The Light at the End of the Tunnel is NOT an Exit

Events occur that most wouldn't understand how that seemingly unrelated thing would have any effect on me.  It's complicated to explain and when pushed to do so, even though it's also said that I don't have to explain, I feel compelled to explain if it's someone that I think I might be able to trust in some smallish way.  So I explain, a little.  A testing of the waters. A testing of the light.  It could be another instance of setting myself up to be devoured by following the light of apparent friendship with the bait of a much-needed hug.  I just might have some trust issues, but not without cause. ;)



I get entranced by the "light at the end of the tunnel" and continue moving towards the light, all the while I'm actually moving deeper into darkness.  I discover I'm not in a tunnel but rather my whole existence is surrounded by darkness, punctuated by flashes of light whereby I barely escape alive, but certainly not unscathed.  The light moves where ever it needs to in order so that even when I move towards the light I descend farther into darkness.  I retreat from it and too late realize it now is between me and the true light.  No matter what I do nothing makes a difference for long.

For an all too brief period of time I moved out of the darkness I have been surrounded by for most of my life.  I believed I had escaped the darkness.  For a time I was free of it, but a vortex from the depths pulls me back.  I see a light above me but its not the light of freedom, its the light of that ever present trap moving closer to me as I sink deeper into the darkness I'm well accustomed to.  Between me and the true light of the freedom I have tasted is the light of the false hope of healing from PTSD and all that goes with it.  The darkness and coldness of a life numbed to emotions is safer.  And today all I want is to be safe and for this anguish to be over.

A Perfect Easter Sunday...except

Easter Sunday... It's supposed to be a day of hope remembering Christ's resurrection.  In some ways I am participating in Easter, but I feel more like an outside observer this time.  Not belonging, but this time of my own choosing.  I made sure everything ran smoothly this morning and the whole family made it to the sunrise service on time and even a little early and then on to the breakfast at church and then the worship service.  Dinner is in the oven the potatoes are cooking and the gravy is standing by ready to be made at the last minute.  The boys are all down and actually sleeping for naptime.  It's been a perfect day thus far.  After naps then everyone will get their Easter baskets and then we will have our Easter dinner.

Sounds great and it is except...  I dissociated through most of the service which made me rather fuzzy headed afterwards.  Someone asked me if I was sick because it seemed I was walking like I didn't feel well and seemed off.  I thought I was hiding it well.  Evidently not.  I am out of practice in hiding how I feel.  People are used to seeing me fully engaged and not in shut down mode.  She also kept asking and guessing what was wrong until I told her the short version of the story, which was the PTSD is back and I thought I was over it because everything was so different this time.  I also told her about the two local counselors who couldn't handle my "multiple traumas" and one of them has been counseling for 30 years and has PTSD with trauma as a specialty.  Somewhere in the conversation I said a few times, "I'm done."  She asked what I was done with.  I couldn't give her a good answer.  I didn't want to.  Church? was one of her guesses.  I wasn't sure how to answer that question since that is something I've been thinking about.  She and another lady who came back into the conversation a bit later both hugged me and said they would pray for me and some other comforting type statements.

Another conversation in the parking lot with someone else, more hugs and encouragement to not blame myself or carry guilt for considering or deciding to not adopt the boys.  The only people who know at this point in my face to face life are the pastors and elders at church, and at least one of their wives. 

So, it's a perfect Easter Sunday.  We have the pictures to prove it.  I wish I didn't have a different narrative running underneath it all.  The one that says, "This is the one and only Easter you'll have with these boys.  The last holiday.  They will leave with their Easter outfit, but maybe will never want to wear it again because of the association of the last happy holiday with us.  Everyone sees how well they are doing and the improvement in behavior.  No one will understand why I can't do the mom thing, why I can't pull it together, why I have an inability to parent them all, why all of a sudden I can't handle the improved version of these boys or what my problem really is.  God is sovereign but why so much pain?  Am I supposed to tough it out and somehow stop leaning on my older children for help?  The more times a day goes well and I survive it, the more I doubt myself."

Then again, with the almost constant dissociation during church, dizziness, blurry vision and the lingering headache and evidently odd way of walking around afterwards, can that be called a successful day?  I am surviving it, but that's it.  And this day is going so well compared to others!  I just want to sleep it off, but if I dare go to sleep I will easily be out for the next 4-5 hours which would ruin the day for everyone else.  So I inflict upon a few people another rambling blog post chronicling my journey through life. 

Turning Off Emotion: it's what I'm good at

There is no grace, no redemption, no hope in this post.  If you are having a bad time of it right now then this isn't what you should be reading.



