208 card disaster

When I was in high school I took four decks of playing cards and taped them to the ceiling in my bedroom. I used to stare at the cards and count the numbers and look for patterns in the disorganized mess while my father raped me.
I had therapy this morning and now I have things I want to do and but I am having a hard time functioning.

There will never be a way to get back to the not knowing.

This is what I said out loud for the first time ever this past Friday. This is what I have always know but have had to believe was not real. This is what I told myself a thousand times was from a very terrible nightmare that I had a very long time ago.
This was not a nightmare (A dream arousing feelings of intense fear, horror, and distress.).
This is a real part of the story of my past.

On Friday I was talking to my doctor about the first time I became pregnant by my father. The first time I was 14 and it happened once again when I was 17. When I was 14 I had a miscarriage at home, in the middle of the night. Scared and confused I woke my mom up and she took me to the emergency room. I have talked about this before- with my doctor, with Stefano, with friends. But on Friday I told the story without a second of pause and not as though it were some far off dream but this memory that I have been needing to say for the past 16 years. I described in detail the night of the miscarriage. And about waking my mom up. And about going to the hospital. It was so familiar- thoughts I have had a thousand times but it was the first time I had ever used words to describe the pictures in my head.
There is a way that all of these memories are at first too large. Too large to grasp in one moment and I have found that what I do is take some little part of the memory (because the whole of it is much too big and much too painful) and repeat it over and over.
This is what I am repeating in my head since Friday morning: When my mother took me to the hospital I went into a regular emergency room exam room. Then I was taken into another room. I was WHEELED on a bed into a SURGICAL room. And what I keep going over and over, what I keep trying to understand how I could have the knowledge and memory of this feeling without the horrible explanation that I wish were not the truth is: When I was taken into the second room, the surgical room- it is hard to type now with all the water pouring from my face- I remember being lifted. I remember being lifted from the bed that I had been wheeled into the room on, onto another surface. Not a bed. A table. But the part I am obsessing over is the moment of the lifting. I remember being like a small (14 year old) mummy wrapped in white hospital sheets. And there were three other people there. Someone lifted me by the sheet up behind my head and somebody lifted the sheet at/around my feet. But what is troubling me the most (it is not even what HAPPENED NEXT- BECAUSE I CAN NOT EVEN GO THAT FAR IN MY HEAD YET)- what is troubling me is that there was another person. There was a third person. The third person was on the other side of the (my brain feels like it is being torn and knotted, torn and knotted) metal (torn and knotted, torn and knotted) table. And when the two (tearing and knotting) people put me down (tearing and knotting)- me at 14- my fourteen year old body- my 14 year old body that had just miscarried the child of my own father- when the two people put me down in the sheet on the table the third person was there to help push me back and center my body on the table.
And this is what is really nagging in my head: I remember EXACTLY the EXACT feel of that other person (the third person) I remember feeling that person's hands through the hospital sheets as they pushed me back and directed my body toward the center of the table.
That is what is trouble me. Not what came next, not the vacuuming, not the pain, not the sound, not even the feeling that my whole insides were going to be sucked right out from my body- that is not what is torturing me right now anyway- not YET now anyway.
What is torturing me right now is that feeling, that memory of those hands; pushing me at my hips back towards the center of the table.
If all of the rest was a dream that I have thought of hundreds of times how would I KNOW the feeling of being lifted up in that sheet and the feeling of HANDS PUSHING ME AT MY HIPS BACK TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THE TABLE.
THOSE HANDS PUSHING ME AT MY HIPS TOWARDS THE CENTER OF THAT TABLE.

Untitled.

Twenty minutes.

Yesterday I got to my doctor's office 20 minutes before my session. I sat in my car and made the above drawing. Something happened in therapy yesterday that is so... difficult to bear... I want to write about it but I just can't. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow or maybe the day after that. It is a memory and about the way things are coming back to me and realizing I have always known about them- I always just told myself the horrible memories were nightmares. Except now I am remembering physical feelings and... Anyway- I will try to explain more in the next few days. It is painful (literally) beyond words right now.
Five weeks from now Stefano and I will being having our first dinner together in our new apartment and Lloyd and Winston will be walking around the apartment wondering how they are going to learn to speak Italian.

