there’s so so so much that has happened inside, in our thoughts, in our therapy, in our processing and healing, and of course life, and yet there has been this vast emptiness here in our journal. all we have are our taped therapy sessions and some occasional brief handwritten journal entries and what’s left within that has not been written but resides somewhere in here in time and space.

it’s hard to just start writing whatever current is going on, whatever it is that is right there in our thoughts and feelings at the moment we begin posting. it’s as though it’s wrong, not right, not valid? (interesting that word came up in the mind), not something that can be written unless we go back and fill in all the gaps, which of course is overwhelming. thus, the gaps won’t be filled in anytime soon and thus, a nothingness exists. and the nothingness continues onward and the nothingness gap grows and extends further.

suddenly someone inside wonders how much the nothingness that exists here on our online journal, how much of that is a symbolic thing of the struggle we’ve battled constantly, but more prevalently lately in our healing. there’s a saying within that is uttered on a regular basis, both within and outside, particularly when any discussion of ritual abuse comes up. and really, it’s more than ritual abuse, but somehow leaving out the satanic part or the cult part or the other things we wonder about or the mind control words before or after or in conjunction to ritual abuse or ra is somehow less scary, less real, less telling than to use the sra or any of the other words spelled out. of course i know we just wrote them and spelled them out, but it’s a start from leaving them blank and unsaid and just known by us what we mean when we use the terminology that we do.

so the saying that is used, which at some point we tracked down to this really bad circular thinking and programming and stuff and will have to take time to find it within sometime to explain it, but anyway, here it is. “nothing happened. it’s not true.” it’s not true because nothing happened. if nothing happened, then there is nothing to tell, nothing to say, nothing to see, nothing to feel, nothing to remember. just a vast nothingness. a blank. a darkness of nothing. just exactly as the word means. nothing. empty. nothing. and if we should dare to remember or dare to see, dare to feel, dare to speak, dare to tell, then what comes from within us is utterly not true. it’s just not true. we are crazy and a liar. if we know we aren’t lying consciously then our other brain is tricking us. it is there tricking us to believe something happened and we are crazy and wrong and nothing happened, it’s not true. and since we have another brain tricking us into believing this and it is purposefully making up things that aren’t true and when nothing happened, then surely we must understand how utterly and horribly bad we are and useless and beyond worthless and disgusting and sick and crazy and oh the worst upon worst of badness there ever could possibly be. so to not be this inescapable badness that is beyond redemption and “badder than our current badness” as some kids would explain inside, we must understand and remember that nothing happened, it’s not true. that is the safest thing to know. to know nothing. to know anything that our other brain tries to trick us with is not true. that nothing happened. that there is a vast darkness of nothing and really just an empty nothing. and so there is nothing to say, and on and on it goes.

well i guess we explained most of that circular crazy stuff although it feels like there is more, oh so much more that relates to all of it.

and so we had this spark of an idea and wonderment that perhaps our lack of writing here, thus nothingness, is perhaps a parallel (?) or something to the struggle we’re dealing with inside. as though the more we battle that nothing happened, it’s not true, and the more the truth is tearing down the denials and the walls, then the more we need to show in other ways, that nothing happened, it’s not true, and that there is nothing to say, nothing to tell, nothing to reveal, yadda yadda.

i don’t feel like i’m grasping or explaining the entirety of what this is. i caught this faint fleeting glimmer of an idea as we were writing stuff above and that’s where it lead me for a moment, but it is lost and gone and i’m grasping at nothing i can see or feel or think. but i still grasp, hoping i will end up with something that i can take with me and journey further within to understand and connect pieces of things.

