Heartsick

It's been a while since I've been here. I've been okay. Mostly okay.

But - not to be a broken record or anything - I am never really okay. Or at least not for long.

I've reached this point in life that I've always heard about, read about. A phase. Where you find yourself looking backwards, incapable of seeing anything except what's past, what's gone. All the chances I didn't take, all the wrong turns. Periodically overwhelmed with regrets. Middle age, is maybe what it is. Or the approach to middle age. Something like that.

Oh you guys. I know you come here and read sometimes. Your comments pile up in an inbox I never read until I need to post something, when some emotion leads me outside of my mostly calm and kind life to come here here to this torn-up place inside me. And this time I feel so dumb and young and clueless and empty and so very sad.

Right. So. I'm not young anymore. Not really old, either, but far from my girlhood. This spring I found it distantly odd that I have so little interest in the spring. None of that frisky flirty feeling. Not the whimsical little hope of a fling and fun, the hope of a little heart-flutter. I suppose it's just that hope doesn't actually spring eternal. Perfectly fine, really, but it made me think more. About past springs and past flings and what my heart has been up to all my life.

The very sad answer is: not all that much. It is a howling sorrow to me, that I have never been in love with anyone who was in love with me. I've been in love, of course. And, thank goodness, I've been hopelessly helplessly desperately in love, a colossal fool, blind with it. I've lived that much, at least. I know what that's like. But I never did let myself fall for anyone who fell for me.

I knew it as I lived it. I didn't want to jump into that mess, that certain disaster area. It was a mostly conscious decision. Safer that way. I always figured -- one day. One day I'll be ready. One day I'll be safe enough, smart enough, strong enough. One day I'll be enough. Until then, I'll just fall in love with the safe ones. The ones who won't feel the same about me. Practice for the day when it can be different.

But now I realize that day really won't ever come. It's what's kept me sane and functional, this lack of mutual squishiness. It would lead me truly off the deep end, I'm quite sure of it. Because of the trust it requires, how exposed it would leave me. Close friendship, I can handle. Giving all of me in that way, okay - hard, but I can do it. I can't add my body to it. Or my future, my privacy, my tight control over myself. But especially not my body. Agape, yes. Eros, no never.

One thing that's hard to explain is the terrain of my sanity, how I work each day to keep certain structures from tumbling, certain valleys from getting too deep, to know where all the deadly cliffs are. I can't mess with the tectonic plates, or it would all tumble into a great hole, swallowed up by the earth.

It's a price that I pay, to have the life I've managed to have. By all rights, I should be in a straight jacket, or a high school dropout runaway, or dead from an overdose, or beaten to a pulp by a string of bad men, or put a bullet in my head years ago, or any number of things that happen to girls like me. But I managed a nice little semi-normal life that might even stretch to a ripe old age. And I know that one of the reasons I managed it was by staying out of a grand love affair.

It makes me so sad for myself. I was such a romantic thing, once upon a time. Not even all that long ago, I could swoon and sigh with the best of them, at some love story. Then I notice recently that it's gone, replaced by this numbness, this disconnect. Because I really just can't pretend anymore.

And I know, that voice in my head telling me the same thing you're thinking to tell me: it could still happen, not dead yet, try try try work hard and you never know, seize the day, et cetera. But it won't happen. I won't let me. I created some inner ninja long ago, deadly and swift and always on guard, to protect that part of me. And I don't stand a chance against it. Because I don't really want to.

Besides, I'm tired. I feel old. Mostly, I'm just waiting around to die, anyway. I've lost the ability to want it, anyway.

It's unbearably sad. I see myself from the outside and I think - what a waste. What a lovely girl. What an empty life she's given herself. Poor lonely thing, she'll never know that thrill, that joy. If only she could've been different.

But I'm not.

Worthless

Well here I am. I haven't disappeared from anywhere but this blog, much to my chagrin.

Something that's hard to deal with is that even during the times when the shit about my father isn't tormenting me, I'm still not exactly doing just fine. There are so many levels to this kind of thing, and the deepest darkest one is where I'm stuck in the trauma of the actual event. Where you can't get your mind off it, intrusive thoughts and imagery, screaming inside my head. The extreme comes and goes at different parts of life. Like wound flaring up.

