Tag Archives: therapy

I fired my counselor today

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I feel kind of bad because she’s a really nice lady who is trying super hard but she’s a student, with only a small amount of training, and I am way the fuck out of her league. I would be training her, not getting support from her. Also: I’m not allowed to talk to anyone else while I’m talking to her. She fully understands that she is there to be generically supportive and she doesn’t have a lot of therapeutic value to add to my life. So this was my last meeting with her.

I don’t get a lot from telling a tiny shard of my story, heavily edited for their sensibilities of course, to a stranger I will see 6 times then never again. There’s not a lot of value in that for me. She said that a lot of her clients have literally never felt heard in their lives and they have no opportunity whatsoever to explain what is going on with them to another person. I said I write thousands of words and have loyal friends who have been keeping up for going on 25 years. Many of my friends are more educated about psychiatry than she is.

She said I am going to find a very hard time finding a therapist in this city who is as educated as me. That was hilariously awesome to hear. She sent me a list of all the links for support organisations in the city. There is an EDS support group!! Only for people who are 18-30 years old. That is… so Scottish.

I didn’t make my step goal today but I did back to back yoga classes and rode my bike 6 miles. I will choose not to be mad at myself.

I feel like I really should take my friend up on the long distance EMDR. That is the most stabalising option I have on the table. Separately I think I might even have found a friend who might be able to help with more active brain rewiring. I will not be more explicit. That will be good if it works out.

I’m scared. I feel helpless and out of control. I feel like I don’t have the ability to reach for hope right now. I am trying. I really am. I’m trying for positive moments with people. I feel unable to believe that anything could be better. I feel sad. We haven’t had sex in a while. That’s probably contributing.

I’m reading a fun book (I’m finally getting around to Go Tell the Bees), I’m binging Madam Secretary (again), I’m exercising, I’m sleeping an average of 9 hours every night over the past week and some. I’m eating vegetables and fruit and enough protein and fiber. I’m making concrete plans for the future in the near and short-term far future. I am still doing things to solve problems for other people. I am just at much lower capacity and speed. And today was fucking exhausting. Being around humans and having casual conversation was weird and awkward and uncomfortable. I didn’t know what to say and I felt stupid.

Wednesday and Friday will be days with lots of people around and loudness and awkward feeling alienated fun. I will have a hankie for when I escape to the loo to cry. Fuck.

I want to say “I just want to stop feeling like this” but I already fucking know you can’t “just stop” feeling something. You have to move towards feeling something else instead. I am really scared.

Most of the things I instinctively move towards feeling are the things that make me bad.

I should go to sleep. I’ve had a sufficient amount of evil for today.

I don’t really think I need a therapist. I need friends I can feel comfortable believing they know about the scope of my humanity and they are ok with it. I don’t have many of those friends here yet. I get limited amounts of time where I feel mostly accepted. I mean, Bestie and I will walk through fire for one another, we also have health problems and autistic, high needs kids. We share what we have left over and say thank you for what we get.

What I need is people I feel safe being in a room with where I can say whatever comes up in my brain without having to be afraid that I am going to be punished or ostracised or seen as other forever. I mean, I am ‘other’ in a great many senses–I’ve got the whole immigrant thing going on. That’s fine. I’m not ridiculous about this. It’s complicated and late at night and not important right now.

I feel deeply lied to. That buzzer is going off really hard in my head. I feel like I was told that it was ok to do things. That it was explicitly fine and I was still punished for them. I feel set up to fail. I feel like there will always be a way to spin my behaviour as disloyal mainly through inadequately narrow interests. I’m twitchy as fuck. I feel angry and ragey and like I want to beat something until I break it. I want to destroy something. I have kept every fucking man in Scotland at arms length. I have not seriously flirted. I have not issued a come on. I have not tried to get someone to want to have sex with me. I have been so good.

Burn it all down.

The only time I’ve ever heard a Scottish person come it was my rapist. Fucking cheers for me.

But that part wasn’t the rape. That part was me. That part was me feeling like I needed to be in control and I needed to decide what would and wouldn’t happen and I dictated exactly what I would take from him. And I took it.

And I put him in prison.

So, I look like I’m setting up a torrid affair? He doesn’t strike me as the type to actually write letters and I’m not sure how much email access they have. Anyway I’m not planning to visit him.

There are magics you don’t understand. There are things that compel me and I don’t know where they come from. Was it training from my dad? Was it me trying to get to know him and having a fucked up view of how “mentorship” works since almost every single one of my mentors fucked me at some point? I will edit out long the rant about stuff related to the court case. I can’t say any of that. (Hell, should I say any of this?)

Fuck. Uh, if the trial goes well I want to go to karaoke and sing You Should Be Sad. I will make that happen. Where in the fuck near here can I do that? I will find out. Yes, sirree.

Surviving rape

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Surviving rape doesn’t happen in one day. You don’t survive by getting the fucker into a taxi and out of your home. Out of my studio. Out of the place that is supposed to be my sanctuary. That is the first step, not the last. It isn’t like surviving a car crash where you wake up and the crash is over.

Surviving rape means being able to look myself in the mirror every morning afterwards. Surviving rape is about thinking that whatever you did to get to the next screen was harm reduction. Every single shitty thing that kept you alive was better than dying. Surviving rape is binge drinking and binge eating and screaming and crying and falling to the pavement when out on a walk because the panic attack made my vision go black. Surviving rape is believing that you do not deserve to be punished and harmed more because you were defiled and made dirty by someone touching you or you touching someone else because you felt like you had to.

Surviving rape means opening yourself up to lots of judgment, scorn, derision, and contempt. Good people wouldn’t survive the shit I have. They die.

