This morning I ran the race.

This morning was the "Race to stop the silence and stop child sexual abuse".  It was an 8k; a five mile run.  Five miles isn't too far a distance for me but at the beginning of the race this morning I was thinking it was about to be the longest five miles ever.  Luckily my friend I was running with began to talk about someone he knows who ran a few hundred miles over several days.  That was a good story and made the five miles seem pretty small.  Three friends ran it with me and 6 friends were waiting at the finish line.  So it was good.  And I was happy.  I'm looking forward to seeing the photos from the race. :)

This was the second time I ran this race and my favorite part of today was realizing how much better I am doing than I was last year at this time.

About today.

In progress.

In my own life.

The one thing in my life worse than the abuse I survived was having to pretend it didn't happen because it felt too painful to know about.  Not fully knowing about it saved my life during the abuse and after it.  As I've worked for the past several years to know the truth about my own life and my mind- still my own denial about the abuse inside of my head has protected me in a lot of ways.  But my ability and even my wish to deny it is less each day.

The problem about denying my past was that I never got to be in the present and then there was absolutely no possibility to think of a future.

I struggle everyday with my thoughts, my body, my mind, my everything.  I am grateful though because in the past I just was trapped inside of my head.  The more I get clear about the abuse and am able to sit with the truth- the more I am able to be clear in my present mind and sit with myself.  It is a gift and it is a hard one- but I think a lot of the best things take a lot of work.

I still wish everyday the past had been different, that I had not hurt myself so much after my father stopped hurting me, that I had not hurt other people because I was hurting.  But I can not change any of that.  I just work to accept it now.  I work to accept it each day and to remind myself that each day I get to live differently now.  I am no longer being abused and I am not abusing myself or anyone else.

I have a lot of sadness about all that was taken from me by my family and how much I lost even after my connection to my family ended.  I cry a lot still.  But it is better.  It is better to feel the pain than to be shut off and to feel nothing at all.

Today I've been struggling a lot and I keep coming back to ask myself:  What is really wrong?  It's old feelings, old hurt.  I am so angry and sad and... wounded.  But I keep going.

I draw everyday now.  (I love that.)  Today I have been drawing, I am going to go for a run with a friend and then I will draw more tonight.  I am trying to finish a dress covered in drawing before my final critique next week and this Sunday morning I will run the 8k "Race to stop the silence and end child sexual abuse".

So I'm carrying on.  Hurting sometimes, struggling often, laughing sometimes, drawing often.

It feels incredibly difficult to live with this reality but I know it has gotten easier and I am sure it will keep going that way.  For a very long time I felt like I was just surviving.  And that was a lot- that was huge- surviving was EVERYTHING.  But now I am living.  I struggle a lot- but that is part of life and I am finally in my own life now.  And it really does feel like a mess a lot of the time- the up and down, the wishful thinking still and the different streams of my thoughts- but it's my mess and more days now I am finally happy to have it.

detail

How it goes sometimes. (Exactly like that.)

288

My decision to smile.

Making room.

Today I drew for several hours. Longer than I've drawn in a while and so long my butt began to ache- a problem I'd long forgotten about and was quite happy to have today. I made this little corner in my bedroom and sat there all day drawing while listening to different things on my computer. I'm starting to order books on cd's to listen to while I am working. It was good. I was happy to draw so much. It's one of my very most favorite things. I love the total freedom in art making.

In every place I've ever lived I've had a closet big enough to sit in. When I was growing up I used to practically try to live in my closet. And even as I've gotten older I've always felt safer in a smaller space. So the corner in my room made me happy.

So I have the freedom of making my art- but I am kind of overwhelmed... so quietly making it in a corner... I'm sure that part will improve eventually too- today I was just so happy to be really drawing.

Understanding it wasn't my fault that I wanted to have sex with my own dad.

I've mentioned on here that I've recently been watching a lot of "RuPaul's Drag Race" with my roommate Ashleigh.  I love at the end of every show when RuPaul says, "If you can't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?" Except lately I've been thinking about it and I'm kinda like... I don't know.  How am I going to love myself?  Yikes.

Which brings me to the title of this post.  I have spent the past several months of my therapy working on a lot of things connected to Stockholm Syndrome and feelings of being in love with my father.  It has been very painful and it's taken me a lot of years to be able to get to the place of doing this work.  Recently I've been talking even about being with other men and wishing that person was my father.