But then there's the rest of life, which involves the by-products of that wounding. Tedious things, like abysmally low self-esteem, unfocused resentment of the world, sudden and inappropriate anxiety, low-grade depression. Those are the things that wear us down in the end. And it wears others down, because it's so tiresome to deal with someone who can never think well of herself, who always has the same whine.

I keep seeing my life stretching out before me in the same pattern it's laid out behind me: long stretches of self-hate and depression, broken by occasional deep-dark-horrible times and the rare moments of pure joy. There's so little to look forward to, really, except more of the same. And all of it happening in increasing isolation and old age. Cheery thought.

In the end, what always brings me to my knees is a feeling of worthlessness. I wasn't worth anything to anyone, or someone would've noticed me, would've helped me, would've seen me. I just didn't matter. Everything and everyone else mattered more than me. And I still feel that way. Which is probably why I've been going through yet another suicidal phase. Hard to want to keep living when all you can see are the ways you don't matter.

And rationally, of course, I can see I matter a little bit, to a few people. It's important to some of them that I'm around. But it doesn't change the fact that deep down, I don't actually believe it. That I have to keep trying to convince myself. And to know that I'll be fighting the same fucking battle for the rest of my pointless fucking life.

Histrionic

I really hate when something happens and it's really nothing, no big deal. But my head is so fucked up that it becomes this big fucking issue. And then it's all mine. Mine all alone. Stupid tiny little things that are nothing at all, but oh jesus god in my head, in my head it's a million times more.

And when it happens, then I'm the freak. I'M the only one for whom this could ever be such a big deal. Because (I am screaming in my head) it IS a big fucking deal, god almighty, can't you see don't you know how important this is, how big, how bad, how awful, so don't tell me it's nothing to get hung up on, you, you, standing there all nice and normal in your nice and normal goddamn life, what the fuck do you know about it, about me, about my life, about any of it, goddammit.

That's this argument I keep having in my head with the person who thinks "Oh hey sorry about that" is enough. But I can't REALLY have the argument because that's exactly right: "sorry" should be enough. It WOULD be enough for anyone else on this goddamn planet. So I have this reasonable voice in my head, patiently explaining over and over that it's really not a big deal, that I can't live like this, be like this about such little things, this is no way to be, calm down calm down.

And then I have the other screaming part of me that says Don't you tell me to fucking calm down, I know it's my problem, MY problem, it's always my fucking problem and I KNOW that and that's why it makes me crazy because it never ever stops being a problem.

So there's nothing really to talk about. We all agree that it's me who's the problem. We all agree I'm overreacting. So I'm left holding this bag of emotions while all this screaming goes on in my head about trust and honesty and betrayal and respect and on and on crazy madwoman should be locked up. Unfit for society.

I get really sick of being alone in my crazy head sometimes. Alone in my craziness. But that's what I get for having such nice, well-adjusted people around me.

Song

I sat last night with my friend to my right, friend of my heart, dear friend without whom I think I would be dead. (It's true. I was so close to failing, to falling, but he was there, is there, always a firm and steady grip, always beside me and never looking away, no matter how ugly I get.) My friend at my side and us watching the play. Not a very good play, but the music was mighty fine.

Because of the subject matter of the play, my father was sort of in the air there. The story was set in a place, a culture he grew up in. A distant slice of his world.

It was good music, and one song - a lovely ballad. Sweet and earnest girl singing her heart out, a country tune. It made me think of my father, instantly: He would love this. If he heard it, he would remember the melody but not the words and he'd walk around the house humming it to himself and bursting out with it in boisterous music-love. But he'd make up his own words, nonsense words. And we'd grow sick of it.

My mother, who has no ear, would tell him to stop with that blame song all the time, so annoying to hear it over and over. My brothers would make fun of him by creating their own nonsense lyrics which would tell the story of a silly old man who sang the same song over and over again like a broken record and wouldn't shut up. My sister would mimic my mother's complaints.