oh without explaining, without writing when this has already drained us from writing what we have written, there is so very much going on within. it feels huge and is very scary and we are constantly getting triggered to cut and self-injure and that is a battle that is so hard right now to fight. and the utter sadness and emotional pain is vast and deep with an unyielding of neediness that just won’t end. to even have a glimpse of observation as an insider to their pain being expressed to our therapist, even if for a few seconds and then i’m, we’re gone, that horrific pain that is beyond measurement is just so frighteningly real and what lies beneath their pain is even more frightening to me. the horrors, the injustice, the evil, the memories of whatever that must exist somewhere inside me that is beyond the nothingness and darkness and blankness, it is all too much. as others inside reveal themselves and write and share things and as we look back on old writings from others and information previously shared, the shock of “that exists within me, within our system” is almost a bit too much. never in my wildest dreams would i imagine some of these things to be within or words and things to be expressed in the ways that they are and yet it comes from within our system and it is so strange and surreal sometimes to put together pieces of not one life, but many lives within here. yeah sure, one body and thus one life, but there are so many of us within and although some of us share a lot of similarities there are just as many of us that are vastly different from one another. and we all have a life within here and are part of this body’s life, whether she likes it or not. words do not comprehend it well.

this is another attempt at writing. we will continue to make attempts and hopefully someday we will return to routine writing.

us, julies, and whomever else

then there has always been the awareness that we’re so out there or at least can be and there’s always the chance that our mother could accidentally stumble upon our site or someone else who knows enough about me and my life and put things together. if someone read enough, and they knew my mother or my family, they’d probably put it together, even if we used pseudonyms for the people in our life that we mention by first name in our journal. this is why we finally settled on that debate regarding whether to use pseudonyms or not– we decided it didn’t wholly matter as anyone knowing us and our life, family, friends, etc. could figure out who was who even with pseudonyms and so it didn’t make sense. we know on some level which people in our life absolutely require complete anonymity and hope that others who might take issue with it would let us know.

anyway, so we’re thinking that this fear, worry, anxiety, etc. is behind a large part of the silence and struggle with writing anything in our journal. we used to write daily or almost daily… though some of those journal entries are not posted here because we still have to import them. we’ve done a reasonable amount of journal writing in our handwritten journal throughout these periods of silence, but that hasn’t been scanned here.

we want to be the ones with the courage, the braveness, the openness, rawness, etc. that we see other friends and bloggers do. we admire that so much. we want to not care or to feel free to reveal, to tell how it is, to help others in some way hopefully, to share with those who know us (and we know they’ve been to our site or been given the info) so that they can know how we’re doing if they want to know. we want a strong living record of our life, our healing journey, our thoughts, feelings, etc., because so much of it is forgotten and lost somewhere and so much more is captured with words… and words we can return back to for reference, patterns, growth, healing, etc.

instead the silence lives and we argue and are divided inside about so many different thoughts, ideas, feelings, philosophies, dynamics, etc. regarding whether to journal or not journal. we’ve debated whether to go to all password posts and whether to just push past all of this and be an open book and whether there is some kind of balance. in the midst of all of this, we end up at this standstill, the standstill and safety of silence. but where does that get us? silence eventually leads to a sense of failure, badness, shame, etc. of its own making because we aren’t writing when there is so so so much going on inside that we need to share, want to share, explore, and take further along that writing and processing brings for us. instead it just sits within, spinning, circling, withering away, with only a small chance of living and not being buried deep within with everything else. our life is about burying things. it is so automatic. even the good things… they get lost or buried and we’re left with only the hope it will be remembered instead of splintered and scattered pieces or nothing of it left.

we know it really boils down to whether we can handle our mother or someone else we know that we prefer to keep this journal private and away from them, from whether we can handle and accept that happening and the potential effects of that. we aren’t worried about the father because we’re pretty sure he is fairly computer illiterate or really doesn’t use a pc much at all. there’s always the worry that if we post links or info about a certain friend that our brother might decide to google her and eventually find our site and then that would be bad as our family would then know.

there’s just so much about this topic and issue and there’s a lot more bottom lines that we know exist besides what we just wrote. we’re not sure how to settle this within as there are loud and competing philosophies and ideas and stuff about this topic and uggh, it sucks.

