If… I understand the situation correctly, it appears that my 67 year old parent outed me to my extended family because she’s mad at me for defriending her on facebook.
This is the sort of selfishness and childishness I’ve been dealing with all my life.
I have been up most of the night trying to calm my mind, quiet my fears, collect my thoughts and find the words to voice what I’m feeling.
It occurs to me that I’ve lived a lot of my life taking advantage of the shelter that appearances have created for me. I could go anywhere in this country and be accepted based on how I present myself. The majority would not see me as something “other” than themselves. Unless and until I speak up, no one challenges my beliefs, because they assume my beliefs are their beliefs.
This ambiguity has been intentional, and while it’s partially due to liking my privacy, it’s also partially because I have benefited from it. I grew up in a very strict and religious family in a very backwards, conservative and religious part of the country. I learned at very early age that I was different from the people around me, and that being different wasn’t tolerated. I couldn’t erase who I am, but I did learn to how to hide in plain sight. At points in my life, this was a necessary survival mechanism. Now, it’s just cowardice.
I’m pretty vocal about my political and social views — enough to have become the black sheep in the family. I’ve heard multiple times this year that they “tolerate” my views. They see me as soft-hearted and misguided, and their tolerance for me is based on the perception that these are my ideals, not my life. For years, I have bitten my tongue, held back and let them make their assumptions. I’ve pretended this was to avoid conflicts and to maintain the flimsy bridge connecting me to the people who share my blood but not my values. It’s not a path I want to walk anymore. It’s better to walk alone than to share my time and energy with people who are not willing to accept my life.
Supporting Trump in this election meant supporting Trump’s views on women, minorities, the LGBTQ community, and people of different religious faiths. Half of the country has decided this is the leadership they want. This is the message they are comfortable sending to us and to the world.
This is personal for me in several ways.
As a woman, I’m tired of being made to feel like my gender is a liability in my professional, personal and public lives. I’ve felt enough conflict of my own regarding my gender. I don’t need help from a bunch of old white guys.
As a member of the LGBTQ community, I’m disgusted this country has chosen leaders who wish to revoke our rights. I don’t particularly want to ever get married, but if I change my mind, I should be able to marry the person I love, regardless of that person’s gender. And I feel for everyone who does want that life. I’m scared for those who already have built homes and families together and are left wondering what their future will hold.
As a person who is not Christian, I am dismayed by how strongly the beliefs of a portion of the country impact the entirety of the population in a nation supposedly founded on the principle of freedom of, and from, religion.
As a person with great empathy for the others who have suffered, and will suffer, more than I ever will, simply over the color of their skin or the origins of their heritage or the religion they were raised within, I am frightened by how emboldened the many bigots in this country have become.
I’ll be honest – my instinct is to find a way out of this country, but I know that’s a selfish approach. So, how do we fight in a way that makes a meaningful impact?
Oh my god. I just felt a chill go down my spine as I realized that the last time they were in a World Series was when my dad died. He’d gone out to celebrate the Series being tied at 2-2 and never came back.
As soon as I had that thought, it almost felt like he was with me, and I’m so not okay with that.
So a family member (who has not yet learned to NOT bring up politics with me) actually said to me this morning, if God can use someone as “evil as Pilate” to work his will, then God can use Trump.
a) Pilate was kind of a patsy.
b) It’s been well researched that the whole “pardoning a prisoner for Passover” was not actually something that was done.
c) The whole backstory leading up to crucifixion was likely fabricated by The Church to spread anti-Seminitism by blaming the Jews, as a whole, for Jesus’s death. Not the Romans. You know, The Church.
d) The vast majority of the world’s population doesn’t believe this stuff anyway.
e) Why do Christians insist on making the rest of us part of their apocalyptic fantasies?
f) It’s probably because they think they’re going to fly into the sky anyway and leave us sinners to suffer the consequences of their actions. (To this I say “Get raptured” with a tone that conveys “Get fucked“).
g) Seriously, I hope they’re right. I can’t wait. I’m thinking– less traffic, more available housing,…
h) But in the mean time, thank you for your dedication to Christ-like behavior. He would be super stoked on your bigotry, sexism, blatant disregard for the poor and downtrodden, mocking of the disabled, and blind hatred of people with different religious beliefs. If you say you don’t believe in these things, maybe you should reconsider aligning yourself with the person who does.
i) “God” isn’t making this happen. You are.
