So we had a bowl of cereal, skimmed for interesting articles in the tiny local newspaper that is really more like a newsletter that I found awaiting in the driveway after taking Zoi out. Then we went online and tried to look up some new anti-depressant that we could only remember the name partially of but had seen on a tv advertisement the day before. It’s Pristiq in case anyone is curious. And now we’re here trying to write something, even though nothing of value has really been said.

I guess for value sake we can say that we’ve discovered in the past few days that talking and telling and communicating things in our head (as if we’re writing a journal entry) in 3rd person about stuff with the neighbor boy is proving to be helpful and most recently tonight as we fell asleep, it is also proving to uncover additional information. Of course there is always the cynical and disbelieving and questioning parts of what if such and such is being made up or adjusted to what our psyche can handle or what we want to believe, etc., but I think what’s being shared is true and valid as there is a connection to my heart and what some of us know for sure is absolutely how it is whereas other stuff is pieces filled in and we’re pretty sure that’s how it is. Just someone inside always seems to have to take the role of being so utterly critical and self-hating and anything deeply negative that is needed.

We’re sounding pretty general and some inside are sure we’re sounding really fake and making stuff up and stuff but really it is because of how cryptic we’re being about things. Part of it is that it is still hard to really talk about certain things and part of it is that we’re really pretty tired and don’t feel like getting into the whole topic and starting a long journal entry about it.

The other thing is that we had therapy today, err, yesterday (Tuesday), and it turned out to be about some present day stuff that is really stressing our system out and causing a lot of anxiety. It was supposed to have been time for some others inside to have a ‘release’ of their pain and time for them to share since they didn’t get that Saturday either. So the buildup had been coming. Now it is really hard as there are internal reactions to what took place or rather what didn’t take place in therapy today. However, out of that, some interesting things came about towards the end of therapy.

1) Those inside awaiting their turn basically said something to the effect that “Something is always more important than their pain.” “Their pain is never important enough or enough of a priority.” I’m not quoting this correctly at all, but the gist is there and it was poignant the way they said it. I have it on tape and so I just have to review it and find it and update that here.

2) We realized (again for the ??? time) that we really need to listen to those whose requests are practically whispers or barely there for things. We’ve been hearing ever so quietly and ever so faintly and not at all loud or insistent or so obnoxious that we have to do something about it, the request to have on hand blank paper and crayons as part of our therapy stuff that we bring to therapy and lay out on the floor with us. We sit on the floor pretty regularly as this is just something weird that helps us get in touch with the inside easier (well, sometimes anyway… much more so than sitting on a couch or chair). They need to see and have available for them to get to easily the paper and crayons in case they come forward and need a way to communicate.

3) This then sort of brings back the point which we’ve become aware of in the past, but somehow today we just really got it on a different level or something was different and we heard them on a deeper level and perhaps more so with love and nurturing and respect that we haven’t in the past… anyway, something different transpired today, ever so briefly as we wrapped up therapy today. The realization and discussion with Kathy that many in our system value our therapy time and value talking and utilizing therapy time as much as possible in that way (or listening to our therapist’s feedback). So when insiders who are hurting and in pain take a long time to come forward and then take a long time to talk, others inside decide that they aren’t going to come forward, aren’t going to talk or say anything of usefulness, and so others inside take steps to get their agenda met and not waste therapy time (THANKS SO FUCKING MUCH BITCH ALYSA THERAPIST FOR THAT LOVELY FUCKING THING WE SO EVER CAN’T SEEM TO GET OUT OF OUR HEAD) and basically try to make use of every minute that we have in therapy talking about stuff, processing stuff. However, this takes away the whole point of others being able to just sit and ‘be’ and to ‘be in their pain’ and for Kathy to be a witness to their pain, even if they don’t say anything right away or even if they don’t know how to say anything or what to say. It is sort of like we realized on a deeper level, perhaps an emotional level instead of just a yah, yah, intellectual level, ok, but blah blah blah intellectual level, kind of thing that we need to work really hard at stepping as far back as we can so that others inside can come forward and just be and just have a witness to their pain, no matter how wasteful of therapy it may seem to us (since they aren’t saying anything, don’t seem to plan or have anything to say, etc.) and of course the crazy thing of all (and yet so duh and not crazy and again, duhhh) is that the further we step back, the more they will have to say I’m sure. It’s just if we can’t pick up anything from L.J. who is or might be picking up stuff from them (so it is very indirect) then we make assumptions, and the thing is, L.J. has been known whether purposefully or unconsciously or the data may simply be marked as sealed and stuff, that even if L.J. gets info or pieces, it will not translate over to us when we scan her for info she is picking up. So we make assumptions on false information due to the amnesia blocks and information blocks and others inside and ourselves make it harder for those in pain to push forward and us out of the way (unless they are majorly triggered by something).