this has been going on for us for a long time, and we’ve been fighting it within for a long time, and lately it seems, the silence is winning the battle. the ‘do nothing’, ‘say nothing,’ etc. because it is safer seems to be the default right now. and there are quite a few of us that want it different or think we want it different or something.

so here’s a start to conquering this and finding a solution for ourselves.

julie/s, julies, Julies

we so badly need to write about so many things. we need to process things and yet nothing comes and the emotional or physical energy is zapped and something or someone seems to be silencing things.  i suppose Blocker and Eraser and the other Function Keys are busy doing their jobs.  and whomever else inside is involved in all of this.

we’ve had some very intense and symbolic dreams that are very revealing about the extent of our processing of various stuff and so many of us believe a lot of deeper processing is going on as we work through some tough healing issues.

there’s pain and sadness and such a deep lack of energy from all of it.  sure, some of it is physical related to our anemia but it feels like some is also just the emotional zapping of our life energy that has already been trampled on for so many years and so it really isn’t up to par.

whatever. we are getting chastized for writing what we’ve written.  so much criticism from so many inside to a greater degree than usual, or so it seems.  i wonder if self-hatred and badness has a need to increase when you are processing stuff that might eventually help release some of that.  sort of like don’t you dare get rid of any part of me like that and to make sure you don’t, i’m going to reinforce my stance, grow bigger and stronger, and cage you even further than you were before. roarrrrrr.

we don’t even feel like finishing with tagging things or categorizing things.  i mean it is common to be overwhelmed to do it and thus the exhaustion comes with it and just unable to cope with it and so we pass it up ‘for later.’  we still have sooo many entries left to tag and categorize properly amongst all the other entries with backups that we need to import and also tag and categorize, etc.  we always manage to forget that when we are torn between wanting to come here to our journal and do something, write something, etc., that even when we find we can’t do it after all, that there is always the need to review entries and do the organizing of them.  even the ones we’ve tagged and categorized already, they also need reviewing because sometimes (like this one), we’ve been only able to tag a few things and haven’t thoroughly thought and decided on whether to add any more, etc.

uggh, the self-hate and mean commentary is getting stronger.  we’re just going to shut up.  it seems easier right now cuz i just don’t have the energy to try and fight back.  it hurts too much no matter what.  and yes, according to the commentary, we are babies because of that and need to grow up and shut the fuck up and get over it and be okay and fine and on and on it goes.

us, julies

i think it’s cuz we’ve been working so very hard in therapy and it is taking its toll on us.  i guess we’re supposed to expect or at least be able to cope with the after effects of therapy but it is so so hard and painful and so exhausting.  we are wondering if we need to pull back some and slow down some of the stuff but we think others inside are just focused on pushing harder and pushing forward on things and that we can cope with it.  well some of us think not!  the sadness entrenches us.  how do we get rid of it? i mean besides making it go away but really it doesn’t go away just somewhere buried inside.

we think too all this therapy and crap is just too much for the other Julies as they just get so worn out easily by lots of stuff and especially since they are kind of working through some of this with us, well ya know, vicariously working through the stuff they know about and are aware of.  it doesn’t take too much emotions and therapy stuff to totally wipe out the Julies if they can’t stay far enough away from it.

we are wondering if we need to do a forced dissociation in order to get stuff done but not sure how long it would really last.  but like in therapy when things are too much or have hit a strong triggering point where the ones pushing to do the talking and telling and emotions and stuff have pushed as far as they can against the ones trying to keep everything silent and nothing happened its not true and all that stuff, well, a weird kind of jolt and snap and jerk of the head and boom we are totally fine and nothing happened, it’s not true, no feelings, nothing, just utter and totally fine and okay and perfectly normal with no problems and no issues.  so like maybe we need to try and use that as sort of a forced thing when we’re like this.  not sure if we can but maybe we could try and see.   and we have no idea if we can control it like that but guess it is worth trying.  but doing any of that by itself takes energy too.  and we have so little of it.  so little physical and so very little emotionally at this point too.