The good doctor taking a drink just minutes before being put into his carrier & taken to the vet for his microchip implant.

(New dress. For the wedding of Stefano's cousin in September.)

June 24, 2008

June 25, 2008

June 25, 2008

June 26, 2008

Choosing the right photo for your passport.

The following examples can help to guide you when picking out a passport photo for your pet or yourself.

Example 1: Too close to the camera.

Example 2: Unnecessary use of props.

Example 3: Inappropriate positioning.

Example 4: Unacceptable do to use of costume.

Example 5: Eyes are closed.

Example 6: A passport photo should contain just one person or pet.

Example 7: Finally! The perfect passport photo.

Hysterical in front of The Beatles.

That is what I am going to be like only I will be freaking out over Juan Diego Flórez.
Stefano (who loves to listen to very very heavy rock music) has offered to take me to the Rossini Opera Festival on August 9! Juan Diego Flórez is performing that first night of the festival!
Stefano is incredible. Really. Opera is really not his favorite kind of music (not even close).
He is the most generous and loving human being I have ever met. Seriously.
The only thing better than seeing Juan Diego Flórez at the Rossini Opera Festival is the fact that Stefano is so incredibly wonderful that he has OFFERED to camp out half the night before the concert so that we can get tickets to the performance.
Just 37 more days until I can squeeze that wonderful sexy guy who keeps asking me the same question every single day.... ;-)

Tuesday morning self-portrait.

(pen and ink with marker and colored pencil on paper, 11" x 8.5", 6.24.08)

Horowitz plays Liszt Consolation No. 3

UNABLE TO WAIT UNTIL I GET HOME I STOP AT THE LIBRARY SO THAT I MAY PURGE ONTO MY BLOG.

I just left my therapist's office. I am beyond sick but at an extreme loss for better words. I feel sick, sad, angry, in a rage and also I feel like, "When am I finally going to have said it all?" Today I told my doctor things I have never said. Never in my life. I mean: I am thirty years old and one hour ago for the very first time I said things about my past that I have never said. There are huge terrible things that my father did (my mother as well) and many of them feel far too large for me to even be able to really still grasp yet. So I start with the small but when even the small hurts this much I wonder: how I am ever going to be able to tolerate really knowing and accepting all of the trauma and horror of the physical and sexual abuse (17 years of it) if the psychological abuse part alone feels like it is almost going to kill me?
Today I told my Dr. about how my father used to yell at my sister and I that we ate too much. He used to become angry with us and say we were eating too much of HIS food.
Today I told my doctor that when I was in middle school I started hiding food in my bedroom because I could not get enough to eat to feel comfortable without getting yelled at for eating too much.
I really don't even know what else to write or say or type about this right now. I feel so incapable of tolerating/knowing/thinking about the sexual and physical abuse that it really does just scare me that even the emotional part feels so incredibly intolerable.
I am not going to do it but I feel like calling my mother on the phone right now and absolutely screaming. Why did she let him do all of those things? Why didn't she just put my sister and I into the backseat and DRIVE DRIVE DRIVE us all away from there? WHY WHY WHY? I accept the fact that me mother is/was like a child and was also being abused by my father- but she was still an adult!!!!!!!!! And between her, my sister and myself: SHE WAS THE ONE WITH THE CAR AND THE CAR KEYS AND THE LEGS LONG ENOUGH TO REACH THE PEDALS.
I feel so sad. I feel shaken and sick; I could go on. But I am going to stop myself for now and I will go on as I planned with my day. There will be no revenge. There will be no justice for what my father did- not in this life anyway. All I can do now is cry and have my grief and grieve it and go on. I have about four errands to do before I go back home- all of them related to my getting ready to move to Italy in just five and a half weeks.
So I will go on. I will go on as I planned; I will go on and be even stronger. There is no undoing what has been done- there is only the present and the future that I can change or affect and the only thing I can think to do that will ever make any sense of/from what my father did is to go on and finish my therapy and recover and live my life and make my art and tell this gruesome story through images and words and explain how I survived (am surviving) in hopes that in telling all of this it will somehow help another person.

loud and close.

