Finally something positive about being completely obsessive.

Ok... So I began checking the Lufthansa site and I found out around 9:45PM that my flight on Friday was CANCELED. I felt sick. I called Lufthansa and had to wait on hold for a really long time and then I spoke to someone and then she put me on hold for a really long time and when she came back to the phone she sounded totally relieved and told me that she was able to get me a flight for this Saturday. It is with United. It creates a new set of challenges: Like the fact that I will now be flying directly to Rome and Stefano will have to leave his house at 3AM to meet me at the airport at 9AM and we will have to rent a car and drive four hours to our apartment. But mostly I am just glad that I have a confirmed seat on a different airline and for just one day later. My seat is confirmed but I have to call in the morning to make sure there is room enough for Lloyd and Winston. If there is not... That will be a whole new problem. I am just going to imagine that part is going to work out and I am going to try to sleep now. And I am going to pray that there is room for Lloyd and Winston on the flight and that everything will work out ok.
So many flights are being canceled because of the strike. It scares me to think of what other people must be trying to deal with- reorganizing plans or being stuck in airports needing to get somewhere. I am grateful for the new ticket. The short time when there was NO TICKET was scary. Anyway... I hope it all works out now.

Just when I thought I was worrying about every possible thing.

I am leaving for Italy on Friday afternoon. I have been worrying about Lloyd and Winston flying, the weather and a million other things. But I forgot to include possible strikes! I was so sure I had thought of everything.

Lufthansa has been on strike since Sunday and I just now opened the business section of the newspaper and read about it. I went running (literally) up to my computer and started reading about the strike. There is already a "Special Timetable" which Lufthansa has posted on their site and it contains flight schedules for the next 5 days. Both of my flights are on the schedule and on time. I will now begin checking the Internet and our departure times and flights obsessively.

Good. Something to take my mind off of worrying about the weather.

Just some hours now.

I will be hugging Stefano in just 77 hours. I am SO excited. I am nervous about Lloyd and Winston flying but I have done everything I can do and now I just want them to be ok.
I will be completely relieved when I see their two little furious faces at the airport in Italy.

collaboration complication.

(8.5" x 11", pen and ink on paper, July 28, 2008)

Scotch on the rocks.

Stefano gets nervous when I fly and he keeps joking that he will have to be drunk during the time that we are flying to Italy.
(Less than 5 days now.)
Lloyd says he thinks the LIVE ANIMALS sticker is "horrifying".
Winston was speechless when he saw them.
I think we might all have to drink.

(drawing in progress)

(in a twist, 7.26.08, state 2)

Awkward beginnings of collaboration between the different ways of being me. (drawing 2, July 25, 2008)

Awkward beginnings of collaboration between the different ways of being me. (drawing 1, July 25, 2008)

Re: Awkward beginnings of collaboration... ("As is.")

I AM SO TIRED OF FIGHTING WITH MYSELF AND TRYING TO NOT KNOW WHAT I HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN.

Any person with dissociative identity disorder would probably agree that it is a very tiring way of existing. It is not just "complicated" or "confusing" or "messy": IT IS TIRING.

The good side of dissociative identity disorder is that it saved me from my father; both my mind and my life. The bad side is that there comes a point when there is WAY TOO MUCH "NOT KNOWING" and trying to keep all of the information separated/divided/not touching/not known becomes exhausting. It becomes EXHAUSTING AND PAINFUL.

For example: I have recently been feeling overwhelmed by getting ready to move and all of the things I need to do and all of the work I am doing in therapy and all at the same time. So I have been having a lot of ANXIETY. (I think I have said the word "anxious" to Stefano about 1000 times in the past two weeks.) And during the past couple of weeks the anxiety inside my mind has sort of been building.
My reaction to this enormous amount of anxiety has been: Having the urge to cut myself. It is as though my brain and body feel so overwhelmed with so many thoughts and feelings and memories but none of it is really being acknowledged because some other ways of my thinking are scared and so I am trying to do a lot of the "I do not want to know (what I already know)" thinking and I think I become so desperate that I start imagining that if I sliced open my skin it would relieve some of this building pressure. (Which does not totally make sense... but sort of...) Anyway- during all of the years that did I cut and burn myself I think this was one of the main thoughts behind it all; that I needed to have a release- that I was too 'full' and I needed to let some of the pressure out. (I also think the other main point of the cutting/burning was to create a physical pain which then created a sort of 'real time' explanation for all of the psychological pain I was in. I was hurting but I could not tolerate knowing WHY- but I needed to have a reason because it was impossible to be in so much pain without a reason- so I would physically hurt myself.)

