permission

I am giving myself permission to see myself differently.

I am committing myself to write every morning. Just write. Whatever comes through will be enough.

Today I am setting up my fitbit to support beginning steps to becoming fit. I know how. I know that numbers help me stay on track. Achieving goals is good for me to feel good about myself.

It's a trauma response to always feel like something bad is going to happen.

aware now

Jan 7, 2015

Preparing to speak to Dalton today.

• I feel safer living alone. Living with my parents and keeping the secret of incest, I felt vulnerable and that anything bad could happen at any time. Living now with Mag I realize that the presence of someone in my living space (permanently) is a challenge to my sense of physical and emotional security. My last year at Grier I chose to live alone in senior dorm. The 10 years I lived by myself on Bryant I felt safe. The exception (maybe) would be Kate. I am not clear on that yet.
• My presence in this opposite bookend of my life is contributing to recovered memories. I believe that the influx of negativity, fear is connected more to my childhood than the years in between.
• Getting old is like being young. More vulnerable. My 60's are contributing to my sense of personal and emotional safety. More ptsd trauma response.
• Big and burly and in the front of the room I felt the safest.Big and burly in  my 40's I could move. Not in my 50's I became immobile and did not feel safe so I lost weight, and exercised to feel stronger and physically safe.
• Keeping secrets again. The middle of my life I experienced a powerful healing given to me by going public and being an artist and an activist. In my mind I am attached to the idea that this is the way to heal now.Going public. How public and to whom?
• Confession: Wonder how much Catholic dogma which I rejected, remains and governs my ability to heal.
• Sharing our stories with people who have earned the right to hear them through trust is healing. I am not alone. What i feel what I have experienced has been felt by others as good as, worse and better than  myself. It is liberation.
• Public vs, private. So this little girl was publicly shamed and humiliated. Maybe the public confession is a way to say I am not ashamed, you cannot humiliate me, I have taken back my power by telling you publicly .. and there is the rub. What was I saying publicly? I'm ok. You didn't mark me you didn't damage me, this was not my fault, you oppressed me and I have come out from under that and I function and even thrive. I got the satisfaction that I was helping other women do the same and educating the oppressors to stop by taking responsibility for their participation in the oppression. It is retribution.
• Conditioning. Reading about conditioning made me v sad made me cry and upset for the whole day or maybe more. 
• More aware of triggers.Hands of an older man. Cosby stories. Campus rape. Prominence of assault (language included) against women in art culture and media.I can now when sitting in meetings, relax my shoulders, take deep breaths, remind myself  of what is happening in my body may not relate to the situation I am in in that moment. I am aware of how much brain space this takes up. I can feel flight or fight
• More aware of behaviors. Getting to places early, I control the environment and my safety. Always feeling I have to have the answer so no one sees me as weak. If I am seen as weak (little girl) then I am at risk.
• What Bobby did and why. What I did and why. What was I getting? Attention from someone in my family besides my father. The early back-rubs felt affectionate and comforting and loving. I was special to him like I was with my father. By the point in time when it was more than that when it became masturbation and oral sex and I no longer felt good, it felt icky, it felt bad. It wasn't special anymore it was a dirty secret. I was a bad person. I just laid still, eyes closed pretending to be asleep, like it was not happening. I gave no response.
• Sexual expression outside of incest. Neighborhood kids sought me out for let's play doctor. Junior High school boys were threatened by me and had not clue what to do with me.. My girlfriends in High school came to me for advise on sex. Sarah recognized it in me. My lovers too. Always it was...Yeah I knew you would be.... I had been owning this as "what was wrong with me? Why? Because I was conditioned young to be sexual for someone else's pleasure...and to keep it secret...and that became a part of my identity.
• Guilt and shame attached to stopping it NOT UNTIL age 12/13. Why did I let it go on for so long? Let it go on? That's ridiculous. How could I until I was older, stronger, taller, was in my second year at Grier which was empowering to me and gave me the first independence from my parents. I had been on my own at boarding school and I was thriving. That's when I COULD stop it. When I did say no from behind a closed bathroom door, I didn't know the outcome. I was risking a lot. Well I believed I was. Bobby was never violent towards me, never yelled at me, but he could have started that day.
• what is interesting is.. if I have this right .. again a connection between vulnerability based on age...

as clear as i can be ..

