAL SIGNS
Anxiety
Guilt
Grief
Denial
Emotional shock
Fear
Uncertainty
Loss of emotional control
Depression
Inappropriate emotional response
Apprehension
Feeling overwhelmed
Intense anger
Irritability
Agitation
BEHAVIORAL SIGNS
Change in activity
Withdrawal
Emotional outbursts
Suspiciousness
Change in usual communications
Loss or increase of appetite
Alcohol consumption
Inability to rest
Antisocial acts
Nonspecific bodily complaints
Hyperalert to environment
Startle reflex intensified
Even if the trauma occurred decades ago, survivors may act -- and family members may feel -- as if the trauma never stops happening. They may feel as if they're living in a warzone or a disaster if the survivor is excessively on-guard, tense, or easily startled or enraged. Family members can find themselves avoiding activities or people and becoming isolated from each other and from friends outside the family. They may feel that they have no one to talk to, and that no one that can understand.
They may find it very difficult to have a cooperative discussion with the survivor about important plans and decisions for the future, because s/he feels there is no future to look forward to, because s/he has difficulty listening and concentrating without becoming distracted, tense, or anxious, or because s/he becomes angry and overly suspicious toward the family member or toward others (hypervigilant).
They may find it very difficult to discuss personal or family problems, because the survivor becomes either controlling, demanding, or overprotective, or unreasonably anxious and fearful about problems becoming terrible catastrophes.
Feeling irritable, on-guard, easily startled, worried, or anxious may lead survivors to be unable to relax, socialize, or be intimate without being tense or demanding. Significant others may feel pressured, tense, and controlled as a result.
Difficulty falling or staying asleep and severe nightmares prevent both the survivor and partner from sleeping restfully, and may make sleeping together difficult.
Trauma memories, trauma reminders or flashbacks, and the attempt to avoid such memories or reminders, can make living with a survivor feel like living in a war zone or living in constant threat of vague but terrible danger. Living with an individual who has PTSD does not automatically cause PTSD; but it can produce "vicarious" or "secondary" traumatization, which is almost like having PTSD.
Reliving trauma memories, avoiding trauma reminders, and struggling with fear and anger greatly interferes with survivors' abilities to concentrate, listen carefully, and make cooperative decisions -- so problems often go unresolved for a long time. Significant others may come to feel that dialogue and teamwork are impossible.
Survivors of childhood sexual and physical abuse, rape, domestic violence, combat, or terrorism, genocide, torture, kidnapping or being a prisoner of war, often report feeling a lasting sense of terror, horror, vulnerability and betrayal that interferes with relationships.
Feeling close, trusting, and emotionally or sexually intimate may seem a dangerous "letting down of my guard" because of past traumas -- although the survivor often actually feels a strong bond of love or friendship in current healthy relationships.
Having been victimized and exposed to rage and violence, survivors often struggle with intense anger and impulses that usually are suppressed by avoiding closeness or by adopting an attitude of criticism or dissatisfaction with loved ones and friends. Intimate relationships may have episodes of verbal or physical violence.
Survivors may be overly dependent upon or overprotective of partners, family members, friends, or support persons (such as healthcare providers or therapists).
You have experienced a traumatic event. Even though the event may be over, you may now be experiencing or may experience later some strong emotional or physical reactions. It is very common, in fact quite normal, for people to experience emotional aftershocks when they have passed through a horrible event.
Sometimes the emotional aftershocks (or stress reactions) appear immediately after the traumatic event. Sometimes they may appear a few hours or a few days later. And, in some cases, weeks or months may pass before the stress reactions appear.
The signs and symptoms of a stress reaction may last a few days, a few weeks or a few months and occasionally longer depending on the severity of the traumatic event. With the understanding and the support of loved ones, stress reactions usually pas more quickly. Occasionally, the traumatic event is so painful that professional assistance from a counselor may be necessary. This does not imply craziness or weakness. It simply indicates that the particular trauma was just too powerful to manage without help.