OK, I am trying not to digress but my brain is(or at least feels like) a tree that branches out in a bunch of different directions and sometimes it is hard to stay on one thought (branch).
So what I was trying to say is that for a very long time now I have been needing not just to talk about the things I had never ever spoken about but also to COME TO KNOW ABOUT THE DIFFERENT WAYS OF BEING ME. Ew. I hate evening typing that sentence. I hate that my mind is 'divided'... it is sort of like a big circle that I run in constantly: I try to start to know or think about the different ways of being me and then it gives me a bad feeling- I start to feel like it is not right- or that something is not right- and I start to even feel ashamed.... and then I think: What is all of this about? And then I remember WHY my mind is divided (because my father is/was a completely sick person who almost killed me) and then I just feel really really sad. Sad and depressed and terrible about knowing about what my father really did. And then I start going off in different directions in my head thinking in different ways about it all of the many sad things and then again about having different ways of thinking and then it all starts back up again.

ANYWAY: For a long time now I have been needing to start to allow "different ways of being me" to talk and tell different things in therapy and I have been fighting this a lot. And for a really long time. Tonight I was trying to fight the feeling of wanting not to know what I already know and I felt terrible and awful and like I was going to explode and/or die from the work of trying not to work or move or breath because of trying not to "know" and having to fight the other ways of my thinking that are tired of not telling what those parts of my mind know.... And I was contemplating cutting myself (I have not cut myself (by the way) I have just been talking a lot about WANTING to do it and this in itself has been HUGE PROGRESS for me). Then I sat down at my table and started to draw. And I just really clearly thought, "I have a bunch of different ways of drawing." And I was thinking about how I am always trying to get them to be just one way or I draw in one way for a while and then 'switch'- but for a long time now I have been wanting to try to allow myself to have the different ways of drawing on the same pieces of paper. I think that by making one drawing one way and another drawing in a different way- well the paper is like my separating device. And I have sort of "used" different pieces of paper to keep separate the different ways of my thinking- which as I have tried to explain is no longer working. So I decided to let myself draw in totally different ways on the same pieces of paper. And that/this is the beginning of me trying to accept more all of the story of what happened and also accept all of the different ways of thinking and drawing that I have. Because I can not and do not want to keep fight and also hating myself (especially when none of this is really my fault and in fact all of the "shame" feelings I have really belong to my father for all of the horrible things that he did).

If I took every drawing that I have made over the past month or two and pasted them together I imagine it would like a much larger version of something similar to the two drawings I made tonight.

And if you were able to read all of this and understand what I am trying to say... well, it is so hard to explain. (!) And it is hard for me to understand and accept too. And I always think that it is almost like a cruel joke to have SEVERAL different ways of thinking and every different way of thinking has to come to understand and tolerate and accept this complicated thing.

*NOTE: Please excuse any typing errors, non-sensicalness or other messiness in this post. I have been typing and trying to explain and then editing and rereading for a long time and I could probably go on all night... but I am just going to post this now 'as is'.

untitled 2

from drawings I would like to disown, (drawing 2)

untitled 1

from drawings I would like to disown, (drawing 1)

before "bed".

(8.5" x 11", ink and colored pencil on 100% cotton resume paper, July 24, 2008)

The Angus report.

Here he is! :-) Angus came to live with us exactly two weeks ago today. We thought he was probably about two days old when we got him. When he was found (crying under a bush) he weighed just four ounces and his eyes were closed. In the past 14 days he has put on 6 ounces(!), opened his eyes and started to walk around. He is sleeping less and wanting to walk around more and he already likes to have his cheeks and belly rubbed. I can't believe I will not be here to see him get bigger (I leave for Italy a week from tomorrow!!) but I am really glad he is here because Lisa is going to have her hands full dealing with this crazy guy and I think it will make it easier when I leave and take Lloyd and Winston too.
I will be coming back to the US for a couple of weeks at the beginning of November; Angus will be about 15 weeks old by then and in full swing crazy-kitten mode. I will take pictures then.

abortion(s) drawings, (pregnant by my own father)

I had therapy yesterday and spent over half of my session talking about the two different times I got pregnant by my own father. The first time I had a miscarriage at home and then a partial abortion, the second time my mother set up an appointment and drove me to have the abortion done while telling me I was a whore and pretending that I had slept with a "stranger" (as opposed to the terrible truth that I was pregnant by HER HUSBAND; MY FATHER).
This is the drawing I made last night at 1AM when I could not sleep.

a drawing I made last week.

"head"

Multiple personality disorder with a cherry on top.