My very survival is what marks me as a monster. Good people don’t do the things I do, the shitty, dirty, disgusting things that people like me do. Good people would rather die.

I am still alive. I feel like I owe the universe endless apologies for not having the decency to just fucking die already.

I have screamed so much today that my throat hurts enough that I don’t really want to eat this lentil soup that is the first food I’ve had today. I’d rather not eat. I also haven’t been drinking. I don’t want to.

I want my body to stop.

I want to be good. Good people don’t live through the things I do. That means the only thing I can do to be good is die. That hurts so much. I have tried so hard to be good. It doesn’t matter. When it counted, when I was supposed to display my loyalty I was only loyal to myself and my survival. And that is why I should die. If I will not pick death over disloyalty I am nothing.

I betrayed my family. I betrayed my husband and made myself the lowest of the low. I feel like I want to use a scalpel to flay myself alive. Maybe if I make myself hurt a lot lot lot lot lot more Noah won’t be so mad.

Mama told me I don’t need to stay and let Noah make me feel so bad about myself. I don’t think Noah is making me feel bad about myself. I think Noah is reacting reasonably to the consequences of being married to a nightmare. I’m in this pickle where I can’t act good enough to not hurt him and I can’t leave without hurting him more. I can’t see a path forward that doesn’t involve me wrecking his life even more than I have.

I’ve betrayed him a lot. It’s not like this is a one off. It’s who I am. I am shit. I am worthless and faithless.

But fuck me, definitely no EMDR before the trial. Couldn’t be having that. Fuck the NHS. I can’t believe I had the ovaries to say, “I’d like EMDR. If not that then Ketamine, MDMA, or LSD assisted therapy. If none of that then I want nothing from you.“

That was pretty intense. I was freaking out and shaking and clearly not ok and I just blew off one of the higher up doctors at the psych hospital. That was maybe unwise. That smart mouth comment is now in my permanent record. I mean, I started with wanting EMDR? It’s not a controversial treatment? It’s not a drug? It’s not a wacky thing to ask for. That was not inappropriate. I just can’t have it.

I can. I just can’t through the NHS. Curse my internal hierarchy structure. It is fucking inconsistent and I hate it so much. One of the harem actually does remote EMDR already. It’s just a trick in his tool bag. I could probably have a session today or tomorrow if I could just ask him. Hell, I don’t need to ask, I need to say yes to his offer. He wants so badly to be able to help me in some way and I have not been able to let myself receive anything from him.

Someone who has been in love with me for almost 20 years wants to help me because my health care system is letting me down and I can’t let him. I have also basically stopped talking to Travel Boyfriend. I am deep in not-fun-land and I just can’t accept help in this place from people I am emotionally close to. I can pay for it. I can’t get it for free. I don’t deserve it. I do not allow myself to be someone who has consistent support from specific people. Well, not beyond Noah. The few other attempts I made as an adult went pretty sideways.

I am feeling incredibly burned. I miss the God Mama. I miss my mother. I miss Sarah. I miss the Bonus Mama. All these women. Hey look, Katy Perry’s song The One Who Got Away just came on. I’ve been calling Sarah The One Who Got Away on Fetlife. I failed to sustain that relationship.

It’s kinda funny that I don’t miss my sister. Fuck that bitch. I hope she suffers terribly for every day that she is alive and that her death is slow and painful as she fucking deserves for being a child raping piece of shit. She had a chance in this life to break the chain. Instead she forged new links. I wish her nothing but pain. Given her romantic choices I’m pretty sure she’s been punched a lot since then. I wish I could feel bad for her but I really can’t.

My brother is single and whining about how women use men up and take everything from them. My brother, who never worked full time or even managed to fully pay for his own vices let alone support his three children. Yeah. Poor guy. Fuck the golden boy too. I don’t wish him as much pain. He is suffering a lot from being who our father loved. He will suffer for all of his days. He refuses to believe that our father was evil. He tells people that our dad committed suicide because he was depressed. lol. Yeah, scared of a life of prison rape depressed.

Surviving rape is not pretty. I would argue that my sister’s soul has not survived. When she chose to justify her pain by normalising it and passing it to her children her soul died. What is left is a soulless monster.

I have not raped a child since I was a child. I’m not saying I get a pass. But my children have not been raped by family members. That’s something, I guess.

It’s really hard to eat this bowl of soup. My body does not want to. Why do I keep insisting on eating healthy food and exercising? Don’t I know that this is going to get me lots of years of more pain? 9.821 steps for the day. Even if I did have a panic attack.

I can’t keep getting punished for surviving. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I think maybe punishment is not something I can accept for something like this. I was ok with it when it happened. I consented. I consented, what, days after surgery? I kind of wonder how much I hope that you would hurt me enough to cause those complications I otherwise worked so hard to avoid. Could you have lived with that? Was it worth it? Sure. You think it was necessary to break the fawn.

Fawning is a survival tactic.

What I am doing now is not upping the chances of me surviving. I did that walking on the first day of my period without eating or drinking anything. Am I making good choices? I don’t know. I am flailing blindly. I’m trying not to talk to people more than I absolutely have to because I know that vile bilge will stream from my mouth. I’ve probably cut 80%-90% of my social chatter for the past I don’t know how many days.

Right now the random reinforcement of punishment (sometimes physical with consent in the context of our M/s dynamic and more often verbal in the form of lengthy diatribes about the crimes I’m about to commit) I have received in the past 4 months means I can’t risk talking to someone in a tone of voice Noah doesn’t like or I don’t know what will happen. I am afraid he will think I am fawning. He’s not ok and I’m not ok and I don’t know what will need to happen before either of us are ok.

