My competence level compared to my peers at the same job is kind of depressing. Does anyone have challenging job for me? Realizing I hate my jobs when they’re too easy.
Also last night I dreamed that I played the lotto and the numbers I picked won the jackpot!… except that I had only written them down and neglected to actually go get the ticket. The rest of my dream was me sulking that I had to keep going to the job I hate….
It’s amazing how a little (well, a lot) of meditation, contemplation, encouragement, and sympathy can shed some light into the darkness that is my mind these days. Thanks frenz.
Last week was “I’m done, the fight isn’t worth it, how could I die without hurting all the people I love?”
This week: “I’m much, much braver, stronger and more resilient than I had believed was possible.”
I hope it lasts. 
Cuddlywhiskers: “Sometimes you need to take responsibility for your own happiness.”
Diane: “You don’t think that’s a little selfish?”
Cuddlywhiskers: “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m happy for the first time in my life, and I’m not going to feel bad about it. It takes a long time to realize how truly miserable you are, and even longer to see that it doesn’t have to be that way. Only after you give up everything can you begin to find a way to be happy.”
(From Bojack Horseman)
I was wondering why people were talking about Stranger Things being scary, and then I watched episode 6.
Fuck this life. Fuck this life. Fuck this life.
It’s been one of those days… weeks… months.. Years where I honestly frequently wish I could just opt out. Not participate. Not live. The effort it takes to keep going is more than I can muster so many days. I feel like I’m just
I’ve been napping on and off today, as well as going into my body and trying to release what knots and tension I can. Thinking a lot as well.
On Friday, I had a second session with someone named Atsuko at a locally well known shop that facilitates sessions with readers and healers. I’m still not sure what to make of her. She called me out for “testing her,” when really the problem is that I don’t trust her. She’s told me a lot of information, so much that it feels like she is trying to impress with what she can see. Or exaggerates and embellishes a lot.
I didn’t plan on seeing her again. The first session had seemed like it was going okay, but I lost sense of time (not uncommon for me), and was shocked when she ended and said it had been 90 minutes. I’d asked for a 30 minute session, and she never indicated or asked she was going to go longer than that. Reluctantly, I paid for 90 minutes and tried to chalk it up to a lesson learned. People do seem to assume that I have lots of money to spend and try to find ways to get in on that. I don’t know why I assumed it might be different with someone who calls themselves a healer. There was a real mismatch in expectations as I was leaving: I was saying I did not plan on booking another session, while she was still pushing “weekly sessions for several months.” Like she wasn’t even hearing what I was saying.
When I did not schedule another session, she texted and tried to call me… a lot. Every day. For days. I stopped responding. I didn’t plan on ever seeing her again. Then she texted me saying she would work on me and just ask for payment at a future point. Of course I wasn’t going to take her up on that, but her suggestion made me wonder if she legitimately felt she could help and needed to help, or if this was a method of luring people in. It wasn’t like she suggested a sliding scale or asked what or how often I would consider. She just suggested she could keep a running tab to be paid off.
I am apparently easily manipulated. I came back, I asked for a 60 minute session, and she did 120. And then added 120 minutes to my debt to her. I am apparently easily manipulated, and it seems worst with people who call theirselves intuitives. Maybe because my vulnerabilities are particularly obvious to them.
Money is apparently a very vulnerable spot for me right now. Even though I did end up finding another (crappy) job at my company and didn’t end up getting laid off, the threat of being laid off immediately after coming back from medical leave and having multiple current expensive to treat issues really really brought my money fears back into full force.
Addendum: Many months later, I’d read an article about psychic development/maturity versus emotional development/maturity, and this would all make sense. (Moderate psychic maturity, but low emotional maturity = someone who shows off psychic gifts and then uses them to take advantage of the people who believe).
Surprised I feel rested at all with the number of and intensity of nightmares last night.
I woke up today with the worst cramps I can remember having. Doubled over in pain, feeling like I needed to throw up. Fun times. Being a woman can be really awesome sometimes! I find that sometimes when I try to deal with the issues with dad, I get cramps and pelvic pain, even if it’s not the right time of my cycle. I suppose my body is reminding me of some of the pain, just as I had been getting paid in my arms and shoulders and neck all this time.
On Friday, I saw an energy healer at a local shop. I can have trouble relaxing and really tuning in to a session when I’m not convinced the person is legitimate, and I started the session with some qualms. It ended up being interesting more than helpful. It was supposed to be energy healing, and honestly, I could see and feel that not much was being done. She gave a lot of information, but it was mostly a set-up to how very much of her work she thought I needed to come back for.
With that said, she did hone in on the spots that hurt the most for me: right under my shoulder blade, the top of my shoulder, my collar bone, throat, back of neck, the lump hidden under my hair on the back of my head, right jaw. All “my” spots. She seemed to know a lot about what had actually happened, too. Things I hadn’t told anyone yet. Many things I’d only told one friend. So I have no doubt she can read intuitively from the body. She knew dad had shaken me by the shoulders and held me down that way. She knew he strangled me. She knew he’d forced me into oral sex. She could feel that in my face, jaw, throat. She gagged a lot as she worked and kept talking about how I’d vomit up black sludge later. She kept talking about it. It got me worked up, and honestly a bit re-traumatized, and before I knew it it was much later, a much longer session than I’d agreed to for her work. I felt pretty manipulated, especially when I checked in and nothing much worse than I did before working with her. Nothing had shifted away; I felt like I was buried under more.