I am sure that moving to a new country is challenging for most people. I think that taking two cats and having a divided mind escalates that challenge. The cat part is actually under control and as Stefano wrote in an email to me tonight, "I am so glad that you got all the forms signed so that Lloyd and Winston are ready for becoming Italian citizens." :-) So that part seems easy now compared to the whole "I-have-different-ways-of-thinking-and-those-ways-of-thinking-are-usually-not-on-the-same-page" issue. This is where the real difficulty is.
Here is a snap-second inside my head: "My to-do list seems too long.", "All of the important things have been done and now I am really just worrying while I wait- there is not much left to do.", "What if Stefano becomes overwhelmed by how much therapy work I have to do still and can not tolerate me?", "Which pants should I wear on the plane?", "Will I be able to get poultry flavored cat toothpaste in Italy?", "Is cat toothpaste more expensive in Italy?", "Why did my high school guidance counselor not inform my mother when I showed her the burns from where I was putting cigarettes out on my legs?", "I will be able to hug and kiss Stefano in less than one million seconds.", "Should I grab a box of yellow cake mix and take it with me so I can introduce Stefano to the joy of Betty Crocker on his birthday or should I make him a fruit pie instead?".

AHHHHH. I am going to take my anti-anxiety medicine now and try to calm down. While I wait for the medicine to start working I will go back to work on the drawing I started earlier tonight.... an image of the head of Medusa.

Perfect.

sketch without a sketchbook.

Nine days.

My to-do list shrinks shrinks shrinks and then expands slightly again. (Ah!) Today I have to drive 50 minutes to a USDA certified vet and have him sign the (six) documents which the regular vet signed last night (at their 3rd vet appointment) for Lloyd and Winston (to get them out of the US and into Italy). Tomorrow I have to have my car inspected so I can sell it before I leave, run a bunch of small errands while that happens, then I have therapy again tomorrow (instead of Friday this week) and then I have one other appointment tomorrow night. I am really sick over the stuff that has been coming out in my therapy and working hard to do all of the last minute things to get ready for moving. I am praying that there is no problem with the paperwork for Lloyd and Winston and also that my car passes the inspection and there are no problems.
Last night I could hardly get to sleep and then I was awake really early and then back into a restless sleep again. I feel constantly sick to my stomach and it is hard to eat when I am this anxious. I just want to get onto the plane. Nine more days.

I GO TO THERAPY AND DISCUSS IN DETAIL MEMORIES OF MY FATHER RAPING ME ANALLY WHEN I WAS A VERY SMALL CHILD.

The title of this post says most of what I can manage to say right now. As I drove home from therapy this morning I realized my fingers were actually touching my lips and I was fantasizing about taking a sewing needle and thread and sewing my mouth shut (so no more of these horrible true memories/stories could escape my head).
After therapy I called Stefano and I was crying so hard I literally could not even speak. I took a nap in an attempt to shake off some of this hurt but it was a restless and nightmare filled sleep.

My consoling thought: I will be moving to Italy in just ten days.

I will try to write more later today or tomorrow.

Thank you to all of the people who leave comments of support here; every one is very much appreciated. Thank you.

The incredible sadness of getting better.

Yesterday I called my mom to tell her I am moving to Italy in less than two weeks. My "father" answered the phone. I asked for my mother by her first name and not recognizing my voice he asked if I was the person who called earlier and was I calling about 'such and such'...
I was shocked and for a moment unable to respond. Then I said, "No. It is me. This is Jenny."
At first I thought I was insulted that the man who raped me and tortured me for the first 17 years of my life did not recognize my voice any more. Now I realize it is just painful to me because I hear his voice so clear in my own mind and every day.
He hung up on me.
This morning I called back and my mother answered. I told her I was moving and she said, "Good luck." Now I am wondering how I keep missing a mom I never had in the first place.
The most painful thing is that it is not so painful anymore. Not that part anyway. I mean: I am no longer shocked when I call and they are exactly the same as they have always been. I wished for so long for them to be different and now I think I miss even just that wishful thought in its very empty self.

In a Twist.

(drawing in progress, 7.18.08, state 1)

I love this poem.

