Possarinhos

The leading questions for this 3rd chapter of the "Are You Mad at Me?" self help book that I am working through:

Is there something that you are grieving? (Notice if any resistance comes up as you acknowledge it, that's okay.) 

I am always grieving something, it seems. This time around, I think I am grieving the feeling of insecurity that I've carried with me for my whole life. I still will always carry a bit of it. But, right now, I feel okay about the load I have. I wish that I could burn it and it would just disappear, but it just seems like I carry around lead ashes of all the insecurity instead. (Meaning, I can't get rid of it until I unpack it and every time I re-pack it, it seems to be lighter or I'm stronger. Or both.) I always feel resistance to this type of healing. I want to cower away from the feelings. I feel proud of how I can handle it more than I ever did before. 

Is there something you feel angry about? (And remember you are allowed to feel angry.)

Yeah. I do feel angry. I'm angry I can sometimes feel powerless to what men say and do to me. I hate that feeling. Even something small can trigger all of these feelings of helplessness. It can just be something so miniscule that wasn't even intended as a slight- but I feel the impact coming at me of all the times I wasn't able to stop it from coming at me before. I recognize that there are some levels of being able to say, this isn't that time and I get that, but I still feel this way- I am getting better at not reacting to it as if it IS all the times that came before. To just say, calmly, well this is uncomfortable. 

As you reflect on your past, are conflicting emotions coming up for you?

This entire entry is a walking contradiction. I don't want to be sexually overpowered, I do, then no, but only sometimes when I feel like it's with the right person and I want it... What am I even talking about anymore? Yes. The answer is, yes. It's conflicting emotionally for me to think about these things. 

I am allowed to acknowledge the loss that I feel. I can give myself the validation that others can't.

I think it's relevant, and I'm not trying to force a chapter I am not ready for, or doubling up on it just to double up, but because I feel like it was all part of the same connected healing. I'm not making up for lost time. I am healing in the timeline I need to heal in. 

So, the next chapter, four:

Take a moment to imagine your inner critic, what does it look like? Maybe it's your scared younger self, or maybe it's a character who represents your younger self. 

I took a really long time to find a way to speak to myself in a kind way. It was never something that I learned. I had to reteach myself that my inner critic can take care of me instead of be an enemy that I don't want to listen to. I started listening to my gut and forcing myself to acknowledge that I wasn't being kind to myself and that opened up so many wounds. It was debilitating for many years. I think I have gotten myself to a better place, where my inner critic is more like me. Generally, I mean well for myself, sometimes intrusive thoughts aren't nice, but I stop myself and let them go. Build myself up instead. I have always been scared to be myself. It's a trait I learned growing up. Now I know it is masking. Masking ADHD, masking trauma, whatever way I want to look at it, it's just not exactly healthy to use that as a go-to healing mechanism, but it is the tool I have. I am learning to embrace the masking I do to protect myself so that I can get better at listening to it and accepting that part of me, even though sometimes I hate it for silencing me. Compartmentalization is in the same category for me where I know that I use it all the time to protect myself, but it also stunts me so I need to remember to go back and unpack things and work on myself and heal those parts after I tuck it away in times when I cannot. Instead of hoarding it like a sad denial treasure trove of toxicity. 

Recall a time when your anxious thoughts told a story that wasn't true. How might those thoughts have been trying to protect you?

Well, as I said, I guess. Anxiety for me is just my mom telling me I can't do it because she could never do it when she was my age. She will be in awe of all the courage I have but then tell me to question myself over it. I have stopped listening to her or asking her for advice or anything until I am already out of the zone of vulnerability I can have with new things. I don't need her judgment. Or my own. Or anyone else's, really. Of course, I know that my mom has always tried to protect me and as a result, my inner voice that she narrates at times, also tries to protect me, but it's not a healthy coping mechanism. I shouldn't be afraid of the unknown. Or the things I haven't experienced for myself. Just because she went through it, doesn't mean I have to. I can choose a different way to live it. I have always known this, but it isn't always easy to just say, "I'm no longer anxious about this." It's not so simple. But I have made a lot of progress there over the years. Now, it just hits me sometimes. Like I just need a lot of self-reassurance, but that isn't always available, especially when starting a new relationship. I have to just blindly trust that I am not going to be hurt on purpose. I have to blindly trust that it is okay to feel like I am hanging over an edge sometimes. The drop isn't even that far. I might get a little bruise, but I'll be okay. I've been through a lot worse and survived. I know it's never a good feeling to get hurt, but I'm not putting myself in a position to be easily manipulated into harm's way. I am just in a normal amount of vulnerability. 

Just because it's a thought, doesn't mean it's the truth. These thoughts are not me. I am the observer of them. 

