#getup8

Hello, All!

It has been pointed out to me that, especially for this type of blog, I should have an introduction post.  I’m still pretty green at this whole tumblr thing!  

Anyway, I suppose I’ll start by introducing myself.  As of this post, I’m 32, live in the greater L.A. area, and live with two cats and my male cis/het/allo partner, whom I married last year.  I’m some sort of ace, but still figuring out what label fits best.  I prefer ace or asexual for ease of use, but right now I’m leaning towards cupiosexual panromantic in the specific?  Sexual and romantic attraction are a bit difficult to figure out in retrospect; I’ve been with my current partner for almost 12 years now.  I came out to him almost immediately and we had a talk about if we wanted to continue together and what that would look like before we got married.

As for what this blog is about and what you’ll find here: this blog is about abuse, how it affects the abused, and recovery.  It’s mostly going to be original content text posts of poetry and essays.  There will be a reblog here or there, but it will relate to the theme of this blog.  The specific themes within abuse that will be addressed are child molestation, familial & emotional abuse, rape, gaslighting, PTSD, self-harm, suicide & suicidal ideation, and how all of that interacts with my depression, ADD, and queerness.

This will mostly be unpleasant to read.  What I write here is going to be raw, and it’s not going to be posts that most will want to stumble across in their main dash.  That’s okay; this isn’t for that person or their comfort.  I write for me and my recovery.  I post because a very dear friend of mine works in psychology and believes my words can help others.  I can only hope that she is right; if even one person can gain a small flicker of camaraderie or understanding from my pain and my process, I will write and post and lay myself bare.  

Feel free to send me asks or message me here on tumblr; though I will not, at this point, be sharing my main blog, as I’d like to keep my identity a bit anonymous for now.

Nanakorobi yaoki, darlings.

i feel like i am a pilot and up until now i’ve had phases of just looking for the one switch that’s going to level out my plane, which lever do i pull to make her fly right and copilots have come and gone but they all give me the same sideways glances and this plane has spluttered and stalled in the air, there have been some near. fucking. misses. i’ve had my hands over my eyes while someone or other reached over my shoulder and grabbed the joystick.  i’ve spent a lot of time in this chair having no business to be sitting in this chair, i’ve tried to shirk the job on someone else, i’ve done my best to avoid and circumvent that floating feeling in my stomach, tried to pretend my feet are on the ground, ultimately skirting the facts but it’s time to realize that this is life, megs. life is flying a fucking plane in the air and forget what every knob and button and lever does, the essence of the job is using your eyes, making decisions, communicating with your copilot if you have one and never. looking. away. because you’re scared or you think it’ll be easier.  unflinching vigilance my girl. that’s where the magic is anyway so straighten out and fly right, said with the utmost love and pride and confidence. fly your damn plane. and while you’re at it, you can let go of trying to have a phd in everything that ever was or will be. you miss the is that way.

i’m going to try the twelve steps.

quick note also: i think after a stumble and then a serious backslide like last week, this is a hugely successful thing to do: hit the ground running and get the momentum.  and to do it loving and to do it messy but to just keep going.  i think i might have an idea for a tattoo that i want to get.  something involving a ram.  maybe a ram with a bird on its head.  and a daisy chain around its neck.

I don’t know how to be angry

It consumes

It seethes

And it is worst when all is quiet

Because it turns out it’s always been there

But my life had never been quiet enough to hear it

My mind had never had a chance to be still

I’d never allowed my soul to breathe

You filled my days with noise

You filled my head with your voices

My bruised and battered mind filled my nights with terror

I filled the rest with distractions

And now I can’t stand the quiet

I don’t know how to do something badly

Quietly

And I’m so bad at anger

I’ve never known it

Not personally

In others, sure:

My partner is a short, loud burst of inarticulate noise, white knuckles in hair, then terrifying, fragile silence

My friend is a kettle; slow and unchanging, then temple veins and screaming and screaming until removed from the heat

My father is a bark of not-laughter and a brittle smile, words too casual, apostrophes everywhere

My mother is a slap and words squeezed through pressed lips and clenched teeth and wet cheeks

My best girl is a pot of water; boiling, shaking, fast small noises and when it’s too much, water spills over

My soulmate is fingernails in tabletops, crisp words, and hard hugs hiding fulminating violence

But my own anger?