We should note that we had a therapist years ago (before Wendy in fact) that told us on numerous occasions that we were “wasting our therapy time,” “wasting therapy time.” Oh and she wanted us to “tell her about our pain,” (she said this a lot too very closely associated with us wasting our therapy time when we failed to do so) but every time we tried to tell her about our pain, we did it wrong and we were wasting therapy time and we couldn’t figure out how to do it or what she wanted and we just didn’t know how to do that and she didn’t really help us figure out how or whatever. All I know is there was a time after having been told this repeatedly over many sessions, that we felt at the end that we had really done hard work in therapy and we really believed we had made progress in “not wasting our therapy time” and truly felt and believed we had done hard work and then we were told, once again before we left that session (after what we believed to have been hard work and telling her our pain) that we had wasted our therapy time.

So anyway, unfortunately this piece of shit garbage has followed us for years and years and has been a constant pain in the ass problem that has carried over with us with every therapist we’ve had since then. We just don’t know how to let this issue go– it really affected us greatly and I suppose it traumatized us because we have regular anxiety over it. Even after all those years with Wendy, we’d still have this shit come up while doing work with Wendy—worries and anxiety and needing reassurance from Wendy, etc. We’ve decided recently that we need to confront Alysa again about it as we think we may have forgotten this piece to confront her on (we confronted her once while seeing Wendy) because there was a lengthy list of shit that she did that greatly affected our system in very negative ways. Anyway, we’re going to confront Alysa again in the near future and do our damndest to find a way to let this stupid fucking bullshit piece of crap fucking bitchy unethical in our opinion stupid fuck therapist comment to let it go. Even if we were not doing therapy “right” or not making progress according to her, she could have fucking spoken to us about it in a professional manner instead of saying the crap she said and she said it way too fucking much and devalued our attempts and efforts and work we were trying to do in therapy. Excuse us for not knowing how to do therapy right enough for you bitch Alysa.

Shit. Apparently some inside still have a ton of anger at her about this and perhaps other stuff. Damn. I had no idea there was still so much anger and nasty words still left towards her. Anytime she’s come up with other therapists, other parts who are far more pc will speak of her and mention casually or matter of factly or sometimes with emphasis that we had a negative experience and some things were said and done that were hurtful (and at times brief examples are given), but wow, never anything as nasty as what has just been written here.

We had some other points to write about in regards to therapy insights and awareness and thoughts about stuff that transpired in therapy yesterday but we’ve gotten so far off track and just too tired to try and bring those thoughts back after a lot of searching inside and even after we get them, we’d have to write them down and this is long enough as it is.

Bleh. Such is some middle of the night writings. I guess we’re gonna try and go back to sleep. We’ll see how that goes.

Julies and whomever else here cuz there sure were a bunch around at different times

It is really hard to face this stuff. We have been making strides in saying his name more in therapy and in group, but it is still too much to actually write his name down for anyone to see. We HATE his name with a huge passion. His name is triggering and thankfully very uncommon, but nevertheless, for years his name or the word that sounds like his name (just a different spelling) has always reminded us of him on some level, and that word is very common. It does seem that the more we push ourselves to say his name the less power his name has over us. Funny how that works. Ha. It’s so obvious of a thing to do and yet in the past and to some extent still today, it is so hard to do and the difficulty buries the obvious solution to it.