it really sucks being anemic too and we need to schedule an appt with our regular dr. because looking online it talks about how it is important to find out the cause of it.  maybe then we can actually get our vit b12 and folic acid and vit d and whatever else needs to be checked as possible causes of anemia.  we’ve been wanting our vit b12 and vit d checked for so long but always afraid to just ask outright and afraid if the dr. says no b/c for whatever reason it isn’t “medically necessary” or they don’t want to b/c we didn’t convince them enough that it is merited then we are screwed in the future and will have to prove so much harder that it is medically necessary to have evaluated.  we are pretty sure they are totally low and we need vit b12 shots and special vit d pills.  we just suspect it is also contributing to our problems.  our sleep dr. tested and found the anemia and we’re taking supplements but we’re still exhausted and we know it’s going to take time and we’re also looking at upping the double dosage he is already prescribing to us.  we are thinking of taking a different brand and type of iron supplement in addition to the kind and mg he prescribed.

and for all this time, for many years, we’ve thought that our fatigue was associated with our depression and just being a fuck up and stuff.  now we’re wondering if we’ve been anemic for years now.  our regular dr. checked our iron when we went in to see her awhile back but she didn’t do the extensive testing.  the sleep dr did and he found it that way.  she just diagnosed us with chronic fatigue syndrome and maybe we have that but maybe we don’t.  i don’t know.  we just hate being tired all the time.  and this has been our life for years now.  having no energy to do crap and any small thing (taking shower, emptying dishwasher) wears us out and puts us back to bed to lay down which often leads to several hours of sleep.

so whine, whine, whine.  we’re having a hard time.  we hurt emotionally and sometimes physically but i think we still dissociate a lot of our body pain.  we get weird ass pains in various places in our body but we just cope with it and deal with it.  we’re emotionally exhausted and physically exhausted and the depression is just doing its damndest to suck us up and really, we think with the therapy stuff we’re doing lately, we think we’re experiencing a lot of grief even though we’re not sure what exactly it is we’re experiencing other than deep sadness and just our system is struggling.

we can’t put into words yet quite what is going on.  sorry this is so stupid.  just we hate things right now.  it’s so crazy how we can plummet so far and so fast and we forget sometimes how very easy and very close we always are to this place.  we’ve been struggling but getting through and we’re used to that… things being hard with varying moments of coping ok and varying crappy times, but now things are not just hard and barely getting through, they just fucking suck and we feel like we’re falling with nothing to hold onto to stop.

stupid us.

julies, and others we think

every now and then we have the energy to call some therapists to find out their availability, insurance, and if they have any experience treating multiples, but mostly haven’t had any luck. so we pull out our lists and phone book and make some more calls, slowly plugging away at it and then it is put away for weeks at a time. it’s so overwhelming and draining.

things are going great between sean (and all) and us. we’re making some progress towards wedding planning and stuff. so very glad we have almost a year and a half yet to plan.

we’ve been having such a hard time writing and have kept hoping it would change, but it hasn’t really. so i guess we’ll keep hoping and keep striving towards getting back to writing.

today is a rough day for us. there’s some memories? (hard to say aloud and admit to that it might be true and say and act as though it is true) about stuff surrounding this day and some abuse done to some inside. trying to get up the courage to say what it is here.

got to go for now. too anxious and need to go back to bed. we did get up and tried to get a few things done around the house. two small things just doesn’t seem like enough, especially when there is such a long list of things left to do.