Today I feel like Oskar Schell; I have very heavy boots.

(2001, Heart, monotype over intaglio)

Stefano (1,2,3)

Stefano (4,5,6)

40 (days until Stefano)

40 is the atomic number of zirconium.

The planet Venus forms a pentagram in the night sky every eight years with it returning to its original point every 40 years with a 40 day regression.

"Forty days & forty nights" describes the period for which rain fell during Noah's flood.

The code for direct dial international phone calls to Romania is 40.

"Afterward, when they had stopped for a moment to allow Tip to rest, they saw forty roads branching off from their feet in forty different directions; and soon these forty roads began whirling around like a mighty wheel, first in one direction and then in the other, completely bewildering their vision." from The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum

And this is so good: Rostropovich playing Shostakovich Cello Sonata Op. 40.

Suggestions? Anyone? Bueller?

I have been trying to make my blog look better but I am beginning to think I may spend the rest of my life just sitting here in front of my computer. I am giving up for now- I have been changing everything and then changing it all again. I wanted to show more of my art and have it look less 'bloggy'.
Creating the row of tabs took a long time and I feel unsure about how it looks- even though I like what it does.
OK... I am going to try to walk away from my computer now... Except just to check email. Please leave comments if you have any suggestions on how I might make it look better. Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

Head (2001, intaglio)

the swimming pool series

Here are three intaglio prints that I made in 2000.

42

Chopin Waltz in A-flat Op 42, played by Dimitris Sgouros in Queensland, Australia, February 1989.

The angle for which a rainbow appears.

The atomic number of molybdenum.

In 1965, mathematician Paul Cooper theorized that the fastest, most efficient way to travel across continents would be to bore a straight hollow tube directly through the earth, evacuate it (remove the air), and then just fall through. The first half of the journey consists of free-fall acceleration, while the second half consists of an exactly equal deceleration. The time for such a journey works out to be 42 minutes. Remarkably, even if the tube does not pass through the exact center of the earth, the time for a journey powered entirely by gravity always works out to be 42 minutes, as long as the tube remains friction-free.

The Orion Nebula is Messier object M42.

"At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, cackled out `Silence!' and read out from his book, `Rule Forty-two. ALL PERSONS MORE THAN A MILE HIGH TO LEAVE THE COURT.'

Everybody looked at Alice.

`I'M not a mile high,' said Alice.

`You are,' said the King.

`Nearly two miles high,' added the Queen.

`Well, I shan't go, at any rate,' said Alice: `besides, that's not a regular rule: you invented it just now.'

`It's the oldest rule in the book,' said the King.

`Then it ought to be Number One,' said Alice."

from Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

43 (The 14th smallest prime number, the Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd is exactly 43 minutes long, G.W. Bushy is the 43rd president of the U.S.)