I would roll my eyes and make cutting remarks and tell him to shut up, no one wants to hear him singing. And then I'd catch myself humming the same tune later. Because I love a good melody. The joy my father took in belting out a tune - I inherited it. Not so much now, with the singing, but very much so when I was younger.

Sitting in the dark of the theatre, I found myself missing that silliness of him. Sad for a moment. Because it was a reminder of. Jesus, I don't know what. Of stupid normal family goofiness. Of his deep baritone booming in the bathroom as he shaved. Of his humanness.

I turned my head up to stare at the ceiling - theatre lights and ropes and catwalks in the dark distance as the melody my father would've love curled around me and I felt him there, and willed him away, wished there weren't good memories with the bad, wished there wasn't a part of me still that loves a part of who he was, his joyful singing. I made myself not cry at the memory of a father I could have loved.

But oh, I thought, as I made myself push it away because otherwise I'd have to leave - I almost did, almost got up and walked out. But I didn't because oh, how I know that joy. The joy of wanting to sing nonsense because the music is bursting from you. Oh how lucky I am with my good and worthy friend beside me, how lucky in the crisp autumn air on a clear night, watching a bad play that reminds me of the place my father came from - and how very, very far away that place is. Oh what a joy, a miracle, how far I am from that.

And so much more - how miraculous it is that it was only a moment. That I could pull myself back from it, not even mention it to my friend, not let it steal my evening. The memory of my father only briefly touched the back of my neck, pressed behind my eyes, and then I could let it move on.

Somehow my life right now - just right now, and oh please let it last, let it happen again that my life and my whacked out fucked up insides align in such a way that this once, his song didn't ruin mine.

Orphan

It's been so long since I've been here - and by "here", I mean both this blog and this place inside me, looking around in the ugly places that are neatly hidden throughout the course of my day, but that are always waiting for me to poke at them. Either I poke at them, or they poke at me. I have a lifetime ahead of me with these snarling little wounded animals in the corners of myself. They make a noise, and I check on them. Or not. If I mind my own business, they attack when my back is turned.

One day, maybe we'll have a nice established give-and-take worked out. I think we get closer to it, the more I get used to it.

My life lately is pretty okay. My moods are less swinging, which I think is due to regular exercise. Releasing endorphins on a regular basis really helps. Work is not bad, and the ghosts of the past are mostly quiet. Or more quiet than noisy - that's more accurate.

A big part of why is this: I've mostly stopped talking to my mother. This was a progressive estrangement, culminating in one big blowout back in the early part of this year. I've seen her once this year, talked to her on the phone maybe 3 or 4 times. I may see her at the holidays, but that's all. I've discovered the part of me that hates her, the stupid blindness of her, hates her for having loved him and for never seeing him, never suspecting.

And then there's the part of me that wonders if she did suspect, but never let herself acknowledge it. That part of me hates her more. A homicidal maniac hatred.

But aside from that part of it, there were many other ways my mother was and is unbelievably insensitive, unfeeling, manipulative - all of that crap. She's a real piece of work, and I've spent a lot of my life defending her to myself, to others. I had to believe she was a wonderful mother, a near-perfect mother who loved me more than anything else. I had to believe it, because I couldn't face the fact that not even one of my parents cared more about me than they cared about themselves and their own selfish desires.

It's hard to let go of illusions that you spent your childhood building, and it's hard to admit that you've given up so much of yourself for the sake of someone who turns out not to deserve it. But much of who I thought my mother was is an illusion, and I kept my silence for her peace of mind.
Well, I mean - half for her peace of mind and half out of personal shame. I'm hardly some self-sacrificial saint. Now that I actually don't care all that much if she gets hurt by the knowledge of what a criminal slime her beloved, enshrined-in-memory husband was, that doesn't mean I'm going to tell her. Mostly because it's none of her fucking business.

How twisted that sounds. But it's true - I would never tell her unless I could love her and trust her like I used to. I don't give that part of myself to people who I don't feel close to. And part of it is spite - she doesn't get any part of me, especially the deepest and most vulnerable parts.

