[note: my brain is disorganized in ugly ways. it doesn't seem to naturally filter nonessential information. i don't feel like trying harder to organize this information. basically, what follows is vomit, and i just want to let it out and try to move on.]
part of of my life story, some aspects of it, mostly from age 13 on. i seem to be stuck here, my thoughts always circle back to all of this. i always feel guilty and mean and confused when i try to express any of this, and then try to destroy it if i've written it down, but it seems that right now i am trapped by it all again and maybe there's some benefit in trying again, although i don't know what. i'm just so uncomfortable. i want to stop bingeing and purging. i want to have something in life that feels good. it would be good if the others involved in this story could have their say, and perhaps it would help me to figure out how to express things better as well. without questions, without feedback, i fall into the same patterns when telling my story, and i know it's far from comprehensive and complete, and perhaps it's grossly unfair in a lot of ways.
as a sprog, i read a lot. i wrote - although i usually felt the need to destroy what i wrote.. i was always very embarrassed about it. i made up plays for me and my siblings, and i was director, lighting, sound, costume, makeup, etc, person. i made up song and dance shows. i wrote out school lessons, played teacher and marked everyone's lessons. i climbed trees, and ran around and practiced trying to fly. i practiced ballet. i wanted to try to accomplish something. i wrote and illustrated a book at age 10. i skipped a grade. but at times i was so incredibly bored, and while i could see things to do, it was like i just didn't have the energy. i felt i wanted to die. maybe it was something in my genetic makeup. maybe it was related to my parents' fighting, or to their own personal depressions. maybe it was genetic predisposition as well as environmental influences.
i don't like going the 'blame your parents' route. nobody is perfect, and nobody's parents are perfect, everybody does the best they can, and almost everybody suffers. i think the most likely explanation for things is that i'm the weakest of my siblings, the one with the least practical intelligence, the least good-looking, the least physically strong, the least able to cope with the stresses, trials and tribulations in life.
my story is too messy and complicated to have relevance to very many people, and i usually end up feeling even more embarrassed, raw and needy after telling it. i don't tell my story well. i understand that it is not fair to expect people to know what to say.
i don't think i've had things really bad.. i've just tried to give information that is relevant to me personally, information that might help me to be understood. i cracked under certain experiences that others could have handled.. because my personality was weak in certain areas. when i can explain it fully enough, it makes a kind of sense to me.. i can understand part of what happened, although i am unsure whether anything could have been changed with the right 'help' or whatever. i suspect not. i think that who 'i' am would have led me to where i am now, regardless of whatever 'help' i received.
when i moved in with my father at age 13, i was out of control with food. my eating disorder began here. every weekend, i planned to get my eating under control, to start exercising/dancing regularly, to work towards accomplishing something.. writing etc, but monday morning would come, and i'd still be bingeing, still feeling out of control. in part i think this was because i was on my own so much. in part, i think it was because i wasn't really wanted. my father had asked me to live with him, but i don't think he really knew what that entailed. i don't think his girlfriend wanted any of his children to move in. i had no real mother figure at this time, no one taking an interest in nurturing me. my own mother kept calling hysterically on the phone, yelling at me for choosing to live with my father, telling me what an ugly person i was, how i was throwing away my life and would never amount to anything, etc, and that one day i would know what she was talking about. well, one day i did know what she was talking about, and even when i was 13 i could sense her pain and i felt guilt about causing her that pain, but i still made the decision that i felt was best for myself. ok, so i wasn't nurtured at this time. what i did get with regards to parental guidance was a drunken father who went on and on about sex, telling me all the family sexual secrets, talking about each of the women he had known, including that he had slept with my mother's sister. it seemed to me that whoever was able to provide the right kind of attributes or attention at precisely the right time was the one likely to be most important to a man at any given time. there was no prediciting, but it seemed that you had to have exceptional qualities of some kind, or you just wouldn't stand out. my father said i would do 'ok', although i wasn't very good-looking, because i was 'smart'. what this meant was that i always surprised him with new ways of looking at things when we had discussions, when he asked me questions to test me, when he gave me iq-type puzzles to solve, etc. what i realized later was that when drunk, he was behaving with me the way he probably behaved with the women he had known, seductively testing me in the ways he tested them. he actually did ask me to sit on his lap, saying there was 'nothing wrong' in it, but i immediately felt there was something wrong in it, although at that time i really didn't suspect him of anything.. it took a long time to realize that his behaviour was inappropriate, because i had such a high opinion of him. i still realize that he didn't do any anything as 'serious' as some men do. i think he went through a very complex mental seduction of me, using philosophy and mental tests to lead my thinking in certain ways.. to lead me to accept what most people do not accept. he was attracted to me, and wanted *me* to bring up the possibility of taking things further, so that he could be absolved of responsibility. knowing what i know of men now, he probably did not have much conscious awareness of all this, especially drunk, and if he did have conscious awareness, there is something in the way men are socialized that helps them to forget, or think that what they want and do is more important than a female's mental health, and so he has not suffered a moment of guilt regarding it. should he? no. i think all of it probably did make life more complicated and stressful for me, but perhaps part of what i picked up is part of what makes me different, unique. perhaps i am more open-minded, perhaps i understand human nature better than some people, and perhaps i have a kind of understanding of men that has given me something of an 'edge', in a way.
ok.. so the influence all of this had on me: i had no feeling of security regarding relationships. already i had seen my parents' marriage collapse, i had seen the way they and their friends all flirted with each other and i understood everyone was sleeping with everyone else, and most of these relationships ended in divorce as well. i knew that if i had a serious relationship that my mate could very well be attracted to my sister, or best friend, or best friend's daughter or whatever, and that he could even attempt to act on the attraction.. that there was just no predicting. i think i was always afraid of marriage, and my pattern in all of my relationships has been to be very wary of commitment of any kind. i think that i haven't ever really had interest in having children because i think i picked up from both my parents that they wished they hadn't had children, that part of each of their depressions was based on not having accomplished more on a personal level before accepting the responsibilities of marriage and children.
in addition to this, i had a skin condition which was absolutely hideous, and my skin only looked normal in summer, so i was already feeling that whatever relationships i had could only last over summer months until i found either a cure or could find a way to live in a warmer climate. this was a very big stress in my life, and the distress it caused me cannot be overemphasized. this condition was traumatizing in itself, and led to serious depression in itself every year when the colder weather came.
my father still seemed to have some kind of wish for ideal love, and at times it was confusing because it seemed that some qualities in different women were ideal, and at times he seemed fonder of some women than others, and then it would change. i think this is a common pattern not only with most men, but with a lot of women.
in high school, i had a best friend, my only real friend, and she was one of the beauty queens of the high school, one of the girls everyone thinks looks like a model. she related her experiences to me, and i learned that men were drooling idiots when it came to beauty, and that beauty was more important than anything else. her sister's boyfriend was secretly attracted to her and made passes, the male part of one of the school's major couples told her she was his dream girl and that if she was interested in him, he'd drop his girlfriend (who reminded me a bit of myself) in a second. etc. it went on and on. and although in high school i was the top advanced level student in my grade, the comment that appeared beside my name in the yearbook was about my breasts. my high school pictures were extremely ugly, but i wasn't able to accept yet that i was ugly. it was like it was so important for me to be pretty that i had to find ways of glossing over the evidence. if i was famous some day, a few ugly pictures could be hidden, but the more of them there were, the harder it got, the less promising my future seemed, and the more stressed i felt. i also wrote stupid things, things that a person who was extraordinary would never write. there was just no way to cover up all the mediocrity, and it was a huge stress for me. and yet, i was still hopeful that somehow it could be done. maybe the problem was that i was just exceptionally unrealistic, and i was bound to be unable to cope with life.