I leave for Italy in 43 days. It is incredibly hard to be away from Stefano. I am constantly trying to figure out ways to help make the best use of this time and to also try to enjoy this time and not just completely wish it away. That is hard though. Anyway- I got a new pair of shoes three days ago and I am absolutely addicted to them. I am also convinced they have resolved my knee trouble and that I am going to be able to jog in them. Right now I am walking for an hour a day with a few little sprints in there. I am trying to run a little more each day.
These shoes are magic. Walking has never been so good and I almost have to MAKE myself turn around and come back to the house because I want to build up with my time and not just be out walking for hours and hurt my legs or feet or something.
The magic shoes? OK... Here is the link... But let me warn you (if you do not already know about these shoes) once you know about them you should go to a store near you that carries them and you should try them. And after you try them you are going to want a pair. After I ordered mine online I was like a little dog waiting for the UPS man each day and I can still see him coming up across the shimmering green grass just a few days ago with a russet paper parcel against his chest... OK, OK... Here is the link to the MAGIC SHOES.
While I am out walking I am trying to use that time to try to work on learning more Italian. I have a little deal with myself where I listen to music one way (for the first thirty minutes) and then Italian lessons on the way home (the last thirty minutes). It is hard for me to take in the whole lesson and sometimes my mind wanders off- but I am doing the best I can. People in this neighborhood probably think I have lost my mind. I am walking around in a pair of completely strange looking shoes, wearing shorts and tank top, exposing my whiter than white legs and all of my tattoos and talking to myself in an Italian that probably does not even sound very much like Italian. Oh well. Stefano has asked me to marry him about 45 times in the last three days and so I feel like it is finally time to really commit myself to learning the language. :-)
Tomorrow I have therapy and I have very mixed feelings about that. I am hoping I will sleep better tonight since I just walked. Today I went through art work I made when I was in college- intaglio prints mostly. I will try to post the pictures of them tomorrow. Arrivederci!

"The fires were increased, the screw revolved forty-three times a minute, and the steam poured out of the valves." 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Verne, Jules

Pack it up, pack it in.

I am in the process of going through all of my belongings and getting ready to move to Italy. I took all of my artwork to Italy several months ago and left it all with Stefano already. Now I just have a few larger drawings that I need to figure out how to take and a small mountain of sketchbooks (there are about thirty actually). Anyway- it is PAINFUL to get out the sketchbooks and pack them up to take with me. This morning I was looking through this one (the second image is the cover of the book) and I saw this drawing (the top image). I was working in this sketchbook at the end of 2005 and I was drawing about the exact same things I am now.
There is a lot of wishful thinking inside of my mind but the story of the past always stays exactly the same. And that is just really painful and really hard to accept.

Winston learns of the travel accomodations, becomes light headed and has to lay down. (44 days)

Get thee to an editor. (Oh how much I wish...)

(marker on canvas, 16.5" x 25.5", June 2008)

Words about being raped by my father.

My head hurts. But not in a head-achy way. It hurts in a 'my mind is divided into a bunch of different ways of thinking and a lot of thoughts happen over each other and at the same time' and it makes me feel crazy and tired and there just is not a good way to describe it.
I have had problems in the past with sleep and/or going to bed at night. Some of the problems have been and/or include but are not limited to: "Oh my god I can not tolerate the sensation of the sheets against my skin", "I do not want to sleep because I can not tolerate having another nightmare that is not really a nightmare but instead a memory/nearly photographic image of my father fucking me" or "I do not want to lay down because I am afraid I will hurt myself if I remember the feeling of his feet against my skin"... Now I have a new one. A new reason I do not want to go to bed. And it is not really about bed... It is about seeing. I do not want to close my eyes. I am not so much having a problem with sleep as I am having trouble with the IDEA OF CLOSING MY EYES. AS IN: I DO NOT WANT TO DO IT.
The answer- the reason- is so obvious and so sad it makes me sick- SICK!!!!!!!!!!!... At some point when I was still very young I realized it would be better to be awake for some reasons when my father came into my bedroom at night because at least then he would not surprise me. It was better to wait. It was better to plan and to KNOW he was coming- it was terrible to be caught off guard. I would wake up with him over me or... something terrible I will not even write it here... and was it real was I dreaming was it a nightmare and I need to believe this man is not my father!!!!!
All those nights... and my mom was just in the room right next door. For all of those years.
This post is a mess - oh well. It is 12:05AM here but 6:05AM in Italy and I am writing and trying not to call Stefano before 7AM and wake him up crying. I am going to be the best girlfriend I can and wait another hour before I wake him up with my crying! I have one more hour to wait and I guess I will take my medicine and draw while I wait for the time to go by and then I will cry and then I will fall into a twisty and anxious sleep. This morning Winston jumped on the bed at 5:40AM and it scared me awake and half out of my mind and I could not close my eyes again. Just a funny little orange cat.... this time anyway.

Back to therapy.

Standing up. (In what I thought was the deepest water there was.)