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Sadness

Regret

Hollow

emotion and tears well up...I flatten them down and refuse to feel

and then nothingness

 

 

Maybe there is a chance that things will change for the better someday, but I can't see it right now.  Truthfully, I don't want to see it either.  I'm out of hope and my pain meter is maxed out.  I just want a way for it all to stop.  I only know one way to stop it and to stay alive, nothing else has worked long term.

Everything I do is on my list. My secret “how to live life so no one knows you aren't really here” list. I haven't used that list for two years now. For two years, plus another four months if I count my inadvertent thawing, I have been waking up to my own emotions, feelings and pain. Lots of pain. I've dealt with it and had much needed help doing so. I spent several weeks feeling and a few being suicidal. I think I was in that dark place again for about five weeks . I thought it would be a long time, maybe 3-5 years before I would cycle back around to being that bad off again. I was wrong.

I got to the point I could be in church and the triggers and dissociation didn't necessarily happen every service and when they did it was manageable. It took the better part of two years to get to that place. Even then there were plenty of days where I didn't function well and was checked out and not able to do the mom thing.

NO. MORE.

I'm done.

I'm done working so hard to be okay and honestly thinking that this time it will work. This time, because the message is so different and I'm believed and and and... There is just no fixing me. Not a real fix, not real healing, no truly getting past the PTSD and dissociation and the failure of being a good mom, who is truly and always here for my kids. I can't give them these two years back or all the other years where I was trying to find help, but I can give them a well programmed mom who does the right things at the right times(with just a little bit of lag). This I can do. This is what I'm good at. I've done this my whole life except for those times when I longed for something more, something real and for the experience of having real emotions besides anger.

I've done the emotion thing now for the last year or so and it's just not worth it. I've experienced the good emotions in what I think are genuine feelings. It was amazing to feel, really feel happiness and to laugh spontaneously without thinking about it and cuing myself to laugh. As great as all that was I can't keep those good emotions without also keeping myself open to their opposites. The price is too high and I can't keep paying it.

Tears are turned off

feelings are being dampened

I'm starting to look ok again.

 

The true test will be when we tell the boys and we send them away.  Until then, I practice for the big day.  The day when I rip my heart to shreds and pretend it doesn't hurt.

An Odd Collection of Friends

It was a decade or so ago and I was in desperate need of help. 

In search for tangible and lasting help that brought healing and not more pain I kept trying to find some one or some thing to help.  It's all a blur, unless I slow down and think about it, the stream of people I looked to for comfort and ministration and found that their capacity to simply hear my story was so small.  The few who could hear some parts of it and remain my friend and not turn me into a dreaded sympathy project were those who themselves were so wounded.  We gathered together at all night restaurants and talked till dawn.  Just friends talking, no projects allowed.

After a time, and so many hours drinking sweet tea, coffee and cappuccino and splitting hash browns at three in the morning, the gatherings eventually had more reasonable hours and we met at my house for popcorn, hot chocolate with butter schnapps, white zinfandel and talking and board games.  We felt like normal people, with friends.

Our conversations were different than any other gathering of friends or church people I'd ever experienced.  We spoke of cutting; head banging; sleeping the darkness away; the need to check on a friend who might be suicidal, again; and abuse, all kinds.  We spoke of God and Bible verses that helped, but mostly we were the hands of Jesus to each other because everyone else hurt us more.

I'd like to say that I was strong and a source of comfort and was full of empathy for these dear ladies.  In reality we were all barely functioning and from day to day what kept us together was the knowledge that we were all we had.  We were all in different churches, and each of our churches were actively "helping" in our lives in some way.  We needed each other.

Can I Tell My Story, Uncensored? Should I?

What is the importance of telling your story?  I mean really telling it, from beginning to end.  The last time I attempted to do that was in the last couple of years and it was only the highlights, if you will, of a life time of smaller hurts and also of ongoing effects of childhood sexual abuse which still affect me today.  The statement that counselor made to me was that any one of these events would be enough to cause PTSD in someone.  For two or three, one hour sessions I briefly ran down the list without too much detail.  From the confident woman I first met, this counselor changed before my eyes into someone who seemed to be afraid to hear the next thing that would come from my mouth.  My trauma was causing her pain in some way.  I didn't understand how she could feel my pain.  All I knew was that she was having serious problems with hearing my bare bones story.  I felt bad to be hurting her, so I didn't go back.  My story remained untold.

