1:42 p.m.||||2005-08-22
So, shortly thereafter, Josh got thrown out of preschool and I went completely insane. I am really tired of so much.
I left my job, in classic non-confrontational fashion - didn't go back and hardly called and haven't spoken to them since. It was over the minute it became degrading.
So now, unemployed, uninsured, at home in the day with the four year old, trying to figure out how 12 steps are going to give me back my life. I'm in a really pissy mood today, but I brought the whole thing on myself.
I find it tiresome that we drag a complex of issues with us through life. Isn't that a bore? An emotional cripple because of some fantasy I had in childhood that I could ignore it all away. I'm finding this isn't exactly true. And if it sucked so much to go through it the first time, hurray that I get to do it all over again. I wish I could do the rehab for a year trip. I need an overhaul that I can't initiate myself.
8:29 p.m.||||2005-07-08
my "sponsor" is into the heal your inner child thing. She suggested I dig out a pic of my little inner child, set it up in a frame and preparte to meditate with her in mind; you know, focus on reassuring her, giving her the trust she needs to deal with the adult world, etc.
I couldn't find the picture- my photos are mostly in storage. I had in mind one of me when I was about three, standing in a psychadelic little dress, with my chubby knees poking out, and I stand making a photo clicking gesture in front of my own face, with little squinty eyes. My mother stands next to me, in psychadelic floral pants, with hair to her waist, smiling as she won't do ever again, in any picture my father (or anyone else for that matter) as she cannot seem to step outside herself for one goddamn minute, just to make nice for a camera, just to pretend, for one minute, in any photo with her daughter, that she had the kind of life, ever that might make her smile.
I thought that that photo of myself was endearing enough that I could stand to focus on the child in that pic as an inner child worth saving. Also, it's one of about only ten that made it all the way through history to still exist as a picture I own, after my dad lost all of the rest of my childhood photos, in the moving from city to city he did briefly in his early marriage to the woman who replaced us all. As a note, neither he nor stepthing ever would admit that they had had the pictures of my infancy in their possession - they blamed it on my mother. Little did they know I would later need those pictures to recreate memories I successfully tuned out, after training myself quite well, in the midst of trauma, to forget what I coudn't accept. Which, back then, was pretty much all of it.
So I settled on searching for an older inner child - one when I was about 8 - or about in third/fourth grade. I pulled one out, where I stand flanked by mother (smiling only because we stood with family friends), my father's biking buddy and his wife. My hair is gruesomely short - the trend that began in answer to my attempt to cut my bangs when I was in kindergarden - hair to my ass - and they were so inflamed they neutered me, turning me into an androgynous eunuch who would have to defend herself against insults of being a boy. I am chubby but straight as a stalk, wearing an awkward green and blue rectangle laden attempt at a shirt, gawky pants, and a look of trying to please.
The photo of me at three gamely captures me doing what I do well - turning the camera away from myself to look at you. And the second captures me gamely doing what I do best, putting on the face, playing the game, trying to make nice for the camera. The year before my babysitter put her breast in my mouth while I was blindfolded.
Recently I have become extremely angry with my mother for failing to protect me. From anything. From my father's never ending, crippling criticisms, jaunts, kids, yells, spankings and degradations. To protect me from the unwanted oversexualizations that arise when a child is confronted with an adult's preverse sexual attentions to a child. To protect me from feelings of inadequacy, depression at powerlessness, to protect me from relentless teasing from other kids, and from the occasional ass kicking they liked to give me.
She protected herself from my father by acting out passive-agressively. She could not have an honest argument, but could slam doors to infinity. She could ignore his sleeping around by bitching incessantly, by ignoring his attempts to be a real human, and by dealing with minor transgressions by audibly making known she was angry without ever having to be honest and get to the real issue.
She was a frigid, uncaring cold person to him, though he mainly deserved it. And while she loved me and gave me attention, she also failed to model what a normal healthy woman is, she mad me think all fathers and dads are insensitive tryants, and she taught me that you can't win in those situations, you can't stand up for yourself, but you can manipulate by being in a perpetually bad mood.
She protected herself from feeling like a poor mother by reading. Reading book after book after book.
So, when I took out the picture I will settle for in the effort to heal my inner child, it dawned on me. Though she represents the mechanisms I developed to survive, I look at her and I hate her just as much as every kid who ever picked on her. I just want to take her and fucking annihilate her.
I am not able to be honest with my sponsor yet. And recently, I failed at something very important. I might never get past this impasse and am sort of paralyzed by anger I have for at least four important people in my life. And I see something now. Yesterday Dave held me and forgave me and said that I don't know who I am yet because I am still in the shell of the false self I had to invent in order to survive. That hit me in my gut for a minute - and then I felt tremendous relief for a minute that in spite of the unbelievable roller coaster shit hole of a ride we're on at the moment, that he can still look beyond that and love me.
We miss each other so much. And I am distracted, in my attempt to "recover" by an insidious hatred for my mother for being just an unbelievable, and Godless, control freak, whose real misery right now, and possibly forever, is that instead of loving me, she thinks she can somehow control me. She does not undertand what it is to be addicted to something (other than cigarettes) and to have no control over it. And to know that, in its grips you relinquish whatever modicum of control you thought you had over anything else. Which, pathetically, but truly, is so little, that you might have to kill yourself rather that face the reality of that. She will never have the satisfaction of knowing I will be ok. To her, to manage my checkbook successfully is to be able to sleep at night. What she doesn't realize, as I get ready to step into this abysmal precipice of trying to heal, is that what I am really facing is so much worse than financial insecurity, it really is a matter of life and death, and I wonder sometimes, what she would really want for me, if she could stop obsessing, manipulating and lying long enough to investigate.
I need to cut the umbilical cord. She has become another person to either please or manipulate, and I think she is an impediment to me emotionally.
Ah.
It's a phase. I'm sure it'll pass, and I'm not sure why I came here to tell you all this.
I'm just pissing nails, at the moment.
8:59 a.m.||||2005-05-21
I'm sitting here in the tooth whitening strips grimace. Grrrrr.
Today is the party for Josh's 4th birthday - tonight at Chuck E. God help me. Literally.
In other news, Dave is doing muuuuuch better, I am feeling serene, and the sticker incentive chart for Josh? Worked like a charm. He just wanted some control, and some boundaries. He gets so excited by taking ownership of his behavior - he sees that he can actually plan a little, he understands consequences better, and after learning a couple of anger management tools, seems to actually get some little part of it. Nothing is cuter than watching a 4 year old take deep breaths, count to 18 and then report "I feel better!" Holy crap. He's so awesome. And smart. And 4. Gotta go.
You've been great.