For several years I have used the image of water in my art work. I have drawn anatomy, partially dissected cadavers, images of animals, self portraits- and then I have covered them. I have covered those images with images of water or with the same meaning by literally drawing, scribbling and scratching out what I have drawn until it is buried, gone, drown, disappeared. I have spoken in metaphors about water for a long time and during the past hard 4.5 years of the work of my therapy I have talked many many times about feeling as though I am "drowning".
Right now I am in the process of getting ready to move to Italy and so I am sorting through boxes, stacks of papers, piles of photographs, etc. Yesterday I came across a quote that I have always liked and I read it, smiled, then put it aside. Suddenly tonight- like the flick of a light switch in my mind- I thought of the quote and I finally really KNEW what it meant. The quote is by Marianne Williamson. It is this:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
I suddenly thought of that first line tonight and thought, "It is true! It is completely true." My deepest fear is not of my inadequacy, but of my own true strength within.
Many times during the past four and a half years of therapy when I mention my "drowning" feeling my doctor has said to me something like- Stand up- the water is not so deep where you are.
He is right. He has been right for a long time but I just was too scared to hear. The water is not so deep where I am. Stand up, he says to me Stand up and you will see that you are not drowning. I finally realize now that I CAN just stand up, I do not have to lie here- And not only will I not drown- not 'lie here'- but I can and will and AM walking out of this water.
Now all I can think tonight is that the truth- however painful- the truth really is setting me free. It is true and it is happening. I am not drowning, I am not a prisoner of my father and not even of my own mind anymore. The truth- the truth about what my father did- the truth about what I had to do inside of my own head in order to save myself from him- it really is painful in a way too large for any words I know. It has been a LONG four and a half years and I have spent a huge amount of that time just 'tolerating' my feelings. And just 'getting through' until the difficult feeling pass. But I have reached a great place in the path that I am on and I am now strong enough to draw more, to write more, to talk about the details of what happened to me at the hands of my father and especially to try to work more on understanding how it is that my very own mind works.
As I physically prepare to move to Italy I realize that I am mentally ready to move as well. Not only to Italy- but FORWARD. I still have a huge amount of therapy work to do and a whole lot of tears to cry- but I am stronger now. I have been 'getting by', 'tolerating pain' and 'waiting for the painful feelings to pass'. Now I SAY when I am hurting. I say out LOUD to people near me when I am hurting and I draw whenever I want. And I ALWAYS want to be drawing.
I AM FREE.

Dissociation, dissociating, dissociated.

48 DAYS!!!!! (Black and white and red all over.)

Lloyd& Winston will have their international debut in just 48 DAYS!!!!

Video blog 2; Thank you Karen and a message about Father's Day.

So much to say.

I made this drawing last night. I can not even look at it without crying.
Thank you to all of the people who leave supportive and encouraging comments here on my blog. I appreciate every one. Thank you.

If I can not write it down I will have to speak it out loud.

Re: Comments I received yesterday. (****WARNING: This post may be triggering.)

