Archive for the 'Julies' Category

where we’ve been

Published
by
JAGA
on October 17, 2008
in Julies, Unknown, julies (lc) and others (lc)
. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

it’s been a long, long, long month. since october 3rd through the 15th, we’ve been at the mother’s house almost every single day and night–only 1-3 nights when we weren’t there. she needed help cleaning her house before her 2 sisters came from out of town for bryan’s wedding this saturday. her house hasn’t been dusted in who knows how long and everything was dusty and dirty. the non main areas of the house were ultra cluttered and disorganized and just a mess. the main areas needed general pick up and deep cleaning because the bare minimum has been done for a long time. furniture needed to be moved and rearranged because it had been on the list for years and it needed to be done in order for there to be room for guests and for things to “look nice” and in a way “perfect” for her sisters…. as if things have always been this way and she isn’t as ill and out of sorts as she is.

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

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

The Belief Factor (my other brain is against me) Part Two

Published
by
JAGA
on May 7, 2008
in Jillie, Julie-In-Pink (JIP), Julies and others (lc)
. 0 Comments Tags: .

I don’t recall what we were thinking or planning on writing next after we completed Part One earlier today (now yesterday).  I sort of feel like what is left to talk about is the actual memory or visual picture(s) we are seeing.  And in a way process out what is so hard to believe about it.

*** (in very small writing and a small voice) i’m very terrified of being wrong.  i don’t want to accuse him of doing something he didn’t do.

*** This particular memory or visual picture(s) is the only thing that equates to what some inside view as “real sexual abuse” and not just “inappropriate behavior.”

Basically many inside discount and minimize the other stuff that we recall and know for sure happened–we do not doubt those things at all.  Although if I was real with myself, I would recall that when these memories (the ones now referred to as not real sexual abuse) surfaced about my father, they were very distressing and I/we had a very hard time believing them.  If I allow myself to go back in time and try to remember what it was like to just have those memories surface, and the unrealness about any of it, and difficulty believing it, etc., etc., then really what is happening now isn’t all that different.  Those memories that we had flashbacks of years and years ago (that we now just give little attention to as though it wasn’t that big of a deal– fucked up, yes, but not distressing to the degree it used to be and to the degree that other flashbacks or memories other kids inside have about other stuff is for them).  Anyways, those memories sparked huge PTSD stuff in me/us and it just about broke me in trying to come to grips with it and believe it and realize what my father did to “me.”  And now I give such little credence to it.  I forget that those flashbacks weren’t readily accepted as truth either, just as we’re dealing with this now with this new flashback.  Everytime I write “we’re dealing with this” and use the plural form, someone inside pipes up and gets annoyed and ??whatever the word is that I’m looking for?? and basically lets me know that it is me and plural doesn’t completely apply here.  That the usage of plural signifies the majority of us and that isn’t the case as they know it and knew it and didn’t have the issues that I had.  And frankly then I want to get snippy back and say that it wasn’t really “me” back then as it was Jillie and Julie-In-Pink, but I don’t know where Jillie is now and Julie-In-Pink (J.I.P.) is merged with me (although I think she split again, but I think she is merged back with me… not sure totally).  Anyway, so technically if J.I.P. is merged with me, I suppose that still makes it ‘me’ in a sense and applies more directly to me, even if it doesn’t feel like it was me back then first experiencing all of this.  At the same time, on some level, I know it was me, whilst on another level, I don’t feel as though I was part of that time.  That I wasn’t the main fronter at that time.  For that matter, I’m not sure if I was even around at that time.  I think I may have been created later, but not wholly positive.  I feel stupid for not knowing for sure my origins, but I’m just not sure that I’ve been around all along.  Sure– I take on the “Julie” identity and that is my name, but that could easily have been incorporated into my being and creation as an adult.  I guess really I don’t identify that much with having been around as a child and I don’t identify with it as my childhood or having a childhood.  Yes, intellectually I do and intellectually on an emotional level when it seems like I’m supposed to, but not really, and even that (intellectually on an emotional level) it really just isn’t there at all.  Okay, I side-tracked here.  I have to go look and see where my original thought was that I was trying to write about and tell.  Uggh, so hard to tell and describe the flashback stuff.

*** There’s been very little of any flashbacks of actual sexual abuse acts involving my father.  Years ago, I had 2 separate flashes of what I believe were moments just before an actual sex act happened and I’ve always struggled with believing what I just “knew” happened afterwards in a very broad manner.  I guess I’ve always pushed back hard against the visual stuff that ever crept forward in connection with those 2 particular flashes.  Aside from definite sexually inappropriate behavior (but no touching) involved, and aside from the seriously inappropriate and disgusting kiss he did to me in broad daylight in broad view of any neighbors when I was between 11-13 years old, there just hasn’t been any flashbacks involving actual sexual acts.  There was one very general flashback that a poem was written about from it, but I’ve really never considered it a memory as it is just so very far away from me, unreal, and just different than the other flashes.  So this particular flash is significant in that it involves sexual abuse in the form of a sex act by him.  And it is specific in a way.  It isn’t as far away as the poem memory is, but it isn’t as clear as the other flashbacks of sexually inappropriate behavior are.

There’s been a fair amount of other things that have led me to believe he sexually abused me.  Just saying that makes me want to put quotes around the “me” part because it wasn’t me, because I just wasn’t around during the time he was abusing us, me, whatever.  Fuck.  Insiders have had their own distress and referred to things, said things, etc., but at the same time, not a lot has been actually said in any detail about the father.  There’s been a lot of focus from the time that we lived in California and the neighbor boy/s and cult (if applicable to us).  I know my father abused me during that time too, but there’s been virtually no memory identified (that I’m aware of) with that state with him.  It’s been the states before and after that one.  I sure as hell know that he didn’t just stop mid stream.

So I guess we will try part three in trying to actually say it aloud in words.  I don’t know, maybe we won’t be able to do it.

Julies and others around