Lately I've been googling, trying to find out if telling it in story form is a good thing, necessary or just a nice sounding way of wallowing in the past.  When I think of NOT telling my story as a whole, instead of in disconnected pieces; then a whole host of statements made to me by my abuser start playing in a continuous loop, joined by all the other not-helpful things people("friends", counselors, pastors, police officers and lawyers and toss in one ignorant doctor) have said to me over the years.  I often feel as disconnected as the way in which I've told my story to my pastor/counselor.  In the beginning he told me I didn't have to tell him everything about the actual abuse, so I didn't.  Along the way I disclosed small snapshots of what happened when I was abused.  I tested him at every turn, waiting for the words, "I can't help you. You need to find another counselor."  Instead he keeps on telling me that he's in it for the long haul.  I believe him now.

In spite of a non linear telling of events and staying focused, more on the effects of the abuse in my life today than a upfront factual retelling of the abuse, my pastor/counselor has the basic gist of what happened.  There is a bit of a problem with adequately addressing guilt and shame, since I've only barely brushed on those immensely shaming aspects of the abuse, in all the many hours of counseling over the last 18 months.  I don't know how to go there, or if I should go there.  It's pretty explicit because that's part of the story, and to sanitize what happened so its a little more palatable seems like its minimizing what really happened.  I lived through it.  No one sanitized it for me.  No one dimmed the horror by skipping what I couldn't handle.  Not one person has heard it all.  In order to cushion the blows my words have become to my hearer, I always skip around as I speak of the sexual abuse in counseling.  Past counselors have either been deeply affected to the point that they can't help me or have done other odd things that moved the focus from my abuser like: attempting to convince me it was a different person who abused me; or that my "real" problem was something besides the sexual abuse.  To a point, it has been a necessary cushioning of it for me too, yet I'm also acutely aware of my edits and deliberate minimizing of the abuse in order to talk about it and not harm or scare off another counselor.  There are times I don't say things because I'm sitting there contemplating whether or not bringing up certain aspects of events would be too explicit; and therefore would bring down some sort of rebuke for a gratuitous recounting of things about the abuse or its long term effects that didn't need to be said.

This fear of rejection runs in me so strongly that I can't think reasonably about the chances of such a rebuke occurring.  Technically, rejection of me as a person, and not listening to the details of my story are not the same thing.  In my mind I know this, but the part of me which fear controls can't make that distinction.  Crawling under a rock and face hiding shame dominates my thinking and instinctive self protective behaviour.  I would contaminate another person by going into the shame filled details.  Why wouldn't anyone not look at me with disgust if they knew everything?  It's not like I want to put out all the details, or even any of them, to everyone who knows me.  I just want one person on earth to know everything and not turn away from me.  That hasn't happened yet.  No one yet knows everything.  I don't blame them for not being able to handle hearing it, but still, I had to live it.  Isn't there anyone who can listen to me say everything; from the sound of the stairs, the creaking open of the door, the smell of concrete, the taste of fear and helplessness, to the things I did to provoke him so he would just get it over with?  Or is it just too much to put on someone else?  When it's all put together it is horrendous and explicit in all the details of what he did to me and what I did, felt, saw, and thought at the time.  Is is wrong for me to tell my story, uncensored?

S is for Suicidal in September

Between October and now almost to the end of February I have had no postings.  Well in September I had a several days run of extreme depression.  I couldn't sleep for well over 60 hours.  I was, to put it quite bluntly, extremely suicidal.  I went as far as making a plan and taking steps to ensure I would be able to carry it out.  Once everything was in place I was so happy and lighthearted, and just felt such relief as though a great burden had been lifted.  I hadn't felt so good and free since high school, which was also the last time I actually tried to kill myself.  I drove around town for a little while reveling in how relaxed and happy I felt.  I wondered if this was how normal people felt sometimes.  I didn't want to wait for a better time.  NOW was feeling so wonderful, I was ready to be done with hurting; with curling up trying to hang on and riding the next wave of depression so deep that it hurt to just, be.  I drove around thinking about things and feeling good and truly alive.
Eventually I thought about my children and especially what my little guy had just recently started saying to me when I came home, "I missed you, Mommy."  He was so little, how could he voice that?  I heard his little voice in my mind and I couldn't die, but I wanted to so badly.  The pain was so intense for so long I couldn't bear to give up this relief and joy I felt.  I found myself driving to someone I trusted and giving them a note and a bottle of sleeping pills for them to keep.  I couldn't throw them out the window or drop them in the trash and once at their house I resisted their efforts to dispose of the pills.  I think I needed to feel I still had an out.  I'm not sure, it's strange to think it out loud like this.  For me depression is like the ebb and flow of the tides.  It always returns.  Sometimes I get hit with a tsunami, same waves, but totally out of control.