She moved out of my childhood home, so I never have to go there again. Never. (And oh how I wish I had a way to express the relief of that, the freedom and release I feel.) I realized that I never came away from an encounter with her that didn't leave me feeling like shit about myself - so I'll never have contact with her again, unless I want to. Unless I feel like it. Unless it's on my terms.

It was very hard, for a few months there. Almost as if she'd died, and I was mourning the loss of her. That's what I was doing, of course - recognizing that she isn't what she was, that I've been clinging to this idealized version of Mother in my head. When I let go of the illusion, and there was just her there, just the person who she is -- well, it's not much. The things in her that I loved and needed are gone, and I had to face the fact that I'd lost another parent. Hurts just as much as losing the first parent did (and of course I don't mean at his death, but at the moment that he first reached for me).

All I can think is how lucky I am, to have realized my orphanhood at this age, when I'm strong enough to bear it, and have non-worthless, warm, wonderful, caring people to love me as I deserve.

Trigger

(Not just the name of a horse.)

Had a dream last night. Something that involved watching a man being hypnotically regressed to an earlier memory. He didn't want to remember, but these very villainous psychotherapists basically tricked him into it. As he remembered, they threw a jacket over his head and he screamed and screamed at whatever he was seeing in his head.

I listened to him screaming and I was angry at the villains, but I thought to myself: it feels so good, that screaming, I know it feels so good to him to scream like that. Even though it wasn't me doing it, it felt like release and relief, like getting some of the poison out.

Then my dream wandered on and I woke up thinking about my father, remembering something. There are different ways to remember, and the two main ways (for me, anyway) are (1) Just Thinking About It, and (2) Back In It. Sometimes if I'm Just Thinking About It, and it goes on too long or I think too hard about it, I'm Back In It. Like the thoughts won't leave you alone until they're thoroughly thought.

Getting thrown back to the moment -- re-living it. That's the worst. That's what makes me want to scream like the man in my dream. Except I can't scream like that, because this is the real world and such a noise has consequences. Not to mention that it can happen at any moment. At work in a meeting, at home while I'm cooking, talking on the phone with a friend, browsing in the linens department. Landmines.

Yeah yeah - apparently it's post-traumatic stress disorder. Or so I've read. Wow. A bona-fide disorder. Having suppressed so much of it my whole life, expending my mental energy on assuring myself that it was No Big Deal, it was long ago, I'm fine, forget it and move on - after a good chunk of my life was spent thinking like that, it can feel weird to realize that I am not, in fact, okay. I am very much not okay. I am fucked up. I have issues that are not garden-variety. I have mental disorders, even.

Trying to get used to that. It's still a novel concept, and requires constant re-acknowledgement of my past and what happened. Also acknowledgement of how many of my actions and reactions are not normal and healthy.

Anyway, the dream. The remembering and how it immediately threw me back in it. I don't know what made it happen. It must've just been waking up with that on my mind, and in that wandering half-awake morning-thoughts way, it hit on something I'd never thought of before, a detail. And my brain, ever curious, had to pursue it. Did it really happen like that? Is that a memory or just a dream? What do I remember about it? Fucking brain, always sabotaging me. I wound up in my bathroom, splashing water on my face, staring at my toes and wringing my hands and wondering if I could make it. Get in the shower, get dressed, normal day, I'm grown-up it's long ago stop thinking stop remembering stop stop stop.

I think I'm okay. Not sure yet. Work distracted me for the whole day, but the empty evening is here now. And I'm out of liquor. (A good or bad thing? You choose.) And I'm thinking about my known triggers, the things that set me off, that I know will set me off. Here's a list of what Ican think of:

• my own body odor, when it's very strong and trapped against my skin (I inherited his smell)
• the sight of forsythia (mixed result - it makes me feel strong, in control, but with disaster in my periphery)
• uncooked coconut macaroons (long story)
  
• dank cement-floored basements (I was cornered many times there, so he could cop a feel at the very least)
  
• being wet, my whole body soaked, unless I'm alone (first time it happened was in the bathroom as I came out of the shower)
  
• anyone calling me "honey" (always called me that, his whole life)
  
• the words "you're beautiful", unless spoken by a child (he said it to me all the time)
• the words "I love you" when spoken to me when I'm naked with the speaker (it's what he said, always, whispered in my ear when he was doing it)

Look at the last two. Tell me I can be normal, happy, healed unless I can hear those things without wanting to scream at the top of my lungs and murder whoever says them.