Yesterday I received 2 comments on this post and I just wanted to take a quick minute to answer those comments here: 1. Thank you for your comments, 2. Yes. and 3. Thank you; no one has ever told me I am 'brill'. ;-)
Part of the reason I wanted to write something about the comments was because this is a really important part of my therapy and my working to understand better my own mind and I have really struggled for years and years with the idea that I have different ways of thinking and I am just now beginning to try to not be angry or feel like I hate myself when I even think about this true fact that my mind is in fact (very) 'divided'. So yes- the different images and the different styles of drawing do correspond with the 'different ways of my thinking' and it has taken me more than four and a half years of therapy to be able to really even admit to that- let alone to begin to try and actually look at what I have made and read the meaning. (I have been making art for most of my life and then quite literally 'hiding' it from myself somewhere so I do not have to look at it because it is usually too painful.) I am constantly becoming more and more aware of the different 'ways' I have of drawing and also how different parts of my thinking make not just the same 'styles' of drawings but also use certain imagery over and over again.
For example- if you look at a bunch of my work (there are over 200 of my drawings here on my FlickR page) you can see that there is this "shape" (see above images) or something very similar to it repeated in several of my works. And I have just very very recently (last week) realized that this 'image' I keep creating is a symbol for something that happened when I was just 12. When I was twelve years old I became pregnant by my father for the first time (I later become pregnant by him one more time when I was 17) and I had a miscarriage at home and the was taken to the hospital by my very own mother/abusive father's enabling partner. Anyway- the miscarriage happened and I have a memory of holding a somewhat small and sort of bloody clot/lump thing (which is hard for me to write- but I am sure was a tiny dead fetus) in the palm of one of my hands and then- (dear universe I am going to write about this here in order to try to disperse this enormous suffering out of my own little body and into the much larger world because the pain is too much) -and then I flushed it away- down the toilet. I can not think of this for even one second without crying... and then I begin to think of the abortion that my 'mom' actually made an appointment for and drove me to when I was 17 and I guess that was just another 'chunk of medical waste' as well. My apologizes for poor grammar and or punctuation and for cutting this suddenly short- but I suddenly feel ill and can not tolerate to think of this any more right now. Sorry. But thank you for reading my blog and for commenting.

The ticket, the countdown, the flying kitties, the master list and drawing every day now.

I just spent an hour researching which kind of pet id tag is the best kind. Plastic? Metal? Round? Heart shaped? If I get the heart shaped ones will the little point at the bottom of the heart possibly poke them in the chest? (This is how my mind works.) But I would like to add that Lloyd and Winston are my only living family members- so that is how I treat them. When I am in Italy with Stefano I feel like I am finally "home" (the greatest feeling ever)- the only 'thing' I ever feel like I need is just to have L & W there with me. So I am going to try hard not to freak out about flying there furry little (and slightly larger boned) butts over there and instead just do every single thing I can to make what I am sure will be the worst day of Lloyd and Winston's lives as ok as possible. I am in the process of doing some serious research on cat carriers right now and I was almost EXCITED today when I discovered Dry Fur. Stefano and I are going to buy the plane ticket today or tomorrow. We are buying the best possible ticket to minimize kitty-cat-suffering-time. We will fly from the US to Munich and then from Munich to the small airport that is very near where Stefano lives. Both flights and the time in between will be the shortest amount possible: 11 hours. I hope we are able to get that ticket. We will know soon.
I have so much stuff to do that I have lists of other lists I need to make. After I type this I need to organize all of those lists into one huge and ordered 'master list'.
Then I am going to sew and draw today. I will post pictures tomorrow. I made a little black sundress a few days ago and I have been planning to take a white fabric oil pastel and cover it with tall skeleton images/drawings... but I keep putting it off because I am worried I will somehow "mess it up". I hate that. I hate it when I am scared to draw because I am worried I will not do a good job. I think I probably do my best drawing when I just work and stop worrying about the outcome; knowing that if I drew for 20 hours a day for every day for the rest of my life I would never run out of paper or fabric or pens or markers. :-)
I am going to draw on the dress today. If I do not love it- I will just make another. I will post pictures of it tomorrow. :-)

To fill a belly.

I heard a performance of the famous Bach double violin concerto last week and this last movement made me cry. I feel like there are some losses to large to accept. I try to remind myself that is just the 'feeling' of it.

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale

by Dan Albergotti

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life's ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

The Man Next Door Is Teaching His Dog to Drive

by Cathryn Essinger

It all began when he came out one morning
and found the dog waiting for him behind the wheel.
He thought she looked pretty good sitting there,

so he started taking her into town with him
just so she could get a feel for the road.
They have made a few turns through the field,

him sitting beside her, his foot on the accelerator,
her muzzle on the wheel. Now they are practicing
going up and down the lane with him whispering

encouragement in her silky ear. She is a handsome
dog with long ears and a speckled muzzle and he
is a good teacher. Now my wife, Millie, he says,

she was always too timid on the road, but don't you
be afraid to let people know that you are there.
The dog seems to be thinking about this seriously.