Last night I sat on my pretend porch (just a chair on the sidewalk, really) and read. I have cushions I bring out and an electric candle if it is dark. I have a lighted background e-reader and I don't need the candle to see. It is entirely for ambiance. I sometimes have a glass of wine and sip it thoughtfully as I am reading through chapter after chapter. (I may sit and read for several hours before I realize it is late or I am weary of sitting in the same position for so long. I desire the ability to lay down at this point.) I engross myself in the books I read. I am reading to myself, in my head, and I am picturing the scene. I will use the words that the author has described to set the background to this world as I scan the words on the page. I mean, I am in another world. Entirely inside my head. The ideas may be fabricated by myself to adapt to the general idea of the world, or the actual world the author intended. It is hard to say I am picturing what they wanted me to, but I can say, I picture it. I have been reading a fantasy novel series that is set next to a beautiful forest with ripe, bursting berries, a species of beings that are striped and speckled unlike humans. They are at war with the humans and I feel their pain. On both ends. The author does a great job of describing the split of the man character's spirit into two different people, both of whom, do not belong. Not to each other or the world's they occupy. After 2 books, this character has not figured out how to be himself in both worlds. It's simultaneously agonizing and entirely entertaining. 

Sometimes, a person walking down the street will pull me out of this world. I may nod, or smile, or say, "Hi!" before returning to the world. Sometimes, a loud car or music will grab me and I scowl that I was mentally interrupted and then sink back into the story. I can be entirely living two different lives while I read about a man living two different lives. There's the story life, the world in the forest that feels like a dream, and then the "real" world where I live and breathe and people are in existence, the "human" world of the story. I was in this space when I heard, "...walked past you earlier..." and I realize that someone is talking to me as they walk by. My brain tries to work three times as hard to stop the story world from playing, stop reading the words, which is made slower by the wine, and back track to what this man has said. All the while, he is still talking. I infer that he said, "Now, I..." before the other part I caught and then I run to catch up to the rest of what he said, as he is still talking to me passionately, "...and said hello, you know you can get to know your neighbors out here, you don't need to just act like we don't exist..." I furrow my brows thinking that he is intending to put a racial barrier behind his words, or maybe an ageist one. He is older, dark skinned, he has a wooden cane that looks almost handmade out of twisted wood, it is sanded smooth and charred a bit, or maybe it is the color of the wood, and heavily shellacked. Maybe the "we" he refers to is people of color generally? Or maybe he means older people? Since I often get mistaken for someone in their 20s, I can't deny he could have meant the weight of all generations are on my shoulders right now for being disrespectful of an older gentleman, which clearly, he is trying to tell me he is being disrespected in some way. 

I do not like the tone he is whipping at me, as if his passing me by and not looking up from my book is an extreme slight to his entire being. I frown and wonder when he will stop talking so I can process all the weight of his words: He is interrupting me. I am an introverted person, living my life, exactly how I want to in this moment. I am reading. That requires attention to what I am doing. I don't owe a random person on the street any of my time or energy. That belongs to me. It's my time and energy. But, in the moment, I have a numbing empathy that is encompassing everything I am listening to and I forget that I am allowed to just ignore people who are taking up my time and energy for themselves, without my permission. He continues on, through all my thoughts racing, "...it's okay to say 'hi,' 'hello,' 'how are you?' you don't got to be afraid to get to know your neighbors." He's almost to the next house before I can get a word in. I am slow to respond because I am stepping into reality, a fight I didn't know I was in, and the extreme strangeness of someone telling me who I am without knowing me at all. My brain catches up and all the words said, that I heard in a different order, register fully. I have a lot that I could say. I choose, "Hi. I meant no disrespect. I'm sorry [you feel that way]...?" He didn't reply and kept walking. I frowned at his shadowed back as he stepped around a car and into the street light before crossing the street. All the while, his steady pace with the cane helping him like he hadn't said anything at all. Tears welled in my eyes for a moment and I was left feeling hollow. What a strange thing to do to someone. 

Excuse me? Since when do I owe anyone anything from my time or my peace? What? I genuinely have nothing against any stranger I see on the street. I am recalling I saw him walking by earlier and I know I nodded at him. I don't think he said a word to me. What the actual fuck? This sent me on a path. I am realizing that this whole week has been a test to my patience. There has been so many times that I've been stepped on. None of it in any harsh ways, but it has brought up ways that I have been cruelly kicked down a peg. I have been fighting for a chance to remain standing. To say, "No. You do not get to take what is mine." I will not go on being a doormat because that is what you thought you could make me. No. I realize that this whole week, I have been fighting ghosts and feeling justified in it. That the approach I keep using was the one I should have taken in the past, but the moment is gone. The old man with the cane has passed by. He isn't listening. He never was. Because, it was never about what I needed or said or didn't say or even who I am. It was about him. He wanted to feel like he had an impact in that moment. He did. Maybe not in the same way he wanted, but he sure got one. He will never know that it sent my thoughts going to a place I should have come to on my own, but maybe I do always need other people to bounce my ideas off of, don't I? 

I don't have to engage. I can just listen to what comes up and give it time and think about it first. I don't have to respond. I can just be in that moment. 

I remembered mid-week that I didn't work on the questions I told myself I would each week. To work through some of the stagnation I have been living in. To see if I can break a barrier and be the next level of person I was always meant to be. To keep going. To keep healing. Understanding. Be worthy of myself and to others I care about. To be worthy of the love that I know I deserve. Love I want to give, receive, and hold onto for myself and others. I didn't work on it. I just let my body process as it came up, forgetting every part of me is not living in the past. I am here, in the present. 

But, I was frustrated all week. I forgot that I am still always healing. I didn't remember that I can stop and reflect.