I guess my sister and I both antagonise our partners to hit us. She does it by yelling insults and degrading their manhood. I cheat.

We both deserve what we get.

I say I won’t do things and then I go do them. Every time. Apparently.

It’s the first day of bleeding. With good luck part of this furious screaming in my brain will stop soon but I am not feeling like I’ve had a lot of luck lately. I feel like if it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.

I listen to other people talk about family as if it is a permanent fixture that cannot be undone. I think of Bestie and the brothers she hasn’t spoken to in over a decade and my family I haven’t seen in a few years more than that. Family doesn’t feel very permanent to me, in a general way. I am having a hard time with the war in my brain. I have to serve my indenture. Do I really owe many more decades beyond that? Do I really? Why do I owe anyone this much pain?

I reread the book I bought at the Lakota reservation called Keep Going. Man. That’s not a book to make you expect much cheerful shit in life. I think one of the reasons I have never felt comfortable with most pagan community is because I’m not willing to co-opt an old-world-religion-that-was-and-has-been-reinvented. That’s what I see when I see most pagans. The heathen cultures I grew up around were indigenous cultural ones practiced by descendants. I sure as shit never felt entitled to join any of what I saw, but I feel like my ancestors closed their ears to the Gods. I had a Mayflower fucker in my chart and the most recent arriving branch was a bunch of Mennonites that had been running around Europe trying to be the most repressive dickheads around for a long time.

I do not feel entitled to any Gods.

I do believe that Akhilandeshvari chose me. The Hindu temple on the corner was full of people who were a little confused by the white neighbours who came to Hindi classes and who dropped by to pay respects to the Gods and Goddesses occasionally. I have been given the strong impression by every Indian friend that they are totally cool with a Hindu Goddess picking me. They said she obviously knew I needed her. I think that is most diplomatic of them.

Here I am breaking myself and breaking my husband. We had been at a much better place.

I did not deal with being raped in a way that worked for him at all.

I feel like I failed the exam. I do not deserve to stay in the program. This is not my first time failing and being kicked out because my body could not do what was being asked of it. I’m not being kicked out. Noah won’t kick me out. That’s not something I worry about in any way. Just like I don’t entertain the idea of leaving him. This marriage is till death parts us.

Surviving rape over and over and over and over and over is partly done in stutter steps of eventually asking to be allowed to have some kind of agency and autonomy for my body after more than 4 decades of not being allowed to make all the decisions. No. That’s a no, dog. I’m a set of holes and somebody bought them. How dare someone else touch them.

I feel deeply dehumanised. I suppose that is a natural and obvious outgrowth of some of the kinds of play I choose to do. I suppose it is unsurprising that it is a natural and normal state for me to slip into sideways. You think maybe getting kicked out of a community for being a loud mouth who objects to homophobia, and dealing with denial of service from the NHS has something to do with it?

Hell, I’m even freaked out about how far from what I wanted the prosecution process is going to be. I’m going to have to go to court this time. They won’t let him out so he can suicide the morning of the trial. Phew. I have options about how to do it. I’m going to pick sitting in court and looking at him. That’s the least shielded way. Because why in the fuck would I do it by video in a room alone? That would be even more alienating for me. I would be even less of a fucking person just a figment on a screen.

My life is wildly out of my control right now. I can’t even seriously future trip as a hobby because I don’t know when the fucking UK government will finish our paperwork. We are picking this?

Yup. Better than Gunlandia.

I will take every piece of stress dealing with the NHS and the police and the courts and the cultural mismatch and low-key ostracism because I never have to worry about a cop pointing a gun at one of my children. I’ll take it. Most of my ancestors left this island (or the big one right next to us) almost 400 years ago. Yeah, there’s going to be some friction on reentry. I don’t resent that.

Noah is also unemployed for potentially the entire foreseeable future. It’s coming with a massive drop from where we had planned retirement income because otherwise all of the choices suck. I’d rather have his time than more money.

Yeah. Even though I had my door locked earlier tonight because I was not going to fucking talk to him right now. I feel like I want to kick him in the face and tell him to stop sniveling and get his fucking shit together. It is not your turn to fucking melt down right now and you are being a selfish dickhead. It can be your turn for the next 11 years, buddy. Knock it off until the trial. I guess you are right that it means you should just stop fucking talking for a while.

I just realised why I don’t like playing games. I don’t particularly enjoy feeling like a loser and I don’t have the desire to prove I can beat people. There is nothing for me in the process but bad feelings. I play because other people want me to. I never play enough to get very good.

Surviving rape never stops. The crazy shit I do that seems so inexplicable is maybe about my dad or Paul or Jeremy or Michael or Kevin and whatever the rest of those bitches names are. Fuck those guys. Fuck all of them. Every last fucking one. Right now I can’t remember the exact number and I really don’t want to try hard to figure it out. I think that would be really bad for me right now. I’m really glad I can’t think at all. Yay not eating or drinking.

The weekend that my rapist was arrested I played the song You Should Be Sad several hundred times. Yeah. That was fucking trippy to find out in the rear view mirror. I had no idea it was happening then. This song is going to loom large in my memory of this experience.

I think I am always going to be trying to survive all this. It’s going to be hard forever. I have a lot of physical pain that I can’t make go away with all the good food and exercise in the world. I am struggling on every level right now.

The most life affirming thing would be to throw myself on the net I have created. Instead I hide and scream and rock and cry. I can do very little right enough to trust that I am not going to get in trouble for it. Hell, an awful lot of this post feels like I am skirting the line of “don’t write about it”.

