Long Talk with my Bro

My brother and I have been talking for the past coupla months.  Which is a big deal.  Because of the way our mother manipulated us, we have stayed pretty seperate as adults.  So Jem (my bro) has had a helluva month.  He basically has had a trauma breakdown.  And we talk/have talked a lot lately about our childhood and our mother and her behavior.  There is so much I want to say about Jem, but right now, I just need to get down some points that came up in this convo.

1. Mom sat with Jem at a table and said "You have to become a lawyer, it is like a license to steal."  This may not seem like a big deal, who cares.  But it is huge.  Because the mother I know would never say something like that.  So our mother talks to us in different ways.  Meaning she is manipulating us, and is fully aware of doing so.  The Allison/Mother connection would never think "a license to steal" is a good career choice.  We are all about nobility and truth and working hard and making money that way.  And doing good, and being ethical and trustworthy.  So basically, MY MOTHER IS A LIAR, AND QUITE PROBABLY A SOCIOPATH. A PSYCHOPATH, SINCE I NOW KNOW THEY ARE THE SAME THING.  Not just a narcissist, a psychopath.

2.  I found out about yet another time when my mother did not tell me that Jem was sick and had had a suicide attempt.  She has never told me that Jem's problems were that serious, and thus I was never able to support him.  I had NO IDEA how bad it was for him.  NONE.  And I think my Mom deliberately kept the information from me.  She never visited Jem in the hospital, never comforted him.  Nothing.  Angry, anger starting.

3.  Jem just found out that 15 or so years ago, when he was in a relationship with a girl I'll call Mary that Mom did some fucked up stuff.  Mary sent a letter to Jem that she was pregnant, and Mom got her hands on it and Jem never saw it.  Mom then proceeded to attack this young woman (maybe 19) and call her white trash and a gold digger and that she was making it up to get money from Jem.  Mom then paid Mary some amount of money to go away and never talk to Jem again.  16 year old Jem had no idea any of this happened, all he knew was his girlfriend went away and never talked to him again.  He was heartbroken and depressed and started smoking weed.  Which I now understand, probably made mom very happy in her fucked up head.  So fast forward to now (a few months ago), and Mary and Jem connect via Facebook.  Mary asks Jem, what was that all about with your mother? Jem has no idea what she's talking about.  Mary thinks Jem is bsing her, pretending not to know to not take responsiblity, and it takes four or five conversations before the truth becomes clear- the Jem had no idea, and that mom is a monster.

I am very specifically writing these things down so I can take them to my therapist tomorrow.  I am so disgusted and angry that I think I am in intellectualization mode and am numb.  But actually, it may be just acceptance.  My mother is a monster.  I am lucky to have survived.  I hope Jem survives this breakdown part of the trauma fucking path.  I can only suggest to him what I did, which is to cocoon yourself and GO TO THERAPY. He is a different person, so his path will differ.  duh.  I just want him to know that he is lucky to be alive, and that he should pat himself on the back for surviving not only our childhood, but also the past month of shenanigans he has self-harmed hisself through. (I am fully aware of my atrocious grammar).

OK, now I am going to fucking be dark and angry and usefully vengeful and watch "Men Who Hate Women" Swedish version, with the amazing kick ass Noomi Rapace.  GRRRRRRRRRRRR

Do the Work

Fucking fuck.  I don't wanna do the work, but i do wanna do the work, but fuck.  OK, we gotta do the work.  we gotta write the poems.  we've gotta go for the walks.  we gotta fucking do the fucking yoga.  we gotta fucking meditate. fucking meditate. fuck.  we don't wanna.  we wanna do drugs and get high in the sky and teach beautiful theoretical math and fuck the world.  and eat what sugar crap.  but we gotta fucking drag ourselves outta this.   we gotta. we gotta.

We have to do the work.  It's on now, I guess.  It's on.  We are high right now, but I guess it has to stop.  Eventually? (With a Chesire grin?)  Fuck.  Drug Problem.

Drug Problem.

We love the way we feel so much on DXM that we do not want to give it up.  It almost feels like a "gimme" quick cut pull away to me kind of thing.  My precious.  It's MINE, AND I LOVE IT AND FUCK OFF.  fuck. 