Life Together with Christians in my New World

I haven't written a blog post in a while, although I've been writing a lot for my own sanity elsewhere.  I've started reading another book, just a short little one, but it is packed with a whole lot of things new to me in some ways.  It's really not new, but reflects the cry of my heart that I've done my best over the years to bind and gag and bury it deep so I can't hear it any longer.  The book I've begun to read is Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Enter the idea of Christian community and confession.  Why in the world would I read such a book?  I don't know, I suppose it has something to do with the things I've been wrestling with for the last few months.  In good ole IFB language these would be the things I would mention as "unspoken prayer requests" back in the independent fundamental baptist church I grew up in.  Thankfully I'm not in that world anymore, but I still don't quite know how to safely navigate in the world I find myself in today.  Life Together is given as an example of how we should live life together in our Christian community.  Therefore I find myself reading it to see just what that entails.

There is a great amount of tension between confession and daily community life that I see lived out before me.  How much of your story should be known?  What sort of things do you confess and to whom?  Who can handle the really big stuff, you know, the type of things that you do need help with in overcoming, the struggles that are too hard to carry on your own?  Not too many people fit that description.  And the incredible risks involved are enough to drive you back to isolation and denial.  That's a lonely and emotionally frozen way to live.  I want to be thawed out, but I'm afraid I may be "freezer burnt" and never be able to function as a normal person in the community I am now in.  The big things like major depression that cycles around to various degrees of suicidal thoughts all the way up to the point of deciding to attempt it or not is not something most people can deal with.

Of course the ones who are "trained" to deal with it are the ones who have no answers.  What kind of help is that?  Listening to the Godless drivel that comes out and yet is called help, is enough to drive me to really go through with it.  Talk about truly depressing!  Yet these are the people that I would be referred to in the throes of being suicidal because evidently pastors, who are thoroughly trained in the scriptures and theology, don't have the answers I am in desparate need of during the times I am suicidal. (Did you notice the sarcasm here?)

QUOTES from Life Together:

"The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer." p19

"The believer feels no shame, as though he were still living too much in the flesh, when he yearns for the physical presence of other Christians." p19

"The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God." p20

"He knows that God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him guilty, even when he does not feel his guilt, and God's Word in Jesus Christ pronounces him not guilty and righteous, even when he does not feel that he is righteous at all.  The Christian no longer lives of himself, by his own claims and his own justification, but by God's claims and God's justification." p22

"God has willed that we should seek and find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man.  Therefore, the Christian needs another Christian who speaks God's Word to him.  He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth.  He needs his brother man as a bearer and proclaimer of the divine word of salvation." p23

Themed Blogging Days

Thinking about ways of being more intentional with this blog and I'm going to try themed blogging days.  Something like:
Marvelous Monday, Mad Monday or Morbid Monday or maybe just to be a little more "normal" I'll do Monday Munchies.
Truthful Tuesday, Tuesday Triggers, Troubled Tuesday, or Torturous Tuesdays: a walk down memory lane
Wednesday Wonders, Wordless Wednesday(I like pictures and occasionally I take a good one)
Theology Thursday (I could probably write on this, pose questions, post about the crappy "answers" I've received over the years)
Fearful Friday or Fabulous Friday (That's really polar opposites, maybe I'll just skip Fridays)
Searching Saturdays (open ended theme that can work for a lot of things, even normal living life stuff)

My Lousy Balancing Act...

I've been trying out, in great seriousness and effort, another go round of counseling with a pastor and not just some pastor that I drive to go see that doesn't see me on Sunday or other times, but my pastor, the one who is charged with shepherding the sheep in his flock, of which I am one.  I'm not sure how well it's going.  Rather, I'm not so sure how well I am doing.  I don't know how to balance honesty, openness, anger and being nice.  I don't think I can be fully honest and nice at the same time.  I can be honest in a limited scope and be nice which is how you act with everyone else when you know they have neither the time, nor inclination to hear your deepest darkest.  And that's ok, that's life.  I sure don't want everyone I know to know all about me.  Hence the somewhat anonymous blog. hehe  But as far as maintaining civility and avoiding the appearance of anger while being fully honest and open, well I've never done that before.   Never is a strong word, but it might just fit this time.

I keep coming back to the difficulty I have in balancing emotions and behavior.  Being able to handle church, preaching, Bible reading, singing and physical touch without the necessity of retreating physically and/or emotionally in order to maintain a facade of normalcy is where I would like to be some day.  I'm tired of the facade.  When I let up and am fully, or nearly fully, open and honest then I am always the loser.  When I restrain myself and limit what I say or try to act like all is okay when I am falling apart on the inside; then I still lose because I think people notice and pull away.  I'm not sure if it's because they are bothered that I don't trust them enough to be real with them or if they are retreating to avoid any possibility of getting too close to my screwed up self.

