Monthly Archive for September, 2008

The Storm Before He Visits

Published
by
JAGA
on September 24, 2008
in Julie/s and System Wars
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I feel like a fucking idiot and that I’m whining and making a big deal out of nothing.  Who the fuck cares that the father is showing up and visiting.  He won’t be at our house.  He won’t be at Sean’s.  So what is our problem?  I know he won’t hurt me physically.  What I really mean, but not saying explicitly, is that I know he won’t hurt us sexually.  I don’t know if others inside understand that.  I sort of feel and kind of think that they should know that, but then I also sort of feel and know that there are those that don’t understand that.  But there’s that part of me that is so frustrated by the whole fucking thing.  Like the whole, “GET A GRIP.”  I guess it is about just forgetting, pretending, ignoring, and distancing.  Dissociating.  Like that’s what this part is about.  Pushing, promoting, forcing the dissociation.  That sounds harsh and it probably isn’t the best way to describe it, but in a way, it is kind of like that.

I hear some inside screaming at me to shut up and are angry with what I’ve written thus far and are telling me how I have it all wrong and to shut the fuck up.  I’m fighting to stay here.  To keep going forward with writing…. something, anything, but to stop staying silent.

The father’s visit seems to be bringing up a lot of inner turmoil and the whole constant therapy issues are just playing out big time inside.  Someone inside while I was writing that was commenting very sarcastically, “You Think?” Most of it is about whether it is true that he abused me/us.  The constant battle inside between he hurt us and what if you’re/we’re wrong and it can’t be true and on and on it goes.  There’s so much more, but it is farther away now and I don’t want to venture there.  I’d rather just let it be forgotten until the next time I have to be sucked into it or delve into it.

I feel stupid and bad to struggle to believe the others inside that he abused them.  I know I should believe them.  And I know their pain is real.  I do believe that.  I just have such a hard time sometimes believing the father did all these things to “me.”  And oddly I can go back and forth on this issue and feel or say strongly he did in one moment and then say the complete opposite in another moment.  It seems to depend on who is nearby or something and is influencing my beliefs.  So often I feel like I don’t have an opinion and I don’t know anything.  That I’m just this vessel with very little or no beliefs and opinions and I just sway to and fro depending upon who inside is near at any given moment or whatever outside conditions lead me into believing for one reason or another.  I can hear numerous sides to a situation and be swayed in any direction.  Except for certain things and really I think it is those things that go deep to the soul or core or at least cover a vast majority inside.  Then those are times where there is a definite firm belief or feeling or whatever that comes from within and exudes outward.  I feel my strongest and most powerful in those moments.  Not powerful in a bad sense… just so unbelievably strong and capable and empowered.  Ahh, yes, that word is more accurate.  I’ve come to learn how amazing our system can be and how awesome it is when our system unites on something and works together towards something.  They are very rare moments in time and brief, but wow, to have experienced it and to realize that’s what is causing that experience, well that was incredible to me.  I can’t really and truly remember the feelings and the experience, but I do recall the knowledge and know the gist of it, and aspire to have that unity somehow.  When I contrast that experience to how we live daily, I then realize that we really and truly are not united and not working together really other than survival.  I’m also unsure what sparks that massive unity or how to get that kind of united level and working together thing.  When I try to think about it, I can only figure out that it correlates to having been pushed beyond our maximum limit and survival and sanity and something I can’t describe becomes paramount to us and so we unite on a cause.  Uggh, I feel stupid as I write this, as though I sound like I know what I’m talking about when I really don’t feel that way or believe I do.  It’s sort of like I kind of know something, at least a little bit about it, but I can’t remember it really and I don’t really know it like I know other things and so I start talking and writing out of my ass thinking it might be somewhat accurate, but I worry and fear it might not be.  To not be wholly accurate on something and in describing, explaining, whatever about something is like this horrid thing to us.  Accuracy, truth, thoroughness, completeness, detailed, analyzed, etc., is so so so important to us.  And without it or if we fail something along the lines, i.e., miss any tiny thing, then the anxiety and belief of failure and badness is so very strong.