Wait for the trial to write. Wait for the trial to qualify for EMDR.

It’s like fucking no one wants me to survive.

I know you do. You don’t need to say it. Take it as read. I know. That’s not the point. I’m not whining about my friends doing an insufficient amount of reaching out. I’ve had more contact from old friends since I deactivated than I have in a long time all at once. I am not responding much. I can’t.

All I contain is poison. Am I even surviving? Traci said any amount of harm reduction that allowed you to get to another day was good enough. Traci ODed on heroin after getting kicked out by her wife and losing custody of her son. Yeah. I’ve gotten advice from some wacky ass sources in my life.

I have stopped daydreaming about the trip with TB. It is seeming less like a good idea by the day. I am scared that being in a room with me will be bad for him. I am going to fuck him up because I am so fucked up. 70 days from tomorrow. I wonder how I will feel by then? Fuck.

It isn’t feeling like a life affirming activity. It is feeling like proof of why Noah doesn’t trust me and why he should never trust me.

Just stop, Krissy. Stop being so bad.

Harsh

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I’m not screaming and frantically wanting to hurt myself. I do feel harsh and angry and sick of being flexible. I feel like I cannot keep jumping through hoops to try and be good when there is no good that is good enough to not keep getting yelled at.

Parenting is a shitty gig in a lot of ways. Kids are feral creatures doing their best and you can’t regulate off of them. It’s not ok. There are predictable stages that are frustrating in their own special ways. It’s not that the kids are being extra hard. I just have so much less to give than usual. I feel depleted and diminished.

I’m really struggling with what it means to get help in this country. I am told I can’t get support from more than one person at a time… until suddenly I am told that if I wait to get help from different services one at a time I am told that I am declining help from one of the services and they won’t help me later if I turn down this offer. I’m deeply confused and overwhelmed. I feel like I’ve been threatened repeatedly by NHS doctors that if I am not properly compliant I will be barred from basic medical care from the NHS. I feel scared. I feel fucked over and abused.

Seeing more than one therapist is medical malpractice… until it isn’t and refusing the second person who is offering assistance means I am not compliant and I don’t deserve future help. I felt like I was going to get help from the ADHD prescribing lady until I talked to her boss and now I feel more hopeless, helpless, scared, and vulnerable than I did before.

I feel like I’m about to be barred from medical care because I can’t perform patient properly.

As we have just hemorrhaged money to be able to live in this country permanently, I’m feeling very scared that I will be unable to access the normal medical treatment that citizens get here because I don’t know how to be good enough. I feel deeply abused that this is getting so much worse because I was foolish enough to report a crime. I feel punished. I feel sick to my stomach every time I think about having to deal with the doctors here.

When I think of that insulting lecture about how people don’t get better because the glacial pace of the NHS is deeply painful and they don’t continue to come back for inadequate, inappropriate care. I can literally tell these people that I have paid for tests that reveal that genetically a drug won’t work for me and they tell me I have to take it anyway or I am being uncooperative and I am not interested in my own mental health.

I am fucking livid.

Mama was asking me if most of my feeling bad-ness is coming from Noah and the way he is melting down. No, he’s not helping overall at the moment but he’s not the reason I feel as bad as I do–certainly not on his own. I do feel really bad that he thinks I betrayed him but he’s entitled to evaluate my behaviour in any way he sees fit.

I mean, 2016. I will never be done being yelled at for my craven and disgusting behaviour. I can’t describe myself in mean enough words to convince Noah that I am sorry. I can’t debase myself enough to satisfy his feeling of being wounded. I don’t think he will ever forgive me.

I feel absolutely overwhelming like the next time I am raped I need to die. I cannot survive any more of this. I can’t. People are so fucking mean about me surviving. I can’t keep doing it. If I were a good person I wouldn’t be able to keep going through so much evil. The fact that I keep walking is part of why I deserve every punishment and insult. If I were a good person I would have been destroyed. I am a monster and I deserve every scrap of bad I receive in this life. The only thing I could do for the smallest ounce of redemption is to just fucking die already.

It doesn’t matter though. I have 11 years, 3 months and 19 days on my indenture. I am not allowed to die. I have to, in fact, work really really hard night and day to stay alive. I have to be careful about every fucking aspect of my life if I am not going to die in my 50’s. Between my 4 grandparents and 2 parents there were 2 suicides preventing folks from hitting their 50’s, and 2 folks who died because they wouldn’t take care of their bodies, and 2 motherfuckers who are too god damn mean to die–my grandfather made it to 86 and my mother is still alive.

My indenture runs out when I’m 54. I am going to have to work at making it that long. This is why I couldn’t have another child. Here is a fucking horrible thing: if I fell pregnant this week I would abort. That’s how not fucking ok I am. The idea of extending the indenture by an additional almost 8 years? Now. Not fucking ok. I am not working for that. FUCK NO.

Every time I do that silly thing where I bring up the 60th birthday party I want to have it is me trying hard to believe that I have that much of a future. That’s a sand castle I am not sure that I believe I will ever live in.

I don’t know how to get my head to be ok with the idea that I can’t survive the next rape. How do I endure the days of fear between now and then? I feel like I can’t get yelled at ever again for surviving. I can’t. If I am bad for keeping this shitty meat sack moving then I need to stop. I don’t want to be bad.

I am unable to perform the behaviour as a mother that lets me feel good in that role. I am not being a shitty abusive mother, but I’m not hitting the metrics I self assign.

I am definitely feeling like a shitty wife. My lack of instinctive monogamy is hurting my husband deeply.