julies

one of the bigger Julies finally told the mother, “I’m disabled for a reason,” when referencing to the mother that we needed a break away from her and not going to her house when we said we would and that this was taking a huge toll on us and we were burnt out by everything. it took us so long simply because we can only manage so much concentration and energy to do anything and so what might have taken ordinary people a weekend for the amount of work that needed to be done and we did, it took us basically 2 weeks… and we still didn’t accomplish everything. there is a lot left to do and Sean came over several times to help and Loretta came over towards the end to help put things in order and get the basics done on things we just couldn’t get to because we were running out of time and our OCD couldn’t let go of certain things to ignore all the dust and dirt and crap of things that needed to be done and since we were doing it, it needed to be done right and while it took time, it took less time to do it right than to go back and do it over at some point and we had no interest in doing it over at any time in the near future and so we needed to do it then. even if it pissed off the mother because we weren’t getting everything done and it wasn’t getting done in the way she wanted or in the time she wanted and we weren’t listening to her towards the end to ignore the cleaning and just make it done and ready somehow. well fuck it, it’s fucking family coming to visit and if they can’t cope with it and realize the situation and that we did the best we could, then fuck it. damn it, some of us felt like if she still needed shit done, her sisters could help, because they are sisters after all. fucking hell she is ill.

we did let the mother know clearly again that we had no intentions on taking care of her when her health gets even worse. she’ll be going to a home or some place and other people will care for her, thank you very fucking much. we’ve cared for her as a child and as an adult and still to some degree do a lot of shit for her, and fuck it, we just aren’t doing it for her when she is totally in need of 24/7 care. fuck that. i don’t care if she is my mother. she fucking doesn’t deserve it from us. maybe if she cared for us as a child and cared for herself throughout our adulthood, then just fucking maybe we wouldn’t mind the idea of helping her when she gets older and more ill, but fucking hell, she isn’t coming to our home and we aren’t going to hers. and amazingly the mother seems to understand that and says she doesn’t want to do that to me or bryan. guilt i suppose or maybe she’s just saying that, but she seems to be sincere about it.

it seems hard to believe that so much time has passed and we were at the mother’s for so long. in coming out of the fog or whatever state we were in, the realization that we put our entire life, our entire personal to do list, our entire well being, our entire sanity, our entire everything on hold, and put away and pushed aside, all for her and her sake. we tried to tell ourselves it was for our aunts sake as well because they needed a nice enough place to stay, but really, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world if they saw how things normally are. it’s like in the moment while it was happening we just didn’t seem to “get it” how much time was passing and how much we were putting aside all for the mother. on one level we knew it, but on many more greater levels, it wasn’t connecting. i guess it was just a dissociation and denial of the reality and truth of what was happening.

Sean said that he doesn’t want this to happen like this ever again. that he will pay for half of the cleaning the mother needs and call professionals in– that he doesn’t want to see us go through this again and what it did to us, etc. i think he saw more of the depth of the stress and toil and problems that this caused for us and our system and functioning than we did or do. he did see the mother as we knew her to be growing up and in our adult years for many years… he saw the mother we knew… the one who takes her stress out on us, simply because that’s what she does and who she targets…generally. the mother who was rude and snarky and bitchy to us when she wasn’t getting her way or what she wanted exactly or how she wanted it exactly… when her control wasn’t there over us and we were doing things the way we wanted to, when, how, and on our time schedule and not hers. he saw our anxiety when we didn’t realize we were anxious. the only thing we noticed was that we were irritated with the mother and couldn’t stand her and angry and hating that we were doing anything for her. i thought it was just that others inside who have mother issues had come forward closer to the front suddenly, as i’ve experienced this sudden “okay or no feelings or nothing or fine” to this sudden out of the blue intense internal feelings and issues and stuff that we’re fighting to keep under control and not show it to the mother that we can’t stand to be around her and don’t want to be there and certainly don’t want to be helping her or doing anything that pleases her, etc. apparently the mother irritated Sean too by what she said to us and around us, that interestingly, I didn’t hear or notice at all… but I’m guessing others inside did since they suddenly were triggered close by. The amnesia and separation was there for that.

There’s more… so much more to say and write about and get out in the open, but we are running out of time for that today.

