ha. Right from the beginning I can not even get my mind organized enough to agree on the title for this post. "A messy PLACE."? "A messy THING."? "A messy brain."? Nevermindnevermind. Just: "A messy." I was going to go to a funeral today and I spent all day yesterday from literally 6am to 8pm and then from 5am to 8:30am today worrying about going. I finally called the person I was to go with and said I could not go. It is snowing here this morning and my face is broken out with all of these 'messy' red spots and I don't know if it is acne from stress or what is going on- but my face (like the feeling my brain has) is a splotchy red. Four years of therapy and I am finally getting to the place where my therapist and I have been working towards but now that I am nearing that place I am looking at it and thinking, "Ew." When I started this blog I wanted to have a place to put my drawings, then a place to write about my therapy and telling the story as I tell it back to myself just exactly how I survived 17 years of being basically tortured by my 'father'. All I want is to sleep and I am not even tired. I am not tired at all but the alternative to unconsciousness is seeing my big ol' filleted strips of brain dangle in knots and balls of knowing. I am not sure if it is the weather... I guess it is the time of year but also the place that my mind is in, the place my mind has reached- where I can start to tolerate really knowing about the terrible things my father did- but EVERYTHING feels like it is reminding me of something related to my past and to my father's abuse. This morning I was outside just minutes after the snow started to fall and I was in my pajamas and a coat and the dogs were happy and acting silly because they have not seen snow since last year- so I was feeling sort of ok and still ruminating over whether or not to go to the funeral and I was filling up the bird feeders in the backyard when I remembered something from a long time ago. And it is weird the way the memories come back. I feel like what usually happens is that I am reminded of something from the past that is not really directly related to the abuse but only sort of connected- but I will have the memory in an extremely clear way. I will remember all of a sudden the smell and feel and taste of something and how everything looked and felt and seemed at that time and the memory will be so clear.... but usually not so bad at first. But the memory, while not really 'bad' troubles me... because of the clarity of it, I begin to realize. It is like my mind sends up something I knew from the past but had forgotten about and the point is not so much the memory but the extreme CLARITY of the memory and it is like a strange warning from somewhere in my mind to some other place in my head. It is a warning that if I remember in detail filling the bird feeders at my house when I was a child, if I remember the containers we poured the birdseed into, their color and shape and the feel of the lid as I unhooked it from the bin.... If I remember the rounded plastic edge and the little ridges on the top, the fact that there were two of them, the fact that each contained a different kind of birdseed and I can see them now and smell it all and I remember it being winter and my father being mad and the tv is on and he is screaming at someone in the house but I am outside and it is cold and I need gloves but forgot them and so I feel the seeds with my fingers... if I can remember the thistle seeds running through my hands, I am sure- I am telling myself this message now- that I am going to remember the details of terrible things from the past. And I pause for a moment and I can always watch him standing in the doorway of my room. I remember it from when I was three or four and I remember it from when I was sixteen and at last- seventeen. My 'father' comes to the door of my bedroom and it is night and he is enormous- both in real life and in the fake night light memory of my mind- the hallway light was always on and so he was always black in the space of the doorway. He is like a one-man paper doll and he is about to kill me. (In my/the memory, I mean.) p.s.- I am really in a hard place- I mean... I have come to a good and terribly painful place in the work of my therapy where everything in my life and brain is all shifting and sort of REALLY starting to come together. It is scary and confusing and weird but it is really too painful now to try to stand still anymore. I know I have to keep moving forward through this mess from the past and the problems I have in the present created by/from the fact that I live with a mind that thinks it is in more than piece... a mind that thinks there is more than one body for it or something sort of like that... Anyway- it is difficult to explain but my point is this: I have come to a painful crossroads and my choices basically are either to go forward or to go forward. So... I think I might try to use this blog to write about what my life is like and what my brain is doing/working/struggling/recovering/functioning and how/what I am working on in these the present days. I need to get better because I really want to start living my life in a real and AWAKE way. I want to move past the past and I want and need to heal my mind. One of my 'major concerns' since the very beginning of my therapy work four years ago was: IF I am able to survive this (recovering my mind, really knowing about