We were talking about one of the bigger issues on a larger scope of things and yet so central to so much of it for us at this time, and somehow in talking with Kathy it seems that we may be slowly coming to some sort of ‘peace’ or rather resolution to this issue. It’s still far too sensitive of an issue to write here just yet. We’re just not that brave yet about it. I told Kathy that I couldn’t tell if it was because the real feelings and stuff were so dissociated right now or if perhaps there was an actual hint of peace on this headed our way. It is too hard yet to decipher clearly because when talking to her today, there was no real emotion nearby and it was so matter of fact. We imagined that if anyone was listening and observing us that they would think we were making it up since we were speaking about the subject matter as if it was no big deal. But it is a huge deal. Just we were and really in many ways, we’re so far away from the emotions right now. I think we just have to be. I can sense the deep sadness inside, but I also can sense the utter desperation to stay back from it because to get too close to it means being swallowed up by it and coming face to face with the past realities and truths and horrors.

Therapy with Kathy is going incredibly well. It is so amazingly easy to talk to her and tell her things and there is little or no ramifications (that I know of) for sharing so much with her. She is a very accepting and non-judgmental person and just a great therapist for us.

Anyway, we’ve been dealing with a lot of day to day stuff lately and trying to keep a handle on those things while also working as hard as we can in therapy. There’s still so many changes that we’re trying to adjust to…changes within us, with what we’re doing, outside us in our life, etc.

We’re exhausted and going to try and fall asleep tonight at a decent hour. We’ll see how that goes…

Julies

It is shocking to me and sad and grief giving as to how many years we’ve been in therapy (17 years this August) and we’re just now really and truly talking about the memories of abuse by him and really making a concerted effort to stay relatively focused on this topic and the memories and feelings and thoughts that swallow us up in such misery. Hell, in many ways, I’m just now giving myself permission to realize how serious the abuse by him was and how much of an impact it has had on us. On one level I kind of knew, but we have consistently minimized it or avoided it like crazy to not really feel things about it or acknowledge the traumatic level it has had on us. Since we’ve known about these memories or rather basically pieces of various memories, we’ve really downplayed it as something to work on because we’ve known about it for so long now and we’ve mentioned a few of them to therapists in really generic terms before, but we’ve never really dealt with any of it on any real level. We are now. And it is so hard.

Someone is mad and saying I’m exaggerating about all of it, but I’m not. I don’t feel anything right now about it, but I know there are kids inside with immense pain about all of this. They were there in therapy today. I don’t remember much, but I remember they cried and crying comes easy to the ones who showed up in therapy.

This Wednesday is the last day we see Cec and so we will be saying our final goodbyes to her and we are still completely unprepared, but hopefully we will sit down and write a letter to her or at least set up an outline for ourselves to make sure we tell her the things we need to tell her, etc.

Therapy with Kathy is going very well. We are moving along with her relatively quickly and are very focused on trying to make the most of the time we have with her each time we see her. We are also working on trying to stay focused on our therapy issues and the things therapy brings up for us and trying to problem solve stuff like that in the background while dealing with the shit that comes up from facing memories and our past.

It sounds like we’re working our ass off. I’m not entirely sure about that. It helped that Kathy said we worked very hard today and I think she’s made inferences that we’ve been working hard with her. It also really seems like we did some releasing of some toxic stuff inside and some deeper processing and release of emotions and things like that…. the kind of stuff those inside…especially those from the us and usz groups… are always needing and crying and desperately craving the time and chance for…. and today a few of them were brave enough to come forward in therapy and do some of that work.

I’m surprised we wrote this much as the exhaustion is pretty strong right now. We haven’t really had a chance to take our usual nap after therapy or any real downtime until now. We just needed to say something, even if it isn’t really saying much of anything and is so general… at least we are making ourselves write something. I honestly thought we’d only write one or two sentences, but once we got past that first hurdle, we ended up writing this much.

Really need to go for now.

Julie/s

I questioned and pondered aloud the time before last when I saw Kathy (therapist) as to how does one know and distinguish between a memory that is healed and unpleasant memories that are a part of my past. I am not even coming close to the way I originally phrased it, but that’s the general gist of it, and honestly, it sounds utterly stupid to me now as I type it… like it should just be a duh thing, but it isn’t. At least not the way we were phrasing and wondering about it when we spoke with Kathy.

