we’ve been up for hours now. we fell asleep early, like maybe 9:30pm or something and slept until 11pm or 12am. I’m not sure, but basically, that’s it. We haven’t been able to sleep since. It fucking sucks. We know we need the sleep and the rest, but we can’t seem to make it happen. I wish we had some good sleep meds to knock us out because that would be so much easier and nicer than trying to work hard to figure some way to do it on our own. It’s also so frustrating… it seems like most of the time when we are ultra exhausted and fall asleep early we end up punished because we awake in the middle of the night and can’t sleep for hours. And of course we aren’t interested or don’t have the energy to do anything to get stuff done and make use of the time and writing is a chore on its own.
I wish we could get back to writing again. I suppose it is good that I’ve been hearing some very young ones talking about the father and things, except they call him daddy. They were passing it on to us and wanting to write it in the journal for some reason. I don’t know what the hell to do with it. I know the intellectual answer is to talk to them and treat them as if they were outside children and what I’d do to try and help, but emotionally, I just flounder when dealing with them. I’m this emotionally neglectful person to the inside kids and sort of figure that hey, I heard them and they know I acknowledged them, and shit, that’s pretty much better than my mother did most times or the father. I’m acutely aware that the emotional neglect part partially stems from the parenting I received growing up. The odd part (and yet not so odd) is that this doesn’t translate to children externally but only to those inside. Like inside I will feel for them, but I don’t do anything or enough for them internally that exudes from me externally within our internal realm. It just stays internally within me in our internal world and of course this does manifest in various ways, much still unknown to me, externally in this life we live.
Whatever. Just feel like I’m making up shit and don’t know what I’m talking about and feel very switchy as a matter of fact.
I feel so bad and ashamed that I lack so many things to nurture the kids inside or talk with them about things. And this issue they are talking about… I don’t know what to say or do anyway. I’m stuck in the middle about a lot of it and just go back and forth on it as those inside battle it out. We haven’t spoken to the father since my brother’s wedding and even then during that time, we basically said hello and avoided him as much as possible and didn’t spend any time talking with him or anything. Just enough to be polite. Bryan didn’t even approach us about what to get dad for xmas and gifts and sending it out and stuff. Even Bryan knows things are different and changed. All these changes are so hard for the kids inside and our system. Right now the young ones worried about him being sad and hurting him and not making him happy are the loudest along with the denier ones that he ever hurt us…it’s so strong right now it makes me question whether he did or not.
Sometime this past week we considered writing him a letter to see if this time if he would admit to what he did. Even though some inside say ‘give him another chance’ to take responsibility and maybe apologize, others were pondering whether we really have that ‘control’ on our side by ‘giving him another chance,’ and that actually we are giving the control to him because basically his actions might strongly determine what we do as a system and possibly sway the battle inside one way or the other. I don’t know… it may just be more fuel for the fire and the endless internal battle will continue until somehow or another we figure out someway to work it out or get past it or something.
It’s hard and scary changing things with the father, especially pretty much cutting him out of our life. We did that to some degree previously, but we’ve taken it a step further and it’s just hard and scary and sad. And the crazy damn part is that I don’t feel or think I’m really that close to him in the first place. I can’t imagine being upset if he died today. I don’t feel or think I miss him. I don’t think or feel that I want a father or whatever it is that we sometimes hear survivors want from the abusive parent. It’s like we were already disconnected or unattached or something has been missing all along or for many years now, so why should these changes be so difficult??? I feel like a baby that this stuff keeps coming up from within and we can’t seem to let it go or just not have it bother us. I mean we can have it “not bother us” by pushing it back down and deeper within, but that’s not the healthiest of ways, at least I don’t think so.
on a different note cuz this is what i wanted to say in the first place is that i wish we would just start journaling more freely like we used to (particularly years ago and archives we need to import someday) or in ways that we’ve done in the past in our handwritten journals. when we read friends journals we are inspired to journal and to write freely and to process things out as we write them and to write for us and to work out issues and things and process process process stuff out and communicate to one another using our journal and stuff and we miss that. i guess we need to do some more thinking and focusing on this and figure out a way to begin making that happen again. daily journaling is going to have to become a must because it is so much harder to return to writing than it is when we’re doing it regularly.
we’re getting tired so maybe we can fall asleep soon… just maybe…
julies, Julies, and then julies