my past and really getting better and healing from the trauma I survived)- Will I be able to explain it all? The recovery from the trauma, I mean. I feel like if there is anything I want to do in my life (besides make art and really be ALIVE and AWAKE and move to Italy and be with S. and walk out near the ocean almost everyday and be grateful and thankful that I survived and have great life now...) I want to take what I have 'learned' in my life and somehow use it to help some other people if I can. I mean: I feel like what happened to me is just insane. The amount and kind and degree of abuse that I survived by my father (and mother) is literally STAGGERING. I know other people have been abused to this same degree and probably even worse if it is possible but my point is this- If I really am able to recover from all of the terrible things that I have lived through I really pray and hope that I will be able to look back on both the past before my therapy and then the time during my therapy and the work I did to recover and I hope that I will be able to go through all of the art that I have made and will make and all of the writings that I have written and will write and I hope that somehow I can put it all together and either write a book or some other explanation of how I survived/recovered so that maybe, hopefully, my suffering and my struggle to get better and the fact that I was able to survive and the fact that hopefully I will be able to fully recover and move on far past the abuse that happened in the beginning of my life and go on and have a wonderful and great present and future... I hope that somehow I can explain how I survived all of the terrible parts and made it to a good life and I hope that my explanation of how I made it even when it seemed truly impossible or how I survived when I think or thought I couldn't; I hope that maybe I can help someone else who has to recover and move on from some kind of terrible trauma or horrific past. I hope that somehow I am able to put together all of the pieces of my story and that maybe my one little story about how I held on even when holding on was terribly painful- I hope that someone who needs help will maybe hear my story and I hope that maybe it can help them to hold on and get through the times that seem impossible so they can survive and just hold on until life will begin to be better for them too. p.p.s- I love you Evie, and The Speaker, and thank you to everyone who helps me to keep going and to keep working to stay alive and survive and recover and live a better and wonderful life. And to my S.; You are my greatest love, thank you, yljc.
December 5, 2007
A messy.
ha. Right from the beginning I can not even get my mind organized enough to agree on the title for this post. "A messy PLACE."? "A messy THING."? "A messy brain."? Nevermindnevermind. Just: "A messy." I was going to go to a funeral today and I spent all day yesterday from literally 6am to 8pm and then from 5am to 8:30am today worrying about going. I finally called the person I was to go with and said I could not go. It is snowing here this morning and my face is broken out with all of these 'messy' red spots and I don't know if it is acne from stress or what is going on- but my face (like the feeling my brain has) is a splotchy red. Four years of therapy and I am finally getting to the place where my therapist and I have been working towards but now that I am nearing that place I am looking at it and thinking, "Ew." When I started this blog I wanted to have a place to put my drawings, then a place to write about my therapy and telling the story as I tell it back to myself just exactly how I survived 17 years of being basically tortured by my 'father'. All I want is to sleep and I am not even tired. I am not tired at all but the alternative to unconsciousness is seeing my big ol' filleted strips of brain dangle in knots and balls of knowing. I am not sure if it is the weather... I guess it is the time of year but also the place that my mind is in, the place my mind has reached- where I can start to tolerate really knowing about the terrible things my father did- but EVERYTHING feels like it is reminding me of something related to my past and to my father's abuse. This morning I was outside just minutes after the snow started to fall and I was in my pajamas and a coat and the dogs were happy and acting silly because they have not seen snow since last year- so I was feeling sort of ok and still ruminating over whether or not to go to the funeral and I was filling up the bird feeders in the backyard when I remembered something from a long time ago. And it is weird the way the memories come back. I feel like what usually happens is that I am reminded of something from the past that is not really directly related to the abuse but only sort of connected- but I will have the memory in an extremely clear way. I will remember all of a sudden the smell and feel and taste of something and how everything looked and felt and seemed at that time and the memory will be so clear.... but usually not so bad at first. But the memory, while not really 'bad' troubles me... because of the clarity of it, I begin to realize. It is like my mind sends up something I knew from the past but had forgotten about and the point is not so much the memory but the extreme CLARITY of the memory and it is like a strange warning from somewhere in my mind to some other place in my