I've been scarily honest in some emails with my pastor after counseling times, and didn't try to hide my anger.  Is that keeping it real or is it being a jerk?  Having to ask such a question reflects my lousy balancing skills.  Anyway, this has been a hell of a week.  DH and I had a medium sized fight last Sunday night, and of course he brought it up in counseling on Monday afternoon.  I wasn't nice.  I was sarcastic, rude, angry, hurt and scared, but didn't show I was hurt and scared, just used all the ugly ways of protecting myself from being known.  That was a dud of a counseling session,  I was actually asked to leave so the pastor could talk to just my DH.  It was just supposed to be for 10 minutes and then I thought I was coming back in, but that actually ended the session.

I've been in a funk, depressed, planning how to win the war with my husband, ended up being really sorry for some emails I sent and I've cried a lot this week. And to top it off,  tonight I was quite triggered by reading I John in preparation for the upcoming Sunday school series. And I didn't even read it, I listened to it on my iphone from a link for this weeks church news.  Like I said, this has been a rough week.  No let up.

How is Christ my deliverer and the solution to my problems?

To say that to see "Christ as the deliverer" is the solution leaves a lot of things out. It makes things seem simple as 1-2-3 now you're ok, it's not.

If you had a lot of bones broken and had gone to the hospital for the "solution"/healing and then had some limbs put in traction and other ones had casts, that doesn't make you ok. It wouldn't be right for people to assume that you were now all better. Let's go a little farther on your path to healing. You're now able to be moved and now the legs that were in traction are in casts. Are you healed yet? Let's keep moving in time. Now all the casts are off and you look fine on the outside. Are you? No. You may or not be able to walk, you certainly aren't anywhere near back to your full strength. The problem now is that you look ok. You can easily be hurt at this time. So now you look healed but you're still going to physical therapy. Do you have to post your schedule to make sure everyone knows you are still working on healing? Of course you have options: wear a sign warning people not to be too rough on you because you are still healing; be prickly to keep people at bay so no one gets close enough to hurt you; just be standoffish enough to keep people away; of course my favorite is to act like it doesn't hurt, all the while you feel like you're dying.

Yes, Christ is the solution, but it's not that simple. Not really. How is he the solution? Those are just words. What does that truly mean in my life? Sometimes it's all I can do to mentally acknowledge that God is sovereign in all. I can't think past that to what those ramifications are. With God being sovereign over all that also makes him, on some level, the problem too. He's God. He doesn't have to use the baseball bat approach to alter events and peoples lives. For whatever reason, he chooses to.

Some days I can see past all this, other times I can barely ignore it, and sometimes I feel like I just get slammed up against all of life and there's no point to it but pain. I really hate being asked "How was your day/week?" I always answer truthfully, but rarely fully. I leave the core of it out if I'm having a hard time. On some level I'm always fine and always busy with something or other; but the part of me that just wants to say how I really am, can't. I can't because I look ok and have to pretend to be ok. I have to keep up appearances.

So am I really truthful? People get tired of hearing the truth. Who wants to hear that you are struggling again and still? They've already told you how to get to the hospital, so check out already! Be healed! or "be ye warmed and filled". If you tell someone that your leg is really bothering you today and then he kicks it to somehow show you that it doesn't really hurt; eventually you keep your pain to yourself. It doesn't hurt so bad that way, but it's also slower to heal.

"I do think that it is true that similar suffering of people can help with similar comfort for one another. But this should not mean that one person has to have the exact same suffering (or the exact same burden and/ or weight of burden) in order to help another carry that burden."
I agree with the above statement, but I've never seen it, let alone experienced it. What I've seen is that those who don't have a similar suffering get tired of other people who continue to suffer instead of healing on some timeline that the one comforting has in mind. That comfort turns to a kick on a healing broken leg. If you get kicked often enough by enough people, you hide the fact that you aren't what you appear to be; you hide your need for healing. Who really wants to try again to see if maybe this time, this person won't kick me, like so many others have?

On the other hand I've seen those with similar sufferings be so patient and gentle with one another taking turns holding one another up.

I believe in transparency with one another. I can't go very far with it these days, but I am tired of having 2 answers dashing around my mind to the question "How was your day?"
I'd like to be able to say what it really was like. "I barely got out of bed, I got nothing done because I couldn't focus my attention, I just curled up and cried and told the kids I was sick, my day was really lousy because I found out x about my non-case, or it's just been crappy" I'm tired of always having a good/fine day, but busy!

