RealMental

Being the one that throws up the signal that something is wrong is not the popular course. Even if that signal is as silent as you trying to take care of yourself and setting boundaries with no words spoken.

You are denied and judged by your peers, your very own family of peers. They want to know, “what is wrong with YOU?” “Why are you always bringing up the past and trying to ruin everything?”

No matter how much your therapist, your sponsor, your safe friends tell you that YOU ARE OK. You wonder if you really are ok.

Maybe the family of origin is right? Maybe I am a waste of space that is always living in the past. They ask, “What is wrong with YOU?” as if, I am the root and soul of the problem. No, those questions are merely a distraction from what is really the problem.

Now, I know better. The pain that comes with questioning yourself. No more, I know better. Now, I do.

You are trying to remove yourself from the insanity that lives in a hoarded stack of papers, plastic things, and food from 1996 that cannot be thrown away. The thick smell of smoke and of a person that hasn’t bathed.

The smell of sickness, the dark, pungent smell of mental fucking illness. It makes you physically ill, and no breakthroughs in therapy can protect you from the despair or emotional reaction of knowing that this is what you came from.

WHY DO YOU ACT LIKE EVERYTHING IS OK?! I won’t do it. I will not act “as if” EVER AGAIN FOR HER OR YOU!

You are all sick, banding together stifling the sickness with alcohol and drugs. If only we all could be as peaceful as you try and convince me that you are. I know you are not. I know.

Now more than ever, I am assured that I am on the right road for me. Your road is different from mine, and that’s ok. I am no longer so emotionally intertwined so that I believe everything I do must also be done by you in order for you to be ok.

I only know what I need to do for myself. After many years, I’ve never been surer of anything else in my life.

This is the road of clarity that I never thought I’d walk, but I made it. I’m here. It is possible.

And, NO ONE can take it away from me. Once you know, you cannot ever NOT KNOW.

Racing thoughts gaining momentum in my head.

Why can’t I just go back to bed?

The swirl of crazy surrounds me.

Like maggots freshly hatched.

How do I make it stop?

How do I harvest the crop?

I am the secret keeper in need of a street sweeper.

To sweep my mind and body of emotion that does not belong to me.

How do I make it stop?

How do I harvest the crop?

A pill you say? Well, screw you. Could you be anymore cliché?

If all it required was a pill, to this day I would be ok.

As for now, the monsters retreated into their hiding places.

I heard their sniveling as they walked away.

When they return, I shall feed them those secrets that I’ve been saving.

Perhaps then, I will be ok.

As a little girl, I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world. I watched her closely so I would be able to mimic her moves and gestures. The way she swept her long golden brown hair back away from her face was beauty, at the very heart of beauty.

She was gorgeous, smart, always had the funniest thing to say. She was the very definition of everything I thought to be rebellious and cool. I thought she was so cool that when I watched her stick a needle in her arm, I wanted to try it too.

Soon, she needed saving. I tried to save her in every way I could. I felt useless when I couldn’t save her from herself or cocaine. Towards the end of that run, I waited for that late night phone call telling me she was found dead. She escaped the clutches of death over and over some how.

She found recovery, I gave it some thought. I took her to meetings after I’d just smoked up myself. The people were all so friendly and cool. I followed her into recovery. We shared that together and for a while, it was grand.

She’s the woman that lights up the room when she walks in. She has minions. She had minions. We were all so eager to do her bidding.

She started using again. She lost her home. She was hiding from me. She would say mean things to me in order to push me away. I wouldn’t budge. After all, I knew that trick myself.

I stayed sober, although life kept rolling and even sober life is painful (sometimes, I thought worse without the crutch of drugs and alcohol). I got into therapy. I was still trying to save her. Save her from herself.

She got sober again but it didn’t last. She quit her job, relinquished the job of parenting her child to her former husband. She had no idea where she would find the money to pay her bills, for a roof over her head.

She cannot get out of bed. She doesn’t have a job. She wants to die everyday. She isn’t a mother in the sense of the word that breaks her heart every day. She doesn’t know why. She’s locked in a vicious cycle of hatred and anger all directed at herself.

I cannot save her. For the first time in my life, I understand this. I have to back away, create space as my therapist says. Saving people has always been a hobby of mine. I am finding out that I am really trying to save myself.

As for her, I told her that she is sick and needs some medical help. I told her I will look into getting her some help where she lives. Then, I will drive there and take her to the place to get some help. That is all I can do. I cannot give her any money or rush in and save the day as I like to do.