after my first year of living with my father, i stayed with my mother for the summer, and my eating was normal for the summer. it was the last time i have ever enjoyed a whole summer, the last time i experienced what i'd truly call normal eating, although my mother was not happy with my weight, my weight was stable for the whole summer, although the year with my father my weight was in constant fluctuation. when the summer was over, and i returned to my father's, my eating was out of control again. i guess my mother supplied some kind of structure - structure regarding meals, chores, etc. my father just always left me to do everything on my own, or things were more or less haphazard. but why did i want to live with him? a big part of it was getting my own room. another part was that i didn't like my mother's violent boyfriend. i also didn't like being forced to go to church. the biggest part was probably getting my own space, though. when i went back to visit my mother the following summer, the structure she provided was not enough. after i had been there a short time, i felt out of control, and told her i needed to leave and that i needed to see a psychiatrist.
my father arranged an appointment. it wasn't what i had been looking for. i didn't know how to organize my thoughts, and the psychiatrist wasn't helpful. i think i was too young for him to think i had serious problems, and i think he was somewhat condescending. also, he asked the same questions over and over again from session to session, as if he'd never listened the first time. (what age were you when your parents split up? how many siblings do you have? what are their ages?) i gave up and things were dropped, but the problem wasn't solved. i stayed in bed for two weeks. my father came a couple of times a day to drag me very physically down to the barn in my nightie to help with the horses.
as the new school year began, my obsession with a particular boy was out of control. i could not think of anything but him. i was anxious and depressed, and could not concentrate in school. i stopped trying altogether. for years i had resisted trying drugs and alcohol, but now i tried these things, in part as an effort to get closer to this boy. i drank the way my father drank, and my body couldn't handle it. i did some very embarrassing things, leading to further distress and depression, and once i landed in the hospital and after that had mandatory counselling and started antidepressants. as i've written elsewhere, i think my depression was related to my parents' depression. i think what i did was to project all of my feelings onto two issues: obsession with a particular boy, and being out of control with food. what i was lacking was nurturing, parental guidance and concern. i think that in living with my father i was probably neglected because my father didn't really understand what was required in parenting a child, didn't understand a child's needs, and because he and his girlfriend worked in the city and were gone for long hours, and in addition, his girlfriend did not want to get involved with his children. at the same time, my mother was very angry with me for choosing to live with my father, and so i was probably lacking in the kind of acceptance a child needs. this need for love, acceptance and attention was probably projected onto this boy. in part, my father's talk about sex probably also contributed to my focusing on this boy. when it came to food, i think i was expressing a kind of helplessness, and a wish to be helped. i needed some kind of rules, guidance and concern that were similar to what i had been used to, something similar to what my mother had provided. when i ate out of control, i think i was acting out my father's feelings of depression and hopelessness, and the way he coped with those feelings - he drank, and i ate. i think his depression was severe, and that he had no help with it, and i was hypersensitive enough to be affected by it, because i cared very much about him at that time.
my mother had had problems with her weight as a teenager. she gained a lot with her first pregnancy, me, and even had toxemia. after that, it seemed that she was always thin. i think she wanted to help me, that she didn't want me to go through some of what she went through, but it came across to me that i was too fat, not attractive. i don't think mothers should be blamed for trying to encourage their daughters to lose weight, though. i think it's part of their role, their job to push their daughters to achieve their potential.. and part of that means being aware of what cultural ideals are, and showing their daughters how to best take advantage of their own particular attributes. i'll agree that it would be good to teach females how to find things other than their looks to put their energy into, but i think the reality is that looks *are* important, when it comes to being selected as a mate, and there is just no way around it, no matter how we try to make everything nice and friendly and politically correct and non-competitive and non- 'superficial'. (underneath the surface, i think looks are so much more important than most people realize.)
[added 13/01/05: about the above paragraph - it's worded badly. when i wrote this entry, i wanted to write without censoring or fixing things. perhaps there are other more glaring things i should be looking at here, but this entry is so difficult for me that addressing this one issue is slightly easier than anything else. what i was trying to express was that i think these days mothers are judged harshly for putting pressure on their daughters, contributing to their eating disorders. i think the mothers are under pressures, too, some of which may have a biological basis that currently is overlooked. i don't mean to say that it should be their role to encourage their daughters to focus on appearance, and that i don't question that or that i think it should be just accepted. the whole topic is difficult, and i wish i had answers.
i feel pretty hopeless tonight. i can't sleep, and i can't stop thinking about all the little idiotic things here and there that i should try to fix up or address. i worked on my 'extra' site for a while, until i was burnt out, and then i couldn't stop the thoughts about all the little things i need to address in my old site, and everywhere. it feels so pointless, because often when i add things i think i just make the whole mess messier and i make myself feel worse. and i can't help wondering when it could ever be enough. enough to finally make sense, or something. arghh. that's not really what i mean. and i just feel embarrassed, and like i should just shut up already. i almost deleted everything one night a couple of months ago. i had decided to go through with it. and when i tried to get online, i couldn't, there was some problem. it was frustrating. if i had been able to get online, i'm pretty sure i would have done it - first the online things, and then the rest of it. i know the mood, i've experienced it before, i got rid of so much stuff in the past, over and over. stuff there was no way to get back. but here, i guess even if i delete things there might be cached copies of at least some things. anyway, it wasn't long after my attempt to delete it all that i decided to get my own domain.
i didn't do it before partly because of a stability issue. i didn't know what my circumstances would be, or if i'd be able to continue to pay for a site for long. in part, i didn't really think it was worth it to pay for something related to the sorts of things i do. i was always self-conscious about making people deal with ads (geocities) in order to view my site - but i originally had tried very hard to prevent that: i first launched my site from freespeech.org, until they had to let a lot of sites go because they couldn't afford to have so many free ones. in addition, someone who was very important to me informed me that it was very slow for him to view my site on freespeech, and suggested that geocities might load quicker.
i still don't know what my circumstances will be.
i'm just writing at the moment to help me get through a little time.]