On the Skeleton of a Hound

Nightfall, that saw the morning-glories float
Tendril and string against the crumbling wall,
Nurses him now, his skeleton for grief,
His locks for comfort curled among the leaf.
Shuttles of moonlight weave his shadow tall,
Milkweed and dew flow upward to his throat.
Now catbird feathers plume the apple mound,
And starlings drowse to winter up the ground.
thickened away from speech by fear, I move
Around the body. Over his forepaws, steep
Declivities darken down the moonlight now,
And the long throat that bayed a year ago
Declines from summer. Flies would love to leap
Between his eyes and hum away the space
Between the ears, the hollow where a hare
Could hide; another jealous dog would tumble
The bones apart, angry, the shining crumble
Of a great body gleaming in the air;
Quivering pigeons foul his broken face.
I can imagine men who search the earth
For handy resurrections, overturn
The body of a beetle in its grave;
Whispering men digging for gods might delve
A pocket for these bones, then slowly burn
Twigs in the leaves, pray for another birth.
But I will turn my face away from this
Ruin of summer, collapse of fur and bone.
For once a white hare huddled up the grass,
The sparrows flocked away to see the race.
I stood on darkness, clinging to a stone,
I saw the two leaping alive on ice,
On earth, on leaf, humus and withered vine:
The rabbit splendid in a shroud of shade,
The dog carved on the sunlight, on the air,
Fierce and magnificent his rippled hair,
The cockleburs shaking around his head.
Then, suddenly, the hare leaped beyond pain
Out of the open meadow, and the hound
Followed the voiceless dancer to the moon,
To dark, to death, to other meadows where
Singing young women dance around a fire,
Where love reveres the living.

I alone
Scatter this hulk about the dampened ground;
And while the moon rises beyond me, throw
The ribs and spine out of their perfect shape.
For a last charm to the dead, I lift the skull
And toss it over the maples like a ball.
Strewn to the woods, now may that spirit sleep
That flamed over the ground a year ago.
I know the mole will heave a shinbone over,
The earthworm snuggle for a nap on paws,
The honest bees build honey in the head;
The earth knows how to handle the great dead
Who lived the body out, and broke its laws,
Knocked down a fence, tore up a field of clover.

James Wright

Everything seems so different now.

I am sitting in my car before therapy typing this into my phone. I have been incredibly busy getting ready to move, taking care of our tiny kitten and trying to recover from what has been coming out in my therapy these past few sessions. I hate when I get here even a few minutes early because my mind is racing and I start to feel sick knowing that in just a few minutes I will be talking about things I wish had never happened. Everything is so different now and it is not that things are worse but some of the many parts of the story are starting to connect in my head and the picture they create; it is grotesque. And it becomes harder and harder to accept these gross truths about my past and everything is turning "real" and that is just so hard because I worked all of my life to pretend I knew almost nothing about my father. Now I realize I could describe him to the inch.The pain is a burn to my heart and head.

Addendum (I keep going).

I wrote my previous post at 7:19pm tonight. That was just an hour and ten minutes ago- after I wrote it I literally crawled into my bed and began to cry. I cried for just a few minutes and then I decided that even though I had said good night to Stefano an hour earlier and even though I knew he was sleeping- that I would call and wake him up. He answered and I could hardly talk because I was crying and he asked me to turn on my computer so we could see each other and talk over Skype. (Note: When it is 7:30pm here it is 1:30AM where Stefano is.)
As soon as I hear his voice I feel relieved and when I see him I know I am glad that I called even if I feel bad about waking him- because I just did not want to sit and hurt- I needed to tell someone- I needed to tell Stefano that I was hurting.
And he listened to me and let me cry- as he always does and then everything he said was like a step out of some black hole I was stuck in and I started to feel better. It is such a wonderful and painful time and the joy and excitement about moving there in just sixteen days- while wonderful- makes me feel all the more aware about my extremely less than wonderful past and history and the story of my father and the abuse he delivered by the ton.
I felt bad after I wrote the previous post- for saying I wanted to kill myself- so I wanted to come back and say that I feel better. And I am doing better and as Stefano repeatedly pointed out: at this time just a year or a year and a half ago I was not calling anyone to say "Hey, I am really hurting here!", I was taking razor blades and cutting big scratches into my skin.
So I keep going and it is painful in a way that I can not even begin to describe but I think I am always getting better- even when I am feeling terrible.
This is a hard and complicated and strange path- but not impossible.

Shave off the skins.

I feel like I want to hurt myself and so I reach for the last sheet of paper in a tablet and a new Sharpie marker. This is the result:

It is not the images that make me want to kill myself. It is the meaning that they carry. This nightmare-reality-past that I am still wishing I could somehow cut myself away from.

looking back.

As I prepare to move (IN JUST 16 DAYS!!!) I am going through all of my old sketchbooks and it is often very painful for me to find what I was writing and drawing so many years before I got to my therapist and finally began talking about all of the violence and abuse that I survived. I was telling the story so long before 2004, but it was in pictures and no one seemed to hear.

more sketchbook pages.

Angus takes his lunch.

Stefano.