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.
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.
I do not want to do morning pages anymore. 12 weeks? It’s been like 3 days.
I feel like just typing asdflaks;dfja;efaoisdjfalsdk;jsdf over and over for three pages. I feel like throwing the laptop across the room. No, I feel like browsing the internet, some Facebook here, some Netflix there. Maybe just engrossing myself in a book until bed.
[Look, I KNOW typing them on a computer instead of writing them by hand is a bad idea – it introduces a lot of distractions – but I’m having even more resistance to hand-writing].
I don’t know why I am already so resenting the time I spend doing them. I don’t know why I am procrastinating until evening rather than writing “morning pages.” I don’t know why I am so resistant when the time comes to click the keys and put letters onto screen. I don’t know what will come out, I guess. I don’t know why I can’t just think and type and write. What am I afraid of seeing come out?
Yikes. My stomach just lurched when I typed that.
While procrastinating, I spent some time doing research on different training programs that are available in the Seattle area. I found a promising looking site/teacher for “healing touch” energy medicine, as well as a reiki training class. The “healing touch” instructor’s name seems very familiar. I feel as if I have seen her name on another intuitive’s site or perhaps have seen advertisements at a fair for her services.
I’m interested in exploring this more to see if the training is useful and fruitful for someone who is not already in the health care field. Meaning, would I be able to even see clients? Do I even care if I’m able to see paying clients? Perhaps that’s not something to focus on at this point.
I realize part of me already knows what to do, but I don’t feel confident working on others, because I have no explanation for it. I’ve not been taught, I’ve not been certified, I’ve not been legitimized by someone else. My heart swelled with pride at a quick mental image of myself as a healer, a helper, of others. I self-corrected and disciplined myself, insisting it is wrong to be prideful and to want an outcome where I feel important or powerful. But, I almost immediately realized it isn’t wrong, because that warmth wasn’t about desiring great power. It was about being seen, noticed, remembered. Being valued at all. Maybe even being important. Not important like the leader of the free world is important. But important to some. Important to others. Someone who would be dearly missed if gone.
This surely goes back to childhood, to psychic, emotional and physical injuries that were inflicted on me by dad, by mom and by others. I was told before that I need to get angry about this, to feel and process and release that anger. I always replied that I just couldn’t see it happening, I just can’t summon up the anger. Well, tonight I finally did. Admittedly, it was mild. Barely a stirring as I read about chakra development stages and realized how much dad had screwed me over and screwed me up in literally every phase. There for a split second, I felt it. In the center of my chest, but also high in my gut, a rush of warmth and a clench of tension.
How dare he? How dare he? How DARE he?
It’s baffling to me that my siblings have become so religious when they had the same parents and same upbringing as me. How can they not see this all as hypocritical, at best, but possibly even more sinister and harmful? Was the abuse I received more impactful than that they received? Perhaps. I would think though that they saw and felt enough to know something was very very wrong, something was WRONG with the person who promoted himself as our spiritual superior. Our spiritual guide.
Master. That’s a better word. He never guided us — he ordered us around. I racked my brain to think of any situation in my childhood where my dad ‘guided’ me. Does grabbing me by the arm or gripping my head hard to jerk me in his direction count? No? Okay then.
Wow. Just wow. Some of my family members posted on memorial day about losing our ancestors defending their freedom…
…from the north in the “war of northern aggression.”
And people wonder why I refuse to visit my mom’s family.
Nightmares all night. Would like to stop dreaming that my father is alive, stalking me, and trying to kill me.
Like when I suddenly started getting emails from “GodTube” (which sadly is not a satirical porn site) to an email address that only my family and friends have….
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