Maybe it won’t matter. Knowing that I really should not survive another rape is going to be a good reason to never be alone in a room with people. Maybe I can cut off enough of myself that I will never be put in that position. I don’t think I would be forgiven for whatever I do so I need to ensure it doesn’t come up again.

The only sure fire way to make it not happen again is to die. The second most effective way is to be alone in a room as much as possible until I die. I feel really scared. I feel really helpless. I do not foresee a path forward where I can be alive and good and that hurts very badly.

Pacing

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I am sure there are many people who would not appreciate me saying this: but I miss lock down. I didn’t have to worry about balancing the various needs of my family members with various outside the home activities and people while also figuring out when to get chores done. I slept more and more consistently. Lately my sleep is shit again.

One of the problems with the age spread of my children is that the shape of providing “structure” for each of them is different. Youngest Child is still small enough that she should mainly be around kids through classes and they all want to start mid-morning and last for around an hour before popping the kids out on the other side expecting snacks and a trip to the park. Most parents of children in similar ages are either nearly in nursery or already in nursery and they are specifically training the kids around having the habit of being out of the house 5 days a week for most of the day so the children manage the transition to primary school.

I get it… but I also find that doing that in the morning mostly shoots my wad and I’m too tired to come home and do a big project of my own unless I do it after dinner and give up sleep. If I am out for the morning the mid-afternoon to dinner chunk is mostly me interacting with the older kids around their school stuff and my brain is just not currently capable of doing something for me while I talk to them. Yay ADHD medication? It feels like too tired because I can’t push my brain into doing many things at once on this medication unless I am super well rested.

If I get a good night of sleep and I start my project early in the day then I can normally handle talking to the older kids about a second thing while I work. (Most projects of this type being garden or cleaning related.) I can talk to them about their literature reading progress first thing in the morning while we continue working on removing nails from the old shed boards because we are going to repurpose the wood. But if I try to do the exact same thing starting at 1 or 2 I get confused and befuddled and irritated and angry. My brain says I can fuck all the way off.

So I’m not making forward progress on a lot of the outside projects I want to do since YC started classes and that’s feeling frustrating. The older kids have enjoyed the descent into too-much screen time that happened during my last painting project and they are absolutely loathe to give it up. They really won’t come out in the mid-afternoon and help me. I can push it in the mornings.

This pacing is not working and I feel exhausted and crappy most of the time. It doesn’t help that Noah’s work schedule is hard to figure out and manage. Working for a company that is 5 hours behind us in time zones gets to be pretty challenging.

I am almost to the end of this session of little kid classes. I am going to try and move the timing. If I can get her into classes that are more like after lunch and less like after breakfast then maybe I can get the big kids through helping me instead of getting on video games first thing then fighting to not have to get off later.

I am getting to the point where I am low key signaling distress in ways I don’t mean to and that’s a problem. Fairly random strangers keep asking me if I have any support because it sounds like I have a lot going on. It depends on what you mean by support but mostly… no. I have been shoving my mental health care needs in a box for a couple of years now. Every so often I open the box long enough to shove something else in then I quickly tape over it again. I’m not ok. I know that lots of people aren’t ok and I don’t have it bad in the scheme of things.

I’m not ok and I don’t have a way to cope with that right now. Therapy isn’t an option–I spoke with my GP recently about head injury stuff. In the course of the conversation she asked me how I was overall coping and I told her not that well. I had previously believed that I would be a lifer in therapy then I moved here and that’s not an option. She told me that she thinks I am being very kind to notice just how limited the access to therapy is here and deliberately not put myself on a waiting list. She told me that she has seen me enough times now to have a sense of me and she thinks that any of the therapists in town could be nothing other than a kind and sympathetic ear because they don’t have more training than I do after how much therapy I’ve had.

This is not the first local expert who has told me that I am the best source of support, tools, and tactics for managing my issues and those of my children in this area. Apparently I put those decades of living in the bay and having access to experts to very good use. Every so often one or the other of the older kids has something challenging happen with regard to mental health because they are people and life is complicated. When that happens I ensure that we have privacy and we get into the heavy stuff. Both kids have said, “I’m sure if I tell you about (_____) you will be upset with me.” I tell them to give me a minute so I can fix my face. Then I put on the “I will not judge you; I will be supportive and unsurprised by anything you say because it’s ok for you to be a person on your journey” face. We talk about their big feelings and the situation and why it is both normal and ok that they are struggling. We talk about the fact that it is hard that we can’t hire therapists to be there through these sorts of things going forward. We talk about what things they can imagine doing to change the situation. I ask if they want to hear about any other options I know about–sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. Boundaries, yo.

I am not your therapist. I will never be a completely neutral party. I will never be 100% on your side because I am often the person you are in the most conflict with. That is rough. But I am not going to judge all of the things you think I will judge. I am not going to be upset about even half of the things you think I will be upset about. And as you get older I will have to be less and less of who you consider when you decide how you will solve a problem. That is the way forward. I am not and I can never be your therapist but I can help you talk out some of what is bothering you. I definitely don’t have all of your answers but pretty often I do have useful questions. I have been very lucky in my life and the state of California made sure that I had access to lots of people who asked good questions.

I need to start writing even if I am afraid of consequences. I am going to be the closest thing to a therapist I have going forward. That process doesn’t work well without the blog. As my Eldest Child says: “When I write something just for me I delete it or rip it up most of the time because it never seems worth keeping. When I just go ahead and post it right away then even when it isn’t perfect I get feedback and I have to act like it was real and I have to carry on forward as if it has happened and can’t be taken back.”