You can't tell me that, because it would be a lie. I know it. And I know it's getting worse instead of better. I know I have to make myself work on it, make myself try. I always intend to, but just hiding myself away in an effort to avoid it is so much easier and safer and, well, non-terror-inducing.

Safety and an absence of terror are pretty high on my list of priorities. But yeah - I know. I have to try, or I'll get more bitter and less better.

Worse

Sometimes people think a thing is worse or better than another thing. It's easy to think that it's worse for me because it was my father, as opposed to someone for whom it was an uncle or a neighbor. It's easy for me to think things like: At least he didn't ever get violent with me, hit me or cut me or burn me or tie me down. At least it's not like I tried to tell people and they didn't believe me, or that like the rest of my family knew and never did anything. That would all be so much worse.

But really, that's the most asinine kind of thinking there is. It is, in fact, a measure I use to see if I believe someone is mostly lying or not. Very often in this world, people like to milk their drama for all its worth. Occassionally people will lie about sexual abuse. Now, why anyone would want to lie about such a thing is beyond me - pity points, I guess. Or those people addicted to their own drama, who take something like "when I was 15, my cousin asked to see my boobies" and turn it into A History Of Sexual Abuse For Which I Now Need Years Of Therapy.

Anyway, I guess I just find a lot of victim culture. Thanks, Oprah. And it's hard to tell when something is real deep trauma or when it's just someone in need of a little fucking perspective. So what I use as my bullshit detector is the word "worse". Anyone says "My experience was worse because xyz" is a piece of shit liar or else just a piece of shit, period.

Wanna know why? Because my life was hell and I didn't even know it; I just kept shrugging it off as well, at least I'm not homeless and starving and having the shit kicked out of me every day. And when I realized that, as a friend recently put it, it's just as easy to drown in a puddle as in the ocean, it's not like I wore my pain like a badge that I proudly pointed to.

I didn't have it better than any other abuse survivors, and I didn't have it worse. It's true that I think there are levels to the bad, and I guess I privately and almost subconsciously judge other people's stories to decide whether they really are a member of my tribe (that's the tribe of Hey Look We Got COMPLETELY FUCKED OVER Before We Even Had A Chance). But if you're in that tribe, I am never going to say that I have it worse than you. One thing the truly injured people of the world understand is that it's not a contest. And maybe someone else DOES have it worse, but that doesn't mean any of us have it any easier.

It's not worse or better; it's just different. No, I never fell into illegal drug use. I also don't cut myself or swallow dangerous mixes of pills or play with guns. No one ever beat me up. Most of my life the effect of my past has caused me to do things like retreating into silence and withdrawing from others, cutting myself off and shutting down, denying my own humanity - relatively pretty harmless, and it means that I'm not battling against any horrible addictions or trying to piece my life back together on top of everything else that comes with this Fucked-Up gig.

But you know, maybe that girl whose brother held her down as she cried and he did horrible things to her and her mother knew but never stopped it? Maybe she doesn't know what it's like to live a life where her abuser is pretty universally adored and she had to keep her mouth shut her whole life and everyone has wonderful things to say about the guy who fills her waking nightmares. Maybe she's had a series of terrible relationships instead of a series of non-relationships because something's more than just a little bit broken inside of me. That's not to say I have it worse, or she has it worse; we just have it different. Maybe this and maybe that and maybe a whole hell of a lot of things, but the point is that we both got the shittiest end of the stick and it's ours to deal with for the whole rest of our lives because it isn't going away and it's not like we're saying we're scarred because we never got a pony and ballet lessons.

People who have really been through shit compare wounds, and maybe tell war stories, and occassionally talk shop. But there's no talk about who's got it worse. Only the posers and the well-meaning but uncomprehending standers-by think of it in those terms. There is no "worse" here.

Unfortunately, there's also not a whole hell of a lot of "better" either.