Here are some very common signs and signals of a stress reaction:
COGNITIVE SIGNS
Blaming someone
Confusion
Poor attention
Poor decisions
Heightened or lowered alertness
Poor concentration
Memory problems
Hypervigilance
Difficulty identifying familiar objects or people
Increased or decreased awareness of surroundings
Poor problem solving
Poor abstract thinking
Loss of time, place, or person orientation
Disturbed thinking
Nightmares
Intrusive images
EMOTIONAL SIGNS
Anxiety
Guilt
Grief
Denial
Emotional shock
Fear
Uncertainty
Loss of emotional control
Depression
Inappropriate emotional response
Apprehension
Feeling overwhelmed
Intense anger
Irritability
Agitation
BEHAVIORAL SIGNS
Change in activity
Withdrawal
Emotional outbursts
Suspiciousness
Change in usual communications
Loss or increase of appetite
Alcohol consumption
Inability to rest
Antisocial acts
Nonspecific bodily complaints
Hyperalert to environment
Startle reflex intensified
Memory Babe
I never cried about it. About being raped. Not when it happened. Not for years and years. Only a few months ago did I ever shed a tear about it.
We drove, me and my friend, to where it happened. Just a few months ago, in the Spring. On an overcast Saturday around noontime. I didn't tell her where we were going or why, just that I had somewhere to go and that I wanted her with me. She didn't ask questions. We simply went.
It's on a side of town where I have no reason to go. It's almost the Country. Just at the end of what could really still be called city limits. A few more miles and there's nothing but feilds and an onramp to the Interstate.
As we got closer to my old neighborhood, I pointed out landmarks to my friend, little scenery from my teenaged life, my high school life that I lived on that side of town. Memory snapshots burst into clarity and then bled away slow. All of my recollections were of me walking those streets at all hours, always wasted, always unarmed, always by myself.
I saw my teenaged self in my memory's eyes out the rainfreckled car window as we moved past corners I hadn't stood on or even considered in so long. Why, I asked her suddenly realizing this, why was I outside walking around these streets in the middle of the night so often? Drunk or high, with my Walkman on. Going to or coming home from where ever on my own. Why didn't any adults in my life ever wonder or know where I was? What if I had disappeared into a car and been taken the short jump to the Interstate?
Where were my parents?
We finally arrived at the end of the very long street where the cheap little out of the way apartment complex was, the one where I lived as a teenager. There was the park. I thought to myself: Wow, every day on the way to highschool, I had to walk past that park, where I had been raped. Every day.
I expected it to have kids in it at that noon hour on a Saturday, but there was nobody, just empty swings and grass. I had forgotten about the rain. It drove the kids inside. As we pulled up and she cut the engine, my friend and, I stared out at the spot where it had happened. A tree had grown there. On the exact spot. It was huge. A maple. It was in bloom. We sat there in her car with my gawking numbly out at it for what was probably 60 seconds, but it felt like minutes and minutes before I heard my own voice coming from far away. I told her where we were. Why we were there. She followed the invisible line drawn by my gaze and she stared out at the tree too, as I explained.
Then I got out of the car and started walking across the wet grass towards that spot, that tree.
I remember the rape in a fogged over blur. My first love. He held me down and he raped me. And the entire time, an unbroken reel of soothingly sung words came from him as he did it. Words of love. To make me stop saying no. To make me stop.
On that spot.
I stood under the tree and the tree kept the rain off of us and kept the grass dry on that spot so my friend and I could sit and smoke by that tree. It was large enough around and tall enough into the sky right on that spot so that when I looked at it, when I lay my hand on the trunk and stared up, from how big and tall it was, I could suddenly see for myself that it had been 20 years. A tree that wasn't there had had time to grow to that considerable of a size in the time between then and now and that takes a lot of time.
That tree made it real to me that what had happened there had happened a long long time ago. It made that notion something I could finally solidly comprehend. Something I could place the warm, slightly shakey palms of my warm hands on and touch. Stand under and stare up at. On the exact spot
I looked up into its branches and then I looked at my friend and said, "It's like it's standing guard. It's like it's been waiting here all this time
And then we both sat under it in the dry grass and I smoked cigarettes and told my friend what had happened to me. And then I cried about it for the first time.