So we are making slow progress I suppose and are trying to carve out a pathway and plan in our healing as we partake along this new path and new journey of therapy with Kathy. We spoke a lot about the shame and badness that we have and how it is particularly attached to any of the abuse in any way (indirect or direct) by the neighbor boy. We left therapy fairly triggered with a lot of emotions and things close by, along with the us and usz groups very close. They wrote a letter to Kathy and one of the things that was stated in the letter was something about “having to get the sad out of usz.” For some reason it just spoke volumes to me, in that it was something so precious and heart breaking in the way it was worded and shared by the younger ones. I can’t quite put it fully into words, but it touched me and many others inside.

So we are embarking along a journey to “get the sad out of us” and one of those things we’re realizing (once again many times over) is that we need to write down in every detail that we can the various memories we have that surround the abuse and any piece relating indirectly or directly to it. We have a lot of pieces that provide information on what happened and the dynamics with our family and what kind of impact it had on us. I don’t know… I keep feeling like I’m not expressing myself in the way that I need or want to do so.

We’re fighting through the blocks we’ve been having with writing. We’re also continuing to work on a way to have greater access to our computer or one of Sean’s work laptops so that we can continue to push forward in journaling as well as working on our website, etc.

So this note is longer than I thought, but shorter than what all we really need to say ultimately.

Julie/s

At the moment we are having some severe allergies or something… I’m hoping it is allergies in a way because I hate being sick and it really doesn’t quite seem like a cold, but it might be a cold or potentially develop from allergies into a cold.  Either way, we are miserably stuffed up and constantly blowing our nose and sound congested with the whole nasal throat thing going on.  The annoying thing is that taking a 24 hour allergy pill just doesn’t seem to be helping much.  I suppose it helps somewhat, but it just isn’t the magic pill that takes our symptoms away.  Bleh, complaining and whining here, but what better place than a journal for that.

It feels like we’ve been in this constant state of fluxation and change and transition for so long and it looks like it is going to continue for another 3-6 months at this point and that is rather exhausting to think about.  We’ve had 3 moves since either the end of 2006 or the beginning of 2007.  We’re actually still slowly working on the 3rd move happening and so that isn’t complete yet and it will be awhile longer before it is complete.  Additionally we suddenly found ourselves very unexpectedly in a serious relationship that is leading to marriage and hopefully at some point a child or children. Meanwhile we’ve had a number of therapists since losing Wendy in March of 2006, and although we did find Cec who has been helpful and we’ve been seeing her for some time now, we’ve known she isn’t the one who is best suited for us for very long term therapy.  So now we’re in a transition of seeing Cec and Kathy while we get ourselves settled in with Kathy.  There’s a bit more to all of that at the moment, but we’re trying to only highlight things right now.  Kathy is planning on being in the area and working for 10 years or more and so although anything can happen and change for either of us, everything is at least looking long term enough to finish up therapy with her.  She’s a good fit in many areas for our needs and ideas of what kind of therapist we are looking for to help us.  That is the hopeful and good news but it also comes bittersweet because we are having to start all over again with a therapist. There’s so much history to fill in and groundwork that needs to be laid down and so there is that frustrating component and we are feeling the pinch of time even stronger than ever as marriage and our own family becomes a reality in a few years.  We have SO MUCH work that our system would like to see done and accomplished in such a short time frame and when coupled with all the other dynamics and issues of everything, it just doesn’t seem like it is going to happen in the manner we envision or hope for.  I suppose we need to put into words what it is that we really envision or hope for and we will have to make that a therapy writing assignment for another day. Mostly we are trying to look at all of this as an opportunity to bring together all the years of our prior therapy and assimilate and associate all of that past information as we bring Kathy up to date and also as we progress in therapy with her.  We have a vague idea of how to go about doing that, but I imagine we will have to write about that as well at some point and put it into words with a more tangible form of measurement and concrete ideas.

We’ve had so very little time on the computer lately and in a sense, for quite some time now.  We finally got our computer over to Sean’s house instead of using a secondary computer that was used by our roommates, but then some additional things changed shortly after our computer came over and so it’s just impacted our time on the computer even more.  Sean and I have been trying to work on some things so that changes and is available to us and to him as well, but the ideal change is yet to come in the future.  So it will still be touch and go in some ways and we’re just trying to adjust to this change and structure that is very outside our norm or comfort zone.  