[added 05/02/05: someone once offered to host my site. at the time, i wanted to disassociate myself from my old site, and i didn't have enough that was new to warrant changing over from geocities. i've now come to a kind of acceptance of the old site. i wasn't sure if the offer was still open to me, and i felt insecure about some of the new things i had been working on. nothing had really gone as i had hoped or planned. when i got my own domain, in part it was a way of coping with insecurity about content. it was also a way to help me feel less self-conscious - if i wasn't worried about mucking up someone else's address, i would probably be more likely to let out what i 'needed' to. part of it is that i just always feel so much less cool than everyone else that i feel kind of intimidated, and don't want anyone to have to be embarrassed to be associated with me. but in part, maybe i also have a wish to be independent, in at least one way.]
a combination of factors contributed to my anxiety: going to high school, moving in with my father, dealing with my mother's phone calls, dealing with my skin,
first year of high school, age 13: development of eating disorder. feeling of being out of control with regards to food. unattended when i get home from school, i eat to deal with hunger (having been too nervous to eat properly at school), and to deal with being alone, nervous, etc. i am encouraged to eat more, i am told i am too thin. i want to please my father and his girlfriend, i don't want them to feel they made a mistake in asking me to live there. i eat the dinners his girlfriend makes, even though i am already full, because i want her to like me.
girlfriend goes to bed at 8:30 pm, father drinks and talks to me. i pick up ideas about striving to be the best at something, ideas about ideal love, sex, ideas about how no relationships last or about how men's attention is all over the place, can't be depended on.
problems with skin.. always aware of it, it is actually very uncomfortable, always trying to hide it, scared someone will see it. aware that this will make it difficult to have a boyfriend. aware that i will have to use my brains to try to find a job to move somewhere with a climate good for my skin.
i am very anxious. i am the top overall advanced level student. the only thing i can think of to talk about with my father is my accomplishments, the only way to get his attention, other than sexually, in his drunken conversations. he seems to want me to keep striving to do better.
second year of high school is when the severe anxiety started. maybe afraid that i couldn't keep up my scholastic achievements, aware that my brain just wasn't made that way, that it was already having problems keeping up. when i stopped trying, the anxiety was relieved. i don't see how any person could concentrate at school, shaking, sweating all day long and with severe stomach pains. i was still second overall, even without trying, and athletically i achieved a few things as well. i had to go to a more serious effort to help someone notice that something was wrong.
the next year.. the worst year.. the horrible drunken incidents, the unbearable stress and anxiety, the depression.. i just could not contain the pain i felt, and something had to give. suicide attempt, nothing changed. it was pretty much that i had to accept i was immature, suck it up and do what was expected of me. but there was something seriously wrong with me. i got by on sheer willpower for a time, my grades got back to what they were, but i was like a time bomb.
i walked around constantly with my head down. i was excruciatingly depressed. i wanted help. i asked for it, but it didn't work and i didn't know what to do next. it was like i needed compassion, but what i got was anger. when i failed those exams, my father told me i had 30 minutes to get the fuck out of the house, no discussion. i had nowhere to go, no resources. there wasn't anyone i felt i could call. i had no money, no car. we were out in the country. i had a fear of being raped.. not of being raped itself, but of my skin being seen, and this fear was so great that it contributed a lot to me not wanting to wander the roads hitchhiking, etc. and i was just too shy and afraid anyway. what my father didn't understand was that i was severely depressed, i had alienated what friends i'd had with my depression, i had been trying to break up with my 'boyfriend' who kept trying to force himself on me (in the end, because he was so persistent, the only person expressing interest in what happened to me, i gave in, but i kept trying to break up with him and it's one of those things in life that i don't have fond memories of. with most of my relationships i can remember a lot more that was good.. this is one where there were good things, but for the most part, it just makes me shudder. so i took all my antidepressants, and got a ride in an ambulance. my father would not speak to me for the first week or couple of weeks. all of the hospital staff seemed to think i was just bad and manipulative. i didn't get any compassion or any help. i was just supposed to take my antidepressants and make a life plan, but no one recognized my suffering or tried to honestly help. so this is the point where i forced myself, and i did get my grades back up but i felt so incredibly depleted, and i really was a time bomb.
i was having sex to relieve my stress. i got pregnant. about a day after i found out, i found out my mother was in a coma and that if she lived she'd be a vegetable. my father delivered this info to me, in my bedroom. he put his arms around me, while sitting on my bed, and as he did so, i could not escape a feeling of revulsion, the feeling that he was on some level using this experience as an excuse. at first, i started to cry for my mother, to break down, but the feeling of revulsion overcame that impulse, and i got myself under control and moved away from him.
my mother died within a few days. i went to the funeral, and was thought of as a cold, unfeeling bitch by some family members because i did not cry. i didn't feel much. there was so much going on with me, and it was like i had to stay in control, and i just didn't know what i felt.
i had an abortion. i was alone in the big city and i got lost and my boyfriend was more than 3 hours late picking me up afterward. i had the knowledge that i was a cold, unfeeling person who could kill without remorse. i wanted that part of my boyfriend out of me, and there was never any question about it, no deliberation, no unsureness. i was not ready for a child, could not have cared for it properly and could not have loved it. through the years, i have often felt i deserved to die for having this attitude. i had my first taste of a fulltime job at this time: working as my father's secretary. i worked 10-12 hour days this summer. i took a day off for the abortion. we also at this time moved away from our home of 3 years, (a long residence for us - i'd only lived one place for about half a year longer) sold most of the horses, including my horse, and i was leaving my high school and would never see the boy i was obsessed with again. at the end of the summer, my father had an accident and almost died. he fractured his skull. the other kids told me to check on him, and when i did, he tried to have sex with me, saying my name over and over as if he was in love with me. i got away, called the hospital to make sure he was taken care of, and then i left home. i felt that horrible disgusting feeling of shame that just doesn't seem to want to wash off in the shower, no matter how hard you scrub. i stayed in our old abandoned house for a little while. no one had moved in yet. then my boyfriend's sister said i could stay with her. i was a mess and couldn't concentrate in school. i couldn't do much of anything. it seemed to me that everyone thought of me as a loser, but i just couldn't force myself to do anything. i felt like i was in a state of collapse. i realized that it was the accident that had made my father act as he had acted, but i couldn't help wondering if he was in part half-consciously using it as an excuse. at this time i remembered a lot of things from the past, and i no longer interpreted his behaviour innocently. i no longer looked up to him, and at this time i think i began to feel suspicious of all men. at one time, i had trusted him, and now i realized that all men could secretly think of the women they lived with as boring or sexually uninteresting, that they could want to have sex with their daughters and possibly even try to get away with it and then make everyone else think the girl was deluded, since she was always a little 'off', or just 'like that'. and he could point to delinquent behaviour, and when a girl didn't have enough experience or knowledge to know how to defend herself, and in fact questioned her own perceptions and didn't think that anyone could be purposely unfair in ways like that it could really mess with her head. and she may not even realize that part of the anxiety and acting out may have been caused by some of his behaviour, or by absorbing some of his anxiety, or the confusion caused by his own conflicting feelings and behaviour.
my boyfriend and i broke up, and i went to a dance drunk one night, and then woke up in a field 90 miles from where i was living, with vague memories of the evening. i remembered dancing with one of the stud-gods of my high school, and then going with him to a car. i remember other faces watching. i remember being in the backseat with my head hanging out the door, my hair dragging on gravel as someone drove the car. i don't remember much else, but some of the details were filled in by others i spoke to later. i woke up with the insides of my thighs all cut up, and generally i was a pretty big mess. i walked in the rain for a very long time. i was very cold. i was terrified the whole time. i didn't feel that i was allowed to have any sympathy for myself. it was probably the worst night of my life. i passed a small country gas station where it looked like a couple of men were up and about, but i was afraid, and didn't want them to see me, in part just because they were men. i crawled through the ditch until i got past there. i came to a farmhouse with a light on. a young family lived there. i asked if i could use their telephone to make a collect call. they asked me repeatedly if i wanted them to call the police. i couldn't understand why they were asking that, and i just said no. that day, i asked my father if i could come home. this begins the period when i first didn't leave the house for about 6 months.