And we gotta focus on what the problem is, and actually the problem is not DXM.  The problem is that you are healing from a childhood of SEVERE abuse and mind-fucking and sex abuse and hurt.  And your mother is a very sick person who is not going to be able to go on this journey with you.  And your brother may not be able to go on this journey with you.   He has come a fucking long way, and he may find a way to be happy, but you can't do it for him  I ABSOLUTELY will help him any way that I can, but I can't control  his path.  It would be grotesque to do so.  You are alone.  You are going to make it.  You have to stop doing drugs.  You have to stop doing drugs.  You have to stop numbing reality.  You have to feel the freakiness in real time, not drug time.  You have to feel weird while you are sober.  You have to feel dissociative and wonky while you are sober.  While you are not chemically affected.  It is OK.  It is safe to be dissociative and wonky and sober.  You will not let go and become fully crazy all the time.  You can control it.  It is actually beautiful.  And you can do it.  But although the drug is beautiful and it helps, it hurts you, it is a chemical not meant for your body, it is probably hurting your liver, it is probably hurting your heart muscle, it definitely hurts you ability to have mental perspective and clarity.  Yes, it helps you feel and get to the truth.  It does. I absolutely will not dispute that.  It does fucking WORK.  But it can't be a lifestyle.  And you want it to be a lifestyle.  I do. I want it to be a lifestyle of wonkiness and gut intuition and truth and weirdness and calm and beauty and truth.  I am so scared to do it.

You have to fucking live out loud.  Yeah, that movie.  Cheesy, fuck yeah, but correct.  Live Fucking Out Loud.  You have to.  You can't keep going doing this drug thing.  I mean, you can.  You seem to be handling work, money, therapy and drugs sorta well right now.  You can do it.  You just have to decide is that the life you want?

I've been watching Weeds. Probably a bad idea.  but someone on it said he did all this terrible stuff, just to see if he could get away with it.  And that is sort of how I feel about the DXM.  Like, holy shit, I am dissociated to the fucking moon, high on chemicals and totally living my life.   And it's working just fine.  The only chinks are literally my own truthfulness.  If I didn't go to therapy, if I didn't have a true relationship with my friends, I would be fine!  It's sort of gross.   I could live like this forever.  I'm the one who keeps telling my fucking therapist I'm using drugs.  If I didn't go to therapy there would be no problem.  But I keep fucking going to therapy.  I feel like I need it.

BECAUSE I DO FUCKING NEED IT.  I need to tell my truth and be heard and loved and that is fucking therapy.  OK, I feel like I gotta stop because now I want to defend DXM forever.  OK.  Stop.

I am exhausted

Well, I am officially a badass.  I had one hell, whopper of a migraine last night after I got off the phone, so my sleep was very shallow and troubled.  But I got up and went to group anyway.  And that is when I was awesome.

Trigger Alert:

I told about the memory I had 3 weeks ago.  The memory of being orally raped by a male when I was an infant.  Yes.  Part of me still has a somewhat hard time believing we can remember something that happened when we were an infant.  But most of me believes it.  I have read enough research about traumatic memory that I know it's possible.  And it happened to me.  This is not the first memory I have had about sexual abuse, but it is the most complete and concrete.  It was all senses at once.  Other times I have had body memories, but no visuals, or visuals when I was high that I discounted because I was high.  This happened dead sober, when I was least expecting it, meaning I wasn't trolling for a memory.  It just came. 

I don't understand someone who would do that to a baby.  It is so foreign that it seems almost impossible.  But my body memory was real.  So I believe myself.  I just am devastated.  Devastated that I was hurt before I could even walk, made to dissociate before I could even communicate.  It is a wonder I'm still alive.  I think some seriously terrible things happened to me in that house, and I know seriously terrible things happened to me in the other house.  I know my mother beat me, emotionally abused me and terrorized me my entire childhood until I was 21.  I told her she couldn't hit me anymore at 21.  Twenty fucking one, and she was still in such utter control of me.  37 and the control is just finally waning, after three years of intensive, intensive, intensive therapy.  Almost 4 years now.  Wow.  I don't like to think about it.  It feels like it shouldn't be taking me this long.

But fuck that.  I was one of the most defended people ever.  I was in total unreality about my childhood, because it was never safe before to truly understand how bad it was.  It took me 2 years to truly trust the therapeutic process.

I am so sad, but it is a good sad, an authentic devastation about my childhood.  I had no one safe, ever.  Ever.  So, I am a badass for making it through.  Yes, I am.  We all are. 

On what looks like to me, my mother's hand

How do I both love and hate Ani Difranco.  She is a genius, but cold.  I am jealous of her talent, her drive, her ability to succeed.  I don't think I could have ever been an Ani, but I could have been great.  Is it too late now?  Probably.

I relapsed just now.  Watching porn.  Ugh.  I hate it, but I do it.  I also relapsed on alcohol.  But for some reason that doesn't seem like a big deal.  Because I don't really think alcohol is a problem.  DXM is definitely a problem.