I hope it works. I don’t want to lose her. I love her. She’s my sister.

The following is part of a recent phone conversation I had with the father. I’m not sure how this subject arose on this particular day, perhaps he felt the need to relieve himself of it, and it had nothing to do with me.

“I know your mother says that I raped her, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. When we separated, I lived in an apartment we would occasionally “see” each other. I did wake up one time and she was giving me a blow job. But, I never raped her. Ever.”

I was unsure on how to respond, and for some reason this popped out, “I’ve been told that was how I was conceived.”

He responded with “I know I was doing a lot of drinking back then, but… (He trails off)”.

Me thinking to myself, “why must he bring this up with me?”

For many years, things like this were openly discussed in my family due to lack of boundaries. I thought it was normal. I had to be told by an outsider that it is inappropriate conversation between parents and children.

Today, I feel the error that exists in the lack of boundaries. I feel it in my heart, my insides, and my mind.

The process of putting names and/or labels on certain issues helps to reduce my anxiety and to let them go more easily.

When I started going through my bag of funk, I was confused about what everything was and how to sort it all out. One of the first symptoms I noticed was that being in the company of certain people made me feel icky. It’s been a long process of learning to listen to that voice inside.

Not only were the feelings overwhelming, but also I had no idea of how to put words to what I felt. I was my own mobster tying a cement block to my leg and throwing myself in the river repeatedly, never knowing why.

I cannot control other people, god forbid. What I can control, is my thoughts, and how I allow outside things effect me.

I have been pregnant three times in my life. I have only one real person to show for those pregnancies. The first was aborted, the second was miscarried, and the third is the child that I was blessed with.

For many years after the abortion, I would feel guilty for being able to become pregnant when there are so many women in the world that were a better fit for parenthood than myself at the time. I was 21 years old.

This is the story about the first pregnancy.

There was a man that was to be my lover off an on for 10 plus years. We had years of celibacy between us with just the friendship to pass the time. For years I thought he was my one and only soul mate and we were destined to be together. I still believe he was one of my soul mates. Age has given me the knowledge and belief that we can have more than one soul mate in our life time.

I remember the night I went to tell him that I was pregnant. He was working late at the studio. He was a photographer you see, all artsy and hip and chic and cool. He was anything but hip, yet talent dripped from his fingertips like rain water.

I walked into the old red brick, four story studio building that I saw every day as I arrived and departed from my place of employment.

As luck would have it, he got a job that was the street over from the street in which my office building was. Purely coincidence. We had a lot of those “coincidences” over the course of those 10 plus years.

He knew I had something serious to discuss so we walked up to the top floor of the studio which was the attic. The windows were dusty as was the floor and everything stored up there.

The scene is forever etched in my mind as if I am watching a movie. We stood far apart as I struggled to find the words to tell him.

My first reaction was not to tell him, but I was there and I had to have my say. I explained the situation and I got the feeling he already knew. We were like that, not always needing words to know what the other was experiencing.

I quickly let him know that I did not plan to carry the pregnancy to full term. I was not ready, I had been drinking and using drugs very heavily although at this point, I was newly sober and terrified.

I remember exactly what I was wearing the day he picked me up at my mother’s house for the procedure. A blue sweater knit top with thin white stripes, and matching skirt with my sexy boots. I thought I was hot stuff when I wore those boots. Not that day though. That is what got me into this mess and I felt like the lowest creature on the planet.

As I mentioned before, this man has talent. While waiting for him to arrive, my mother suggested that maybe, I should not have the abortion because he could be famous one day. You can imagine my jaw dropping to the floor. She was the one that taught me to see people from the inside out, and certainly never to use other people as collateral.

I think she was trying to say anything she could think of to have me not go through with this. We were Catholic, and maybe just maybe she didn’t want me to spend my afterlife in eternal fire.

I tried to explain to her that I would be doing the child an injustice if I were to try and bring it into the world right now. I would have a child when I could live right by that child.

The down side to this man that was my soul mate is he had trouble with emotions. He was unsure on how to express them, talk about them, and probably even feel them. We had that in common; I was not capable of those things myself back then.

This trait of his made my experience a little less than stellar. I mean, I wasn’t expecting the abortion to be a party. Nothing about it is supposed to be positive. It isn’t. And it wasn’t.

It was horrible and there are permanent scars from the experience. I have not ever regretted it, but I have experienced deep emotional pain that was my due. It is the most unnatural act that I can think of. Aside from killing your live children.