I don't regret how I spent my free time last weekend or last week. Not in the slightest. I chose to allow things to just be. I regret my choices at work and in response to my kids, at times. But I stopped myself and remembered that it's okay to back track. It's okay to say sorry and move on. To change my tone or attitude. I don't need to go all in on a feeling. It's funny how often I start to get into the loop and then a simple word or phrase can remind me that it's just that. A trauma response. A loop of indecision. Something that no longer applies. I felt free at that. You don't have to fill the space with anything. It can just be.Very true. Something I would have said if I was on the other side of it. I was accidentally stuck in a trauma loop. Thinking that silence meant something was coming. Something bad. The silence could be that I was being ignored. That I was getting silent treatment. Pushed out of something I wanted to be a part of- or that it could mean that the "other shoe" was about to drop. Instead, I was given the reassurance that silence was just... that. Just a comfortable space in which I can be with someone else and not have to feel obligated to fix. I forgot. I forgot what that felt like. To just... enjoy the silence with someone else. I can do that alone. I do that with my kids sometimes. Friends. Family. It happens. But, I didn't remember when I could just be okay with the silence and I wasn't processing the thoughts behind my gut urging me to listen. I asked my gut, Hm? So, what do you have to say? My gut said: 

So, there was nothing. I could be content with the silence. The hug I got in response was so surprising I almost toppled. It was comforting, even a side squeeze, so quick I barely registered I got one. Oh, I thought to myself, oh. I was reminded of another squeeze I didn't know I needed in that moment. The hugs I have been given at times I wasn't expecting it, but just comes in time with intimacy. Especially when you are understood. The ones like I always give to people that come to me with needs of healing. I stood there, dripping with water, getting a squeeze. The impact of words catching up with my brain. The fact that I couldn't previously understand were needed so much. The understanding of my inner child needing a hug in the present was always there, but never received. Never gratified. Maybe this was the kind of healing I needed all along. Someone to gently tell me it's okay and they get it and it's fine to feel that way and it's also fine that you aren't healed yet and no words were even passed. Just a little squeeze. Oh. I have made a lot of people feel better, if this is what it is like on the other end. To have space held for you is really nice. No judgment. No need to even say those words... "No judgement." It was just felt. It was expressed and received and taken in fully. 

I'm pausing here. It's because I have been rolling a few things around in my brain. Times when I can't help it but the trauma pops up. Like an image burned into my brain. An image I don't want to share. Like it makes it more real somehow to give it permanency with words. But, I feel like I need to. To share how it feels. That even in times I am most vulnerable or intimate, that it still pops up in my mind. I have to take the mental hit. To dissociate for a moment, to come into the image and then force it out again. Then to come back to the task at hand. To remember to enjoy what I am doing now. Because the image in my mind that I just got rid of was never supposed to be a part of what I want to experience now. I didn't want it then. I still don't want it for my past. I have to force, figuratively, it's ugly head down. It's different now. I know that memories change as you get older. As you work on things. Some of the pieces are carved like a headstone. Time has washed away a lot of it, but some of it lingers. The lines of the words are still able to be read, if you look hard enough. The impact of the trauma is still making a mark on me. Even if I don't see it clearly anymore. 

This is an opportunity to stop reading. This is your trigger warning. I need to write about my experiences with being a child and getting sexually abused. I have to write it out to heal a bit more from it. You don't have to read it though. You can just move on. You can just skip it. I'll put a bold face type at the beginning of the paragraph after it so that you know where you can pick back up into the writing that is outside this trigger warning. If you keep reading it, I am not going to be held responsible for what it brings up for you. This is always for me. Only me. I do not write for you. I write for me. I write to heal. Not to hurt anyone. Sometimes I break open old wounds. But sometimes, for it to heal properly, I have to. I have to open it back up and then love myself for experiencing it. For deciding to live on. Even with the memories of it. So that I can heal it and feel better. Again and again and again. Until it doesn't hurt. Until I can live. Until I can experience myself without the pain I felt when it happened. 

The image that lingers. The top of a head between my legs when I didn't want it there. The feeling that I knew it wasn't okay. That I tried to force my legs shut to keep him from pulling them apart. The feeling that he did it anyway. He was behind me while I was on the couch. I always wondered if it was some cruel idea of him feeling jealous that I had a relationship with my dad like this. That I could lay on the couch, usually me on my dad's back, or us cuddling innocently some other way. Spoons. I would watch TV with my dad this way. He would kiss the top of my head and tell me that, "Daddy loves you," and I felt that in my soul. This wasn't my dad though. He was behind me on the couch and I was watching cartoons. He was prying my legs apart. My dad never did that. I didn't understand what this was. I didn't know what he was trying to do. Knowing I didn't say no, but I physically said no. I was paralyzed. I froze. I tried to tuck into myself. To hide. My brain told me that I just needed to get through it. To stare at the cartoons on the screen. To watch "Hey Arnold," my favorite Nickelodeon show, at the time. I was in seventh grade. My son's current age. I remember the next morning, I sat in the back of the class. It was a theatre style room. A door on each side. I remember loving science class. I was excited to take the test. I knew I studied for it. I was interested in learning. The teacher was engaging. I stared at the words on the page and I could hear myself breathing. The slight panic. That I was still able to focus and read the questions and answer them. I knew the answers. I forced myself to pick up the pencil. To write. I took this test. All the while, I looked out around me at the tops of the students in front of me, that were slightly lower due to the seating. I couldn't see everyone's papers, just that I could see them from that angle. Like I was above everyone, looking down on normal kids. Doing normal things. Normal eleven and twelve year olds. I was different now. I was tainted, somehow. In a way that I didn't ask for or want. 