I leave for Italy in SEVENTEEN DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!
This morning I had therapy and it was extremely painful but I have been so busy doing errands and making phone calls for the past 6 hours that I have not even had time to stop and think about all of the terrible memories that I told my doctor about today. Therapy today was SO PAINFUL. For the past few weeks when I leave my therapy session I drive my car to a parking space just a minute away and then I call Stefano and cry. I sometimes wonder now if I would even be able to talk about and work through the things I am dealing with right now if I was not with Stefano. I mean: I know I would do this work on my own if I had to- eventually I would just learn to tolerate more of it myself. But I am SO glad I will never have to know what it would be like without Stefano.
The pain from the memories is so bad it literally becomes physical. There are times when I feel like I almost really am going to die. Every time I call Stefano he helps me. As soon as I hear his voice I can start to breath again and today- when it was so bad I honestly thought I might be sick- I called him and I just kept saying, "Seventeen days, I leave for Italy in just seventeen days."
We are always together- even when we are apart- but it hurts even less when we are physically in the same place and we can hug and go out on a walk. And right now I need ALL of the help I can get.
Ti amo Stefano. See you SOON.

untitled drawing (July 2008)

Angus upside down.

Angus with his SnuggleKittie.

When I was in Minnesota...

I tried on a few wedding dresses- which was kind of crazy. The rest of the pictures are here.

Yes, I am wearing a kitten around my neck.

Here is a picture of Angus in the pouch I made him. :-) He made it through the night and has been eating so I am feeling hopeful. He seems to like the pouch and has been sleeping in it for over an hour already. Lisa went out to buy him a SnuggleKittie and should be back soon.

Angus.

I have spent a long time reading online about how to take care of a kitten that is only a few days old. In the morning Lisa is going to the pet store to buy a stuffed animal cat that has a fake heart beat and a heater inside it so Angus can curl up with that. Tonight I made a pouch that Lisa and I can take turns wearing and we will carry Angus around with us (over our hearts). We are doing every single thing that we can to help him- tonight I am going to get up every two hours to check on him. But there is still a chance that he could die because it is so unnatural for him to be without his mother. I really hope he stays alive.

Meet Angus.

Yesterday when Lisa (the woman I have rented a room from for the past 4 years) picked me up from the airport she kept talking about me going to Italy in JUST THREE WEEKS and about me taking Lloyd and Winston. It is going to be kind of sad to leave even though I am also completely excited and happy that I will not have to say goodbye to Stefano anymore. :-) Tonight after dinner though Lisa's daughter Christine called and said she had found a kitten (not even a week old) and she was going to bring him here. So Lloyd and Winston and I are moving to Italy, but tonight Angus moved here! I am totally happy about his arrival. Before he even got here Lisa said he was black and white and I started calling him Angus-so I think that will be his name. I am sad I will only be here to see him grow up for three weeks- but I am so happy Lisa will have a new kitten to love. Angus is adorable. And TINY!!! Stefano took these pictures when I called him over Skype to introduce him to Angus. :-)

From "In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer", by Irene Gut Opdyke, with Jennifer Armstrong

"I had the strangest sensation, as though I must shake myself out of my own skin, as though my body were a terrible burden that could not exist in the same space as my emotions."

Our bunny.

Here is a detail from the mural. I took this photo on Wednesday- the day before I left. Jessieh is going to finish the mural and she will post images of it on her blog.

Pictures of the mural taken on July 6, 2008.

From "In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer", by Irene Gut Opdyke, with Jennifer Armstrong

"Sometimes, while I looked dazedly at shadows in the corners of my room, I could not believe that I was still alive. Not that I had survived so many physical dangers, but that I had taken so many wounds to my heart and was still living."

Time is short.

Sorry I have not posted anything in the last few days!!!! I am here in MN with Eve and Jessieh and I got a bad cold which turned in to a bad flu and I spent two days in bed totally sick. Now I have to leave really early tomorrow morning. I will be back 'home' tomorrow and I will write more then.

Minnesota mural.

CLICK HERE to see the pictures I took yesterday. :-)

Party of Us.

I have to take Winston's spaceship baby blanket to Italy with us.

pre-therapy drawing (from yesterday)

Stefano is represented by the pig dressed as a sheriff in this drawing.

Talking in pictures.

These are eleven images from a sketchbook I was working in during the summer of 2001.
That was two and a half years before I met my therapist (at the end of 2003) and began to tell for the very first time the story of my family and of what my father had done.
I was actually telling the story long before I met my doctor.
I just was not using any words.

It is painful for me to think this- even harder to write it... But looking at these images I can not help but wonder: HOW DID NOBODY EVER NOTICE THAT SOMETHING WAS TERRIBLY TERRIBLY WRONG?

Trauma on paper.