head. It is a warning that if I remember in detail filling the bird feeders at my house when I was a child, if I remember the containers we poured the birdseed into, their color and shape and the feel of the lid as I unhooked it from the bin.... If I remember the rounded plastic edge and the little ridges on the top, the fact that there were two of them, the fact that each contained a different kind of birdseed and I can see them now and smell it all and I remember it being winter and my father being mad and the tv is on and he is screaming at someone in the house but I am outside and it is cold and I need gloves but forgot them and so I feel the seeds with my fingers... if I can remember the thistle seeds running through my hands, I am sure- I am telling myself this message now- that I am going to remember the details of terrible things from the past. And I pause for a moment and I can always watch him standing in the doorway of my room. I remember it from when I was three or four and I remember it from when I was sixteen and at last- seventeen. My 'father' comes to the door of my bedroom and it is night and he is enormous- both in real life and in the fake night light memory of my mind- the hallway light was always on and so he was always black in the space of the doorway. He is like a one-man paper doll and he is about to kill me. (In my/the memory, I mean.) p.s.- I am really in a hard place- I mean... I have come to a good and terribly painful place in the work of my therapy where everything in my life and brain is all shifting and sort of REALLY starting to come together. It is scary and confusing and weird but it is really too painful now to try to stand still anymore. I know I have to keep moving forward through this mess from the past and the problems I have in the present created by/from the fact that I live with a mind that thinks it is in more than piece... a mind that thinks there is more than one body for it or something sort of like that... Anyway- it is difficult to explain but my point is this: I have come to a painful crossroads and my choices basically are either to go forward or to go forward. So... I think I might try to use this blog to write about what my life is like and what my brain is doing/working/struggling/recovering/functioning and how/what I am working on in these the present days. I need to get better because I really want to start living my life in a real and AWAKE way. I want to move past the past and I want and need to heal my mind. One of my 'major concerns' since the very beginning of my therapy work four years ago was: IF I am able to survive this (recovering my mind, really knowing about my past and really getting better and healing from the trauma I survived)- Will I be able to explain it all? The recovery from the trauma, I mean. I feel like if there is anything I want to do in my life (besides make art and really be ALIVE and AWAKE and move to Italy and be with S. and walk out near the ocean almost everyday and be grateful and thankful that I survived and have great life now...) I want to take what I have 'learned' in my life and somehow use it to help some other people if I can. I mean: I feel like what happened to me is just insane. The amount and kind and degree of abuse that I survived by my father (and mother) is literally STAGGERING. I know other people have been abused to this same degree and probably even worse if it is possible but my point is this- If I really am able to recover from all of the terrible things that I have lived through I really pray and hope that I will be able to look back on both the past before my therapy and then the time during my therapy and the work I did to recover and I hope that I will be able to go through all of the art that I have made and will make and all of the writings that I have written and will write and I hope that somehow I can put it all together and either write a book or some other explanation of how I survived/recovered so that maybe, hopefully, my suffering and my struggle to get better and the fact that I was able to survive and the fact that hopefully I will be able to fully recover and move on far past the abuse that happened in the beginning of my life and go on and have a wonderful and great present and future... I hope that somehow I can explain how I survived all of the terrible parts and made it to a good life and I hope that my explanation of how I made it even when it seemed truly impossible or how I survived when I think or thought I couldn't; I hope that maybe I can help someone else who has to recover and move on from some kind of terrible trauma or horrific past. I hope that somehow I am able to put together all of the pieces of my story and that maybe my one little story about how I held on even when holding on was terribly painful- I hope that someone who needs help will maybe hear my story and I hope that maybe it can help them to hold on and get through the times that seem impossible so they can survive and just hold on until life will begin to be better for them too. p.p.s- I love you Evie, and The Speaker, and thank you to everyone who helps me to keep going and to keep working to stay alive and survive and recover and live a better and wonderful life. And to my S.; You are my greatest love, thank you, yljc.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I love you. You are the most beautiful person in the world. Never forget this.
Post a Comment