Many years later that man and I would finally be able to talk about it, but only a little. He thought the baby would be a girl and I thought it would be a boy. We both have children of our own now and we are married to different people.

To know us then, you never would have anticipated either of us giving up being single and all the freedom that comes with that, nor either of us having children. Yet, here we are.

I am not proud of what led me to the abortion, but it isn’t hiding out in the shame box anymore. By allowing myself to be human and forgiving myself, I am a better person. My errors in judgment are fewer and far between.

A very wise nun told me once, “the mistake isn’t in the falling down. it’s in the not getting back up.”

It was a Sunday morning and I was sneaking out of the house. I was six and desperate to try out my older sister’s kite. I had to sneak because they wouldn’t let me play with it willingly.

My mom was in her bedroom sleeping so I had to be quiet.

I pulled a stool over to the front door in order to unlock the locks. I was terrified that I would wake my mom up.

All I wanted to do was to fly the kite. They never let me do anything. They were always bossing me around, not letting me do anything.

Once outside and trying to fly the kite, a man walked over to me. He asked if I needed help flying the kite.

Wow, I couldn’t believe my luck! I sure needed some help to fly the kite. I had no idea how to fly a kite so I was thankful this stranger was going to help me.

In hindsight, I felt like something was weird about him. Maybe it felt weird because I knew I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to do.

After a short time, the man led me over to the side of a house. There were two cars parked end to end. He walked over and leaned on the back end of one of the cars.  He said, “since I helped you fly the kite; I need some help from you.” I was indebted to his kindness, and I thought that sounded fair.

He began to unzip his pants, and my heartbeat sped up a zillion beats. Something was wrong here, but I couldn’t pinpoint it and after all, he was an adult.

I am not supposed to talk back to adults. I am supposed to be seen and not heard. He pulled his privates out of his pants and held it.

He told me that he wanted me to hold it. I froze. I dropped the kite and ran home. It was that slow motion running, the kind that seems you will never get to your destination.

Once on the carport, I opened the green door and closed it. Then climbed on the stool and locked all the locks and ran into my room.

It would be a little while before I realized that I dropped the kite. I was going to get in serious trouble for losing that kite. Maybe I could just act as if I had no idea what happened to the kite, maybe it just disappeared or something. Yes, that’s a plan.
My mother heard me come back in the house and wanted to know where I’d been. She said I looked like I’d seen a ghost.

I told her what happened and later when my dad got home, Mom told him about it. I got into trouble for the kite situation.

My dad packed my sisters and me in the car and went looking for Mr. helpful. We found him standing on a street corner holding a bible. Dad stopped the car, and got out. He told Mr. helpful that he had better believe in that book he was holding because if he ever came near any of us again he was going to need that book.

I was in shock at the time and unable to retain any information. The only reason I remember what my dad did is because my sisters told me.

Things like this continued to happen to me, and I never told anyone. Not sure why, perhaps I thought it was my fault and it served me right.

This is a problem, children thinking perversion and abuse is their fault. In order to protect myself and not make people do bad things, I tried to be invisible. I was invisible for many years.

I covered up with clothing. To this day, I can go into a panic when trying to decide what to wear.

There are a few behavior patterns that were implanted on this day. Abnormal fear of making mistakes, not trusting myself which led to “checking” behavior (OCD), do not under any circumstances ask for help, or receive it.

The effects of abuse will always be a part of who I am.

My job is to not let it take me over.

It was 1986 and I’d just graduated from high school. I was seventeen years old. Within one week, I moved out of my mother’s house. She was kind enough to buy me luggage as a graduation present.

I was thrilled, excited, and scared with finally being free from my mother’s domain. Despite my sheer joy from being out of her house, I had no idea what to do with myself.

My three of my best friends (two girls and a guy) and I drove to the beach after graduation. I had serious plans for the trip, to get as drunk as humanly possible and to stay that way for a week.

Somehow, we managed to procure some wacky weed from a Burger King along the way to the beach. (We had no previous knowledge of this Burger King with a wacky weed salesperson inside. It was luck.)

One night after we’d been there a few days, we were all at the pier and we met some guys. Before long, these boys followed us girls back to the condo. (Our guy friend was straight, so no boys for him!)

I was beyond drunk and out of my mind. I was fighting the establishment and man was I pissed. Funny how my anger only served to harm me, never anyone else.
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