This is one of the things that I have felt most ashamed for.  Except I recently started reminding myself:  THIS WAS NOT MY FAULT.  It wasn't my fault that I craved the attention from my father when I was young or longed for it when I was older or went back for it after I'd moved away to college.  He'd been having sex with me since I was a very little child and all the resulting Stockholm Syndrome and my feelings of being in love and in ways wanting the sex to happen.... WAS NOT MY FAULT.

I can hardly explain how much relief I've had from finally being able to first- fully know about my own feelings and then to NOT HATE MYSELF for them.

So lately when I feel trapped or overwhelmed I remind myself:  I was having sex with my father for more than 20 years; only I didn't fully know about it because it was too painful.  AND NONE OF THAT WAS MY FAULT.  Then I feel better.  It really wasn't my fault.

I've been doing more drawing than ever, there are just two weeks left of school and tonight I'm going to a great concert!  One week until the "Race to stop the silence and end child sexual abuse".

I'll write more soon.   

Saved from the trash.

Amazing.

Yesterday some difficult things happened.  I got through them all in the very best ways that I could.  I cried a lot- but I think that was really good too.  At least it is honest; the crying I mean.  I am glad I can have my feelings even if they are sad ones.

This is just a short post today to say 'hi'.  I feel a little overwhelmed by the end of school and what I'm going to do this summer.

I'm doing the very very best I can and often that feels like it isn't very good at all... Sometimes though- the best I can seems pretty amazing.

Not graceful.

After I wrote on here Sunday night I was thinking how my thoughts seem so messy and all over the place- it often feels embarrassing. But later I was thinking how anyone who was writing about their daily life and struggles would probably seem a bit disorganized and all over the place. My dissociation just makes it much more so I think.

Yesterday I took my drawing down from the museum. I was overwhelmed and it wasn't a very graceful moment- I crumpled it all up into a big ball.

I'll go back into it- pull things out and salvage pieces. It's a metaphor I know and I'm grateful I have my art to act it out on and that I am no longer using my body. The paper and drawings can take being wadded into a ball as if to be thrown away. My body and mind couldn't.

Long weekend; in the best way.

Jessieh and her great friend Leah were here this weekend.  We had a good time.

I feel like I am losing so much time or not really present when things are happening... I know the awareness for it is good.  It is also scary.  It's scary to switch in my thoughts so much.  Today I was with a friend and I just wanted to yell:  HAVING MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER CAN BE SO FRIGHTENING!

I'm overwhelmed.  There are two weeks left of school, then final critiques, tomorrow I need to take my art down from the museum exhibit and the "Race to stop the silence and end child sexual abuse" is in two weeks.

I want to cry right now I so much wish that I was not going to go to therapy tomorrow and say what I know I'm going to say.

Raja with our glitter card. Fantastic.

Glitter card for Raja.

Ashleigh; dressed for Raja.

Leah and Llllloyd.

Oh Jessieh, what would I ever do without you?!?!

Two women, two diet cokes, a coffee and a dozen doughnuts.

17 days from today.

The 'Race to Stop the Silence and End Child Sexual Abuse' is in seventeen days.  I've been biking a lot but not running at all.  It's a five mile race but I've been starting to worry about it.  I keep trying to tell myself it's not at all about the running part of it but about the meaning of being in the race.  Today after a wonderfully motivating ten second pep talk from Jessieh- in which she mentioned other children who are still presently being abused- I was motivated to go out and do a run.  I want to do a few before the race so I am not using that as something to worry about before it.  I ran for six miles just to prove to myself I could do and I just stopped once to help a guy push his car out of the road.  So 17 days until the race.  And then the next week there are the final semester critiques at school and then I'll be finished with my first year of graduate school.

The whole time I was running today I was listening to this on repeat.  :-)

Love.

DRAWING.

Today I've spent the day drawing with a quick outing for a cupcake lunch.  Jessieh and another good friend are on their way to my house as I type this and will be here for a long weekend; so I'm excited about that.

This is just the corner of a drawing I've just started.... I'll post more photos soon.

Not silent.

Today I stayed in bed for the entire day.  I've felt tired and overwhelmed from school and mostly from the work I have been doing in my therapy.