Is a stranger

I think it might be talking too fast

White knuckles and fingernails in palms

Grinding teeth

Counterclockwise head tics & twitches

Throwing things at walls

Sitting still

Pacing

Breathing too fast

Holding my breath

And I’m sure many others unremembered, undiscovered

I

Don’t

Know

This

Stranger,

And now for something a little different: this is the letter I wrote on the evening of January 24, 2005. It was in my large and rather illegible cursive: blue ballpoint pen on wide-ruled paper torn, meticulously at the perforations of course, from my friend’s notebook. Because stilted poetry has always been my most favored coping mechanism. 

At a very emo 19 years old, this is how I tried to tell my parents about what had been happening in their home, to their daughter, at the hands of their friend.

(Please note that the one name mentioned was changed.)

It's not your fault; what happened to me.

If nothing else, that I want you to see.

How to phrase this wrecking ball

And tell you of a dear friend's fall.

For quite some time, how long I can't tell,

I've been losing my mind, thanks to one you know well.

This truth is too wrong for me to say

So I must tell you another way.

I've been betrayed by one we trust

Who became a victim to his own lust.

And I'm the one he chose as prey

Turned my world upside-down, caused my conscience to fray.

When this I discovered, the pain was so deep;

Even now it is haunting my sleep.

I hate so much to hurt you so,

But it can't be helped; you had to know.

Words as weapons, words as tools,

Words will often make us fools.

He told me that it wasn't wrong,

That's why I've held it inside for so long.

Mentor, relative, confidante, friend,

The role of "molester" brings the list to an end.

Yet I cannot hate him, for all that he's done;

I'm only disgusted by what he's begun.

My heart cries for his wife and son, Ron;

If they ever learn of just what went on

Behind the doorknob without any lock,

Between the words of every "talk."

I wish the words I write untrue;

I wish they were not written to

The ones I've struggled so long to save

So, I’ve been falling behind on this. Not by anyone’s standards but my own, of course. I’m honestly just exhausted, lately. There are three jobs I really need to finish applying to, taxes I’ve procrastinated on that need completing (I know, I know), social circles and relationships I’ve been neglecting, housework that has been left undone… hell, I haven’t even really unpacked after moving in August; the list would probably max out the character count.

I’m not even doing the things I currently or used to enjoy; sewing, playing guitar, crochet, origami, baking, writing my book, reading books…

I’m just empty lately. Insomnia is coming back with a vengeance, as is depression; I’m generally irritable due to the lack of sleep & excess of caffeine… But overall I’m just  E M P T Y. I start my day sleeping in until I absolutely MUST get up at 9:50, and the tank is dry by 1:30, never mind that job isn’t over until 2, and I usually have another job following, then groceries, then cooking dinner, then on & on all of the SHOULDs, all of the ADULTings.

But I’m dead at 1:30. Two jobs at six days a week, plus a social life, plus volunteer work once a month (I want desperately to do more), plus running & moderating a medium sized but active Discord server, plus helping manage a small but active guild in my MMO…. Plus trying to heal. Plus all of the background processing of emotions and traumas that I’m not necessarily even aware of, but still take massive amounts of energy, plus the daily conscious cataloging and correcting of ingrained toxic behaviors and thought processes… This list goes on & on as well.

I, perhaps more than most who have experienced this feeling in regards to me, understand the frustrations of who I am or am capable of being versus who I could have been or should be. It once even ended a friendship before it could start; I met a lovely woman my age who felt like a possible me without the trauma. It was so unnerving. She worked in a bakery, she was finishing her BA, she was a textile artist in her free time, she was planning her wedding, and went on to have a beautiful family and become an amazing mother and homemaker. That’s damn near who I was always told I was supposed to be; and who I was set to become before everything went so off the rails.

Now, I am a political person. I want to represent and be and do and march for everything I so fervently believe in. 

I am a bleeding heart and deeply empathetic. I want to give everything I have to anyone with less. 

I am an academic. I want finish the last 10 units of my AA, transfer to a good university for my BA, and get my MLIS so I can best facilitate and nurture the love of learning as a pastime. 

I am a mother. I want to have children to nurture and guide and teach and protect, not just my own, but also to give a home to those who so desperately need it, children who have seen too much and need someone who has traversed that desolate landscape before.

