#confuzed

I think I know why this time at least. I found a graduate application and am half way through filling it out for consideration, but like nearly always I got overeager and ahead of myself, asked for references before calling to ask about the program (have 1 submission, 1 agreement to submit, and one who asked to be reminded which student, exactly, I was- understandable, it’s been 2 years)

But it’s making me anxious because I’m only 2/3 through the application questions. And they probably don’t have enough of an answer to be well rounded on any of them. And the stupid PDF keeps deleting my responses. Oh, and it might be due in about 30 days. Maybe. The website gives about fuckall information, just like all the rest of the stupid shits. (Like please go back to having a link list and give me allllll the information from class maps to instructors to summaries to outcomes to statistics and cost and all the things please)

This application feels too easy. It’s for a mental health counseling masters, with a conditional GPA that I meet, and a 285 GRE. The questions feel easier to obtain. I haven’t gotten this far in any of the applications I’ve been filling out for an entire year. It feels too simple.

All I can find are vague definitions or the definition crosses into sexual relationship/and or relates directly to sex.

I can feel the ache of it in my cervical spine and shoulders- weight of the world. But I’m not holding it alone. I’m leaning back into my childhood religion for a minute to help deal with it. Might be a bit of a regression, but being able to use the familiar to deal with the grief seems to be working.

I'm still conflicted. But I feel so,, light? vindicated? happy? seen? like maybe I'm not a failure? It's not a Done Deal or anything- it isn't the program accepting me, but the first step. I have a Mandated Reporter training, Immunizations Report, and the Entire program process with the deliberation and the interview and figuring out all the things to be there. I don't know how to feel. I don't like that my hopes are so high because that might mean getting crushed when (if) the program passes over me (not in a good way)

My mother did that. She turned my doorknob around and locked me into my room as a kid for hours at a time, and it led to significant increases in bathroom accidents. I don’t know how many were because she didn’t let me go, I was ‘abusing bathroom privileges to get out of punishment’ or how many were because I refused to use the breaks she gave after restricting bathroom access. I couldn’t help if I didn’t have to go right then. I shouldn’t have had to be subjected to the humiliation of begging to go to the bathroom. She made fun of me and ridiculed me for it. My younger siblings followed her example, leading to an increase in bullying at school too. Mom told her friends about it and they taunted me. I faced weekly issues with regulating my bathroom habits until I was probably in high school and I don’t know how much this had to do with that. It feels so shameful, and led to hot rage surrounding the issue of dealing with my disabled aunt’s incontinence when I was put in charge of a significant amount of her daily care after her surgery, even though I knew a lot of that was misplaced.

Apparently it is considered torture in some states to restrict bathroom access. It is a fire hazard to lock a child in their room without an easy escape, even if she probably didn’t leave the house with me locked in. And it didn’t matter that I taught myself how to pick the lock on the door in multiple ways because the fact remains I was locked-in in the first place. But she did it because I was a bad kid and didn’t listen when I was told. She had to lock me in to get me to listen to the punishments she set forth. She couldn’t hurt me by hitting me like Dad because she exercised self control. And she didn’t keep me from going to school or church- just locked me in at other times. Does me walking into my room and not fighting mean I have consent to do that? Can a child under the age of 13 assent to their own punishments?

I’ve been having emotional flashbacks surrounding the feelings of betrayal and shame surrounding the whole ordeal. It feels abhorrent and contaminating like my insides are dirty and I’ll never be clean.

She made a joke about it a few years ago. The person she made the joke to was shocked. The way their face immediately fell from humor to horror feels bad. It almost feels like pity.

Maybe this was a bigger deal than I thought, even if it isn’t felony material like Dad courted the idea of.

I don’t know how I feel. Almost like a double grief, but also so abjectly numb

This was the first family to tell me the way my father treated me was wrong. I told Buddy first- knew if anybody’d get it, he would- what with his monstrous story of escaping abuse himself

In her backyard and then again in her living room were the first times I told a breathing soul the extent of the things Daddy said and did when nobody was looking. Wept on her knee as I sat in her living room and she held up my chin and told me there was nothing I could have done to make it better because I was the child and it wasn’t my fault.

She was part of the reason I got into interdenominational hymns and all worship music being for god- which gave us the One coping skill and regulatory ability that was available to us in high school- not just selections from the brown and blue books and the occasional modern worship. Sure Mama had an eclectic musical taste, but Granny and the choir were the ones who had the breadth and depth about the hymns that gave me the hundreds of songs I could flip through and sing every single day as a teenager instead of sobbing and shaking for an hour every day.

She was also the first one to say that if I didn’t cry out for help when being assaulted in a public place then it was my fault too (I don’t know if she was directing that at me during that bible study, but it was heard none the less), and who called me a worker of Satan when I left.

We haven’t talked since she told me if I don’t ask Baba’s forgiveness for grieving him and destroying our family- a charge she laid blame with me- then I was the one still in sin.

And that complicates the final grief of her death.

I don’t want amends- there aren’t any to be made. I don’t want reconciliation or forgiveness

Maybe somewhere deep down I want another hug. But I want the hugs back then

With all the assurance they held.

She had her flaws. Nobody should have ever in a million years told anyone ever that they should honor and obey and be submissive to the husband who left marks on their family. It isn’t my place to judge the fact that she did with her own, with the terror and psychological abuse in the middle, but I can’t fathom repeating that as advice to others.

I’m not attending the funeral; I’m not visiting- haven’t done it not once in the last 5 years, won’t now. I’m not messaging the gratitude I still hold for those words she said when she grabbed my arm and shook me and held me while I sobbed at 14. I didn’t even attach a name or message to the donation towards end of life and funeral expenses, but I gave myself that acknowledgment of the love I once held for her, and allowed myself that one thing. That one final acknowledgment and gratitude for the place she once held in my life.

it still feels so weird to be able to say that again.

We reconnected years ago at this point, but I don’t remember much of the shared points of our childhoods. I know it was nearly a decade- I get bits and pieces- sharing a bedroom- sharing beds. Breakfast. Bathrooms. I know we spent the better parts of 6 weeks together in the summers at Grandma’s house. I remember breaking up fights. I remember the first time they let me babysit the girls completely alone. Somebody handed me a belt before they left for the hours they’d be gone; I couldn’t do it. I put them in timeout instead- like my grandmother.

I think she spent a lot of time with the middle 2 girls, and I ended up kinda corralling the 2 babies. I know I put a lot of pressure on her and 2 to include 5 despite 3’s objections. I know that ended up helping 4 to some extent when everything fell apart.

I know she feels like my sister, like if I could just find that rhythm, I could pick up that relationship. I know that she introduced me as that without thinking when I helped out on the headset for a couple hours at the drive in that one time. So she sees me that way too.