Yesterday I was telling my doctor that I've never really felt like I was 'raped'.  It is hard for me to think about what my dad did as 'rape' because it was more like: He was having sex with me from my earliest memory until I moved away when I was 25.  So it didn't really seem like rape.  Clearly it WAS... but it never really has felt that way.  It was more like sex.  But calling it an 'incest relationship' doesn't quite feel like the right way to say it either.  It makes it too... easy.  Too easy to explain; it takes away something about the horror and the pain of it all.  So I think I might start saying that I was fucked by my dad all my life and until I was 25 years old.  Because that is both the literal truth about what happened but then it also really explains something so clearly about what he did to me emotionally.

I went to the 'Take back the night event' at my school last night.  It was rather depressing to see that at a school with about 10,000 students there were only about 150 people in attendance.  Two of my roommates/friends came up to walk it with me and I was really grateful for that- but it was sad to see such a small turn out.

I've been starting to feel anxiety about running in the 'Race to Stop the Silence and Stop Child Sexual Abuse' (it's at the end of this month).  Last night as we were walking through the campus though I was thinking that I HAVE to do it because I need to speak out against child sexual abuse. 

Doll, face.

I was unsure what to put here today and then I saw that Heather had posted this on the Cycle of Healing blog.

Thank you Heather.

Working on a lot of things. And drawing.

Tonight: Taking back everything.

Tonight there is a march on my campus to 'TAKE BACK THE NIGHT'. All day long I've been struggling about whether I will go or not. I keep wanting to deny the painful reality about the past and that's why I've been struggling even more. So I'm going to go. And I'm gonna be present, be honest and speak out. I'll let you know how it goes.

Easter, bunny, dress.

Yesterday I did all the things I planned to do- rode my bike the long way to school, did some things in my studio, had dinner with my roommates.

I feel like a bunch of minds all running at the same time and shoved into one body but that feels like it's pretty hard to explain.

At the art opening the other night I couldn't stop thinking how every day is an opening now.

There's a trail near my house so I don't have to ride in the street so I can ride slower if I want and I can look around at everything- trees and the river and the sky.  I had to shut my mind of from myself only it is more like I had divided my own mind into many minds or pretended that or was able to imagine it and then I didn't- and then I didn't have to shut them all off from me and I was happy and sad and grief filled and relieved and more awake and alive than ever.

To pretend the past was not real I had to pretend everything in the present world was not real too.  And that was worse than the past itself- I just couldn't know about it then.

Happy Easter.

A poem by Marie Howe.

This is pretty great. ;-)

I have not lost my voice.

Last night I watched the American version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".  I usually don't watch films with a lot of violence but the original series of films was definitely an exception and so too with the remake of it.  The anal rape scene of the movie is absolutely horrific- as with the original- when she goes back for her revenge makes it almost tolerable in both of the films though.  Anyway- after watching it last night I was thinking how there are so many terrible things my rapist did to me that over the years I've come to be able to tolerate and slowly accept.  There is though an entire aspect of the abuse- or consequence of it- which I feel I am still just barely able to even fully think about; the many pregnancies I lost.

It feels very difficult to accept because so many things were already being taken from me- my own body, my own mind, control of my space that I lived in- almost everything.  And then more- and then beyond my own mind and body and space I lived in- something inside of me that was beyond me- an extension of myself.  Last night I had a dream about a baby and this morning I woke up and was feeling very sad thinking about the pregnancies I lost and how to even tolerate sitting with this in my reality and then I suddenly had a thought/memory that was:  "I had to get the first abortions because I was still living at home and I didn't want my father to abuse that child too."

The layers.  The layers and complexity of the awfulness of it all is stunning.  The more I heal and the more I am able to get clear and remember the details of the abuse the more I feel like the expression 'the devil is in the details' is so very true.  The fact that I was pregnant several times and lost every pregnancy is incredibly painful- the fact that I was so isolated, had no one to talk to about any of it and thought to myself that I needed to protect this unborn child by ending its life when I was still very much a child myself and that I lived with all of this silently in my own head- it's a shockingly painful wound.

It's 11:39 AM here.  I'm going to finish typing this post and then ride my bicycle the longer way- along the trails- to school.  I'm going to sew and draw and then come home and have dinner with my roommates.  I'm laying in my bed right now with my laptop on my knees and tears streaming down my face as I type this.  I feel worried I need to explain why I am writing about these horrible things here- because I am trying to accept them myself, because I hope that somehow writing this out can help me and maybe somebody else- but then I am also so sick of being scared and feeling like I have to explain myself anymore.  I've worked so much and so hard to recover from what was done to me.  I have no connections to any of my original family now and I've lost a lot.  But I have not lost my voice.  I will not be silent about what was done to me and I hope to be able to help other people with my story about how it is possible to survive being abused so much and to be able to really heal.

