Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
At least there are kittens in this world
The thing about depression is that it doesn't just go away when the therapy stops, especially when the therapy stopped only because the free sessions ran out.
And the extra sucky part about depression is that my brain keeps piping up in the meanest way, and most of it is rooted in deep old fears. I was given the choice to get on meds, and I understand that could be helpful, but considering my long jacked up past and how much I need to get the words out, I don't think a long term pill is the answer for me. I really wanted to try talking it out, with someone kind and competent and more clever than I am about the ways in which I entrap my own self in punishment out of shame for ever busting through the hellish gates of my reluctant mother. It really goes that deep. All the way to a tiny clump of cells that grew and divided inside the womb of an angry abused girl child who wanted a different life.
The way my mother told it I always imagined that I climbed out of her body while she was lying there, frozen and terrified, "A baby having a baby", and I just decided to fuck up every single thing I could. Having any need at all was just my way of manipulating her, having memories of my own was just me being crazy, telling anyone anything about my life was just me, lying my way into getting what I wanted. Wanting anything was due to my innate terribleness. I know all that is weird and hard to grasp for most people. I know (now) that her perspective is sick and sad, and I know her to be a creature worthy of empathy. I also know that she is mentally ill, a pickled recluse, wasting in her own hoarded slum of self-loathing, waiting for me to come and apologize to her for her terrible birth experience and for not fulfilling the promise she tricked herself into believing, that I was supposed to be born because I had some kind of great thing to accomplish. Maybe I do, maybe I will, but I'm pretty sure she will never know about it. Not because I am a mean asshole with no empathy, but because I have so much empathy I can't be near her or it physically hurts. I make everything may fault, everything everything. Every. Thing. Things that happened to her before I was even born settle against me and I let them in. It is toxic, so toxic it leaks into me even now, when I have not seen her for more than ten years.
My sister saw my dad at a family event not long ago, my mother did not go. I did not attend, I don't live in the same state and also there is a part of me that feels like my family never cared much for me in the first place. But not going left me wracked with guilt and fresh anger. Where were they when I was being abused and neglected? Why didn't my needs matter to them then? Why should theirs matter to me now? And in therapy I kept getting the same tired line about how I need to forgive for me and not for them. I get that, I understand the hurt of it, trust me. I really get it. But telling someone who was fucked over as a child to grow up and forgive or else it will just keep hurting is kind of a dick move. It means, "Yes, you were hurt by other people and that sucked super bad, but now here comes shitloads of judgey simple words about how you are doing it all wrong by still feeling it." If the root of my problem is a sense of absolute worthlessness and I still feel like certain people expect me apologize for the fact I even fucking exist, how the hell am I supposed to feel about the idea that my reasoning is off and I'm doing it all wrong and that what I really need to do is get over it and forgive. If I can't, if that feels totally fucked up and wrong to do because none of that shit was ever OK, it leaves it all right back in my lap. My fault. Again. And again, I will figure it out somehow. I always have. I know that to be true. But holy shit would I like a break from all this horrifying head stuff.
Meeting with my ex-husband is what set this all off. I felt his anger rolling off in waves and it occurred to me how sick it was that I never wanted him to know that I thought of him as an abuser. I wanted to protect him from my extreme opinion, because how could he do anything other than hate that and fight against it and that feels extremely dangerous. Explaining that to the lawyer was hard for me. Later that night I met with a friend and somehow it morphed into this giant discussion about sexual abuse and my entire terrible history spilled out. I went from uncle fondled toddler, blamed for being sexy, to raped and crying 16 year old, also blamed for being sexy (with far too many pit stops in between) in the course of one unbroken narrative, strung together on one long desperate breath. That was a week ago. In between I have managed to find solace in laundry and dishes and making broth. I have avoided silence and sleep. I am so fucking mad that any of this is coming up now. Why now? The reason I ended up with my ex husband in the first place is that he was the only one who cared when I told him what had happened to me. The only one. That felt like a lifeline. Now he hates me with all the rushing blood pulsing through that big mean vein in his forehead. Now he wants to punish me for breaking the spell. Having him near me is just as toxic. I swapped my mother for him, as if I needed to be treated like shit but I needed to pretend that's what love looked like. No wonder I can't just forgive. I haven't even begun to process the horrible shit I lived though, I just went from one catastrophe to another until I ended up here. No wonder everything feels like sped up slow motion.