We’ve gotten way off track.  We’ve been talking about writing something here about the father, but we haven’t done that here.  We were thinking of writing something that outlined the things we know for sure he did, beyond any doubt or denial, and then write an outline list of the things others inside have said and the flashbacks we’ve/I’ve had and sort of list them all and maybe somehow it will help the reality sink in or something.  It seems like it might help, but I don’t know.  I guess it is a starting point.

Oh G-d, I wish I wasn’t such a fucking baby about my father coming.  He can’t hurt me.  He’s a wimp and an idiot.  He’s just my father.  So why the hell for all the fear and anxiety? I wish I could turn it off.  I mean I could, but wow, they aren’t letting me totally turn it off.  And it is only right that I know what’s going on inside and know how others inside are feeling, etc.

I just keep hearing how I’m making a big deal over nothing.  That I’m a baby.  That I’m being melodramatic.  How I just need to stop thinking and talking about it because it’s no big deal and I’m a baby and to just get over it.  It’s done.  It’s over.  There’s nothing to talk about.  It’s no big deal.  Don’t be melodramatic.  Stop exaggerating your feelings.  Don’t worry people.  Don’t bother people.  Don’t hurt people.  Don’t tell.  Don’t let anyone know.  Don’t feel.  It’s no big deal.  Nothing happened.  It’s not true.

Julie/s

The father’s upcoming visit

Published
by
JAGA
on September 20, 2008
in B.J., Billie and Julies
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

We’re here again, I suppose at least.  We’re not sure what to say and yet there is much to say.  Such is our usual quandary at times.

Our brother’s wedding is October 18th and the father will be there.  His live-in girlfriend of 15+ ?? or something like that years will not be there.  Her reasoning as told to my mother of all people– She’s afraid that she won’t be able to control herself around me and not lash out at me with her anger, etc., and she doesn’t want that tension as she knows it will make my father tense and spread out to others.  The reason for her anger is that she is disgusted with me for ‘falsely accusing my father of sexual abuse and how dare I do such a thing.’ She has made it clear over the years since I confronted my father at my therapist’s (Wendy), office in October or November of 2000.  And yet this last time when my mother spoke to my father over the phone concerning my brother’s wedding, Betty (father’s girlfriend), wished to speak to my mother.  This is an odd thing because Betty has been very strange in the past with my mother– i.e. refusing to go to my cousin’s wedding years ago simply because my mother was going to be there, even though my mother and father had been divorced for years and were on good civil terms, etc.  The lady is weird.  Anyway, according to my mother, Betty now understands more of the shit my mother went through when she was married to my father… including my father’s sick needs in the bedroom to call his first wife’s name aloud while having sex with Betty and according to my mother, this was a common occurrence for her as well.  My father is fucked up.  My mother likes to excuse all of my father’s problems with “he’s sick,” meaning he has bi-polar and the emotional development of a teenager and thus, this is an excuse for all of his behavior.  Bullshit.

On one hand my mother is hurt and angry and talks and acts like she was a victim of my father all those years she was with him.  I can see that, based on what she said.  I have no real memory of that though.  On the other hand, my mother is the first to defend him in many ways and get defensive at the mere hint or mention of the sexual abuse by my father.  So sometimes she talks as if my father is an asshole and jerk, but of course, you know, he is just “sick,” and she implies he can’t help himself because he’s so “sick.” And yet the wall of anger and defensiveness rises and her denial and disbelief kick in when it comes to her daughter’s sexual abuse by this man she married.  And yet she knows what the asshole is capable of.  She told me she was sure he tried to kill her a number of times in various covert ways over the years she was married to him and looking back she sounds as if she is convinced of that even more so.  I don’t recall him physically abusing her, but I know and believe he emotionally and verbally assaulted her and I suspect there were probably things that happened in their bedroom that she has never really divulged to me.  She’s told me a few things, but I suspect there was probably more there.  He did however threaten her in a number of ways over the years.  I don’t know… it’s just like if she knows this much about him, how can it be so hard for her to stretch her mind to the realization that the piece of shit father also sexually abused his daughter for years.