Of course, she is talking about the status of her fanfic and she’s posting on Wattpad so it’s slightly different. I’ve gotta say that her comments are probably more vicious than mine ever are. I worry about the consequences of my writing because working out my feelings is not a pretty process. Sometimes I hurt people when they know what is going on inside me. If I just shut my stupid mouth and stand near them then they don’t know what an asshole I am and things carry on without too big of a problem.

Being real about all the strife inside my brain is scary. I just about always have as much pull towards people as I have push away from them. My magnetic polarity is really confused.

The thing is: I do shitty things to hurt myself when I don’t work through the stuff in my brain. I am long past the point of the kinds of self-harm that would land me in a psych ward but I am not kind to myself. I do not take good enough care. I do things that will cause long-term damage through neglect or lack of love. It’s little, cumulative things but nothing dramatic that will force other people to intervene. I am smart and I don’t want intervention so let me tell you I will stay below that fucking radar for the rest of my life. There is a lot of room under the radar line to hit a bird and have it destroy an engine.

I am not acting like I am a creature I love who needs to be taken care of. That means I can’t model what that means and that’s a problem. I am very certain that I will never again have a person I talk to all the time to help me sort out my brain. So I have to do it. I need to start doing it a lot again. Which also means I need to stop sitting in this damn chair and use the standing desk. That’s going to have to be step one, Krissy.

Therapy goals (on phone)

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I need to figure out how to have self dates stop feeling like punishment. That’s a consistent issue for me even though I literally require time to defrag my brain. I want all of my recharging to come from time with friends and that has not worked out and it is only going to get harder over the next couple of years.

I need to have a more consistent parenting plan in place. Currently I give until I crack then I get mean. That isn’t what anyone needs or wants.

I want to have better strategies for handling the fact that people routinely over promise and under deliver. This feels related to how I used to get apoplectic level angry about tardiness. I mellowed on that one. Can I learn to not take the casual “I will do x” that will never happen in a more calm way? I know it is related to my mom and that is part of why it is so triggering. (FUCK MAGIC MOUNTAIN.)

I want to stop liking myself only as much as my friends have expressed recently.

I want to have better ways of handling friends who don’t listen to my soft no’s without over the top screaming.

I want to stop pouring myself into friends who use me.

I want to stop trauma bonding all the damn time.

Love my shrink.

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My shrink told me I shouldn't try to give up pot right now.  She said there is no benefit right this minute.  Yes, it's bad for my lungs.  It is better in the long run to have a while longer of this and not beat my children.  I think she is god damn smart.

She also told me to stop trying to be 'not angry'.  It'll pass when the things that are a problem for me end.  I should focus on that end of things.  I'm not so good at this "patience" thing.

Checking in

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Thank you for the phone calls. I really appreciate my friends. I’m trying to keep a more firm line in how much I talk about my shit with Shanna standing nearby. The last couple of times I have really unloaded about what was in my head repeatedly in a day she woke up with night terrors. Today I had the one outburst at my mom on the phone outside in the yard. Then I had one ~15 crying thing immediately following. Then I was calm the whole rest of the day. And Shanna didn’t have a night terror. That, to me, means I erred on the correct side of freaking out. I did a lot in the midst of my mom actively treating me like shit, but I did it outside and away from the kids. I did a little bit in the house with the kids nearby. Then I stopped. I was probably slower than average for the rest of the day, but I kept it together.

Mostly I did this because my friend, K, was due to come over in the morning anyway because she was coming over to babysit my kids while I went to therapy. Handy. Mostly at Jenny’s suggestion (Ack! Two Jennys! My brain is overloading and I will figure out that situation later.) I asked K to drive me down to therapy and they hung out in the park right across from the office. By the way, I’ve realized I’m going to have to do some work on my feelings around unsolicited advice. If I’m going to really do the blogging thing then I’m going to have to just deal with it. Oh man. That will make me twitchy.

And I’m up in the middle of the night trying to figure out what to think and feel about this latest development. I’m trying to decide how many cycles in my brain it gets to have. It doesn’t get as many as it wants right now. I have already decided I need a break from processing this kind of stuff right now and my mother does not have the right to override my decision making process. She doesn’t get to ruin my life anymore. I am on a semi-manic upswing right now. I am trying like hell to get upward momentum started. I can’t stop to obsess about this. Today I need to just get into my head that my mother is doing this to me because she is acting out the story in her head. She is not interested in doing the hard shitty work to break the cycles she has established. That’s not my problem. I am interested in doing that hard work. I am doing that work. Part of doing that work is stopping and telling the quiet, scared little girl inside me that she can’t actually hurt me anymore. Never again will she be allowed to send us to a monster. Tyra’s childhood was ruined too, but Shanna and Calli are escaping. My brother’s kids are escaping. One of my siblings absolutely continued the cycle but I have hope for Tyra. The way forward can’t be me staying up all night obsessing and it can’t be me feeling distracted and apathetic all day with the kids. That’s not acceptable. My life is good, wonderful, and I have all the possibilities in the world. I am not yet 30 years old. My life isn’t over yet. I get to grow up and be anyone I want to be.

Ok. I think I’m going to follow a few random paths for a while as I try to figure out which direction I want to grow in. But that’s ok. I have time.

I think I needed that.