"look with all of you, not with just your eyes."  Albacore, Ani Difranco.

My hands are aging.  My face is not I guess.  I got carded tonight to buy my uggy six pack of Mikes Pink Hard Lemonade.  The guy thought I was in my 20's. Yay.  Or not.  Whatever.

I am so sad.  And so, so, so, so, so alone.  I want to be in love, to have someone love me, but I have no ability to do so.  I want a circle of friends that I can love and love me.  And I don't.  I have 3 good friends.  That is good.  But somehow that doesn't seem like enough somehow.  J says I'm feeling the abandonment.  This feeling of aloneness and emptiness is the emptiness from childhood.  Maybe so, but how do I fix it?  How does that knowledge somehow help?

I think I am close to suicidal again. Death by ennui.

My mother's hands were always on me.  Except when I wouldn't touch her.  But she always had the god-fucking-given right to put her hands on me at any time she wanted.  The right of her being the adult, the right because I was a child, the right because she was my mother and she owned me.  The right of the strong over the weak, over the young, over the helpless.  I loved her and she used that against me.  I put up with so much, because I had no other choice.  I should have left.  Like Suzanne said, at 5 I should have packed a bag, grabbed my 3 year old bother and fucking flown to Paris.  Gotten away from the werewolves.  Werewolf mother, werewolf father.  Werewolf daughter?  No.

Here I Come Again

So I'm writing again because Lara wants me to write. I would like to take some of the credit, but hell, I really don't want to write. But I am at my wit's end and don't know what else to do, so here it is, me writing.

I've been fighting, white knuckle fighting, doing something/anything destructive for the past few days. Over the weekend I was sure I was going to use. Either drink and pick someone up or do DXM and maunder on the beach after watching Dorian Gray. But I didn't. But I still want to. It's early enough still tonight for me to go get some alcohol and be a dumbass.

We have a ton of new people in group, which I wasn't thrilled about at first, but am now glad of it. They are going to bring new energy, new perspectives. Good times.

I really do hate myself. And when I hate myself, I'm embarrassed that I'm still alive. I think I want to kill myself. Ugh. But I think I do.

My watch is too damn big and was fucking up my typing so I just took it off. I guess if I'm going to die, then should I have fun first? I was in this same place in March, when I sent my super-duper awesome email to Dr. . Yeah, there was a veiled "hey wanna fuck?" question in there, but the bulk of the email was about how I hated myself and wanted to travel, get fucked up and jump trains until I died. But somehow that whole part got ignored. Wonder why?

So.... I am coming to grips with the fact that my mom might just suck royally. But I'm not there yet. It would be easier if I could remember some really horrible thing she did to me, but there isn't anything. She just was mean and extremely unpredictable and unsafe. She hit me. She dragged me on the floor. She kicked me. She slammed my head by my hair all the time in the car. She broke my stereo, my most prized possession. But I figured out how to fix it every time she threw it. Fucking bitch.

She left me at the mall once. I was 16 or 17. It was before college. She got mad at me and left me at the mall. I had to walk home probably 6 or 7 (or more) miles. I remember walking home and being so embarrassed. I stopped to eat at a pizza place and somehow felt that everyone could see how gross I was, how contaminated and tainted. I felt like an other, like an "it", but a gross, unwelcome "it", not a neutral being. I was tainted. I just remember being shamed.

When I finally got home I walked back in the house through the front door. I remember trying to decide: front door or through my window? For some reason I chose the front door. Walking through the door was harder than the whole walk home. I just sort of wished I could die and not have to face her. She was sitting in the living room watching TV and didn't say a thing to me. It must have been hours later, it was a LONG fucking walk, with a stop to eat. And she didn't say a thing to me. nothing.

How could she do that to me? How could she not say "I am so sorry, I know I got mad, but I never wanted you to have to walk all by yourself all that way." Or "I went back to look for you and couldn't find you, I'm sorry." She had no idea if I had money or not. And this was long before I had a cell phone. She left her kid alone miles and miles from home and didn't give a shit.

But I did have money. I don't remember if I had my backpack, but I almost ALWAYS had it with me as a teenager, and it was exactly for reasons like that. In fact, maybe that started the backpack thing? But I remember I always wanted to be ready. I always had money, an extra jacket, writing materials and a book. I was safe then. Set for anything. I didn't need her, or safety, or knowing I had a ride home. I could take care of myself. Fuck her. I think. I mean, is leaving me awful? It feels awful, but maybe it's no big damn deal. I mean it's not being raped. It's not being beat up... It's just being... left.