That park was tangled in dreams and half recollections and nightmares. You could almost make those memories keep right on smearing and fogging over so that they become indistinguishable from something of imagination. But that tree was real. That place was real. That all actually happened. Somehow, because I had tried so softly for so long to make it unreal, I was hoping secretly that we would never find it when we went driving that day.
But when we were done and we got up and walked back across the rainy grass to her car, I turned and looked at that tree for another long minute and it just felt like it was there and had conquered that spot, taken it over, made it not be horrible. It had been waiting for me so that when I came back, I would be safe. I would be guarded. I would not be sucked backwards in time.
Let me tell you about that:
We drove, me and my friend, to where it happened. Just a few months ago, in the Spring. On an overcast Saturday around noontime. I didn't tell her where we were going or why, just that I had somewhere to go and that I wanted her with me. She didn't ask questions. We simply went.
It's on a side of town where I have no reason to go. It's almost the Country. Just at the end of what could really still be called city limits. A few more miles and there's nothing but feilds and an onramp to the Interstate.
As we got closer to my old neighborhood, I pointed out landmarks to my friend, little scenery from my teenaged life, my high school life that I lived on that side of town. Memory snapshots burst into clarity and then bled away slow. All of my recollections were of me walking those streets at all hours, always wasted, always unarmed, always by myself.
I saw my teenaged self in my memory's eyes out the rainfreckled car window as we moved past corners I hadn't stood on or even considered in so long. Why, I asked her suddenly realizing this, why was I outside walking around these streets in the middle of the night so often? Drunk or high, with my Walkman on. Going to or coming home from where ever on my own. Why didn't any adults in my life ever wonder or know where I was? What if I had disappeared into a car and been taken the short jump to the Interstate?
Where were my parents?
We finally arrived at the end of the very long street where the cheap little out of the way apartment complex was, the one where I lived as a teenager. There was the park. I thought to myself: Wow, every day on the way to highschool, I had to walk past that park, where I had been raped. Every day.
I expected it to have kids in it at that noon hour on a Saturday, but there was nobody, just empty swings and grass. I had forgotten about the rain. It drove the kids inside. As we pulled up and she cut the engine, my friend and, I stared out at the spot where it had happened. A tree had grown there. On the exact spot. It was huge. A maple. It was in bloom. We sat there in her car with my gawking numbly out at it for what was probably 60 seconds, but it felt like minutes and minutes before I heard my own voice coming from far away. I told her where we were. Why we were there. She followed the invisible line drawn by my gaze and she stared out at the tree too, as I explained.
Then I got out of the car and started walking across the wet grass towards that spot, that tree.
I remember the rape in a fogged over blur. My first love. He held me down and he raped me. And the entire time, an unbroken reel of soothingly sung words came from him as he did it. Words of love. To make me stop saying no. To make me stop.
On that spot.
I stood under the tree and the tree kept the rain off of us and kept the grass dry on that spot so my friend and I could sit and smoke by that tree. It was large enough around and tall enough into the sky right on that spot so that when I looked at it, when I lay my hand on the trunk and stared up, from how big and tall it was, I could suddenly see for myself that it had been 20 years. A tree that wasn't there had had time to grow to that considerable of a size in the time between then and now and that takes a lot of time.
That tree made it real to me that what had happened there had happened a long long time ago. It made that notion something I could finally solidly comprehend. Something I could place the warm, slightly shakey palms of my warm hands on and touch. Stand under and stare up at. On the exact spot
I looked up into its branches and then I looked at my friend and said, "It's like it's standing guard. It's like it's been waiting here all this time
And then we both sat under it in the dry grass and I smoked cigarettes and told my friend what had happened to me. And then I cried about it for the first time.
That park was tangled in dreams and half recollections and nightmares. You could almost make those memories keep right on smearing and fogging over so that they become indistinguishable from something of imagination. But that tree was real. That place was real. That all actually happened. Somehow, because I had tried so softly for so long to make it unreal, I was hoping secretly that we would never find it when we went driving that day.
But when we were done and we got up and walked back across the rainy grass to her car, I turned and looked at that tree for another long minute and it just felt like it was there and had conquered that spot, taken it over, made it not be horrible. It had been waiting for me so that when I came back, I would be safe. I would be guarded. I would not be sucked backwards in time.
