When Words Run Out.

I’m going through one of those spells where I don’t feel the urge to write very strongly. Maybe I just have no content, or maybe the content on my mind is just too overwhelming for me. Either way I just don’t know what to do about that. My life has a very specific set of issues right now, and I just feel redundant repeating it all the time when nothing fun, or hilarious happens in between. It’s just illness, with some pain, throw in a little “hi, I’m still crazy, the doc said so!” with a dash of “OMG iOS 7 came out and it took forever to download on my iPad and iPhone! (First world problems.)” Of course there ARE other things going on, and while I’m ok with talking about my issues most of the time, when it involves the privacy of others, well, you know…it’s only fair that this isn’t a place for that.

So, I’m just waiting, waiting for the writers block to lift I guess and the words to become interesting again.

How Will I Know?

If he really loves me?
I say a prayer with every heart beat …..
I fall in love whenever we meet!
I’m asking you what you know about these things.

Break.

Sorry, I got so caught up in my Whitney Houston throwback title if I did NOT get that out I could never live with myself, for as a child, that song was one of my jams.

The subject at hand is one that came to me as a bit of a surprise. Apparently, I AM WRITER. WHO KNEW AND WHY DIDN’T YOU PEOPLE TELL ME? It’s also possible I didn’t hear you so don’t be too hard on yourselves, we all know how I am. I’ve always loved the “creative arts.” However most would say I self identify as a die-hard music person when I pick one of those arts. I was raised playing the piano, and went into vocal lessons, sang in a talented music program in high school. Competed in vocal competitions for chorale groups in two states and have never stopped “living the music” even though I did not pursue it as a career ultimately. Life doesn’t work that way sometimes. However, music is my soul, and I’ve held that to be my thing. I have also taken up photography the past few years and gotten serious in that hobby and its semantics and found that quite enjoyable too. Not trying to step all over the pros here, I’m just saying I love it as an art and I appreciate that I’m cultivating that in my life.

Now writing. I’ve always written things down. I’ve always gotten good marks on school papers, done well in English, excelled in “put the pen to the paper and do this” type thing. I have started a blog even in the past where I randomly babbled on about whatever fell out of my mouth and did it for a couple of years. Did that qualify as writing? Writers are these remarkably talented people who can suck you into these worlds, fiction or not, with their WORDS, and make you feel and visualize things just through type. They are smart, and persevering and I just never thought I made that sort of cut, to call myself a writer. I don’t aspire to spend 16 hours a day writing and rewriting my work, although I do get inspired to share the thoughts that pour out of my head while I’m in the shower washing my hair. There is this frantic scramble out of the bathroom, and it’s clumsy, and towels are flying, and I’m terrified I will suddenly be afflicted with dementia if I don’t write these thoughts RIGHT NOW, and really, the world doesn’t need to see the aftermath of my bathroom when this happens. My husband and cats have slowly come to expect this from me now and just get out of the way when the water shuts off and the doors fling open. Often writing fatigues me because of my illness, and sometimes my thoughts keep me up all night and I don’t write them down immediately like perhaps a dedicated writer should because I’m begging my body for sleep versus slaving away over a word document. The desire is there, but I fail at the dedication I feel that so many real writers have.

Someone (another writer) informed me the other day that things like this, this need, in whatever form it takes, means I’m a writer. This revelation has hit me like a load of bricks ever since. Even if publishing is not my goal, she said. Which it’s not. People keep saying “WRITE A BOOK, you’d be good at it!” Reality is, I don’t want to. At least not at this point in my life. I don’t know what that makes me, but there it is. I love my kind of “hit and run” blog style writing, and I feel connected to it and it suits me.

My writing at the moment documents my life, emotionally and raw. I’m sick, I have this frustrating family situation, I have issues I feel passionate about, and coming up here I may be losing my husband again for a year via military separation. Writing exercises those demons for me, and is fast becoming an inspirational thing I DO. And I can often do it from bed which is a huge bonus for the mobility impaired such as myself. The idea that people READ THIS THING and told me “hey writer, look at you!” is nothing short of mind-blowing.

PTSD: House of Cards

This is the hardest thing I’ve chosen to write about, ever, so if I falter in my delivery, style or miss a grammar issue, grant me a pardon. I feel strongly about sharing my story on a personal level because I’m hoping staring it in the face will help me heal, and knowing its out there will make me deal better. It’s been sitting with me quietly, in writing, in private for a few days now, but I think taking my voice back is important to the process as well.

I had enough to handle as a kid growing up that I was already a pretty unstable person going into adulthood but I really think what sent me into full blown fracturing of my psyche PTSD was my rape. And I think the other night I realized just how much INSIDE I hadn’t dealt with it. I was laying in bed and it all flooded back out of nowhere. But mostly the anger at how I turned to my family, my dad for support, and what he told me on the phone the day after I escaped from that house. And then how he handled getting my stuff back, chatting with the guy, shaking his hand. I got super angry and burst into tears and sobbed right there in the bed for an hour. And asked Ken all sorts of WHY questions. I was flooded with betrayal like it had just happened last night. So bad I could not breathe.