I'm absolutely sobbing now.  I feel so hurt and so angry.  I'm going to keep going.  I've come a very long way and I'm going to keep going.  My parents treated me far worse than most people would ever treat an animal.  None of it should have happened, but it did and I survived it.  I've gotten so much better.  I'm almost finished with my first year of graduate school- I'm only 34 I keep reminding myself.  I have a lot of time yet to fully live now- free because I am able to know my own mind now.

Bicycle ride, studio, making art, dinner with friends.  I'm going on.  I've stopped crying and I'm glad I wrote this.  And to everyone who reads this: Thank you for helping me to tolerate this by holding a piece of this story with me.  Thank you.

One final image from my piece in the MFA show.

The above photo is a detail from the piece that is at the very bottom of the wall piece.  It was the last thing I added to the wall before I said it was 'finished'.  Last night was the opening reception.  It was pretty overwhelming for me.  In the past when I would show my work I always felt like, "Did I really make these drawings?  These drawings don't feel like mine at all."  But last night I was standing in the museum near my piece and I didn't have that feeling at all.  I knew every drawing on that wall was mine or a collaborative drawing I'd made with someone and I could remember making each piece.  I know this is huge and wonderful progress- but it was a lot to take in as well.  I was proud of how I was able to tolerate it all though.  I felt emotionally overwhelmed so I just stayed for a while and then I came home.  I didn't hurt myself, I didn't try to cover up the hurt or the overwhelming feelings- I just had them and they eventually passed.  I woke up feeling better this morning.  So it was difficult, but it went ok and even though it was hard to really stand there and own my own work- I did.  And I feel really good about that.

I spent the afternoon yesterday sewing a dress- I've started two now and I'm really excited about both.  I'll post more about that and photos soon.  The dresses are for this summer; covered in drawing and designed for bicycling in.  ;-)

Associating.

For the past few months I've been working a lot to unravel the knots of the Stockholm Syndrome pieces of the abuse.  This is about that work.

Before my therapy session on Monday I told myself I was really going to push myself as much as I could.  I understand that the more I can tolerate sinking into my own mind instead of constantly trying to be in a state of running from it- the sooner I will hurt less.  So I went for it.  I said as much as I could- just let myself talk and the hardest part was hearing what I had to say.  It was so painful.  Then yesterday I was sort of torn between pulling up the conversation I'd had with my therapist and running from it- so again- I decided to just really let myself go over what I'd said.  Then I cried.  A huge huge cry that involved sobbing and snot streaming from my nose.

In order to dissociate from a lot of the worst things that happened I had to take a new event and paste it over the old one.  So yesterday I was obsessively thinking about a present day relationship but aware that I was obsessively thinking about this person and that this wasn't in fact what I was really even meaning to be thinking about.  So I managed to ask myself:  WHAT IS THIS REALLY ABOUT??  And I immediately had my answer.  Then I immediately started to cry with the streaming snot part soon to follow.

These are difficult answers.  Thoughts and feelings I could not tolerate at the time they actually happened so I stuffed them away- but they were always still there and then they came out in other weird places where the feelings didn't really belong but I just needed them to be somewhere to explain them and the reality and truth felt too painful.  

So here... let me get to my point.  When I was 19 I left 'home' to go to college and in my memory I was SO HAPPY.  I remember being in the car with my boyfriend and him driving and I remember the cd we were listening to and I remember being SO HAPPY.  I was happy to be getting out of the house and away from my mom and dad- I WAS SO HAPPY.  Except I wasn't- or not completely anyway.  A part of me didn't want to leave at all.  But I couldn't really know about that part of me then or until approximately yesterday.  I didn't fully want to leave my dad.  I was 19 and a way of being me had been thinking of him as my 'boyfriend' for about 10 years by then.  And I felt like I was leaving the man I really loved and I didn't really want to be doing that.  But I couldn't know about it because I wasn't able to know about the fact that I'd been being raped/having a sexual relationship with him all my life.  So I was in terrible pain in a certain part of my thinking but I couldn't know about it at all.  Until now.