This is a good-sized dose of truth about me. I don't communicate well with spoken words. I go mute and my brain generally freezes up. I just want to not have to always be ok with everyone I see face to face on a regular basis. So maybe now my answer to how my day was, can be closer to what it really is and not just a sanitized part of it. I've felt like I've been making small talk with a friend of a friend, because I've hidden my broken leg. As long as it's acknowledged I don't have to dance around things that remind me of it and make sure I avoid it when I'm just talking.

"The only one who can really and completely carry another person’s burden is Christ Himself. But that is also where the members of Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12) come in—we assist in the carrying because we too have and live the solution—forgiven and comforted in our union with Christ!"

I know that Christ is the only one who can completely carry the burdens. But is it conditional? If I don't come and take his yoke and learn will I never have rest? I have a hard time distinguishing between his yoke and what I'm already bearing.

Matthew 11:28-30
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

1 Corinthians 10:13
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

God promises that he will never give us more than we can bear; then again believing that this verse is really saying that is a IFB holdover. I doubt everything I was ever taught, maybe this is wrong too. Maybe I was lied to again and temptation here doesn't mean trial, maybe it just means temptation. Maybe this refers to sin, not suffering. So maybe then God never really promised that he wouldn't give us more than we can bear. That would explain a lot of things.

II Corinthians 1:9
Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

If I fell off a mountain and lived I wouldn't think I had been delivered. I would think I survived. Just because I landed and the fall finally ended doesn't mean active deliverance. It means I lived through it.

I have been delivered from a literal end in hell, but that is the deliverance that I received of God. Other than that, I view it as the fall off the mountain finally ended and I survived. That's not deliverance. I have huge problems with attributing God's deliverance to the natural fact that eventually everything ends, even falling off a mountain. I fell off a mountain. I was falling for the entire school year. The year ended and I hit the ground. I wasn't delivered from anything. It was a natural end, like gravity.

Now that I've written all this I can talk off of it. If I hadn't written about all this I wouldn't be able to say a thing. It's like it has been unlocked and now I can take it out and look at it and figure out what it is.

Denial? or protection

Who am I kidding? My 93 year old grandma doesn't even have a computer!!!

My kids? I don't know. How do you tell your kids something like this?

Everyone else? Shame?

I'm trying to breathe, hands sweating etc.


Yesterday I called a lawyer(I knew him when we were in grade school and college)
I also called the Independence Police Department and
and the Kansas City Police Department
--somehow my police report is missing but the record that it exists remains
--puzzling
I talked to 2 new friends that hadn't known any of this before, they know now.
I talked to the Metropolitan Organization to Counteract Sexual Assault(MOCSA)
I "chatted" with an old friend on facebook, she now knows

I think I'm doing pretty good, for a chicken.

I bought chocolate and hot tea. The chocolate is gone already:(

I think that for now I am as public in as many places as I can be and still hold together.

Using My Real Name!!?

Well, I finally took the plunge, overcame my fear, or maybe I only overcame my sense of self-preservation because I finally joined the rest of my generation and got a facebook account using my real name. My abuser also has a facebook account. I blocked him; hope it works.
He appears to have left the South and moved west according to his facebook info.

On my facebook wall I wrote that I was looking for other victims of a teacher I had had. I went to a medium to large size Christian school and then on to Bible college with some of the same people and I am now feeling like a bug under a magnifying glass. I have now just put out a huge advertisement and flashing neon lights about the fact that I was abused in some serious way and I sincerely hope that it pays off and he is brought to justice because this really sucks.

Here on my personal blog I will maintain anonymity except to an extremely small number who know me in real life.(about 4) I'm not sure if it's more to protect myself, or my family. I lean towards thinking it's for my family(grandma and my kids). I don't want my kids to know everything or really much of anything. My mom and I get along now, mostly because I threatened her that if she didn't treat me like a human being that her grandkids would never even know she existed, and she lives over a 1000 miles away. We talk on the phone and I enjoy it now. She acts like the past never happened. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.

Being Findable Online and Fear of Rejection

I've been going to a Bible study for the last couple of years. I sorta stopped going much this past year. We were going through a book that I can't remember the name of and the next week we were going to be reading and then talking about a chapter that covered rape. I couldn't go that week or the next, and I've been sporadic in my attendance ever since.