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Today my therapist laughed at me. At some point we worked our way around to how to continue processing abuse stuff in a limited way in that little box over there in the corner so that there isn’t ‘leakage’ into the rest of my life. These are important things to consider when planning how to end the cycle of abuse or build a nuclear reactor plant. Just sayin’. I came around to the idea of a support group. Yes! That is what I need! A support group for mothers with mental illness or mothers who are survivors of abuse. Yes! Because then I can have people who are in the same place as me who can give me advice because I suck and I’m not figuring it all out. She almost fell out of her chair laughing. Apparently she thinks they don’t have much to teach me. We actually spent the rest of our time together talking about a workshop she has been dying to lead…and she has been trying to figure out how to talk to me about it. Because she thinks I have a lot to teach about doing this. She views my recent blip as as really… nothing to write home about when dealing with mothers who were victimized. No lines have been crossed. No one has been harmed. No actual damage has been perpetrated. Ok, my tone of voice sucks sometimes. Why am I crucifying myself? We spent a lot of time talking about victim/rescuer judge/(can’t think of the word but you catch my point). It was really neat. It was interesting having her point out on this little graph how I was moving around in my relationship with Shanna. We talked about specifics of how to step out of it and she said that really the only thing she would have suggested is what I started doing yesterday. It was very validating. She more or less gave me a check list of things to think about when considering parenting stuff and that was extremely useful. It was also nice to be reminded that as a parent it really and truly isn’t my job to ensure that my kids like me. Making them happy at all costs is really not the right road to a happy adulthood because they will be total assholes. But I digress. 🙂

I’m always going to be kind of messy (like emotionally and psychically) and weird. But that’s ok. So is everyone else if I look at them closely enough. I am not a bad person. I want to stop treating myself like I am. No matter how much I want to believe that I am a monster in the making, I’m really not. I’m not abusing my kids. I’m not hurting them. I’m loving on them and giving them lots of attention and affection and support. Why do I only see the 4 seconds I yell and decide that is the only important 4 seconds of the day? It’s really not. All the time I spend patiently showing Shanna every step of ‘how to do things right’ even when it is challenging to let her do it. For every time I say, “Man you’ve been working on that! You couldn’t do that a week ago. I wonder what you will be able to do next week.” I see her. I love her. I don’t need to buy her love. I make a vow today, I will stop acting like I have to buy my daughter’s love. That course of action will result in both of us losing.

Picking up my basket

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I really like the movie “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood”. It’s far from being a perfect analogy for my life but I see familiar things in it and ultimately it is a hopeful movie. Yeah, the mom fucked up pretty bad and she is hurt and ashamed by that for the rest of her life. And her daughter has issues, but she also has a pretty great life and a wonderful partner etc. It’s one of those, “Yes moms can be really imperfect and the kids still turn out somehow” sorts of things. Given how frequent a trope that is I’m pretty confident the worry exists in other minds as well, minds that don’t work like mine. Anyway. At one point the mother describes her own mental breakdown as “I dropped my basket.” Since I heard that line I think of it often when I’m having trouble carrying around all my shit. It’s like the basket got too heavy so I had to set it down for a while. For most of my life I have set it down as long as I needed to and slowly picked up one item at a time. But uhm, things are different now. I’m reading parenting books and near as I can tell every single one says, “Hey! You know how you behave when you are cheerful and doing ok? Yeah? Ok! That’s perfect! Do that for the rest of your life without let up and everything will work out!” Cause yeah, when I’m on the ball I do this parenting thing pretty well like I taught well. I genuinely enjoy interacting with kids like this. But it is hard. It is unrelentingly hard. And I dropped my basket. But Shanna has informed me that it is time to pick my basket up again. Her behavior is slipping. She’s acting out more. I honestly don’t know how it will work to just decide, “I am not going into denial or ‘stuffing’ my feelings I just need to set them in this box I look in once a week.” I don’t know if I have really tried this before. I can tell you right now that I am nervous. This is hard. Honestly this feels slightly like a step in the wrong direction in terms of worrying about multiples. 😛 But these thoughts are dominating my entire life and that just isn’t working. I can’t be that self-absorbed anymore. I had like a 7 week breakdown. That’s a fucking long time in the life of a child. It has to just end, now. *beat head against wall*

Called my brother

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So really what happened is I called my brother days ago and we’ve played phone tag since then. Anyway. Tonight we really talked. We talked for 45 minutes and there were so many little subtopics. He said he believes me absolutely 100% without question on all of it. I spent a while sobbing and spilling out my memories of our father and what he did to me. I kept apologizing to him because I know he doesn’t want to hear it but he told me that he is willing to listen to whatever I need to say. He considers my mental health more important than his momentary discomfort at hearing these stories. That’s huge. That’s monumental. I mean, it’s not like we are suddenly going to be close and spend time together. But I was just told by a person in my immediate family that the fucked up version of reality I knew growing up was indeed happening. I am not crazy. I am not imagining any of it. I am not lying. My mother and sister can go fuck themselves.

He believes me. He heard what actually happened and he believes me. He told me that yes, I am used as the scapegoat by everyone. My brother believes me.

Sentry

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Right now I am sitting sentry duty next to my elder daughter’s bed. Her beloved bed. You see, it is a Big Girl Bed! She even climbs a ladder to get into it. Picture an overly intense cherubic blond haired blue eyed german ploughhorse. She’s stocky and perky and deliciously incongruous. She wants people to love her so much. We shower her with love constantly. I carry her until my arms give out and then I put her in a carrier and keep going even now that she’s my big 30 lb going-on-three-year-old. Even while her baby sister is on my back. I do this because I remember that agony of need of assurance of love. I remember feeling no one in the world would ever love me enough and desperately clinging to my mother. I was so very attached to my mother. On MDC they think that is a good thing but I’m not so sure it was good for us.