Someone went out of their way, forced me to do something willingly, that I was not old enough to fully grasp how much I didn't want to do, until it was already done. I was not willing. He didn't care. He didn't ask. He took. I was put in a position that made it seem like I brought it on myself. Was it easier to just lay there and allow it? I don't know. I didn't have a choice. Didn't I allow my mom's ex-husband into my life? Didn't I sit on his lap the first time I met him? Didn't I blab to him all the time about my thoughts and feelings? Didn't I listen to his advice and how he told me that I needed to take care of myself? The importance of good grades, brushing my teeth, taking baths? Didn't I end up being a better kid because of all the attention I was getting? But here it was. The price I was asked to pay. The one I did not want to pay. I knew it in my soul that it was not okay. That I didn't want it. That I didn't know how to say stop or no. Because I didn't even know what was happening until it was. And I didn't know what to do from there either. At some point, he got up from the couch and I stared at the TV. My privates felt cold and wet. Like a dead carcass. Entirely unsexy. Another time, he told me that the name I picked for Spanish class, Esmerelda, was "sexy." I wrinkled my nose. I didn't understand. I never understood until later. How he was trying to groom me. Gauge how I would react to his perverted speech. It felt like a scratch at my brain. One I didn't like, but no idea how to stop or deflect. I was not armed. I had no shield to this. I had no idea how to act. What to say. I would uncomfortably laugh. That's what I had. In the burned image of my mind, I was uncomfortable. Uncomfortably naked. He picked up my discarded underwear and tossed them at me. "Meet me in the garage." He said it as a command. Not an ask. I was dumbfounded. When I heard the door in the kitchen close, I blinked. I knew I did something wrong. But, I couldn't recall what it was. I had no idea. I think he asked me, "does that feel good?" and I distinctly remember saying, "no." Because it didn't. Truly. Maybe if I had hit puberty and it was someone I wanted to touch me doing it, maybe it could feel good. I couldn't fathom that at the time. I just wanted him to stop. If I knew saying, "no," was all it took to make it stop, I felt shame for not speaking it when he was trying to pry my squeezed legs apart. I slowly came out of a trance. I picked up my underwear. I remember I looked at them. I went to the bathroom. I felt like I had to pee. I didn't understand the feeling I had. The feeling across my privates. That wasn't like any self exploration I had done. First of all, I didn't want that. I didn't want it from him. I didn't know it was something I would crave in the future. I didn't understand the feeling yet. I was too young. I think I was eleven years old. I just remember feeling dissociated. Lost. I peed. I wiped and saw a small smear of blood. Now, I know, that it was probably a fissure of some kind. A break in my skin. At the time, I wondered if I was going to get my period now. Had I just gotten it for the first time? I didn't know. I didn't know anything about my body at this time. Just that I was in a state of paralysis. I don't remember even going out to the garage. I just remember at some point, I was sitting in one of the chairs set up in front of the space where my mom's car was parked and he was talking to me. He was smoking a cigarette. He was probably drunk. He always had this look on his face like he was dumb, smelled shit, and couldn't place it. Now, I know, he was high. Drunk. Both. I can only go off of what I know now. I never wanted to drink or smoke cigarettes or do drugs. This guy did that. He was a child molester. I would never do any of those things to people and I associated that feeling he gave me with the substances themselves. How could anyone do that to a child? I sat there shaking. I was in shock, I know now. I was shaking and my mind was hyper aware of my body and certain things in the room, but not other things. I remember feeling the cold wetness in my underwear. How I hated the feeling of his mustache and that it lingered for years. Feeling dirty. Like he had left a disease on me. I was always going to be reminded if his disgusting depravity. Always. 

I think I told him off. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I know I told him I didn't like that he did that and it wasn't okay. He told me he would tell my mom. He begged me not to say anything until he could figure out how to tell my mom and he would fix it all. He would figure it out. I sat there seething. I know now, he just wanted to build up a case for himself to get out of getting into trouble. I don't think he ever intended on making me feel like I was in trouble, in fact, he made me feel like I had all the power. I could destroy him. I just had to tell my mom. But I didn't know how to do that at the time. I didn't know how to say what happened to me. I knew what it was because I was a middle schooler. I knew that he had "eaten me out." But I didn't like that now it was always going to be associated with him. That the first time someone touched me, tasted me, was over thirty years my senior. Ugly. Fat. Hairy. Smelled horribly of cigarettes. Had a mustache. Very disgusting at the time. Mustaches were the hideous association with Ron Jeremy or other sexual deviants. Like child molesters. The white New Balance sneakers. White pulled up socks. Jean shorts. Golf. Toyota Tacoma trucks. Maroon trucks. All of it. Everything he liked and was, it was now for child molesters only. The fact that he was in the Vietnam War. That he was an Army Veteran. I made him feel better about his traumas. I was a CHILD. He used me. 