And the extra sucky part about depression is that my brain keeps piping up in the meanest way, and most of it is rooted in deep old fears. I was given the choice to get on meds, and I understand that could be helpful, but considering my long jacked up past and how much I need to get the words out, I don't think a long term pill is the answer for me. I really wanted to try talking it out, with someone kind and competent and more clever than I am about the ways in which I entrap my own self in punishment out of shame for ever busting through the hellish gates of my reluctant mother. It really goes that deep. All the way to a tiny clump of cells that grew and divided inside the womb of an angry abused girl child who wanted a different life.
The way my mother told it I always imagined that I climbed out of her body while she was lying there, frozen and terrified, "A baby having a baby", and I just decided to fuck up every single thing I could. Having any need at all was just my way of manipulating her, having memories of my own was just me being crazy, telling anyone anything about my life was just me, lying my way into getting what I wanted. Wanting anything was due to my innate terribleness. I know all that is weird and hard to grasp for most people. I know (now) that her perspective is sick and sad, and I know her to be a creature worthy of empathy. I also know that she is mentally ill, a pickled recluse, wasting in her own hoarded slum of self-loathing, waiting for me to come and apologize to her for her terrible birth experience and for not fulfilling the promise she tricked herself into believing, that I was supposed to be born because I had some kind of great thing to accomplish. Maybe I do, maybe I will, but I'm pretty sure she will never know about it. Not because I am a mean asshole with no empathy, but because I have so much empathy I can't be near her or it physically hurts. I make everything may fault, everything everything. Every. Thing. Things that happened to her before I was even born settle against me and I let them in. It is toxic, so toxic it leaks into me even now, when I have not seen her for more than ten years.
My sister saw my dad at a family event not long ago, my mother did not go. I did not attend, I don't live in the same state and also there is a part of me that feels like my family never cared much for me in the first place. But not going left me wracked with guilt and fresh anger. Where were they when I was being abused and neglected? Why didn't my needs matter to them then? Why should theirs matter to me now? And in therapy I kept getting the same tired line about how I need to forgive for me and not for them. I get that, I understand the hurt of it, trust me. I really get it. But telling someone who was fucked over as a child to grow up and forgive or else it will just keep hurting is kind of a dick move. It means, "Yes, you were hurt by other people and that sucked super bad, but now here comes shitloads of judgey simple words about how you are doing it all wrong by still feeling it." If the root of my problem is a sense of absolute worthlessness and I still feel like certain people expect me apologize for the fact I even fucking exist, how the hell am I supposed to feel about the idea that my reasoning is off and I'm doing it all wrong and that what I really need to do is get over it and forgive. If I can't, if that feels totally fucked up and wrong to do because none of that shit was ever OK, it leaves it all right back in my lap. My fault. Again. And again, I will figure it out somehow. I always have. I know that to be true. But holy shit would I like a break from all this horrifying head stuff.
Meeting with my ex-husband is what set this all off. I felt his anger rolling off in waves and it occurred to me how sick it was that I never wanted him to know that I thought of him as an abuser. I wanted to protect him from my extreme opinion, because how could he do anything other than hate that and fight against it and that feels extremely dangerous. Explaining that to the lawyer was hard for me. Later that night I met with a friend and somehow it morphed into this giant discussion about sexual abuse and my entire terrible history spilled out. I went from uncle fondled toddler, blamed for being sexy, to raped and crying 16 year old, also blamed for being sexy (with far too many pit stops in between) in the course of one unbroken narrative, strung together on one long desperate breath. That was a week ago. In between I have managed to find solace in laundry and dishes and making broth. I have avoided silence and sleep. I am so fucking mad that any of this is coming up now. Why now? The reason I ended up with my ex husband in the first place is that he was the only one who cared when I told him what had happened to me. The only one. That felt like a lifeline. Now he hates me with all the rushing blood pulsing through that big mean vein in his forehead. Now he wants to punish me for breaking the spell. Having him near me is just as toxic. I swapped my mother for him, as if I needed to be treated like shit but I needed to pretend that's what love looked like. No wonder I can't just forgive. I haven't even begun to process the horrible shit I lived though, I just went from one catastrophe to another until I ended up here. No wonder everything feels like sped up slow motion.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Every word means something else
It is just so much safer to write about cats. And by safe I mean, safe. Fluffy. Nonthreatening. Accessible. Unsad. Unmad. Unbad.
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