It is interesting to me as I sit here dispassionately looking at the many escapist ways I have of not getting to thinking about what I don’t want to think about. I hyper-notice the cleaning that NEEDS to happen (emphasis added to explain degree of obsession), and I need to go eat. Cleaning house was always one of the few things I could do to make my mother happy. I am also back to a feeling I haven’t had in a long while. When I am completely overwhelmed by my emotional state I cannot eat enough food to make me feel food. My stomach aches with hunger even after consuming a decent sized meal. Given how much of my life I have spent feeling this way I must stop and realize that I actually have a decently quick metabolism. Hm. But I am babbling because I want to procrastinate. I need to stop, but I really don’t want to do this.

Oh, this is going to be one of the few times I really ramble on and on as if this is a paper journal just for me. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to follow my ramblings and ickiness. And just to prove how much you really don’t need to read it:

I was asked on Wednesday if I am really and truly ready to process my old trauma. I told her that no, I am not. But I am planning to start having kids pretty soon and I no longer have the luxury of putting it off because I need to get a better handle on my shit before I subject my babies to my general instability and insanity. *sigh* So here I go. She asked me to write about the actual events and not just give physical details–I can give physical details very dispassionately and that doesn’t actually help me work through the emotions–but I need to really stop and feel the events. I’m pretty terrified right now. I don’t want to. So I’ll sit here and cry. I’m actually doing this on lj because I can type without looking or even really thinking at this point and I can’t do that in a paper medium.

Recently Noah and I have been talking about the fact that given my extreme level of sexualization when I was very young something must have happened before I really have memory, but for the sake of this it isn’t useful to talk about that. The first sexual assault I really remember happened when I was 7. I’ve written about the details before. When I wrote about them for a creative writing class I was in someone told me that the story was totally unrealistic because that sort of thing just doesn’t actually happen. When I was 7 we lived in Texas in a trailer park. I was pretty desperate for love and attention because things at home weren’t going so great. I made friends with the son of the manager of the trailer park and followed him around like a puppy. I did basically anything he asked of me but usually it wasn’t so bad. Unfortunately, one afternoon after being egged on by his cousin he and his cousin raped me. I can picture it in my head so clearly. I felt disgusting. I felt like I was a horrible, bad person who deserved as much as they could hurt me and more. I already had it pretty firmly in my head that I was not a “good girl” because my family told me so often how awful and annoying I was. My mother’s less than subtle innuendos about how it was my fault my older brother wasn’t with her contributed to me feeling like everything bad that happened was my fault. I remember how much it hurt, physically and emotionally, when those boys raped me. I remember thinking that it was wrong, but it must be my fault. I am such a terrible, awful person that I deserve it. When I felt Michael (my rapist) actually penetrate me I remember wanting to die. It didn’t feel like he was penetrating my body it felt like he was hurting my soul. He tore my humanity and individuality away from me. I no longer had the right to be a whole and complete person; it’s sad but I still feel this way.

It feels like all of this trauma is so mixed up and wrapped up with my mothers neglect. I blame her in every way that matters for every assault that happened to me. She didn’t care enough about me to try and protect me. And given how little responsibility she is willing to take even now… I feel like her refusal to accept responsiblity for her inability to protect me means that she is blaming me for what happened to me and I am not one to allow things to go without blame. If she blames me then I feel like really I do have to be responsible. Even though I want to blame her so much I still feel like these things wouldn’t have happened to me if I wasn’t basically disgusting and worthless. Why would these people know to target me repeatedly if I wasn’t just broken and bad?

The next boy I remember clearly was much older than me. He was in high school when I was about 9. He was nicer to me than Michael was. I told him about what had happened to me and he comforted me as I cried. My mother didn’t know and neither did my sister, but I told this stupid boy. In exchange for his affection and support he talked me into allowing him to sodomize me. I remember thinking that I deserved it. I deserved to hurt that much. I am so awful and so terrible that being hurt like that was all I was going to get in life. My mother took me to the hospital that day because all I could articulate was that my back hurt and I was crying and almost hysterical. No one ever thought to do a more thorough examination or to find out why I was so upset. I tried to kill myself not long after. At 9 I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was a disgusting person and I would always have to be hurt in order to get anything resembling affection. I wanted to die rather than face that. This was when Tommy, my brother, was trying to kill me. My mother was rarely home and when she was Tommy needed 100% of her attention. I fell into this abyss of being unwanted and unloved. At this point I didn’t even have decent teachers so I really had nothing and no one in my life who thought I was worth anything at all. I felt so much shame. In my head it still is completely my fault that I was hurt how I was and if I was that horrible by that point in my life it seems like there is no redemption in the whole world for me.

Ok, break for sobbing. I know what I need. I don’t think I can get it though. I need for my mother to tell me that none of it was my fault and I am not bad. It feels like it doesn’t matter what anyone else in the world believes as long as mommy still feels like it was my fault.