The last two days have been writing about my life up till the age of four.  I don’t like thinking about my family.  I don’t like thinking about how I was treated.  It’s weird to talk about systematic abuse.  Why did I believe that everything bad in the world was my fault?  Partially because little kids are dumb.  Mostly because I was actively told it was.  Over and over and over.  It was my fault things happened before I was born.

I don’t know how to shed this feeling of guilt.  This feeling that existing poisons the people around me.  Things with muse are a lot less smooth.  Welcome to crazy girl territory.  I feel like I should go home and lock myself in the garage for a few years.  Maybe Sarah can pass me food through the cat door.  I feel so dirty and polluted.  Like there is no redemption for someone like me.  Too much poison was put in me before I was even verbal.

I am just a hole.  I am nothing.  I have no worth.  No merit.  There is nothing in me worth acknowledging.  But I had better be willing to lie still and open my legs.  And shut up.  Just lie there.  Don’t move.  Because I am nothing.  Nothing.

I have had the Dixie Chicks song “Top of the World” on repeat for two days.  I can sing along with it in the background while I type and cry.  The last two days have been a lot of crying.  I feel like I won’t ever stop crying.  I feel like there is no end to this pain.  The pain of being absolutely worthless.

Why do I want to give away so much money?  I’m trying to find a way to do something in the world.  Something real that no one can take away from me.  Something I can point at and say: See!  I am not a dirty, worthless, bad kid.  I am good.  I do good.  I am good.

How do I teach my daughters to love themselves when I loathe myself with such intensity?  How do I teach anyone how to feel joy when I feel such despair?  I don’t know.  “Everyone is singing, we just want to be heard.  Disappearing every day without so much as a word, somehow.”  I feel like every day that I do not write, that I do not say what I believe to be true is a day that my family has effectively silenced me.  I feel like any time I do not stand up and scream at the top of my lungs that I am NOT FUCKING BAD, DAMNIT I am agreeing with them.  If I am not actively arguing I am agreeing.

I don’t know how to resolve that.  I don’t know how to just take up space and just be.  I have to aggressively take up my space and batter the people standing near me or I feel invisible.  There is no middle ground.  I am invisible and toxic or I am screaming and hostile.  I don’t want either extreme.  I want to feel like I am just ok.  That life is just ok.  That it is ok that things happened.  They are over.

Other than glimpses out my window when he was stalking me, I haven’t seen my father since I was 13.  17 years have gone by.  That’s most of my lifetime.  He’s been dead for 13 years, one month, and five days.  Not that I’m counting.

This hurts so much.  I wanted a daddy.  Why am I not allowed to have a daddy?  Why do I not get to have a mommy either?  The last time I saw my mother was when Uncle Bob died.  I don’t know if I will see her again.  “I wish I had showed you all the things I was on the inside.”  My family doesn’t know me.  Not really.  They know this construction of misery and pain.  It’s not me.

I am not this angry and bitter person.  But I am sad. I am so sad.  I am so sad for the little girl I was.  It was not my fault my father raped my sister.  It’s ok that I was born.  I did not cause my sister to be raped for three more years.  My father did that.  FYI: yesterday’s shirt makes a great hankie.  Squeamishness is for people who waste paper.

Sometimes I wonder why I am writing this down.  Why in the fuck does anyone need to know what a piece of shit my family thinks I am.  How is this making the world a better place?  Why do I need to write another 20,000 words about what a fucking piece of shit I am?  Why?  Technically another 24,000.  But that’s ok.  It’s only the 11th.

Speaking of which: thank you Veterans.  I was too chicken shit to do what you did even though I thought about it.

It’s interesting looking at the differing word counts for different years.  Some years I started and got 600 words in and just… ran out of things to say.  Some years I’ve produced 4,000 words in a day because there was so much to say.  This hurts a lot.  It hurts so much to look at all of this so fast and so hard.  I feel battered.  I feel weak.  I feel fragile.

I’m struggling right now.  I feel like I am beating the shit out of myself with how worthless my family thinks I am.  It’s so hard to be reminded over and over that my childhood was so miserable.  I feel like a ghost of a person.  I feel so thin I could blow away.

Why do I travel so much?  Because I’m running away from myself.  Why do I read so many books?  Because I want to be in anyone’s head but mine.  Why do I have sex with random people?  Because then I don’t have to deal with any of my emotional issues–I can keep them in a box.  When people start getting closer and they see the box I want to run.  I don’t want to even tell you how big this box is.

I don’t want you to know just how big of a box I need for my issues because I don’t want anyone to see how very small I am standing next to that box.  I am too much effort.  I’m not worth it.  Hell, Tom taught me that.  It’s not worth it to meet my needs.  The balance isn’t good enough.  I’m so glad I found Noah.  I didn’t know I was getting a knight in shining armor.  It was hard to notice through the tacky dry humping.

I have lived with Noah for five and a half years.  Longer than I have ever lived with another human being consecutively in my life.  Noah is my family.  It’s terrifying to even consider trusting someone beyond him.  It is so hard to trust him.  And he comes through so very very well.  I don’t deserve Noah, but I’m keeping him.

Soon I will have lived with my children significantly longer than my parents.  Shanna is 3.5.  That’s how old I was when my parents divorced.  When she turns four I will have lived with Shanna more than I lived with my father in my entire life.  And it won’t be much longer before I have lived with her longer than I lived with my mother in a stretch.  Calli will be my third longest live-in relationship.  Depending on how things go with Sarah, she will be the fourth.  That hurts a lot.  I’m 30.  This should not be my story.  This shouldn’t be anyones story.

But it’s mine.  And I can’t change it.  I can just tell it.