Braking, however, is still a problem, but he is building
a mouthpiece which he hopes to attach to the steering
column, and when he upgrades to one of those new

Sports Utility Vehicles with the remote ignition device,
he will have solved the key and the lock problem.
Although he has not yet let her drive into town,

he thinks she will be ready sometime next month,
and when his eyes get bad and her hip dysplasia
gets worse, he thinks this will come in real handy.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESSIEH!!!!!!!!! (From the best hunk of magical kitty cat goodness ever; Dr. Larry LLoyd.)

Two more handbags.

Shame on you Conan O'Brien.

Last night I got into bed around 12:30AM and I was flipping through television stations while I was having my usual "I wish it was not night, I wish night never came, I wish I did not have to sleep" pre-bedtime and post seventeen-years-of-sexual-abuse anxiety. I saw Conan O'Brien was just walking out onto the stage to do his monologue and I usually think he is kind of funny so I stopped to watch while I waited for my anti-anxiety medicine to start working so I could be on my bed without wanting to scream and hopefully then fall asleep. So he starts his monologue and a few minutes into it he says this:

"A night club in Las Vegas is honoring Kevin Federline by naming him "Father of the year". It was a very tight race, the runner up was the dad in Austria who kept his kids in the basement."

He then went on to say this:

"Of course that weird Texas polygamist sect is back in the news. They were in the news then they were out of the news and now they're back in the news. Ah... I've already mentioned this but I'm very unhappy that they are back in the news because I believe that the polygamist wives are stealing my look." He then showed photographs of the women that he was referring to on half of the television screen and his face on the other half- comparing his hairstyle to theirs.

All day long I have been writing letters in my head to Conan O'Brien and the writer's of his show. There is no such thing as a joke about children who are being raped or abused. I am crying and mad and it just makes me sick because here I am working a full time job, 24 hours of every day of my life trying to recover and there he is making "jokes" in front of hundreds of thousands of people and has their attention and this is what he does. He should be completely ashamed of himself and apologize. This sort of thing makes me feel extremely sick and sad and ashamed of the human race. People doing things like this make the incredibly hard job of recovering from abuse even harder.

SHAME ON YOU Conan O'Brien.

Blood.

Today I woke up and before I even opened my eyes I thought, "Today I have to go and have a pelvic exam." I have been putting it off for months and rescheduling and I finally just had to go. It was not until 3pm so I spent the whole day feeling completely nervous. Right before I went I yelled at Stefano for no reason except that I was so anxious I was going nuts. I finally just sat in my car and cried outside the doctor's office realizing that it was not THIS pelvic exam that was upsetting me but the one my mother took me to when I was 12. ...Hard to imagine a person taking their own child to a doctor knowing the child is being fucked by the father/husband. Tonight I wanted to go to a concert and I got lost on my way there and was late and missed the piece of music I wanted to hear and then got lost AGAIN on the way home and I was hating myself and feeling like an idiot at the same time. As I was walking out of the concert tonight and back to my car my nose suddenly began to bleed. I rarely get nosebleeds but when I do it is hard because it makes me remember when I was young and small and my father would put his enormous hand down over my throat and choke me and sometimes my nose would bleed.
At the concert I made a drawing in my sketchbook of my father raping me and it is completely scary to even look at.
Tomorrow I am planning on not leaving the house.

Nearly intolerable. (4 drawings I made last night.)

I was right in the middle of a breakthrough but I just broke right through even that.

This is the first picture Stefano sent me after we met. I printed it out and stared at it for MONTHS. :-) Tonight I was "not feeling good" but instead of just running in circles in my head and not being able to think clearly on anything I told Stefano, "I need to talk about my past and how it is hard for me to go forward and be in the present and think about the future because it makes my horrible past more and more real inside my head." Talk about a BREAKTHROUGH. (In the past I would go weeks or months struggling in the silence of my head.) Stefano is wonderful and listens whenever and for however long I need just to talk. And so cute too... :-)