But she kept gong on, claiming my dad had been with me in many lives and was driven to control me. Fixated on it. She told me in one life, when he had been my stepmother, he killed me as a baby. Threw me off a cliff. “He” didn’t want me, I was in his way. (In my childhood and especially adolescence, he frequently made me feel like I was in his way).
She described him as cruel. It was only in those moments that I remembered just how cruel he was. How I worried that some day he would get really mad and actually kill me. Now, I think, he would have done it out of spite if he thought he wouldn’t get caught or have to deal with the consequences. The way she described him sounded like a monster. Maybe that is the benefit of that iffy lesson, that I have to remember that he was a monster!
All this time I’ve been almost feeling sorry for him, acting as if HE was the victim, just because I know he had a bad childhood. That childhood didn’t FORCE him to become a monster. My childhood was as bad or worse, and I turned out to be a good person. He always had a choice. He just made the self-centered one. She described him as if he was a demon. Can a demon live with a person who talks about God, holds a bible, goes to church? Sometimes I have trouble reconciling the things that were taught to me (parents, church) with lived experience. They’d tell me evil is afraid of god, the church, the bible… I’ve seen evil laugh at the naivety of that idea.
I think sometimes I want there to be an explanation external to him – that he was possessed or influenced, so it wasn’t just… him doing the things he did. Maybe he was just a monster, though. My mom from time to time brings up that she thinks he’s in Heaven… like, okay, lady, if heaven actually existed, he wouldn’t be there. Not if there was any sense of justice. He should be in Hell. Of course, Hell for my father would just be not having anyone to manipulate, not having anyone that would admire him, idolize him, trust him, believe in him. Eventually I will forgive him, but I will never look up to him. I will always see him as a child molester, a wife beater, a child abuser, a pathological liar, a cheater, a hypocrite. I will always wish I had a different father, or that he had left us or died when I was young.
I remember one time when he was in a car accident, I think when I was 11 or 12. He had been taking a class in another city, someone ran a red light and hit him. When someone (my grandmother? an aunt?) left a message for us, they made it sound like he was critically injured. I remember feeling a thrill, at the idea he might die, and quickly covering it up. Feeling guilty at my reaction. Suppressing that memory as soon as I could. It turned out he’d just had mild whiplash.
That can’t be normal, right? And yet, I remember now that when he actually did die, my reaction wasn’t to cry. I went into the bathroom because I felt like throwing up. I think I did? I can’t remember any more. I ended up taking a shower and then meeting a relative who was going to drive me “home.” (Writing this now, it’s difficult to think of that place as “home”). My mom had arranged the ride assuming I couldn’t drive. I think I would have been fine. The relative was kind of a mess. I remember I was not crying. The first time I cried was that night our school’s football game, at the beginning of the game they made an announcement and had a moment of silence. I remember hugging one of my siblings and crying a little. I pitied us for having to be in that moment. My brother didn’t have a good game. Why did we let him play? Somehow we let him feel pressured into it, as if dad would expect him to go on anyway? Who cares what dad would have wanted? It was terrible to let him do that. We were just lucky he didn’t get hurt.
I remember crying at the casket at the funeral home with my siblings, but I wasn’t really crying for dad, I was crying for us. For how fucked up our lives were going to become. For our loss of innocence and security. I remember thinking: it didn’t even look like him. They colored his hair or something, too dark. He looked too tanned. Too smoothed out. Basically, he didn’t look like someone who had been out drinking and smoking as much as he liked, so he didn’t look like himself . Maybe that was good, for people not to remember him as he really was. They could keep pretending that he had been what he wanted them to see, not what who he was.
I’ve been bargaining with myself all day. Trying to make it through the work day and all the unpleasant tasks that it held. Stalling all day. Trying to avoid all the dull things that must be done today. I managed to kill a lot of the work day putting up pictures. Now there are 50+ framed and hanged in the apartment. It’s starting to look decorated.
I’m still struggling to get started on anything creative, but I figure hanging the pictures is a good start. More inspiring environment or something like that. I’m planning on filling my hallway with pictures of friends and the happier pictures from my family — mostly ones of my brothers and me. I’ve been going back and forth on whether I’ll put up any pictures of Dad. Part of me thinks I should do it, after all, he did love me and I did love him and I know he cared about me even though he behaved like a monster. Part of me thinks I don’t need to have any reminders of him in my home. Part of me thinks the omission of photos of him will act as a reminder, still. Maybe my grandmother had the right idea of just hanging up pictures of people in their coffins. (Seriously creepy, right?) Maybe I should just focus on pictures of friends and my siblings in the mean time.
