Random

Another place to write….another place to fill with the words that buzz and circle in my head..why not?

This morning I am thinking about when I was a kid and how I was sure I was adopted.  I am not sure how or why my brain works the way it does, but I noticed when I was about kindergarten age that the photo albums I loved to flip through contained an abundance of data documenting my brother’s birth and growth, but photos of me as an actual baby were pretty scarce. 

My brother had pictures of when he came home from the hospital, I did not.  The first pictures of me in the books, I realized I was already several months old.  I was positive I was adopted.  It was the only thing that made everything else make sense.  Why I never felt of these people. 

I would try to trip my mom up by having her repeatedly tell the story of the day I was born.  I would ask intricate questions like where she was when the first labor pains hit, the route my father took to the hospital.  I looked for any variance in the story and would jump on any inconsitency – the only thing lacking in these interrogations was the 100 watt light bulb. 

It would be several years before I told my mom what the reason for these grillings.  She was baffled.  Admitted that there was a lack of photographic evidence I was of her, but that was only due to the fact that with two kids at home, there just was not the time to document every thing. 

Even before the abuse happened, before my difference was officially and permenantly sealed, I just never felt there with those people.  I loved them, but they were also always a bit foreign to me.  The abuse made the chasm more profound, now not only do I not feel apart of you – I have a secret – a secret that as I am already an outsider here – will further alienate me. 

These are strictly my perceptions – my parents never felt disconnected from me – they remained blissfully ignorant of the torture and torment I put myself through with myths of changlings and baby swapping at inattentive hospitals.

May be that alienation, that feeling of isolation that was with me from my earliest memories – that is why abuse was likely with me – may be I was set apart for this path – preordained for it.  I don’t know.  Does anyone? 

Does it matter anymore?  Once you face the shadow beasts that dwell in the deepest reaches of your self, does it matter anymore?  Why can’t the act of shining a light on the secret – exposing it – why isn’t that enough to generate healing?  Because the lie, the secret is bigger, deeper,  having grown with time and experience?  Perhaps.

There seems to be a course set from the moment of abuse that makes a person – fuck it – made me…me…this is not a disimpassioned report on some people – this a personal account of me, I have to stop hiding behind the protection of third person pronouns…made me make choices that continued patterns of the abuse. 

It was like I had a tracking device and I could find the one person in a stadium of people who would do something, hurt me in some way that was an echo of what I had already been through. 

When I was raped trying to break up with Ellis – it was about control, about him being able to say when things were over yet I saw him after that happened.  I never understood why I could not hate him…that I just thought it was a bad day.  I never called it rape until I was talking to someone and parts of the story emerged and they were dumbfounded.  I still can’t hate him…I have nothing inside me for him – not hate, not pity, not anything.  He is just another onion skin page in my life. 

He was not the first boyfriend to rape me, he was the last though, until I married.  That was the hardest part of my marriage.  I had fought so hard to regain control of myself, of my body.  I had fought so hard to understand it was not okay to have someone touch me if I did not want it, it was not okay to be guilted, coerced or intimidated into having sex with someone – I no longer just shut down, turned my mind off and lay there like a rag doll.  I fought for myself…then I married the encapsulation of everything I had been through…a man who wanted to control everything I did from how I dressed, spoke, thought, to whether I had rights over my body. 

Of course it did not start off this way.  He was loving, kind in the beginning.  The control started the moment we were married.  We moved to NY, I was isolated, alone with just him as a touchstone and intimidated for the first time, feeling overwhelmed and little things started happening, him not liking something I wore, asking me if I had asked permission to smoke…I fought him…in the beginning…after awhile, pieces of me just wore away…when the sex abuse started, it just cemented me becoming invisible again.  The first time he jumped on my back and forced his legs through mine, bruising me between the knees, the thighs and tried to fuck me after I rebuffed his advances – I started having the night terrors.

I know now that what I fought for – the control over myself – was not truly dealing with the underlying cause for the need to regain control – I never – never dealt with the initial abuse – never dealt with the rape or anything that had happened.  My attitude was yeah… it happened, aren’t I lucky it did not effect me?  Ha! 

You can only bury things for so long and then they take on a life of their own – no longer allowing themselves to be stuffed down – they will find a way to break out – to force you to see them. 

I think my sense of humor has gotten me through all of my life, but it has also allowed me to minimize and marginalize events that I probably should have given their proper weight. 

My motto has always been you either laugh or you cry – sometimes if you are lucky – you can do both – but I would rather see the dark humor in a situation than drown in the agony of it.  

I hated that we became a society of victims, tv talk shows and self help books allowed our culture to ”deal” with abuse – physical, mental, sexual - for the first time – but once it threw back the covers and it was exposed – got people talking about it – it left them there – stranded in this new founded victimhood and never showed them, us, me how to go forward.  Once you face the ugliness – then what?  I get to spend the rest of my life as a fuck up because I point to the cellar of my life and say - Well yeah – but I was raped?  I was abused as a child?  I am a victim….Oh fuck me!  Bullshit.  Yeah - it happened. I had it bad – not as bad as a lot of people though.  Where does my responsibility for breaking the cycle of behavior begin?  Doesn’t it begin at the moment of my enlightenment?  Well then…I am responsible for having not dealt with shit, I am responsible for the situations I put myself into…I am not saying I deserved what happened, but damn it, once you know the truth of a situation….own it….there is a responsibility to change. 

In AA they talk about dry drunks.  People who are sober but who never dealt with the behaviors that made them alcoholic in the first place so basically – they are just a dry drunk.  They are usually the ones taking up time in meetings, lamenting yet another failed relationship, job, friendship, hell…missed parking space and their mantra is always the same…I can’t.  I am a drunk…I am alcoholic and I can’t.   I would always query – how many days sober?  30 years.  Well, fuck buster…don’t you think your excuse is a little tired then?  I did not get on well at the meetings. 

Tired of carrying it…past due…I feel lighter…alive again.  It is good to get the poisons out – never knew that the spectrum of emotions were so intense – I have muted them for so long.  So…yeah…I write about abuse now…I write about the things that hurt and caused me to go inside and die a little bit – but it is like casting bread upon the water – I am just letting it go – others can swallow it or let it sink, disintergrate in the water – disburse…I don’t care – it is of me – but no longer mine.