I am letting myself down. My life could be much better. Has been better. I want better again.

Kate will be alright. She is healing. I can see that. It has been a very good Xmas. Having Kate here has been so wonderful. I appreciate that she made the drive to come here. She gave me a beautiful new purse that I will treasure. It's perfect for me.

Mag seems unhappy, tired  and uncommunicative.  She's tense and quietly angry. Makes me uncomfortable and tense. She gave me great Xmas gifts..fitbit and a large Frida Kahlo print that is too big to hang on any wall in this apartment.  It's beautiful but I seem ungrateful because I'm not wowed by it. It's too big. Over the top. Kate loved it. I opened it and thought ... way too big. But then I thought about Mag's thoughtfulness and how she tried to find a gift for me that she thought I would love. Very sweet.  I feel like Peg she always complained about her gifts and my dad tired of shopping for her. I think she felt no one was paying attention to her needs or to who she was. This from a woman shut off by alcohol and pills...how could we know her. She was there but away in her own world of hurt. Like me now.

That hurts me and makes me laugh at the irony of it.


We spent Xmas day with Carmen and Sarah. It was wonderful. Everyone together was love. Just that unconditional love we all need. More of that today. Good for us.

months lost

It is being posted today but I wrote it on December 16. Meaning I have embraced failure for 10 more days.



my life as it was.....The one I worked hard to make..make over. The healthy one. Now I am distracted by Mag. I'm living with someone. With Mag.

It is what I am not doing. I'm not counting calories. I'm  not testing my sugar. I'm not writing down what I eat. And I am not exercising. What I do is eat what I want, I'm binge eating and drinking wine and smoking pot. I'm rebelling.  My sugars are up, I'm forgetful, I'm sleeping, I'm not engaging I'm happily absent having abandoned my new life.

I've put on weight and am having trouble fitting into my clothes. I don't want to go out anywhere. I keep leaving work early.  My work is behind.

I'm afraid. I'm feeling threatened in big ways. I've allowed Mag in. Is that it?

I've been caring for Kate who is now divorced. Poor Kate. She has been put through the ringer and suffered a great loss. But I see her gain ground for herself everyday.

I think I pulled off energy from myself for Kate and Mag at the sacrifice of myself. Or maybe I was missing my old self and anxiety.

Vulnerable. Vulnerability. Difficult if not impossible for me to feel vulnerable. Adults survivors of child sexual abused do not often ever maintain healthy intimate adult relationships. I have had sex partners more than healthy adult intimate relationships.

Now I am trying. To have intimacy on an emotional and physical level...to experience both.

And exit stage left. Fight or flight. All day, every day. Exhausted.

visiting the present

I am feeling tectonic shifts in my gut. My walk is different. Feels like I am finally pushing the ass end of that elephant through the eye of the needle known as my life. The absence of the elephant will be a liberation from shame and self hate. A 50 plus year old elephant that has kept me from myself and the present.

Can't breathe

I cannot breathe. I keep having trouble catching my breath and not feeling panicked. Unfamiliar that is how I feel to myself. Unfamiliar. I am tired and have low energy. After work and workouts I have nothing left to do anything else.

If they only knew

Forever

For all the therapy over all the years, starting in my 20s and continuing until now at age 60 I have avoided the most painful part of my life. Yesterday I said the words I have been too ashamed to say. Said them out loud to my therapist. And nothing bad happened. And then the other words came at me from across the room. Words that were painful to hear. Analysis of why I did what I did and why I had never spoken of it.

He was in some ways the person who taught me about pleasure. Taught me about my own body.

Stay present
Do not abandon this long struggled for opportunity to be well and to be at peace with myself
I can work through this

It was closure
It was a moment to find resolution at last
It was a search for identity
a return to what was familiar
was this me?
I went there to find out

Not uncommon as most experiences are
I am not the only person who has ever made that choice

The pleasure part
I do not remember ever experiencing any pleasure
I remember pretending to be asleep
I remember feeling chocked and gagged
Felling bad

Jimmy I could not trust
Jimmy embarrassed me publicly
In front of his friends he humiliated me
He was an embarrassment to the family, in my mind
His elaborate lies and fantasies
I only have memories of being with him and being embarrassed

I am present
I am not discharging
I am exploring the new information in sisterhood with kindness and compassion