But I can’t be that me due to what gets in the way: paranoia, agoraphobia, impostor syndrome, anxiety, wage-slave poverty, leftover enforced behaviors of hiding anything that doesn’t fit the white upper-middle class, picket-fence-2.4-kids-and-a-dog-American-dream image.

So, I be the me that I can be. I share and like political memes and important articles on Facebook, and provide verifiable sources and fact checking where I can. I buy a meal, or a second hand blanket or jacket, or sit and talk with the homeless who frequent my library and campus. I hold two jobs in library support work, and talk to my students at both jobs about what they’re reading, what papers they’re researching, and try to refer them to those better able to help them achieve their best. I mother my friends to no end, I work with children, and volunteer with youths.

You are not a hurricane or natural disaster. This is how I had come to view you; unavoidable, unthinking, absent of empathy or compassion; without agency or mercy. But this is untrue. This is charity. This is a falsehood that perversely offers comfort; no person I could care for could be capable of what you did, so I unmade your personhood. I excised your soul and consciousness from my mind. It is so much easier to dismiss and excuse a thing. It is so much simpler to have only an unfeeling target to blame for agony. To remove the complexities. But this is a lie. And it is harmful.

I cared for you. I trusted you implicitly. I had never known a time when you were not a fixture in my life; you cared for me and there was a history between us and between your and my families to support this. Had there not been, you would not have been named as the caretaker for my soul, as my godfather. Even through my warped, spotty, and failing memories of your abuses, a few moments of happiness, of love, of real mentorship, shine through. Tidying my room to show tunes, singing and laughing loudly, dancing with the vacuum. A driving lesson where we pulled over so I could vent to you about my mom. Your surprise and amusement at finding that when your wife and I traded manicures, I’d given her baby blue glittery nails.

I have an on again, off again need to know why. Why you would betray such an implicit trust. What could motivate you, what could make it acceptable to so drastically change the context and terms of a relationship without care for the other half. But no answer will be forthcoming. Even were I to seek you out and demand one; whatever you would say would not be sufficient; it would not, could not satiate the burning hole you left in me. I know because I have had this conversation with you a thousand thousand times in my mind.

You’ll notice I speak of you in the past tense, as if you were dead. This is because, to me, you are. I don’t wish you harm, but I have mourned you. I have collected what pieces you left of me and walked on and away, or at least tried. I clearly look back, behind me, more often than maybe I should, but a person without a past is a person with no way to move forward.

I was asked, by a distant relative and good friend, for advice on what someone in my situation needs to hear. I think I may have gone on a bit a tangent; I gave her a list of my most hard-won lessons. These are all things I still struggle with, some daily, others only sporadically. I feel it's a good bit of writing, though, and worthy of sharing.

Language is important. "I was molested when I was a child." Is different than "[Name] molested me when I was a child." The latter places the blame where it belongs, with the perpetrator. The former removes the perpetrator completely. This seems an accident of syntax, but think of it this way: we are all stories. The words we use have so much power and it's important to not subtly blame yourself when you tell it over and over again, because you will. 

Misery is not a competition. Your suffering is not lessened by anyone else's; your struggle is not eased because someone else walks a more visibly difficult road. Your healing is not too quick or too slow. Your pain is real, and your recovery is as individual as you are. 

Find at least 3 people you trust implicitly. They will be your brain when you are paralyzed by indecision and your memory when your mind is blank. Choose people who are kind, patient, and honest. 

It's okay to not be okay. There's a horrible issue with visibility in our society; people want you to either be the broken victim or the triumphant survivor. It's okay to be neither. It's okay to be somewhere in between. It's okay to fluctuate wildly between the two extremes. 

You don't owe anyone any part of your pain or your healing. If you want to scream it from the rooftops, do it. If you want to press charges or march in the streets, do it. If you want to keep it close and personal, do it. Talk to someone, but you don't need to wave the banner. If you want to but you're not ready, that's okay too. If someone is pushing you to go one direction or another, do what is healthiest for you.

 Love is a gift, not an obligation. You don't owe someone love because of who they are. You don't owe someone love because of what they have or haven't done. And don't forget to gift yourself. It's okay to be selfish; healing takes a lot of energy and it's okay if you don't have enough to give to others. Sometimes the gift you give yourself is permission to say "not today."