He told me not to tell my mom because he was going to tell her the truth and I believed that he did feel remorse. I believed that he did regret his actions. I didn't forgive him for anything. But I believed he would repent in his own way. I believed he would say something to my mom. Weeks went by. He didn't say anything to my mom that I know of. One day, I remember painting in the kitchen. That summer before seventh grade, my dad took me to a watercolor class in Clayton. I remember we got there late and I was embarrassed, but soon, the teacher made me feel okay about it and she taught us how to use the paintbrush to make flowers appear on the page quickly, with efficiency. I repeated the technique at my mom's house that fall, and I loved it. I loved to paint with watercolors. I liked how I could build up the colors and how I could add water and the color would fade. I liked that the paper absorbed what I gave it and made it beautiful. I didn't understand how I was able to dab the paint and then the paper and it looked so pretty, but I kept doing it. I liked how it made me feel to paint. I was empowered by it. I was painting in the kitchen and I heard the garage door open. I stopped and looked up. Like a deer in the woods. I knew it was him. I knew it was my mom's husband. He was coming home and would come into the door from the garage and I was sitting at the table unable to move. I tried to get back to my painting. Back to what I was focused on. In school, the middle school, we had learned about some words that were empowering, too. How to say no. How to stop sexual harassment, as it was taught to us. When he came into the kitchen, breathing on the back of my neck, looking at the flowers I was painting, he smelled of alcohol. Cheap beer and cheaper cigarette smoke. My stomach turned. He put his hands on my sides, almost as if he was hugging me after a long day at work, but this wasn't it. He moved over the mounds of my developing chest and lingered there, rubbing over top of me. I closed my eyes, gripped my paintbrush, gritted my teeth. He didn't notice or care to notice that I was rigid. That I had stopped painting. To him, maybe I was reacting positively to what he was doing. Or he didn't think about what I was doing, or what I wanted, that was obvious from the get-go. I pulled up my middle school sexual harassment training, the echolalia speaking for me involuntarily and I said, "Stop it! That's sexual harassment!" Even though, now I know, it was sexual abuse or sexual molestation, not sexual harassment. He wasn't my peer. We had no equal footing in the workplace. He wasn't a child. I wasn't an adult. I was a little girl, aged eleven, sitting in my mother's kitchen, painting little flowers onto watercolor paper with homework and baby soft skin. I wasn't a woman. I hadn't even hit puberty yet. I was just a little girl. He was an adult. Full grown. An army veteran who had served our country by shooting Vietnamese people. He probably raped little girls while he was there, too. It didn't matter in that moment, though. He heard stop and he lifted his hands away from me. Like he was brought out of whatever state he was in and finally realized his mistake in touching me. He was appalled. He spun on his heels, went out to the garage, and sat in the chair to smoke a cigarette. I could hear the beer cans hitting the recycling bin. One after another. I cleaned up my paints. I was shaking. Shock again, I know now. At the time, I think I smiled at myself, for saying the right thing this time. I said it right away. I stopped it. I felt simultaneously empowered and debilitated. But, I made it stop. 

Later, he came in and gave me some sob story and I squinted my eyes and finally saw him for who he was, a manipulative baby. A little manchild who's mommy didn't love him. But I had met his mother and I remembered thinking she was okay, before she died. I remember she died after all this. I didn't care to comfort him. I wanted him to grieve in the most horrible way possible. I wanted his pain to radiate through his body the way the pain he caused me would. I didn't allow him back into my good graces again. He was not allowed to speak to me. I ignored him. "Are you just going to ignore me?" he would ask with pain in his voice. "Yes." I would deadpan and walk away. 

One day I was making macaroni and cheese for dinner. He came home and came up behind me. He breathed on my neck and I stiffened. I stopped stirring. 

He tried to tickle me and I felt how it wasn't innocent so I said, "stop it." He stopped. 

"Don't you like it when I tickle you?" He asked me. 

"No." I replied. 

"Fine. I won't touch you anymore." He sulked.

"Good." I stated. He didn't mean what he said. I did. But, he never touched me again. 

There are people out there reading this. Someone is reading this, other than me, and thinking, "wow, she's so strong! I can't believe she had the courage to say no! I can't believe the word, 'stop,' worked! I wish that when I said 'no' or 'stop' that my sexual abuse/rape stopped! I can't believe how powerful she is!" I'm not. I wasn't. I wasn't strong or courageous. I was broken. I was beaten down by what happened to me. It doesn't make my experiences any better or worse. I was a child and it wasn't okay for me to go through this experience. I shouldn't have had to tell an adult to stop molesting me. It was never about me being strong. Never about my courage. It was always about how a man in a position of power over me made me feel powerless. It was always about how he made me feel small. It was never about me. It was about him. It was never about you, either. It was always about how they felt when they took power over you. It had nothing to do with courage or strength inside of you. They were going to hurt you no matter what. Just like this 'man' hurt me. He always intended to pull off the underwear of an eleven year old child and put his finger inside them. His tongue. I was unlucky that it was me. You were unlucky it was you. If nothing ever happened to strong, courageous people, then women would be in charge. 

