Archive

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.

tremors, focusing, and leaving, oh my—today’s thoughts

Published
by
JAGA
on August 11, 2008
in Julie/s and julie/s (lc)
. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

earlier today we discovered a tremor with our right thumb and possibly the beginnings of a tremor with a few of our right fingers if they are placed in a certain position.  the thumb though is pretty much a guarantee though in a certain position. we noticed while holding our mouse.  and of course now that we went to actually try and replicate it– we can’t do so.  so perhaps it is only with certain insiders.  i’m not sure.  it was stressing a number of us out because the mother has tremors of unknown origin and she’s had tons of tests done.  and she says her father had tremors as well.  so anyway, we did a little bit of research and came up with a few possibilities.  then we were so exhausted suddenly and had to go lay down and take a nap.  it was the kind of exhaustion that we know and experience a lot as we weren’t tired really just prior to noticing the tremor and then doing a few brief research things on it.  it seems like it doesn’t take much at all to push us past our stress limit and we have to ‘go lay down’ which ultimately usually ends up in a nap.

Mostly we just find it interesting and wanted to document how we’ve noticed how something benign and minor in a lot of ways can affect us so quickly and exhaust us to the point that we can’t seem to push past it without laying down in bed and taking a nap…with the hope it will have subsided by the time we wake up.

It’s not just this example… there are so many.  It’s like one thing can so easily throw us off course in the day or night and we’ve suddenly gone from managing, coping, or surviving, or perhaps even doing okay or well to this drastic non-functioning mode.  We’re still trying to pay more attention to it and document it because we’re really trying to understand this pattern and dynamic and how to get a handle on it instead of it handling us.

This also seems to be connected or tied in somehow to the whole ‘only able to really focus on one major thing at a time’ sort of thing.  And yet that sounds so crazy, being multiple and all.  It’s hard to explain and put into words because we’re trying to recognize it and understand this dynamic as well.  One example we can think of is how when we’re at Sean’s house, it’s like that’s ‘our world,’ and even though we know in the background there is this and that we need to do or take care of and is on our agenda, there’s still like a big concentration on being with him/them and living at his place and whatever is going on around us there. We also tend to ‘disappear’ from staying in contact with our other friends or journaling.  We’re working on changing that though.

This weekend our big focus has been our kitchen cabinets.  It’s taken us days and hours, but there have been tons and tons of breaks.  On one hand our only focus has been the cabinets… in that we can’t really cope with much of anything else and we are struggling to get it done and can’t cope with taking on anything else, even though there are tons of other things we need to be doing and there are friends locally we could be visiting or helping in some way. But we can only focus or handle the cabinets.  Yet that isn’t entirely true because we’ve had numerous breaks and often they are hours long breaks after a short bit of working on the cabinets.  The breaks have basically involved either the computer or napping or sleeping.  It seems the kids and some of us older ones as well have been taking breaks and visiting our neopet and playing lots of neopets word games and so forth.  Somehow playing word games justifies the time spent playing those games.  And of course we like word games anyway.  Plus just general web surfing or email a bit, but a lot of that has been reading.  It’s just that the whole idea of doing other necessary tasks that are critical and urgent things on our business to do list– we can’t cope with them because we’re dealing with the kitchen cabinets.  And if we did cope with them, the kitchen cabinets would have to go.  Rather than going back and forth between them.  And this whole weekend has really been about those stupid kitchen cabinets, which by the way, we’re nearly done with them.  Seriously.  A few more steps and that is it.  Then comes cleaning everything again before putting them away in the cabinets with organization and order.  Uggh.  The sad and shame thing is that we were feeling so much anxiety and being overwhelmed with it all that we couldn’t handle leaving the house to go visit our nephews or the mother to help her with something she needs help on.  Part of it is that we’re leaving out of town in a little over a week for a week with Sean and so that always stresses us out to go out of town, even if it is a good and pleasant trip kind of thing.  And I think when we have more “order and togetherness” in our life that leaving out of town won’t cause nearly as much anxiety as it does for us “to leave.”  But “to leave” is another huge thing for us too.  We have huge issues around ‘leaving’ anywhere that we are at.  Now I just thought while writing it that perhaps it has to do with the whole dissociation factor of ‘leaving,’ and perhaps that is why we always have anxiety and stress and stuff around it.  I don’t know.  I still haven’t figured out exactly what the deal is with ‘leaving’ people or places.

And really when we re-read all of that and think about it, we wouldn’t have been able to cope with going anywhere at all this weekend until we get these darn cabinets done.  We’re just sticking our feet in this and plowing away until they are done, even though it is taking us days and hours to get any of it done.  Had we just stayed with it from the beginning it would have only totaled out to be a few hours (perhaps longer than that), but really, they would have been done in a day for sure.

We’ve written a lot and need to get back to the cabinets before we lose our energy.  We actually were going to write about something else that is really hard to write about and so we ended up writing all of this… which is important too.

julie/s and Julie/s