i think i was in a traumatized state. i had horrible nightmares that started at this time, and i was afraid to go to sleep. i had to sleep with the radio on, and even then, i was very afraid. at this time, i began to focus on my siblings, to try to give them emotional support. my father was having psychic experiences as a result of his head trauma, and at this time his psychic friends all agreed that i'd kill myself before the age of 21, although i didn't find out about this until after i was 21. i think it's possible that my father accepted this information, or even wanted it to be true, because he didn't know what to do with me. he didn't know how to help me, and perhaps he just wanted to be rid of me, or wanted me to have peace, or a little of both.
my father got very into the psychic stuff, performed healings and 'exorcisms' and whatnot, and felt that the apocalypse was coming. he seemed to believe that one of my brothers was the second coming, and that possibly my uncle, the convicted drug dealer, was the antichrist or was somehow in cahoots with him. he told me that there was no need to finish high school, since a new time was coming and all of that stuff wouldn't be relevant. he said that he and some of his friends would be starting up a psychic school, and that i could be a teacher there.
on the one hand, i can see how it's good to be open to alternative ways of viewing life and the world. on the other, i can see that all of this happened at a time that was perhaps unfortunate for me. at this time, i probably should have been focused on my future, and this whole experience is probably something that contributed to my lack of stability. something i'll mention here is that at the age of 18 i got a job at a cemetery that lasted for about a year, and my boss there made a pass, and also asked me to be his mistress, saying that he would get me my own apartment and whatnot. with the next job i had a couple of years later, the owner of a fish and chip shop kept trying to force my hand to his crotch when his wife wasn't there, and did other little things. the first job lasted a year, the second a month, and then my next and last job as a waitress lasted only 11 days. i'm wondering if something in my experiences working for my father at a stressful time in my life contributed to my difficulties with working, and if having bosses make sexual passes somehow reminded me of my father and the bad experiences that followed, and if somehow that all contributed to me finding it impossible to stay at a job.
i did have sympathy for him. he'd lost his commonlaw relationship, he lost his horse business, he lost his house in the country (and i think whatever joy he got in life was often due to being in the country, being around horses), he had a lot of problems with his teenage daughter (me), his former wife suddenly died and he had to deal with unresolved feelings for her, he got caught 3 times in a short period for drunk driving and was going to lose his licence, he suddenly had 4 children to look after, he'd had a new job opportunity, but his accident had caused him to lose the respect of the people in his field and it took years to get some of that back, and that for a time he had no money as a result.. i did see that he was a person who needed help and support. but the thing is, he didn't seem to realize that his children needed help and support. i had to protect the others from him, because he said some incredibly hurtful things. i would say to them that dad had a lot of problems and that he needed help but i didn't know how to help him, but that they shouldn't let what he said bother them, and i tried to point out what was good about them, and i challenged my father every time he said things that seemed to me likely to really mess with their minds. i just didn't know enough about life yet to have been able to help my father. i think he saw me as judging him, and maybe i did to some extent, but he didn't seem to realize that *he* could have an effect on others.
there was no one to help me with my trauma. maybe we were all pretty much on our own. at a certain point, my father said that's it, good-bye kids, i can't deal with you any more, and he checked himself into a hospital. they wouldn't keep him. i often found myself wishing he would give us away, that we would go to an orphanage or wherever they put kids whose parents can't deal with them any more. then i wouldn't have to listen to how unhappy we made him.
for me, it was incredibly difficult to be financially dependent on him. and yet, i was absolutely crushed by life. maybe this has something to do with my inability to support myself now. it's like somehow i can't get over the feeling of utter hopelessness, dependence and defeat that i felt when i asked if i could come home. at a certain point, i realized that no one was going to offer me any guidance or help in life, and that i had to find a way to help myself. i forced myself to complete a year of schooling through correspondence, so that i could enter my final year of high school at the regular time. there was no one to encourage me, and so all motivation had to come from myself. also, because of all the eating i'd done to help myself cope with things, i had gained more weight than i ever had. so i started to diet and exercise. i felt proud of myself, and for a time i was very hopeful about life, and i felt in control.
i didn't get any feedback whatsoever from anyone in my family. unfortunately, the feeback i received when i finally received feedback was sexual. as soon as i started going outside again, fit, healthy and 17 years old, i got a lot of attention from males. everywhere i went, i was propositioned, hassled, given phone numbers, hooted at, etc. i liked this attention very much, but unfortunately, i think it set a destructive pattern: it became the only kind of feedback i knew how to get, and through the years i think i became kind of dependent on it. at my age now, it is a problem in that i'm unlikely to be able to attract much of this type of feedback, and so i feel more and more invisible, and less worthwhile.
my efforts to get back out into the world never lasted long. i didn't have enough steam to last. i think i was still in a traumatized state (that i still am now), and just trying to force myself using willpower to get out there because i couldn't see any other way. when i stopped going outside, i also started running to my room to hide whenever anyone came to the door. my heart would pound wildly. none of this was questioned. i remember saying that i felt too fat and ugly to be seen, and that this explanation was not questioned, so i guess it was an acceptable explanation. i think what i was saying was that i had no feeling whatsoever of personal worth, that all my confidence was gone. i was missing the strength i'd need to cope with the stresses of life.
since my father's psychic experiences, i'm not sure if he didn't try to get me help because he just didn't think of me much, if he had different views of life and people's paths, if he was waiting for me to figure something out on my own, or what. at times, i suspect he was just waiting for me to fulfill the psychics' predictions that i'd kill myself, and i sometimes also think he thought of himself as doing a noble thing in providing me a home until i did so. i said that i didn't know what was wrong with me, and i said i'd go to a psychiatric hospital if he wanted, and if he could make the arrangements, but no, he didn't want to do that. instead, he waited until his own life fell apart. first, he let me listen for hours every day to his problems, about his second wife leaving, about his job, etc. and i tried my best to offer support, but he was drunk, and of course i should have known he wouldn't remember, so all of that effort was thrown away. one day, i had 5 minutes' notice that the police were coming to get me, that i was going to a psych ward, because he just didn't know what to do with me, no discussion, no respect, no understanding of who i was as a person at all. and that was a horrific experience for me. i felt like i had been thrown away like garbage. now, of course, this is only my side of the story, and i was not as bitter then as i appear now. my father quit drinking right after that, and that's what i chose to focus on. and i retained relations, and i remained positive, and i swallowed it all, and realized that it was extremely difficult for him, and what else could he do? he was an addict, and he finally made a choice. as the years went by, i realized that he never really understood how much compassion i'd actually shown him through the years, how many hours i'd listened to his problems, and how little compassion and understanding i'd received in return from him. he would never get it, because he would never remember, but more than that, it was because he could never see who i was as a person, because he was too wrapped up in himself. he would never understand my value, my worth. he would never understand the abuse and neglect i had endured, and struggled to understand. he simply thought of his own suffering as more important, as himself as more important. i was expendable. whereas i've felt so much guilt over the years over the things i've put others through, that i'm so concerned over so much, and that in part isolating myself from people is a way of not putting them through confusion and emotional pain. i still found ways to understand all of this, and to forgive, and to try to hold onto family ties. but when it started all over with a new family that he chose, with new stepbrothers and a stepsister, when i heard him expressing the same old things, even without drinking, the same old attitudes, the same abuses, something cracked in me and i just decided i didn't want any part of it any more. i couldn't think he was doing anything 'wrong'. in fact, i realized that things are more complicated in this world and that his personality probably helped to bring out positive things for some people, but i knew that i just couldn't handle it any more. i had reached my quota of trying to forgive and understand. i just wasn't a big enough person to try any more. i wasn't strong enough. i'd had enough. and maybe my thinking was totally wrong. maybe there was something wrong with me, maybe i was (am) just a weak, bitter, shrivelled little person, and i just could never see things clearly, but i'd reached my limit, and i just wanted out of that family. i wasn't strong enough to try to help my step-siblings, let alone myself. maybe no one ever really needed my help anyway, and the issue was that i was just not compatible with my family. whatever the case, i do understand that there are so many different aspects to life and so many different ways of looking at things, and that the people in my family are basically good people. maybe there's just too much that reminds me of too much that was painful, and not enough that reminds me of good things. maybe i just can't accept being the weakest link. whatever the case, i don't wish them ill. i want them to get out of life what they want. the only way i could see myself attempting to get anything out of life was to get away from my family, and it would be hypocritical of me to try and still be part of that family, when i know that all the love i once felt is now dead. it may be totally wrong, my perceptions may be completely wrong, but for some reason, i think i feel that i showed everyone in my family more understanding, caring and compassion than they showed me. i think i feel that they just don't see me and when i try to communicate with them i cannot deal with the ideas they seem to have about me or at the very least i cannot deal with how poor our communication is.