The details are over. I just mildly reference it from here. For most people, it shouldn't be hard to read. If you read any of my posts, then you know there's always a bit of trigger warning. This is on par with those posts. 

I went back to stirring the pasta. I was helping to make food so that my mom wouldn't have to do it when she got home. Just like my sister used to do before she went to college. The emptiness I felt without my sister there was like a hollowed out part of myself. Like I was split and most of myself had left for college with her. My mom's ex-husband taught me how to make macaroni and cheese "the right way." I still make it this way. Just like the Sopranos. Drain the noodles, add it back to the pan with butter, melt it, then add the powder, stir it all in, then a couple drops of milk to work the powder into a sauce. I made it this way with my second serious boyfriend at his 'dad's' apartment when I was a teenager. I had this memory of being "tickled" come back to me and I got quiet and sad. This boy didn't know what I was thinking about. I played with the idea of telling him. I might have said some of it. He said, "Bets? Where did you go?" and I didn't now how much he was manipulating me at the time. I let him manipulate me because I had a step-father who manipulated me. He used similar tactics. The difference was that this boyfriend of mine, I craved him. I craved him sexually, mentally, emotionally. It was like a book that fit perfectly on the shelf. Like a brick that pops right back into its snug location after being a hole for so long. I was no longer hollowed out, I was filled with the delicious taste of manipulation. He sank his hooks into me and it made me feel powerful. Like I chose to have these feelings. I chose to allow his fingers inside me. The sexual tension between us was strong. His desire to take me and my empowerment to let him. I could stop him. I didn't want him to stop. This was a fuel to a fire I had no idea I was suppressing. My first serious boyfriend, the one I lost my virginity to, I didn't feel this kind of sexual attraction to him. I had a chemistry with the first boyfriend, sure. I felt desire and sexual need/wanting that I craved with him. We fumbled around and did different things to each other sexually and he felt like a safe person to do that with, at the time. But the second boyfriend. Not the same chemistry. This was a painful itch I wanted to scratch until I bled. I wanted to take this boy apart. I wanted him to take me apart. Limb from limb. I wanted to be destroyed by him. I wanted to rip his clothes off and touch him everywhere. He would leave bruises in the shape of his fingertips along my thighs and I let him. I didn't even feel them. He would smack my ass and I would scream while reaching a climax I didn't know was possible. We told each other, "I love you." But it wasn't love. It was a toxic game. One I was addicted to. Craved. Needed. I wanted to play games with him. Push him away so he would take me back. I wanted to say no, so he would say yes. I wanted him to take everything he wanted from me. It was a dirty, depraved, desperate need that I felt into the bottom of my soul. He fit my toxic wounds like a soft leather choker and I wanted him to stop me from breathing. I was sixteen at the time. It seemed like I lived a long time in between there, but now I know, it was only a few years later. I started dressing differently, too. I hiked striped knee socks up to my thighs, letting the gap of bare skin show under my pleated skirts. Tank tops too tight with string straps that barely held in my bouncy, fresh, new breasts. He would touch my soft, warm, wetness and I would moan into his ear. I told him I wanted him to place his hand around that gap of skin between my thigh high socks and mini skirt and push me into him, rocking me until I would burst out in orgasm. I had no words for why I did this to myself at the time. I felt disgusting after. Like I had licked the seat of a NYC bus. I was diseased. Broken. Ugly. I felt manipulative. I was playing all these games so that the throb in my pussy could burst over his uncircumcised dick. I wanted to say, yes, to the manipulation, to the desire to destroy myself. It took me a really long time to understand why I did this to any degree. I think I fully understand it more today than I ever did. I get it. I get why I was addicted to this type of sexual gratification. It was a disgusting choice I got to make. I let him do anything he wanted to because I felt like it made me powerful. I have the power to say yes to something taboo. 

I always took that relationship to mean that I was fun in the bedroom. That I was a willing and interesting sex goddess who was open to doing whatever a boy or guy or man (as I got older, they did, too) wanted from me. I would let them spin me around, flip me, whatever. Some partners were more selfish than others, but generally, I got sexual gratification out of it most of the time. After I got a divorce, I realized that sexually, it wasn't what I wanted anymore. I didn't want to be turned around, flipped, spread, and fucked senseless. I didn't get any pleasure out of it. So I stopped seeking men that would do that to me. In turn, I stopped allowing men who simply only wanted that to have any part of me. Not even my time. I spent years alone, on purpose, to fight the urge to get a crumb of sexual need rubbed off on someone else if I knew it was not going to actually satisfy me. I tried a friend's with benefits thing. I tried and failed, miserably. Every time. I fell in love with another asshole who didn't want anything from me but pussy. My time. My love. He didn't want to reassure that part of me. He didn't want a relationship. I spent years without any man. I was lonely, sure, but I was also empowered. I said no to wanting toxicity. I lingered in the feeling of being what I needed for myself. Enjoying my time. My own orgasms. Allowing myself to indulge in my own fantasies, without any input from anyone else. To heal in ways I didn't know I needed to heal. 