I've always felt so ashamed of everything about pretending my father was my boyfriend- every little piece of the Stockholm Syndrome.  I've felt so bad that I've felt disgusted with myself for even eating and keeping my own body alive.  But the more I become clear about the whole picture- about how he had manipulated me since I was a baby and then all my growing up life and then I'd felt in love with him both because I really was and because it was how I survived- now that I can see it all more clearly I am feeling not mad at myself but instead; deeply sad.  

In the past when I would think about the Stockholm Syndrome parts of all of this I would only be able to think that I HAD to feel that I loved him, that I HAD to imagine he was my boyfriend.  But I really did believe it, I really did feel it.  I really loved my father, I really wished in some way that he would leave my mother and be with me instead.  And even though I came to all of that through his abusing me for all of my life... I really felt it.  It was real.  And so the pain of leaving him when I went to college at 19 was a very real pain too.  So much so that I went back home to be with him during the whole time I was in college.  And when I was finally able to remember that I did that- went back to him- DROVE AN HOUR AND HALF to be with my own dad sexually- I HATED MYSELF.  Because it all hurt.  And it was much easier to be disgusted with myself than it was to think:  HOW COULD HE HAVE HURT ME SO MUCH???  HOW COULD HE HAVE CARED ABOUT ME SO LITTLE??

It was the same when I left permanently when I was 25 years old.  It was excruciatingly painful.  In some parts of my mind I knew I had to get away from him and my mother- but in other ways of my thinking I did not want to leave.

And when I started therapy just a few months later and began to talk for the first time about my father sexually abusing me- in order to heal my life and my mind I had to not only give up my whole family- but also the man whom I had come to feel like I was very much in love with.

It's a lot.  It's taken me a lot of work to get to this place.  Unknotting the knots of the Stockholm Syndrome has been the most difficult part of my work to recover.

But it's working.  I am getting better all of the time.  When I first started going to Survivors of Incest Anonymous there was a saying from the program that they had which I thought at first was rather silly and now I realize is in fact rather brilliant:  "It works if you work it, so work it because you're worth it."

The work to recover and heal from sexual abuse is long and hard- but possible.

The opening for the first year MFA thesis exhibit is tomorrow night.  Here is another detail from my piece.

Dress.

I started working on this yesterday. I'm going to make another dress covered in drawing.

Yesterday I had therapy and it was very difficult. Today I really really wanted to resort to old coping mechanisms to try to cover some of my hurt. In the past I would hurt myself more. I didn't do that today. I wanted to- but I talked about how I was feeling and I didn't hurt myself and I made progress instead.

t-shirt

The good things about knowing the bad things.

It was very overwhelming for me after I hung all of my drawings into that huge (22 by 15 foot) piece in the museum at my school.  After that I sputtered and struggled some.  Then I started thinking:  What should I do next?  And because I've been so busy with therapy and school and trying to just 'get through'.... I hadn't really thought much about what I am going to do during these last few weeks of graduate school or this summer.

Then I started drawing on a t-shirt and it made me really happy.  This image of the boots with drawing on them is something I did a few years ago.  I've been drawing on clothes for several years and I used to sew a lot of my own clothes when I was younger.  When I started school this past September I felt like I needed to work on paper.  I felt like the drawing on clothes was not 'serious enough' for graduate school.  Now I don't think that was true at all.  I'm going to do the thing I love and for years I've said that I feel like I would be most happy if I could combine my drawing with my love of fiber arts.  And since I've been working so hard in therapy and I am able to draw more than ever before... I feel confident I can really do a lot of the drawing on clothing.

I wore this dress last week and it made me really happy.  Wearing it once made me want to make more of them.  So that's what I'm going to do next.

When I started school I talked a lot about feeling like I could not 'resolve' or finish a drawing; but I feel like my work on clothing is always resolved.  So that is what I am going to go forward with now.

Which brings me to ask:  Why did it take me this much time to figure this out?  I've know that I love drawing on clothes and making clothes to draw on for the longest time- why didn't I do more of it sooner??  Answer:  I have been afraid to know my own mind.  The biggest problem about not wanting to know my own mind- for fear of knowing about all of the pain in it- has meant that I've also been kept from knowing about a lot of the good things.

So even though it's painful to tolerate remembering all of the bad things- it is freeing me up and allowing me to know about all of the good things too.  And it's allowing me to finally get to be myself more and more each day.

xo