We’re exhausted.  We had therapy today with Kathy and tomorrow we see Cec and then Thursday we see our psychiatrist.  We also have to find another psychiatrist since this pdoc is through the agency and we can’t see this pdoc without having therapy there and stuff and anyway, it’s a long drive or long bus ride anyway.  

So hopefully we can actually start writing here again on a more frequent basis.  We know we’ve said this before, but our intentions truly are there, and we’re continuing to work on things so that they settle down and so we can settle back into writing.  It also seems like maybe the writing block and struggle to write may also have broken down a bit.  I think some of that has to do with the inspiration and renewed encouragement of having a new therapist that we can trust (well trying hard to trust and everything says we should be able to trust it and her) will be there for a long while and whom meets our needs right now in areas Cec just can’t and hasn’t been able to do.  We have nothing negative to say about Cec as she is a good therapist and her style does work for some inside, but not for all and not for our overall system, and even still, there were some things that we need in general as a system that we just weren’t able to have met by Cec. So anyway, that’s just a little bit of what’s swirling around in our thoughts and heart and life.

Julie/s

I’ve been learning about myself and especially Julie or The Julies really learning more about me and crap.  It’s totally interesting as they are like things I knew about myself and whatever but never really had it cement itself or connect on some level like it is now.  And like Julie is really getting to know me way more right now and understanding my triggers and my issues that will get me to react or respond or whatever ya wanna call it. So even though some shit has really hit the fan and even though things have been really crappy and I don’t know what the hell is gonna happen or be decided as far as our system goes about some shit, there is at least some learning taking place.  So that’s all good.

We got our computer and stuff moved over late last night from our apt to Sean’s house.  It’s been unloaded from his car.  So we’ll be setting that up soon.  I think that’s gonna make a big difference in writing.  I sure as hell hope so cuz crap keeps swirling around inside and we are constantly thinking about writing this or that and stuff and it doesn’t happen.  I think we’re getting closer to that changing.  Which is so fucking necessary cuz there is just so much crap we’ve been thinking about and processing.  So much unsaid and so many issues and things we need to explore and put to rest.  So like life is happening.

I decided Saturday that I think Kathy is definitely going to work as our therapist.  It’s good I got a chance to meet her face to face instead of watching and checking her out otherwise that way.  I was surprised at how relaxed I felt and how quiet people inside were about this or that when I was just chilled and my regular self and not my annoyed or pissy or irritated or whatever self.  It was pretty weird.  I was way more comfortable being out with Kathy than I was the first time with Cec.  Well I got passionate or whatever about some shit I was talking about and so my pissy and bitchy self was there.  I mean it’s all me.  Just unlike what Julie thought for years a long time ago, I ain’t always fucking pissed off and I’m not always worked up about something and not always blah blah blah about something where people are all, “chill out.”  Usually for people who don’t know it’s me, they are all like, “CALM DOWN, Julie.”  Eh, whatever.  There’s a damn good reason I’m annoyed or irritated or pissed off about something.  Ha of course that damn good reason is from my perspective.  It’s all about perspectives.

It’s totally weird right now cuz in this latest deal, I’ve been realizing how much I’m “growing up” and changing and shit.  I mean I can see that I’ve come a long way from who I was years ago.  So that’s kinda interesting.  I want to stay myself and who I am or whatever and not have my style cramped by the Julies or Julie cuz I like being me but I guess I’m more open to being sort of different if it makes sense to me or is healthier or whatever.  I mean I’ve got all this psych crap stored in here and I can look at shit and myself or open to hearing what people got to say about me if they fucking explain shit to me cuz it is still hard to see myself as others might see me and there’s like basic stuff that I worry I don’t get or understand cuz it’s never been my thing to know or care about it as much since I’ve been all about protection and Julie’s all about people’s feelings and pc shit and way more dynamics than I ever worry about.  I stick with the basics and bottom line shit and Julie adds in all this other crap.  Okay well fine, it ain’t all Julie that does that.  There’s others inside here that do that.

Well I’ve written a book and a half.  So that’s it for now.  Just wanted to get a journal entry up and to say something.

Billie

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