Sigh.  Whatever.  Why the hell do I even care?  A part of me really doesn’t and yet some part of me does care and also hates that I fucking care whether she believes or not and whether she supports me or not when it comes to my healing about it.  We know not to fucking trust her– been there, done that, been fucked over one too many fucking times.

Hell, I had no idea I was going to write about this.  I didn’t know this was on our mind really.  It doesn’t seem like that really and yet it has come pouring out here.  Mostly I’m aware that insiders are pretty focused on the fact the father will be here in about a month.  That we will be seeing him, but plan to keep it limited.  We are honestly hoping to be able to step back a bit and look at him with more observing eyes and a disconnected mind and just observe and analyze and see him from a different perspective.  I feel like we’ve grown and changed so much since we last saw him and I think we’ll see things about him that we haven’t been able to see before.  The problem is that we forget a lot of it.

My biggest problem is that I never know how to really describe my father or explain how he is or what he is like.  I know he isn’t like the raging alcoholic that one might see on t.v. and that he isn’t this “in your face overbearing father,” and yet there is this threatening and icky nature about him in his passive, though probably passive-aggressive, emotionally manipulating, way about him.  And then I question even that much.  So I’m hoping to be able to view him from a more observing distance and I’m looking forward to Sean’s observations as to what he/they think and see about my father.
[Big relieving sigh and breath]  So basically I think we’re anxious and on edge about the father showing up and yet some of us are hoping to be able to use this opportunity as a way to understand the father more and to see more of who he is and maybe get it deeper ingrained within to those who have a hard time believing the abuse… that maybe they’ll be able to believe it more by watching and seeing how he is, etc.  I’m not sure though.  I’m a little concerned though about any possible fallout from the father’s visit.  I feel like something is going on within about it and that it has our system stirred up, understandably, but I am also so far removed from it and insiders aren’t really communicating to me about what’s going on.

To make it weirder is that we’ve gotten stronger lately and have been having this really weird phone relationship with the father from time to time and things are just different because we play “the family game” less and less these days, especially now that we’re feeling safety and security with Sean and the idea of us having our own family with Sean is happening.

That’s all for now.

Julies with B.J. and Billie around

we are

Published
by
JAGA
on September 17, 2008
in julies (lc), others (lc) and us (lc)
. 0 Comments Tags: , .

we are here.  we are alive.  we are exhausted.  we are drained.  we are okay, yet not, yet okay.  we simply are just are.  we are.

we think to write here but the energy doesn’t come and something seems to keep us from writing as well.  we thought of just making this a place to write snippets of thoughts or ideas or things that have crossed our minds or has happened lately.  and yet we don’t write anything, perhaps in the overwhelming ideas of having to write more than a sentence or two about any particular thing, especially the anxiety of leaving out details.  and the irony that detailing things causes the overwhelmed aspect and lack of energy for writing. and of course the anxiety and things of leaving out information and leaving it unclear, unfinished, not thorough, not wholly and completely accurate in that it doesn’t provide the complete picture.

we’ve thought of writing and changing things to focus more of our writing coming from us to us and to disengage more from thinking of our readers and make this more of a journal from us to us and less from us to us and readers.  thinking and remembering and relaying things to ourselves and at times to readers is often on a continuum.  we desire to go back to more of writing for us and pretending there aren’t readers and yet glad that there are all at the same time.  it’s so strange and convoluted and confusing.  all of it is.

seems stupid and we feel so bad and stupid.  for what? just being i guess.  just writing this much.  not sure we stand behind all that has been written.  it’s like writing and saying things but so unsure of what we’re saying and expressing.  not sure that it is us and what we’re really feeling and thinking deep down.  it feels so subject to change or so unstable or something.

so we will come here again in some time, hopefully in less time than we’ve taken lately, and peek and speak beyond the shadows.  it’s been such a very long week.

us, others, and some julies around.  sort of don’t know and feel unknown.