writing all of this, i don't feel good. i feel that i'm not allowed to have these thoughts, these feelings, and that they're all wrong somehow and that i'll be punished for them, that i deserve to feel bad because i'm a horrible, ugly person. trying to be rational about it, i can see that for whatever reason these particular events in my life had a big impact. i can see that i'm trying to find some way of looking at things that gives me a feeling of peace and acceptance. it's very likely that these particular events are not the cause of my inability to handle life. i think there are some strong patterns that may have more to do with genetic makeup than anything else, and that these patterns may have actually led me to seek out some of my experiences. it very well may be that there is no way for me to ever feel comfortable in life for long, because of irreconcilable parts of my personality. i've sometimes thought that maybe i'm a physical representation of my parents' marriage and what went wrong in it.. it could be that i will only find peace in death. i can see good things about each member of my family. but i can't find common ground, enough to talk about or do. the common ground is too painful to me, and maybe it's a healthy thing for me not to see my family, since we all probably have different interpretations of events, and this may make me feel that my perceptions aren't accepted as valid, that my experiences weren't or aren't real.
i've never been good at talking to psychiatrists, and i think if anything a psychologist would have been a better bet for me. unfortunately, psychologists weren't covered by ontario health insurance, and i wasn't resourceful enough to find a way to afford to see a psychologist. for many years, there was just no way i could have seen anyone anyway, because i couldn't leave the house. i would have had to get a ride, and i probably would have needed someone to give me a lot of emotional support as well. i don't know what members of my family thought about me not going out, not having friends, not having any contacts with the outside world. maybe they thought i was just like that, and that i was basically content. maybe they thought i was a lazy loafer. i felt so much guilt, constantly. and i suffered constantly. i was not happy. i've said it before, but i feel i was in a traumatized state, a state of exhaustion, a state of collapse. i think psychiatrists, my family and others often saw me as more normal than i felt. my family left me alone, for years, without demanding i get help, without trying to get me help, without asking me to get a job, without trying to talk to me to find out what was going on with me. it could just be that communication was too difficult, and that no one knew what to do. it could be that no one noticed me all that much. at the same time, i don't really feel i've missed out much in not getting 'help'. i've seen what's out there, and i think my situation was too complicated to be 'helped'. i think that the life i've found on my own, while pathetic in a lot of ways, is probably more interesting than the life i could have had with 'help'.
it seems so mean, all i've written about my father. it doesn't take into account how much fun he could be, how generous he could be at times, and it doesn't take into account how sentimental and warm-hearted he could be, and how good to his friends and family he often was. it seems so mean to focus on the things i've focused on, when i understand very well that he's lived for most of his life with a very serious untreated depression, and that he's done his best to cope, and that eventually he gave up drinking and smoking. i know my depression has had effects on others. maybe our problems are too complicated, and they can't really be treated in conventional ways. i just don't know. since writing about all of this seems to make me feel worse, it doesn't really make sense to write about it. and yet, i'm in a state where i just don't feel i can stand things. not writing feels unbearable at this point, too. i just want all of these ugly feelings to stop. i want to let them go. i want to understand well enough, although i understand that memory is imperfect, and we're all imperfect, and it may well be impossible to really understand what the hell happened. please forgive me if i haven't been fair enough. i think that for whatever reason, my brain just doesn't filter out nonessential information, and i get stuck in patterns that perpetuate feelings of discomfort and anxiety. i want to let it all go, but it seems like it will always be a part of who i am. i hate the anger, and the blaming, but sometimes i just feel that way. at times i do feel at peace with things, and i try to focus on that. it's like i want to reach some state where i always feel peace, where my thoughts don't go back into the negative patterns. if only i could get past some critical hump, or something, and be the person i want to be.