Doctors appointments this week made me get nervous again about my longer term well being. Sometimes I get really afraid for myself with my weight and health. I can delude myself and tell myself my health is OK, because my blood sugar, chlosterol, etc have usually been OK, so far. A little high some years, but not enough for treatment. But I know that doesn’t last forever. I think my overeating and weight gain is very related to the abuse and how I handle stress. It’s complicated — it’s not just a coping mechanism, it’s also intended to sabotage myself, I think? Let’s put it this way: there have been many times in my life where I consciously was glad that I (think I) am unattractive. I pretended it saved me from danger, or at least hassles. Sometimes it’s good to feel invisible. But sometimes it doesn’t feel good. It feels lonely. I would say I can’t remember the last time I had a relationship, but I can. It was in 2004. Since then, the others have all just been “friends with…” or one time things.
That hits a nerve, to type that out. It hurts to admit that I am the reason for my own unhappiness. Surely, others contributed, even started it, but I’m the one keeping the house of cards propped up now.
Well, instead of sketching, or paining, or even writing, I ended up sleeping for hours. At least now, when I fall asleep at an unreasonably early hour, I don’t end up sleeping until morning. I woke up at 3AM feeling well rested and had to read for a while before I could fall back asleep. That’s an encouraging sign that I don’t actually NEED the 10-12 hours of sleep I had been getting.
I’m continuing to struggle with finding inspiration to start any of the projects I had envisioned. I’ve collected the pieces for the jewelry, I’ve purchased the paints and canvasses and brushes for painting, I’ve splurged on interestingly covered journals for writing, and I’ve filled my apartment with frames and sheets of matboard. Yet it all sits untouched.
I used to be able to just draw and draw and draw without even pausing, really. Inspiration? It was always there. Perhaps most of what I ended up drawing or painting or sewing wasn’t that original, but the ideas never ceased to flow. I wonder to what extent this is a side effect of my medications. How much is my personality and mind being suppressed? Not a question I’ll likely find an answer to soon, as normally my doctors’ opinions are to add more medications, not take away.
My mind just feels…. Stuck. No ideas come out. No words even, right now. It just feels like a ball of tangled yarn.
Father’s day is tomorrow. Normally I don’t post anything of my own, but I like my family members’ posts (without commenting, but still, I acknowledge. And my silence feels like consent). Not this year. I resent that I have to be in a position to forgive him for such atrocious actions and such callous attitude towards me. I resent it because I’m not sure he was sorry for his behavior during his life, only worried that he’d be found out.
Sometimes I wonder what things would have been like if I’d been consciously aware of what was going on and had been able to tell someone and stop him. If he’d gone to jail. We would have had to move — mom wouldn’t have been able to afford the house on her own. I would have wanted to move. Not only was that place a source of anxiety and negative memories, there’s no way I would have been able to stand going to school with people who knew what had happened to me. We would have ended up moving in with my mom’s parents. My grandmother would have been really emotionally and energetically…. Challenging. I don’t know how I would have survived that either. Is this really the family I picked? I can’t imagine consciously deciding I needed to experience these horrible events and that this was the family I needed to have. Perhaps I knew I’d get good siblings out of the arrangement, but that almost doesn’t seem reason enough to have picked this.
A couple of years ago one of my friends said something that immediately felt true (even though I felt guilty too) — that my life would be better, freer, after both parents were gone. He meant this in the sense that I would no longer have to be concerned with appearances, wouldn’t feel obligated to feign interest in religion, and could drift away from extended family. Now I realize it’s not that simple. My siblings are only becoming more and more religious and latching onto the ideas my parents put into their minds, and the legacy of the abuse will outlive my mother.
Why is it such a struggle to put my thoughts down onto “paper”? Am I that afraid of them? Am I running from my emotions that easily? I guess I am. I need to admit that I am really down in the dumps again, that I don’t have the motivation to try to fix anything in my life right now, that if given a choice I would just stay in bed all the time. I don’t know what to do to fix this. There used to be ideas, activities, for which I’d feel a spark of interest. That spark is gone. Everything feels like a chore. Lately even eating feels like an obligation. You’d think that would have me losing weight, at least, but the opposite is true. It feels like I am holding everything in me.
I did a quick tarot reading and pulled two runes today and both referred to having a healthy sex life. Whaaaat? How is that even possible? I never meet anyone. I feel very set in my ways of not meeting anyone. I don’t want to end up alone forever, not really, but when I SEE myself in the future I am alone. What a solitary, lonely life I am leading and am intending to lead. Do I really believe I don’t deserve to be loved? To be made love to? To make love to someone else? I can’t believe that. I don’t deserve to be punished for HIS sins.
I am living what he told me I’d live. Letting no one love me. I know he meant it to be hurtful and never really believed that no one would love me, but I’ve taken that to heart and am living it. How can I break this cycle? How can I stop poisoning my body and leaving it to rot? How can I be happy with the way I look and feel again? How can I believe that there is someone out there, perhaps many someones, who’d be able to love me? How can I even approach dating or sex with these memories always in my mind?
What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me? Everything. Nothing. Who knows? I sure as hell don’t. Why do I feel so broken? Intellectually I don’t really believe I am, but emotionally…. Whew. It’s as if I am living as two different selves.
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