I think of my beautiful child. And I think of my mother. And I think of the power she had over me. The power I have over my beloved, adored, forever wanted Shanna. I begged God for her. I named her and wanted her when I was 13 years old. To think that my mother most likely received the exact same blind absolute trust and love. My mother saw that in her child’s face and let a monster violate her. I can feel my whole body quake with hate and fear and rage. Most of the muscles in my body alternately cramp and flex. This hurts so bad. I hate her. I think if I drove to her house right now I would honk the horn until she came outside and run her over. Oh god. I’m trying to calm the panic attack closing my throat. You fucking bitch. I hate you so much. You did this to me. At the end of the day you stupid bitch. This is all on your head. I hate you. I hate you so much.

Why didn’t you love me?

And that question will never be answered. And no matter how much terror I feel. No matter the nightmare I face sitting next to her bed, my baby needs me to be happy. My baby needs me to take in her love and return it to her as joy. It is so hard to appreciate her like she deserves. I wish that my sweet girl didn’t have to show me her remarkable empathy so often. I wish my baby didn’t offer me hugs and kisses to feel better.

And every time one more person tells me more reasons that who I am or what I am doing is bad or wrong it just makes it one little bit harder. Like what I am doing is not hard enough.

Confirmation

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Today my oldest friend in the world came to visit with her mom. We were born across the street from one another and we are 4.5 months apart in age. So I asked the mom if she knew what was happening to me when I was my daughter’s age. She said yes. She said that all of the kids’ rooms had locks on the door and she asked my mom about it. My mother told her that the locks were to keep my father from molesting us, but she knew they weren’t terribly effective. I asked her why she never turned my mom in and she said, “You weren’t neglected. You were always clean and well dressed and you didn’t go hungry. There was nothing to turn in.”

I’m uhm, predictably not doing so hot. So far I have been assuming that the abuse started then because I remember my acting out starting so young. People knew. It wasn’t the secret I thought it was. They just didn’t stop it.

Food for thought.

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Today my therapist said something very interesting. When I am meeting new people I should basically have it in my head whether I am facilitating Shanna having friends or am I looking for friends for me. Basically if I want Shanna to have friends I should deliberately not befriend the parents. I, somewhat predictably, have mixed feelings about this.

So I got dumped yesterday.

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Not by my husband, by one of the women in my mom group. I got sent a rather hurtful email. To be defensive, because I always am, the hot sauce comment was not even vaguely serious. I would never do that. It was an unkind thing to say at all, but I don’t think this level of response was appropriate. And the ‘cold baths’ were tepid, just not warm and fun. I took zero pleasure in them and I don’t feel they were cruel. They were business like and not *fun*, but Shanna was not harmed in any way and despite not being fond of them she doesn’t seem traumatized by being in less than super warm water.

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I miss Traci

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So I’ve been seeing this woman (that sounds more interesting than it is) occasionally since the first miscarriage. She’s not a bad therapist, but she has a strong focus on EMDR and some weird thing where you pinch the bridge of your nose and tap on your third eye. Not so into the talk therapy part. I feel like the EMDR worked pretty well for me when it came to things like Francesca’s death, and losing my baby, and Traci’s death. Those were fresh and new hurts that were pretty easy to isolate and treat. But right now it’s just not working for me. The last time I saw her she had to ask me, “And who is Noah again?” If you don’t even know who Noah is then you know nothing about me. I’ve been seeing her periodically for over a year and she doesn’t know my husband’s name?

I don’t really have anyone to talk to about the super hard stuff right now. I have Noah, who has nothing more to give. And I have Sarah, who is also really at max capacity. I just can’t unload on them anymore than I already am. I don’t have a space where I can talk about my Byzantine feelings about my children and myself and my future and my family. (Noah’s not really on that list because other than occasional minor irritations he’s just not any kind of problem.) I miss Traci. I hate that I feel so bad for how much I miss her. It wasn’t exactly a ‘friendship’. But she did care about me. I saw her basically every week and some periods more than once a week for over 3 years. She knew every single terrible, horrible, disgusting thing about me and she never blinked. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a person on the planet who knows as much about me as Traci did, not even Noah. It feels kind of pathetic to say that.

I feel very alone and very lonely. And I feel like no one sees me. I miss Traci. The new therapist emailed me today to check up on me. The last time I went in to see her I really really needed to talk and she shut me down to follow her EMDR script and I felt so upset. I’m sorry, visualizing myself as a little girl and giving myself a hug is not going to solve all of my problems. She seemed very aware that I left the session more upset than I arrived. I should respond to her but I don’t know what to say.

How did you hurt your back?

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I remember how blue the sky was.

Movies like to concentrate focus in a way that is just off center. Like when you see the boot lying on its side under the bed and hear springs bouncing so you know they are having sex.

I remember how warm the rock was.

I remember watching the snot roll down the rock because I was crying.

I remember fighting at first and then not at all.

I remember white hot pain that made me want to die.

And my back has hurt to one degree or another every single day for about 20 years. I’m not sure I will ever stop hurting. I don’t remember what exact position torqued my back. At this point I truly believe it just doesn’t matter.

Thinking about judgment

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So everyone has times when their behavior doesn’t exactly match up with their stated positions/world views. It’s a normal thing. There are a few ways this can be dealt with. Someone can more or less subconsciously refuse to look at the discrepancy and continue on their merry hypocritical way–I think this is the majority reaction really; it is certainly the easiest. You can examine your world view more closely and decide that it no longer works for you and you should change it to align with your behavior. You can examine your behavior more closely and decide that it is inappropriate and you need to change it to align with your world view. Or, as Noah points out, you can look at your world view and behavior and decide they both kind of suck and change both. I think this last one is uncommon and maybe a bit drastic. 😉

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