Well the lady who hosts the study is the sister in law of a guy I slightly knew in high school and we ended up going to the same college and hung out a lot our freshman year. He is now a lawyer and he was always a real decent guy. I want to be a person easier to find online so that former students/victims of slimeball can get in touch with me and we can stop him. So I was thinking of a good email address and searchable info I could use but then I thought I should check it with a lawyer to make sure I wasn't shooting myself in the foot for later prosecution of him. AHA I thought, I know a lawyer, sorta. So I called my friend that hosts the Bible study and stumbled around to ask her to ask her husband to ask his brother my question. The joys of giving background info...not. Anyway I can now add another person on my list of people who know. I didn't tell her specifics, but enough so that it's easy to fill in the blanks. I did tell her I had an odd question. I'm getting better at this, maybe I can talk to Dr C halfway intelligently and not have to look at my talking point notes when/if he calls me back.

I did ask her to not advertise it. I'm not sure how she can ask my question without her husband knowing who she is talking about. I got her cell # from him tonight, and then she is going to go home and ask him this question. Oh well. It is what it is. -----I just called her and told her that I had called H and got her cell # from him and that he's not stupid, he can put 2 and 2 together and it's all right, so don't stress over me saying don't advertise it. She assured me that it won't go any further than them.

I think they had already been talking from what all she said to me, but I'm not sure.

Last July(2008) I had been told in some kind of confrontation thing, by people I thought were my friends, that I was all kinds of awful and they were quite specific. One of the things that I was accused of, was hiding behind past abuse as an excuse for not trusting and being open with these very new friends. They put us out of their lives and said that after I had gotten help and changed and fulfilled a list of requirements that the men would get back together and see if I was qualified to be allowed back in their lives.

You know, for someone who is terrified of rejection this was very severe. I didn't know it was possible to stay awake and cry the whole night long until the sun rises. I cried beyond tears. It hurt so bad that I never even wrote about it after the verdict was given.
I had tried so hard to trust and I had opened up to a certain point and where I was most vunerable is where they plunged in the dagger of rejection and unworthiness.

We have made some new friends since then. I have been quite aloof and kept most recent pains and intense past pain to myself. I don't think I come across as aloof, at least it is an acceptable level if they do think so. I am so afraid of losing our new friends that I am always amazed when I see acceptance and tolerance of differences and forgiveness, but yet I still haven't risked them knowing my personal past pain or ours as a family in what we went through with one of our children.

Numb Again

I'm not going to see Dr A again. At least I don't think so. I'm going to see someone else. I will try to call tomorrow. I'm tired of sinking back into where I was. I don't know how to get out of it. I can't seem to get it together. I am more organized now, but more of a mess on the inside. I feel numb again and can't snap out of it. I'm afraid that I will never make it to prosecution of JM. It's all I can do to stay busy and forget. When I slow down, I just get depressed or even more often just hollow. I'm not really here, but I don't know how to get here and live. I try to fake it and am "sick" to cover days when I just am too worn out to continue the charade.

I am going to Florida with a friend later this month. She is not a friend to be quiet with, we will be busy and noisy and talk a lot even about serious things, but not about the emptiness of being trapped behind walls; we will have fun and it will take the edge off, but the numbness of existence will return to me afterward.

I am so tired.

A couple of years ago I was on my way out of the numbness and was learning to lean on God. Not doing so good now. I'm all out of friends. Ones that I have left or call friends are either ones that I don't want to risk losing by being too transparent or are ones that I don't trust that much anyway. I have been so often rejected in the last 2 years that I am extremely terrified of letting anyone else that close again. I guess people just can't handle my daily type troubles let alone the hauntings of the past. I'm safer cocooned behind my walls wrapped in the numbness of isolation, but I know it's not right. For now I can do nothing else. God help me.

I Don't Have This Transparency Thing Figured Out

I feel out of step. An observer. disconnected


Maybe it's because lately I've been asked "What's going on with you?" and similar things. I just smile(I think I'm smiling, but maybe I'm not) and give some lame answer. I can't answer. I don't know how to answer that question. It's a harmless and well meaning question, but the answer to it is overwhelming. I give my avoidance answer. I say, "Yeah, there's a lot going on." and then I name some busy thing we're doing or should be doing. I haven't used the "game over" answer yet. Maybe it's a little harsh?


I give my answer and feel like they know I'm not saying something, that I'm holding back. I don't know how not to hold back. When people give prayer requests, I stay silent. How can I say what my prayer is? I've always despised the hiding behind the "unspoken" prayer request. It's unspoken because Christians are too afraid to let others see their struggle. We don't trust the people we're praying with. There comes a time when the inability to trust the Christians around you, slowly begins to kill you. You have to have real fellowship or you shrivel up and die.


That's the problem. Real fellowship. Biblical fellowship. That means transparency, which I still don't have figured out.