I was living in a house in 2002, with multiple roommates, of which I was friends with and of which happened to be male. I learned over time, that said male friend had a serious control and drinking problem and ultimately it devolved into assaulting me, multiple times. With his own children also in the house. I was terrified, in shock, and at first totally unprepared to stand up for myself and fight back. I was raped several occasions, once when I was even sick with a fever and crying the entire time BEGGING for him to stop. At the end, he dropped his 14 month old daughter in my lap and went out for the night drinking. I was trapped, for I was also attached to this child as well, and stuck with the dilemma of abandoning her, for I had no legal standing on that front, or being subject to this abuse at his every whim despite my slow but surely emotional death going on inside. One night, he came home drunk, and I LOST IT. I fought back. He attacked me, I locked myself in the basement while he cut the phone lines so I couldn’t call for help. The only saving factor in this was he passed out drunk and I packed a bag with a stolen cell phone and stuck out the back door and RAN leaving all my belongings behind in the process and called a friend for help.

I broke down and called my family. My father told me that considering that God didn’t intend for men and women to live together outside of marriage, this was a poor choice on my behalf. He then told me, that he knew of my flair for the dramatic and said that I probably did something to lead him to believe this was ok, or was simply not relaying the story exactly as it happened anyway, so don’t be surprised if no one takes this very seriously. After some time had passed, he did offer to have him and my uncle move my stuff out of my rapists house for me, back to my mothers house, who at least gave me my old room back until I found somewhere else to live. During this moving, I was required to be present, and when my rapist protested over removing some items from the house he preferred to keep my dad LET HIM, because “he seemed to have a point, and was friendly about it (I didn’t even hear the conversation, I was too emotional to leave the car)” and then they laughed, chatted and SHOOK HANDS at the end. And that was that. We have never spoken of the incident again. It never happened.

Suddenly, a couple nights ago, I couldn’t rationalize ANYTHING. Why I could fight so hard to get out of danger only to be dropped on my head by my own father. Why he shook hands with my rapist instead of punching the man who hurt his daughter right in the face. WHY HE NEVER MENTIONED IT TO ME AFTER WORDS. NEVER SAID HE WAS SORRY FOR MY PAIN. Its like it never happened. I don’t want to be known as the family member who’s only hook was getting raped but I sure as hell want to know that people support my through my recovery and BELIEVE THAT IT HAPPENED. I know I have people that believe me. I do. Wonderful friends, and a husband. It’s the people that openly shunned the idea to my face that have done such damage. Because they weren’t just people I could just disregard. I have to face my dad. All the time. My stepmom wrote it off because my dad didn’t feel it important to tell her so when I mentioned it, she brushed me off. I immediately felt shame and never talked of it again. My mom doesn’t talk about things like that, her and my grandmother are experts at bottling trauma and burying that shit so deep it NEVER SEES LIGHT AGAIN. EVER. Meanwhile, I’m dying inside.

After 10 years, I’m obviously no where near over this judging by the rage and betrayal, tears and Klonopin needed that bubbled up out of my own head seemingly unprompted by anything other than my own head working its own thoughts.

Yes, I’ve been through therapy but to be honest, I realize I’ve danced around this event. I have not danced around the topic of religion or my dad, but my rape, I’ve acted like I accept that it isn’t my fault (I do, now) and I can put it behind me. Apparently…..I’m wrong. The other night was proof. Being strong and saying you know it’s not your fault is only part of healing. Never talking about it again on that premise, is NOT strength I’m learning, and it’s forcing me to relive my trauma in me dreams, and in my waking thoughts.

And I will say it WAS the moment I let go of the idea of a personal relationship with God, and started moving toward the idea of a more abstract uninvolved creator type god. Perhaps one that set the world in motion, but did not play a part in events nor did he intervene in the lives of his creations. It’s when I started my first blog in fact (in 2003.) My blog was an exploration of that idea, if I could make peace with that, if I could see beauty in that type of god. I dug down deep into the metaphorical beauty of “God’s Creation” in the bible, and tried to find inner peace with the world through nature of the earth around me. I blogged my ass off about it and thought in my head “why all the beauty out there when my beautiful body has just been torn apart inside and he didn’t care?” (I did a TON of this while drowning in drugs.) And if I could reconcile those thoughts within a church that believed strongly in a personal god. Which, ultimately, I could not. I couldn’t rationalize either. Nor accept the way the social aspects of the Christadelphians where railroading me in the wake of all this, coupled with how my childhood went. So I started reading other materials that spoke to me, in terms of evidence and logic, that have formed my path today.