captivatingbitter

I need to set the record straight. I found out my stupid, crazy family has been telling people that they don’t really have anything to do with me because of “decisions I have made.” So I wanted to clarify those decisions. I decided several years ago to cut them out of my life. MY choice ~ not theirs. I CHOOSE to keep them out of my life and pursue healing. I do not associate with them any more. The last contact I had with them was about a year or so ago when I drove to their house to confront them about the abuse. I then went to the police and filed charges against them for abuse. I have been told by someone that they are telling people that I was stoned or high or something crazy… but I was just angry and emotional. I think they don’t know what to do with my emotions. I think my emotions freak them out and they just want to run away from them and they would rather have me silent and afraid. They don’t know what to do when I am neither silent nor afraid.

There are too many of us out there to stay silent. Our stories matter! #silentnomore

I have walked through most of my life feeling crazy…not quite trusting my own mind.  I doubted every emotion and tried to gain mastery over it.  All I achieved was a terrible numbness that leached all the color out of my world and left me with the terrible gray nothing… A Nothing which threatened to consume me.  My passion had fled… my desire, my dreams, my daring… my hope… all fled and a terrible emptiness a terrible apathy remained.

Neglect… the rot of the soul.

How, then, does one become healthy again?  For me ~ by feeling…raging, crying, sleeping too much, grieving.  One more step, one more day, then another and another and another… all running into each other… Days of pain and misery and fear and pleasure and dreams… Pain is the pathway that will lead hope back into my heart.

I go through most days expressing little or no emotion.  I can pass as human.  I can blend in with the best of them… but I feel like an imposter.  An empty shell.  I just smile at the right times and say the right things so no one notices how broken I am.

I can’t do it any more.  I am so profoundly broken.  Every breath hurts… every heartbeat… they sear my chest and the white-hot pain is such I fear it will kill me.  I walk around with so much bitterness, so much anger… I hide in plain sight.

I am tired.  I am tired of wanting to die.  I am tired of the pain… and I am tired of pretending to be ok.  I am so lonely and so heartbroken.  This is me.

I have been away for far too long…. I have been locked in the dark….in the quet, lonely place where memories reign supreme and where my demons haunt me…where they dog my every step/

Here is what I remember:

I am still in diapers and I am sitting on my mom’s lap. I am leaning against her chest and facing out with her arms around me and I can feel her hands…her soft skin… her thumb rubbing the bottom of my stomach…stroking into my diaper… gentle strokes, caresses….like a lover… all soft and gentle… stroking down and down while rocking and  at the same time making me feel so safe and so warm…. ever stroking downward… caressing me and stroking me… but never holding me down.  Never forcing me.  Always within plain view… always like the ever loving mother…. always letting me up if I squirmed or waned to get away… stroking thumb… stroking fingers… touching me with those soft hands and always being careful not for force me… not to hold me against my will… making me a willing participant in my own molestation… I can’t honestly say I fought you.  I just accepted what you were doing as normal….. or as love

Memory;  I don’t know how old I am … maybe 9… maybe 7… I hear your voice call me into your bedroom…. Mom is at work and Aaron is away… Or maybe at Scouts?  l….. I come to where you call me and I find you there….. shirt unbuttoned… pants unzipped… penis out and erect… and before I have words for this… before I understand what is going on…I am close enough for you to grab me… You grab me by the wrist and force my little girl hands around your penis… You are sticky ad hot and smell like sweat… and I still to this day remember how you felt!! I remember having your rough hands over mine and your penis in between my small little girl hands and you forcing me up and down and feeling the hot sticky explosion of your climax and the salty, sweaty, dirty smell of you….

Memory: later that same year… or maybe a year later… I remember your hands roughly grabbing my hair and pulling me to my knees before you… I remember the pain of you pulling my hair and how it felt to have my head so twisted and my hair pulled so violently!  I remember choking on your erection and being forced up and down as I gagged on you…I remember feeling my mouth stretch painfully and feeling as though I would smother or suffocate on you….

Memory:  It is my birthday…. I  have rag curls in my hair that i had to sleep in all night…. I am barefoot and wearing a blue dress with a little ruffle at the bottom… It is the kind of dress that flairs when I twirl and I feel so pretty in it…. Mom went out to get the cake or something and for some reason it is just you and I at home and I don’t know if it is my feeling so pretty that set you off or if there is something about my joy that infuriates you… but I remember your hands.. you grabbed me from behind and yelled at me about the mess in my room… you shoved me so hard face down on the bed that it took my breath away and you pulled my panites down and my dress up… you raped me in  be but while I could not even scram … let alone breathe … you “punished” me and made me feel so dirty and so disgusting and like it was all my fault.  So many memories and so much torment…

Being slapped in the face, being ridiculed, being tormented…being silenced….

Well::  I am silent no more….

I have pressed charges and I will not live in fear any longer!  I will fight… and I will survive… I will not be the one cowering in the dark any longer.  This far And No More

My heart is racing… half fear, half excitement. I am on the cusp of a decision that will change our lives and I feel the weight of that. I feel the wonder of that… I feel so much. For the last few weeks I have been drenched in feelings. I am alive with them, I am overwhelmed and entranced by them. I have gone my whole life quenching every emotion… I have carefully controlled my facial expression because to live in my emotions and to let them clearly show on my face and body language felt so dangerous to me… felt suicidal. I lived so much of my life just … just surviving… not REALLY living. I have just waited for death, waited for it all to end. Now pure energy is coursing through my veins in the form of every emotion I have not allowed myself to feel in over 30 years. I am dreaming… I am hoping… I am not worried about every thing I do, I a not afraid to make mistakes any more. So I am going to go with my heart…. This huge decision – this is going to be all heart… Now I just have to figure out what my heart wants.

I realized that I was spiraling down … well on my way to depression.  I have not done any of my fun hobbies in the last week… I have not practiced the guitar, I have not read, I have not journaled, hiked, taken photos, sketched… I have just been a lump…

I will not let this depression beat me…  I will do all the things I love.  I will cook… tomorrow I will get out and see something beautiful.  I will play guitar… I will live.  I have spent enough of my life just surviving.   I will break this cycle and live… I will be in my heart… I will live in my feelings…even if that means I spend my days in or near tears… All of my feelings are vital and important…  I don’t have to apologize for them anymore.  

Heat erupts, consuming…

Raw, dangerous…

Quickening, desperate, gasping…

I ache…craving…

And only you can satisfy.

I think of you a hundred times a day.  I think of things to say… thoughts float through my mind and with tears on my cheeks I discard conversation after conversation.  I am… adrift.  You wander through my mind… your smile, the sound of your voice, the brown of your eyes, the feel of your skin…  You occupy my heart.