|
My Profile
She blinded him with whiteness - 2008-07-25
|
1:33 p.m. - 2008-03-25
Mick often asks me how I do it. How come I'm not a terrible dick-weasel? Why aren't I angry and bitter? As I have many times already I smile and remind him once again I wasn't always like this. For many years I was angry. I didn't know I was angry, but I was. I was everything all abused kids are- angry, ashamed, self-loathing and needy. Overriding all of those things though was pride. I was too proud to acknowledge I was broken inside. Not to myself and not to the people around me. Somehow I'd twisted it around that if I ever acknowledged my brokenness then they'd have won. If I gave up my pride and admitted that they'd hurt me then I lost. They'd have taken from me the one thing I swore they never would, which was myself. Beat me, lie to me, shame me, starve me, rape me, humiliate me, they'd done it all and yet I would not be broken. They'd never, ever get to me. In short…I was a fool. I could never ask for help because my pride wouldn't let me see I had any problems. Can't fix what isn't broken, right? Me? I was fine. All kinds of fine. They hadn't gotten to me, no sir. Nevermind I waited my whole life for someone to love me. Desperate for it I threw myself at anyone who paid me the slightest bit of attention, compounding it with an uncanny knack for choosing those who sensed that huge well of desperate loneliness and happily used it against me. Striking the worst bargains in the world in which I gave everything I had for the tiniest, most grudging crumbs in return. Nevermind that my pride in never showing any flaws gave me a glittery and damn intimidating outside. To the casual observer I was too much. Too tall. Too pretty. Too smart. Too amusing and chatty. Too sexy. An overwhelming force that many sought to cut down to a manageable size for their own comfort and there I was so small, so broken inside I couldn't see myself as they did and could only hurt and bleed over what I saw as rejection. I guess it was, but not how I understood it in that I thought they were seeing the true me and turning their backs. All they were seeing was some superficial crap I couldn't help being and letting their own insecurities have a field day. Nevermind the anger that poisoned me. Because of my pride and because I'd been taught so well that nobody gave a shit I turned it all inward. I bit my nails to the quick. Skin rashes that peeled and bubbled and bled covered the soles of my feet and the palms of my hands. I had my first ulcer at 14. I was never without a bucket of Tums and grew used to seeing blood in the toilet after I chucked. Whatever was done to me I owned and turned on myself. Because I would not give it heart space or head space all that rage and hurt settled into my flesh. Halloween night in 1991 I had too much to drink at a party. After getting home Mike thought my drunken inability to stop him was a dandy time to finally get that anal sex he'd been wanting. He did it and then hied himself off to bed. Leaving me on the floor with an ass full of cum and a completely shattered sense of self. Even then my pride wouldn't let me admit to being violated. I did as I always had and refused to be 'broken'. So what my husband had sodomized me and left me on the floor like garbage? It was hardly the first time it had happened to me. If it couldn't break me at 7 years old I certainly wasn't about to let it break me at 27. Yeah, I was fine. Unable to find any other way of dealing my body began eating itself in bigger chunks than it ever had before. Within the year my auto-immune system had gone completely fubar. I couldn't walk, I couldn't get my eyes to work in synch, I couldn't eat, but hey, I was fine. See? They hadn't won and they never would. I hadn't been 'gotten to'. The plaque on my brain stem? The misfiring neurons? The incontinence? Just more of my shitty luck, I guess. No matter, I would take on my wreck of a body and force it to be well again. If my mother and my husband hadn't been able to bring me down I wasn't about to let something as silly as a fried central nervous system win and finally break me, that much was certain. Told you I was a fool. So full of pride. So sure I'd prevailed when in fact all I'd ever done was lose. That 'self' I was so proud to have hung onto? She was nothing. If I'd had any self at all I wouldn't have bought my own blind bullshit for a single minute. If there'd been any me inside me I'd have known I was within my rights to place the blame where it belonged- on those who'd hurt me. Instead I put my chin up and congratulated myself on being so fine. Unscathed. Unhurt. Right as rain. Yuppers. My sleep world was a nightly horror show. My body was eating itself. I stayed married to a man who not only raped me, but whose cruelty and emotional abuse bordered on the pathologically criminal. Stayed married to him, had another kid with him, bought and renovated a house with him, nearly starved myself to death trying to woo him back from his twitter boned little girlfriend and all the while gave myself snaps for having a marriage which was just as fine as I was! But a funny thing happened about 7 years ago. A stroke of crazy good luck came my way. A few weeks before 9-11 I wandered into Diaryland. Never heard of blogging. Not a clue what to do with this funny little forum, but I was hooked from the first entry. I certainly didn't deliberately set out on a journey of self-discovery and healing, it sort of snuck up on me. Which I suppose it had to because if I thought that over the course of writing some 2,000+ entries I'd finally get around to having that long overdue breakdown I'd have run out of here screaming. Of course with that idiot pride of mine leading the way. Fortunately I did break. Again and again and again. Each time hammering through that awful misguided pride to the ouchie meat beneath. Those unacknowledged festering wounds finally got some attention. Damn it was ugly too. Some of you were here, you remember. Slowly there began to be some actual me. Not fine. Not unscathed. But real. Real to myself. Real enough to stop running from my past and begin to accept the damage that had been done. First the damage they inflicted. Then finally the damage I'd been doing to myself. It's getting better. Some days I'm on top of the world. There's days when I feel like nothing but scar tissue. Other days I crawl away to mourn and cry. And that's okay. Because 'okay' is what I all about now. Not perfect. And never again will I be 'fine'. But okay is do-able. A worthy and happy thing to be okay. When I brush my teeth I look at the woman in the mirror. Physically she ain't what she used to be, but those green eyes behind the bifocals aren't sad and haunted anymore. Those eyes don't flinch away and I don't hurriedly assure myself I'm fine, fine, fine around a mouthful of Pepsodent. I can look straight on at the woman in the mirror and ask the question. "How are you doing, LA?"
|