How to put up walls in a door kind of church

I talked to a pastor at the church we're looking into. He didn't play the dance around the question and answer game. I didn't expect a follow up to the follow up question. I was only ready for the follow up question. But in the q and a game my answer was supposed to win and then its game over--no more questions. It didn't work that way.

At this new church we're going to they don't play the question and answer game the "right" way.

This is how it's supposed to go. If the topic ever begins to get somewhat personal or is danger of heading that way then everyone knows the "game" has begun. A question is asked. A vague non-informational answer is given to ascertain if the person asking even gives a flip. If the person asking, returns the answer with yet another question; then the "game" can take one of two paths. On one path the conversation can continue on said topic to a certain point. On the second path the one receiving the questions gives a "game over" answer. That answer contains enough general information in it to satisfy inquirers without opening ones self up too much. The "game over" answer is clearly saying that's far enough and everyone knows that's as far as you go.

They don't play that game at this church. We're figuring this out the hard way.
They ask, "How are you doing?"
We say, "Fine."
They return with, "No, really. How are you doing?"

What do you say to that? You can't stand there and lie. How do you get around it? They expect a real answer. Fine, just doesn't cut it with them. The ones who let you get away with it; let you know, that they know, you're getting away with it.

Most people who haven't suffered the way you have, or don't see that type of suffering as a possibility in their future, just can't handle that different type of pain in your life. They back off and once again there's rejection of some sort. Trust becomes harder and harder to give. We haven't been at this church or type of church long enough to experience that, but...

My husband and I talked about this today and devised a plan. I told him we needed an answer that would stop them because they don't play the dance around the question and answer game. We need a brutally honest answer that will stop them in their tracks. So we crafted a definite "game over" answer.
I don't know you well enough to really want to answer that at this time, because most people can't handle the pain that's in our life and I'm tired of the rejection. So unless you're willing to share your deepest darkest, so I can see if you can handle it, then I can't answer any further.

Now we'll see how far they're willing to take this transparency crap! (tounge in cheek:-)
That's our answer and we're sticking to it. Hope it doesn't bite us.
My husband is testing it tonight at church. We'll see how it works.

They seem to have the idea that if you ask enough questions at a wall that you can turn it into a door. I don't want to sound like these people are pushy and ugly about it because they are not. They have shown themselves to be real. I don't know how to handle it. I love it and I hate it and it scares me. I don't know what their walls look like so I don't know how to put up walls that they will recognize as being a wall. Aside from the in your face "game over" answer, I don't know how to stop their... I don't know what it is I'm stopping. Is it fellowship? transparency? And after all my crying around about wanting fellowship, here I am hollering "TMI !". Is biblical fellowship and transparency the same thing? At what point does information/transparency really become too much information?

Honesty Hurts

I don't know...
It just seems like honesty hurts. The kind of honesty that bares your soul to someone else. I've never done that before. I've been on the road to it and realized that the other person was putting up road blocks and didn't want to "see" and "know" me any more. What hurts is when the other person is one that you so desperately hope will know you and still love you or still be your friend.

I have a few very good friends, but I won't risk our friendship by letting them know the things that tear at my soul. Things that rip me apart in the struggle against them. I have whole catagories of me that no one has ever glimpsed. Only God. Am I wrong to want someone here on earth that I can talk to about everything? My everything is pretty intense.

One time, about a year ago, I thought there was someone who could handle my everything. So I asked her a question. This wasn't just any question. It was a real doozy. Took me weeks to work up to it. She didn't know the answer and said she would ask her pastor. I've called her a few times since then, and I've even asked her about the question a time or two. She evades. We don't really talk anymore. I over estimated what she could handle and lost a friend.

What do people do? There are so many layers of me and I can adapt and fit on the surface with many different types of people, and in diverse situations. What do people do around other people? How do they decide who they are, for that person and situation? Is that what people do? Do they consciously decide what part of their life they will allow others into? Does everyone have walled defenses many layers deep, but just keep everyone to the outer layers?

I'm tired of the walls, but I don't know how to keep up the right ones. I hear a lot of talk about the need for transparency in our lives with other Christians. What kind of transparency are they talking about? to what extent? I don't get it. It comes back to the fact that honesty hurts. It hurts when you're too honest with people. It also hurts when you hold back because they can't handle it.

It's me. Hello, it's just me. I have to live with me and I can't even let anyone else know me, not all of me. It's kind of lonely just being with me and knowing that if I was really honest, in a bare your soul kind of honesty, that I would be all alone because no one would stay. No one really knows me, but God. Is that how it has to be?