We have therapy today with Cec… the first time since the beginning of September. And the stupid fucking thing about all of it is that my Medicaid was back dated which means we could have been seeing Cec all this time, but the fucking agency are assholes and idiots and really not for profit as much as they say they are cuz they fucking don’t work with people in our situation (we always get our Medicaid back dated but they seem to think we can afford $200 a month to pay them to see Cec regularly and then of course, oh geez, we will have a credit with them or they will owe us when our medical comes through as always). There’s more about this topic, but it’s what it is and we are bitchy and wanting and asking too much and spoiled. Spoiled because we had a reasonable therapist (Wendy) who worked with us all those years in our financial situation and still accepts a small monthly payment until someday our situation changes and we can pay her more and pay her off fully. We expect things to change and to be able to pay her fully off at some point in the next 5 years.

We are bringing Sean with us to therapy and he will be going in there with us as support. Cec didn’t want to meet him or anything anytime soon. This was several months ago. We gave her a heads up voice mail message and Billie is prepared to tell her to deal with it and that it is our fucking therapy and not Cec’s and Billie will royally be pissed if Cec takes issue with it. We clearly don’t have the best close connection or care too much and won’t concede to whatever Cec wants just because she wants it this way or that. We’re not in the mood for it and it’s our therapy and not Cec’s. There’s so much crap that Cec can’t and won’t give that we need and this one thing in addition to everything else is just one that we aren’t dealing with because we refuse to let Cec have her way on this. And if she throws a big tizzy about it, it only pushes us further away to get another therapist, which we are working on as it is. For many different reasons. Cec is still a good therapist, but there are things we need that she can’t or won’t give for any number of reasons and there are things that just don’t work in the long term for us with her or with the agency. It really doesn’t help that every 3 months (and less when all is taken into account) that we have a disruption of therapy for 3-6 weeks or so, simply because of the medical issue that always takes care of itself in the long run but the agency is all about money and less about working out a payment arrangement, etc. Whatever. And it is really less than 3 months because beginning Dec. 1st, we’ll be in this situation again and chances are it will be mid-late December before everything is taken care of and by then the holidays and whatnot will be around and well, whatever, in a month and a half we’ll have another unnecessary disruption of therapy. So yah, that really doesn’t bode well for conducive therapeutic relationship crap.

After therapy tonight, we go to the dress rehearsal and afterwards to the dinner. The father will be there at both. That brings up a shit load of emotions and thoughts and system confusion and disruption and uggh, it’s a mess, and conveniently we are sidestepping it because we’ve got to go and take care of a few things and then get dressed and ready for it and head to therapy and then all of that.

The father has been in town since Wednesday and tonight will be the first time we see him and first time we speak to him. We feel stupid and so babyish for being so anxious about it and worried and stressed and uggh. There’s been a lot of intense emotional pain as others come forward. They even cried for a brief few minutes, but really cried, which we haven’t been able to do for so long. It happened when we took Zoey outside to go to the bathroom. It was definitely young ones crying. It’s just so weird. And validating and works on any denial by me or others inside. I haven’t been consciously trying to focus on the whole father shit and the abuse shit and all that stuff. And yet sudden emotional pain and stress and freak out will come, seemingly from nowhere, unexpected and just definitely not contrived or created or instigated or nothing…. and this makes the reality of the abuse more real and true and less made up somehow, like somehow we are screwed up and we must be this awful daughter and person to falsely accuse him of such a thing. It’s hard to explain, but it just makes things harder to slip into the direction of denying and invalidating when we really want to do that because it is so much easier than standing strong and saying he abused us, it is real, he is a child rapist, etc. That is really hard to do, especially around family that is invested in denial and people who don’t want to hear or know that sort of thing anyways.

we’ve got to go. we feel so all over the place. we’re a wreck and utterly exhausted. and it’s october of all fucking months.

and there are quite a number of us that wish the father would fucking admit that he abused us. and we know we shouldn’t wish that and want that from him and we wish that it wouldn’t matter, but somehow it matters right now to quite a lot of us. but he didn’t when we confronted him 8 years ago and he’s extremely unlikely to do so now.

julies, Julies, others, and whomever around

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.