I tried a few times to allow a boyfriend, a husband, a fuck buddy, to go down on me. For years it was just something I didn't want. Sometimes, I did want it. I craved the boy/guy/man I was naked with to desire tasting me. Licking me. I let them fulfill their own desire to prove to me that any man before them couldn't make me cum that way, but they could. Delusional. They didn't know how delusional they were because they didn't know what happened to me. I did. I knew. I told some of them. I would look up the ceiling so I didn't have to look them in the eyes. I would blow out a breath in one big huff to say it was because of being sexually abused as a child. A lot of times, it didn't stop them. Didn't phase them. They wanted to try anyways. Okay. Fine. Go for it. I would give in because I did want it. I wanted this experience. I wanted to say that I could find release in this way. No one had any luck, just like I didn't have any luck in healing that part of me. My husband tried when we were first married. I told him I thought I wanted to work on healing that part of me. He tried once or twice. I got close, but couldn't get past it. He gave up wanting to and I let it go, too. After my divorce, I got involved with a man who never wanted to commit and he wanted to go down on me every time we were together. As a result, after a year and a half of sleeping with him, I can count my orgasms on one hand. It doesn't fill the hand. I would fake it and he would cum and then never ask me if I was "good" or not. If I did, I lied. I craved orgasms and it left me feeling crazy. I was addicted to trying to get off with him, and not ever able to. In the few instances I had, he told me he wanted nothing to do with me after. That he didn't want me or to be in a relationship with me. I was stunted by this. I felt like my heart closed over and I had no way back in. No man could penetrate this space and I wouldn't allow anyone to try for a long time.

Subconsciously.

I wanted desperately to feel loved and be loved and feel that much oneness to vulnerability. I just... couldn't find anyone worth my heart or my trust. Or my orgasms. I began to only reach climax if it was a man I had no interest in dating. I was able to get my brain to shut off any thoughts because, I wasn't going to be hurt by their rejection. I didn't want them anyways. If I liked the man, then I couldn't reach that level. My cum would not... come. This went on for years. It's strange that I would think that a month was a long time to not have sex, let alone without orgasm. Then, I found myself in a position where it was 6 months. I made out with a married man and I remembered that depravity feeling. That I was touching into the dangerous place where I was gross and used- that I was a whore. That's all I deserved, right? No. Not really. I sobered up physically and mentally. I wasn't a whore. I just had bad things happen to me that made me feel like I wasn't allowed to have sexual desires of my own. Then I reached out to my first serious boyfriend again. We had been sleeping together on and off for a few years. Just a few times here and there. Sometimes I would have an orgasm. Sometimes not. Sometimes he would cum right away, frustrated with himself for it feeling too good. Sometimes, he would last just long enough and I could get off and then we wouldn't talk again for awhile. I slept with him and he had told me he loved me still. I started crying. I couldn't orgasm. I didn't want him to stay. I didn't sleep with him again. I went on a date with him, over a year later, where he acted like he wanted to date me, like it was a snack to the main meal of having sex, but with no actual intention of dating me. I knew it. I went on the date anyways. We didn't see each other again after that. To this day. He has reached out and I never replied. Fool me once... 

6 months went by. Then it was my birthday again. A year after. Then another year. I didn't date anyone. I didn't kiss anyone. I didn't sleep with anyone. I didn't do anything but work on myself. The impact of that time alone was really great for me. It was lonely, of course. I was depressed. I craved human contact. A man. I could remember a different kind of count on one hand. One that didn't fill up the hand. A hug from someone that wasn't my children or my mom. No one else was hugging me. A friend here and there. My friend hugged me once and I was temporarily restored. "You are a cuddler aren't you? When you are dating someone you are really cuddly, right?" He asked me like it was a fact. It wasn't really a question. He knew I was. "...Yes..." I said, shyly. Because I knew I was, but I wasn't sure how I presented myself to the world. 

I had crushes that left me crumbled. I wanted a relationship. I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted to kiss, hug, cuddle, and more than all of it, to have someone that respected me back. Didn't try to manipulate me or ask me for anything I wasn't already giving. I wanted a partner. Someone who would not be the parts that I was lacking, but all the parts I had and more. That, yes, we both would give what we had, but I desperately wanted to say I did not need someone to fill any gap, just like I didn't want to be filler. I wanted a whole person who wouldn't take from me and that I wouldn't want to take from. 

All of this is to say, that these feelings have been inside of me churning, since I was eleven, but also this week. I had boys/guys/men respect that I didn't want head, but that sometimes, especially as I got older, respect that I was healing from it and didn't push for it if I said no, and waited for me to ask for it. Because I would ask for it if I wanted it, generally speaking. 

Did you ever meet friends who just know what you are thinking without you saying it? I have had that happen so many times in my life. It's not always a great thing to be easy to read, but sometimes it is great. Like when I am feeling shy in the bedroom and I want something and I don't want to ask for it, sometimes I'll get it anyways. Even if it's not a part of the normal sexual interaction with that person. It does make the intimacy all the more better when it happens. A sexy mind reading. A stolen kiss a date or two after I said I wasn't ready to kiss, isn't really stolen, if I do want it then. 