i don't think i ever really needed a kick in the pants, or whatever. i think i gave that to myself, over and over. i *did* make efforts to leave the house over the years, and it all came from me. i just didn't have a strong enough base to start from, and i couldn't sustain my efforts. with my first hospitalization, i was severely depressed already, and i was scared shitless by my experience. i was pretty much told that i was selfish and manipulative, and i understood that if i didn't use willpower to get myself together they could do all kinds of things to me that i didn't want - like give me shock therapy and extremely strong medication. i wanted my consciousness, i wanted the chance to live a healthy life, i wanted to achieve my potential, and i just didn't see how that would be possible with the kind of 'help' they offered, and i was very much aware of having to depend on myself and find some kind of internal strength to protect and save myself. with the next hospitalization, the one where my father called the police to get me out of the house.. the thing is that i had tried to open lines of communication with him. i had said i'd go voluntarily to a hospital. and he said nothing to me, but let me offer hours and hours of emotional support for his current problems, and then without discussing it with me at all arranged to have me taken away by the police. i spent 24 hours in a crowded emergency room, and i wasn't allowed to leave the stretcher i was on, except to go to the bathroom. i had a series of watchers, and was not allowed to go to the bathroom without a watcher, and people in the crowded emergency room were close enough to see in as well. at this point, i'd been living fairly isolated, and hadn't dealt much with people for some time. when i was finally taken to the psych ward, there was a strong smell of feces and urine, people were screaming, there was wire on the locked door, and people were trying to touch me. one of these persons had diarrhea running down her bare leg. the doctor i had seemed to want to 'compete' with me in a sense, possibly because of (exaggerated) things my father had told him about my iq, accomplishments, etc. also, i could not get this doctor to talk with me about my situation, about what drugs he was prescribing and what he sought to achieve. i had started taking drugs, but when i experienced scary side effects, i refused to continue. all of the nurses on the ward gathered round me in a circle, saying i was sick and had to take my medication and that if i didn't i could be forced. in desperation, i cried out, 'don't i have any control over what goes into my own body?' and i was almost crying, but had to keep control of myself. i still refused. later, i heard one of the nurses relaying the scene to someone on the next shift. she totally twisted things, and said that i had adamantly said, '*I* Control What Goes Into MY Own Body!' it felt so unfair, and i was very scared. when i saw the doctor, he told me i was being 'stupid' for not taking the medication, but he still would not answer my questions as to what the medication actually was and what it was supposed to do. he said if i refused treatment, i'd have to leave the hospital. i said fine. he said where will you go? i said that was none of his concern. he said he couldn't let me go, and that there was only 'smallness of soul' in being homeless. at that point, i was actually prepared to be homeless, because it was preferable to being in that place. in order to get out of the hospital, i had to see a social worker and go on welfare. it's strange, this is the point where i started writing suicide notes all the time, and i'd drop them off whenever i'd go to pick up my money, but at the same time, living on welfare was much better, much more comfortable than living with my family had ever been. the problem was that i was still back where i was as a teen, still in a traumatized state, and my new experiences had only served to add to the problems. i wanted desperately to be able to pick myself up and support myself, just so that i wouldn't have to deal with these scary people any more, these scary situations, but i honestly *was* broken, and still needed help. i knew i couldn't continue to receive welfare indefinitely. since i'd left the hospital, i didn't have a medical reason for it to continue, but if i'd stayed at the hospital, i'd have had to accept their ideas of treatment, and that scared the hell out of me. i didn't think they knew what they were doing, and i couldn't get anyone to communicate with me enough to relax my fears. i actually had the impression that my doctor had something of a sadistic streak or at the very least that he had some kind of complex where he enjoyed having power over others and watching them squirm as he beat them down. as part of my conditions of release, i had to go for weight preoccupation therapy, but it wasn't enough for all of the complicated problems i was dealing with. i lived in a state of insecurity that my welfare would be cut off and that i'd be forced to deal with the world in my broken down state. i guess the thing is that with my own place, i could sometimes gather my energy to protect myself, do what had to be done.. but if i had to face the world constantly in that broken down state, i was afraid of what would happen. i guess that i probably always use some of my energy to appear as normal as possible to others, but in part i think this is a survival thing, a way of ensuring that no one can declare me incompetent and start forcing things on me.
so i had my own place, and i had some independence, and some parts of it were very good. i tried to get a job, but i was still in a broken state. i could not eat normally. it was always binge, then fast for a few days until i could deal with going out again, or until i had money again. i'm sure this sapped my energy even further. i started to date my landlord. it's been a pattern that once i have contact with the world, even if it's just for a short period, that through most of my life i was able to attract partners fairly quickly, and so i've probably had more partners than most females who've actually not spent the majority of their adult lives trapped inside. i think that in large part my ability to pick up on and return signals comes from my early relationship with my father. my landlord and i talked a lot, and he knew of my recent experiences, that i was fresh out of the psych ward and that i'd had some fairly complicated and confusing experiences beforehand and that i was a fairly messed up person. i was honest with him about myself, but he was not honest with me about himself. he couldn't tell me he had genital herpes, and i ended up getting it. it was an accident. part of what bothers me now, although at the time i did not get angry or blame him, but just wanted information, was that he had been prepared to have sex with me without using condoms.. i had been the one to buy condoms and put them on him. also, he just wouldn't talk to me about it, even when he could see that i was scared and wanted to know what it would be like in the future, etc. and he never expressed any remorse for having passed it on to me. he just seemed to accept my acceptance and lack of blame, saying something like i was a 'good-hearted' person. i had gone through excruciating pain over my first outbreak. i was on the verge of requiring hospitalization. the doctor who treated me was unbelievably condescending and judgmental. what gets me now is that i have absolutely agonized over the possibility of people i've cared about contracting herpes, and i've been so careful, and it's all so stressful, whereas the person who gave it to me didn't seem to lose any sleep over things whatsoever.
anyway, at this time i did feel that my life was over. for some years an idea had been forming in my mind, a romantic idea that somehow i'd meet someone and we would die together. it seemed to me the best, most exciting solution for my life, and after this, the whole daydream became more insistent and constant. i didn't want life any more.
at this time an old friend of my mother's took an interest in me, and my problems, and seemed to want to help. she asked me to come stay with her and her husband, and said she would try to help normalize my eating, and either find me a job or try to get me into some kind of training program. i left winnipeg for toronto, and when i arrived, her husband was sick and i couldn't stay with them. i had no money and nowhere to go, and i ended up staying with my sister in the room she was renting from my father, in the same apartment he was living in. very scary, and before it could go on and on, i checked myself into a hospital. so each time i've been hospitalized, it's been because of homelessness, pretty much. this hospital was better, but i still wasn't able to make my brokenness clear, nor could i make clear the complicatedness of my situation, in part because i was so incredibly broken. what happened was that i was considered a candidate for 'family therapy'. i read the material, but no one else in my family did. basically, i saw a lot of flaws in the theories, and didn't think they were comprehensive enough to deal with the complicatedness of my particular family. i think that according to these theories, one person in a family that's dealt with a lot of loss and chaos often chooses a helpless role, and if the other members of the family can offer support and understanding, this helpless person will choose to take responsibility for herself. for me, it wasn't that simple, and it certainly didn't help that the family therapists seemed to be attracted to my father and that everyone in the family was trying to outdo everyone else while at the same time trying to give the impression of being a very close family, and at the same time not seeming to want to go very deep below the surface with any matter. but, we all went to family therapy long enough to get me on disability, which gave me a measure of peace for a while. when i mentioned to the family therapists that i wanted to go on disability, i felt judged, but i wasn't being helped by family therapy, and didn't see how i could be. my efforts to take things deeper in therapy were all curtailed by my family, and i wasn't strong enough to go for extra therapy on my own. i couldn't have organized it. no one realized the absolute state of collapse i lived in when i was on my own, i guess, and maybe the words i used to try to describe it weren't clear enough, or maybe they just had no frame of reference for it or maybe i just appeared too normal. when i finally was granted disability, and got my own apartment, i did at times have some very good moments. i was very isolated, and i lived in the old binge-vomit-fast mode, and i lived in a state of insecurity that the disability would be cut off because i wasn't being monitored by social services and they didn't ask and so didn't know i wasn't on any medication or going for any therapy, and so i always had this idea it would run out, that eventually they'd demand i get treatment and that i'd be too helpless to comply, but i had the chance to live life in my own way, with a bit of peace, for a while. i was still broken, but i'd found my own way of coping, i guess. i was waiting for love, waiting to die for love, in a way that would finally put all the insecurity and suffering to rest, and it was a beautiful thing to think of.
what gk and jamie have been to me is like family. a new family. and what i received from both: lots of compassion, support, encouragement, listening, trying to come up with solutions. but no person can be expected to fill all the emptiness that is me. and i think what i've received from both of them is a kind of proof that there is something wrong with me that goes deeper than environmental influences. but i think both also helped me to realize myself as a person. with jamie, i wrote and wrote, and painted crazy murals, and tried a lot of things with my appearance, and danced in public. with gk i've travelled, and created a website in which i express various parts of myself in new ways.. and it all *does* make me feel less powerless, less invisible to the world. i feel that i *have* captured some parts of who i am, maybe clumsily, but at times it does feel good. it feels a lot better than being trapped inside with no voice at all.
i just want to be free of this. can i be free of this now, this minute, if i decide i want to be? should i delete it all? can i leave it all as it is and accept that my brain is a mess and that many of my thought patterns are ugly? can i accept that all of this is part of who i am, but that it is not the whole story?
ok, so i showed some promise as a sprog that never materialized. i experienced a lot of stress and pain as i grew older, i put others through a lot and i never learned how to support myself in the world and i live with a feeling of insecurity and i don't currently have much of a feeling of self-worth, but i have to admit that there is a lot about my current life that pleases me on some level. i think there are some things in life i can enjoy. i think there are a few things i can accomplish that may give me some pleasure. can i be forgiven my ugliness? do i deserve even a few moments of pleasure?
[05/02/05: yesterday i dreamed that i was dancing a viennese waltz with my grandfather. i hadn't dreamed about him at all in a very long time. when i got out of bed and switched on my computer, there was an email waiting for me in my hotmail account from my brother. we hadn't emailed for almost 2 years, at which time i had asked him for a photo of my mother.
the first thing he wrote was that someone in the family was composing a family tree, and that no one could remember my grandmother's middle name. he said that my grandfather's memory was going, and that he couldn't remember it.
there was more news. my brother now had a second sprog. jamie is now married and has a fresh sprog. my father is off the wagon.
when i read about jamie, i felt almost like i had been validated in some way. years ago, i was with him when he got a vasectomy. at the time, i remember saying to him that i could definitely see him with a wife and sprog some day, was he sure he wanted to do this? i told him that i didn't see us staying together forever, and if he was doing it for me that it probably wasn't a good idea. anyway, it looks like somehow he was able to do something to reverse it, or take advantage of modern breakthroughs somehow. and i admit that there is some part of me that feels that i have been given an example of my perceptiveness, an example of how i can see things others either can't see or won't admit. he said he never wanted to have children, and i had always suspected that in the right circumstances he could adapt, and that with his upbringing, background, family that it would make a kind of sense for him to have that kind of life.
aside from that, i do think that mostly i'm remembering what he was like and wanting him to be happy. i know that he's a happy kind of person, that he adapts well whatever circumstances he's in.
i don't seem to feel any tugs, regrets, wishes for my own sprogs, etc. i think we probably stayed together too long. i guess the closest i've come is to thinking about my 'pet' possum, and wondering if maybe one day she will have a little baby and let me see into her pouch.
as for my father being off the wagon: that might explain what felt off to me about my stepmother's emails. in spite of that, i guess part of me hopes that my father is able to enjoy some parts of being off the wagon. i don't know if i'm ever really on the wagon when it comes to my food issues, and i guess i understand what it's like to not have enough motivation to do without certain behaviours.
i've been thinking about a few things, though. my father is living in northern ontario near an old friend who used to live nearby when i lived with my father on the farm from ages 13-16. i often had the feeling that that friend behaved sexually with his daughters. he had a lot of them. i babysat them. some of them seemed to have some fairly serious problems/unusual behaviour. i have written about how i used to have serious stomach pains at that age. it was usually at school. however, the night it was bad enough for me to think i was dying and to ask to be taken to the hospital, (i) my family was visiting his house.
i only babysat for that family a couple of times. i was told it was normal for some of the girls to have unusual behaviour. like trying to barricade their bedroom doors, screaming, crying or throwing things inside their bedrooms. having nightmares. when the family had dinner at our place once, i witnessed one of the very young girls kicking her father repeatedly in the stomach (he had gotten drunk and was lying on one of our sofas). it was just sort of accepted that she was a firecracker type, and also that she was a little 'off'. after i had moved away, i heard that one of them had become a topless dancer, and it seemed there were insinuations she worked as a prostitute.
my father had another friend that i knew when i was younger. i didn't ever really like him or feel comfortable with him. i had a very strong feeling that he did sexual things to his daughter.
my stepmother had written that my father was driving a school bus. he was usually a night drinker, and i think of him as responsible in certain ways, and think it is unlikely he'd drink if he had to drive children. however, he is now a lot older and i'd expect that the effects of drinking would be more pronounced, and that it would take longer for him to recover, and that this might impair his ability to drive sober. i think when sober my father is probably the best, safest driver i have ever come into contact with in my life. he's conscientious, he knows the rules, etc, but he also has very good instincts, and seems to know how to handle anything from poor weather and road conditions to the unpredictability of the behaviour of other motorists. he's aware at all times, but doesn't seem anxious.
during a birthday party for my father when i was 20 years old, the wife of the friend my father now lives near (the friend is still married to this wife) was discussing me with my stepmother. they were speaking in a catty way, laughing at me, and i walked in on them unexpectedly. they were sneering about how it was amazing what makeup could do. i just smiled and left, not really sure i had heard right. when i had time to think about it, i didn't think i had misinterpreted the situation. i tried to cut them some slack, because even then i could understand what it was like to see certain people singled out for attention while others go unnoticed or unappreciated. and now i see it from the point of view of being older, and knowing what it's like to see young women get a lot of attention. but when i see these young women, i would rather try to build them up than cut them down.
there's one more thing i would like to mention. when i was 15 and had gotten into trouble a few times for drinking excessively - i would drink until the point of blackout. i did embarrassing things, i made out with boys, i came home with my neck covered in love bites. my father knew all this. he eventually decided to get drunk with me. he suggested it. i don't know if it was a kind of thing where he was trying to say 'well she's going to do it anyway, it's safer at home' or if there was anything else in it. i don't remember anything about the night at all. the next day, i found out i had peed in a corner or under a chair or table or something, and that my father's girlfriend (a different one, not the stepmother) was fed up and i think my father wanted me to think that she moved out because of me, without actually saying that's why. in fact, i think he made some effort to say it wasn't because of me, but he did it in such a way that i actually thought he did think it was because of me, but he was trying to be 'nice' and spare my feelings. or be 'altruistic'. (she did move out very soon after, maybe immediately after)
if i were the girlfriend, i would see that the father wasn't providing any kind of stable guidance, and that he was not really aware of what parenting involved. i would find it inappropriate for a father to ask his daughter to model new clothes, including swimsuits while making comments about the attractiveness of her body. i would find a lot of other stuff weird, and i would wonder what happened when i went to bed at 8:30 pm.
when my sister had a female child, i talked to her a bit about my experiences, saying i wasn't sure dad had conscious awareness of what he had done. i asked her if anything had ever happened to her. she seemed angry and said no, and seemed to suggest that if it had happened to me it was only because i was weak and unable to see how ridiculous our father was. i understand that this kind of reaction is not uncommon, but at the same time, i did feel a lot of self-doubt. i felt that maybe i was deluded or something, or not fair enough to my father. in spite of that, i said that it might be a good idea not to leave her daughter alone with my father, especially at a certain age. or at the very least to keep an eye on things, just to make sure. i think she probably saw me as delusional or overreacting. i'm not sure that i'm not.
and i see myself falling into conventional ways of communicating and processing information, and somehow i want to get past it, i know i'm capable of understanding things more deeply, i know i'm capable of more understanding than this. but for now here i am, here this is. having contact with my 'family' in whatever form always seems to end up being difficult for me.]