There really is a point to all of this and I just feel that it is hard to describe so I am finding all the pieces to this mind puzzle and placing them here, in order, so that I can make some sense of it all.

This brings me to the main point. The mental healing I should have done last weekend, which set me up for a strange week, that time instead was spent with a nice man. I chose to spend my time with a nice man who I am enjoying the company of, finally after several years of zero men. It seems like there is supposed to be more weight behind that than there is, but there isn't. He's really easy to hang out with. I keep getting surprised by how much he listens and understands. I want to keep spending time with him and enjoying the moments I do have. I want to be around him, but it's not some fucked up desire. Like a friend in the way that I can just say, I'm busy right now. I don't need to spend anytime thinking about him or engaging with him. Like a really good book I can put down and work on something else. I can pick it up and start reading and know that it was a really good book, but I don't have to keep reading to get to the end. I can just put it down for now and do other things. I can linger in the parts I read and enjoy it in the moment and in reflecting on it, with a smile. He's not taking over my brain waves or my space. I hope that it keeps going. I want to someday make some kind of claim on him in a relationship, but for now, I understand how to enjoy this in between space. I didn't always know how to enjoy it. I remember people telling me to do this after my divorce. I didn't get it then. I had zero chill about enjoying the moment. I was addicted to moments and felt extreme anxiety around these kinds of moments. It could have been that I wasn't ready to. Or it was with someone I wasn't meant to feel them with. Or... I don't know exactly. It just wasn't the right time for me, so it wasn't the time that I felt it. I feel it now, though. So I guess it is the time for me. 

But, now I am reflecting on all the times in the past that I felt that I had these moments taken from me. Either because I was too much of a brat to see it or I was with a loser who wouldn't allow me to or some other reason I am not thinking of right now. I had times that I made the right choices, I had more times that I didn't. I have an opportunity to have a healthy relationship and I am grateful for the chance. I feel almost silly for saying that. I've had plenty of chances, but I wasn't ready or maybe I didn't even have the chances. I don't know. I do know, that I have it now. I feel heard and understood and that what I say matters, but not in any ground breaking way. In the subtle way that healed people experience. It's hard to explain to myself. Maybe I'll read this back to myself and understand it a little more. Sometimes, in the moment, I don't know the impact of my own words to myself. 

Whether I meant to or not, he helped me heal this part of me. I don't think he understood what it meant. But I made a conscious effort to let go in the moment. He asked me and I said, yes. I gave consent to the situation. He asked me again. I reassured him that it was a definite yes. That the feeling that he was reading wasn't from him going down on me for the first time, but more that I felt like I wanted to wait another week until some factors were cleared up. Like maybe not the last few days of my period, but in a few days I would be happier with the situation. Or the maintenance of my privates, which again, were waiting for the lingering period to go away. But, he didn't care. He didn't even acknowledge I said anything about those two things. He just wanted me to feel things. I had that same thought of when I was nineteen, living on my own for the first time, seeing a young man at a party my roommate threw that I always thought was hot. He was eager to prove to me he could make me cum from going down on me and I was like, *chuckle* "go ahead and try, man." Except, I am not nineteen. And this wasn't the same young man. This was an adult man. Who actually did know how to do it. And I quickly was in the right mindset, even after a few of those burned images came into my mind. I was able to quickly shove them aside and go into my mind and accept the sensations as pleasure this time. For the first time, I was able to do this. I was able to get to the edge of an orgasm and instead of feeling frustrated that I couldn't let go- I realized I was already letting go. I grabbed his head and pushed myself up into his face and I came anyway. 

I really don't want this to have any more weight than it does. Just like with it being the first healthy person I am seeing after all this healing. Maybe it will turn into nothing. Maybe he will tell me I am cool and all but he doesn't want to keep seeing me. Maybe I will get my heart crushed, again. Maybe I am reading into him liking me more than he does. I don't know. I can only just keep on going, I guess. But, the weight of it isn't there. It doesn't necessarily mean anything that it was him. It's more impactful to me that I was able to do it. That mentally, I broke down a wall (or at least, cracked a little hole in it) that I wasn't previously able to do. It was what he was doing to me, sure, that required some skill. It also required someone who listened to what I wanted and needed. What I desired. And did those things in the particular way I wanted him to. But- it required trust. I trusted him in that moment to be vulnerable. I allowed myself to open up to the possibility that I could be vulnerable and I was able to do it. I had to let go of a lot of things mentally to get to that level of trust. That does have weight to it. I'm not sure if he understood it fully or not. But as we stood dripping in the shower and I made a joke about how growing up religious will make you shameful to self-gratification, I was also thinking about how I felt safe enough for him to see me that vulnerable. He just gave me a hug. I didn't ask for it. I did need it. More than I knew. That made me feel more safe than I realized, too. It is okay to be vulnerable. To be unsure of the raw feeling I was allowing someone else to see. He understood that it was the right time to hug my inner child, just like I felt like it was the right time to show her to him. 

This is a sense of peace I have always circled around. Never gotten. I never fully opened myself up to it. Never fully received it. It's a different level of healing. One I was looking for. Glad I tried to seek it.

So, that leads me to feeling even more raw, in the best way. Because I am strong enough to be raw right now. Not something I can always say is true. But I can say it now.