[08/02/05: i dreamed last night that i had a psychiatrist who actually seemed to care. but it was my old psychiatrist, the one who did my last psychiatric assessment, and he didn't appear to care back then. he was looking at my website. i have lost a lot of details, there were so many in the dream. i was swimming in the ocean, with whales. the whales were closer to shore than i was, and i found it odd that i was the one in deeper water, and i worried a bit for the whales. however, i also wondered if they'd crush me with sudden movement, even if in play. i wasn't sure if they were aware that i was smaller, because it almost seemed like they accepted me as one of them. they were killer whales. they seemed very gentle. i have dreamed of whales quite a few times in the last year. sometimes killer whales. i remembered when i'd seen whales, and how good they were at estimating distance - even though they are so large, when swimming under the boat they didn't ever bump into it. and roxy music, i heard these lyrics in part of the dream: "i could see at the time there was no way of knowing." there was so much more, and i was trying to hold onto it, i think it was interesting, but i just couldn't remember.
3, 8, window pain.
(i don't want to end up in a hospital having totally lost touch with reality. i always write my own ending for the song, or interpret it in my own way. nursery rhymes. lalalalala. and she ran to him. and she had no fear. but is that the experiment?)
it's irresponsible if i don't try to address certain things. if things point in certain directions, it doesn't mean they happened or that i think they happened. i always want there to be an explanation, and maybe sometimes the need for one momentarily overrides my ability to be objective or fair enough.
maybe i witnessed something happening to other children, or other children said things to me. i don't have conscious remembrance. it's difficult to remember many friends of my father's that were actually likeable off the top of my head. a couple of others: one was so misogynistic he was almost a caricature, another the sleaziest (a lot of conquests and rep for treating women badly) guy i've ever come into contact with. but i always saw my father as open-minded, as giving the underdog the chance.
i was the oldest child, and when my parents had me they lived in a small apartment. maybe i witnessed them having sex up really close, and had jealousy issues, or felt that i wasn't as important?
sometimes i have this vague idea that because my parents were very young and maybe very horny, that perhaps something happened, like i was accidentally there when someone was extremely excited, and i was used momentarily in some way. and that whoever did it felt bad about it, felt guilt. but when people are lacking in self-awareness, and are faced with certain urges that we aren't taught occur even in 'normal' people, and they've been taught to think the world revolves around them, i think it may be possible to do certain things and then sort of push it out of conscious awareness.
maybe when i said i wanted to die, it was about absorbing the depression of one or both parents. maybe i'd heard one or both of them talk that way at some point. (i don't remember either of them talking about it. when my father was about 40 he did make reference to it a few times, starting right after my mother died. i do remember saying in family therapy at age 24 that i thought my mother wanted to die, and no one challenged that idea, they seemed to accept it.)
when i was 3 and took baby aspirin. i watched my mother put the bottle away. i liked the taste of them, and she had told me that it was very dangerous for children to eat very many of them. she put them in a cabinet above the sink, up high. it was in the bathroom that was adjoining my parents' bedroom. one night when they were downstairs getting drunk, i was in their bedroom with another 3-year- old girl. her parents were also downstairs getting drunk. her father scared me. one night, we were at their place, and he got drunk and started getting violent. his daughters started to cry and ran to hide, and were begging him to please stop. everyone was upset, and it was a very tense situation. i only found out years later that he used to beat his wife. he put her in the hospital with very serious injuries. he is another one who i suspected abused his children. his daughters just had a certain look about them. and i realize i could be wrong. so i'm not saying it's true, i'm just saying i had that impression, even when young, and that impression grew stronger as i got older.
the other girl seemed to like the idea of taking baby aspirin with me. i had suggested it. i remember i figured out a way to get into the cabinet. i might have stood on a chair. whatever i did, i remember feeling proud of myself, proud of my ability to balance, and proud of my intelligence. i knew that i had done something unusual considering my age. it may have been before the time of childproof caps. whatever the case, i got it open.
i started measuring things out. one for you, one for me. even at that age, i didn't think the other girl had the same kind of 'constitution' that i did. eventually it was one for you, two for me, three for me, etc, and she didn't mind at all. i think she was starting to feel sick or full. it was a bulk size bottle.
when our parents found us and realized what happened, they rushed us to the hospital. i'm not sure what happened, exactly. when my father would tell the story, he always seemed to suggest that it had been a close call for both of us. he would say that he remembered thinking that if one of us had to die, please let it be the other kid. i think there was some issue with me not throwing up properly, but i could be mistaken about that.
one of my brothers, who in recent years has seemed to get into unusual kinds of trouble, tried to drink various kinds of poison quite frequently. my father used to joke that they knew him (my father) by his first name down at the poison control centre.
i don't think that just because my father had unappealing friends that he was guilty by association. he may have identified on unconscious levels while having feelings he didn't actually act out.
i also should reiterate that while i had certain impressions about certain friends of his, it is irresponsible for me not to say that i could be mistaken. and that i could be very wrong regarding any of the ideas i've had about my own father. maybe this is the sort of thing i should have saved for therapy, where people aren't publicly speculated about. maybe i should be held accountable. sometimes i wonder if that's what the agenda is.
i heard something passed around the family: that his mother's sister had behaved in some kind of sexual way with him. his mother hated the sister. she apparently was an alcoholic prostitute. when his father died, my father was 15. his mother never remarried, and she may have seen my father as something of a substitute. his sister was always treated like a piece of shit, whereas he was pretty much worshipped.
i have never really liked the members of my father's family, although i did like some of the members of my mother's family very much. the person i liked best in my father's family was adopted. she was 'overweight', had never had a boyfriend or girlfriend, and didn't seem comfortable with anyone except her mother, and lived a pretty reclusive life.
i wonder if i was just empathetic regarding things that happened to girls i knew. my memory seems so good in some ways, but there is so much about that time i just do not remember.
my parents did fight a lot, and their fights were sometimes violent. i think they often fought about money, and kids. which may have contributed to my anxiety and self-consciousness, and depression.
my parents did drink a lot when they socialized, and so did their friends. their behaviour when drunk might have had some impact.
i've suffered a lot through the years, but it may be genetic. i may wish to find reasons, but my problems may mostly be genetic. it is scary if in my need to find reasons, or in my delusion or lack of ability to think clearly or perceive reality that i cast aspersions on imperfect but innocent persons.
[note: some of my attempts to express things in different ways embarrass me a lot. some are glaringly bad. role-playing exercises should not be seen as 'truth', although they may express aspects of things i don't know how to get into words yet. why do i leave some things and delete others? every case is individual, and i'd probably have to look at each case individually to come up with ideas. i don't think i'd be afraid to do it. sometimes, i might not consciously be aware of why i delete some things and leave others. sometimes, i feel afraid that i'm not consistent enough, and that i just confuse everything. and when i feel i'm unfair, or when i badly embarrass myself, i start getting the urge to get rid of everything. if i say nothing at all and get rid of everything, i can't be unfair. but, when it comes to the web, if i say things, i can't assume they disappear forever if i delete them. sometimes, i think i leave up things that embarrass me because i see something in them that hints at something, that might be a start toward expressing something difficult. i don't assume that anyone's really paying all that much attention to me. putting things here on my site is a way of affirming my existence, in a way, for myself. i don't feel like i'm saying i'm sure of anything. i'm confused and trying to figure things out. and i hope if people do look at what i put up that that somehow gets through.]