i obsess.

nuts and bolts.

And screws.

Dear Mom,

I woke up yesterday morning and it was all clear, the bell's clarity was resounding all through me, it was this crazy-rapid series of images that gently lifted me from sleep and brought me to rest on a cradle of understanding. 

I believed in your magical voodoo, I was taught to believe it, so of course I did, that the *safe* people were the ones who professed to believe the same voodoo as you do (okay, sorry, but that's just kind of really funny and I couldn't not), but then -- when I went outside of that fold, as I had to do, because that is where reality exists, I discovered I was ill-equipped to defend myself. 

I was raped and molested on multiple occasions, beginning at age three, by a boy, the son of the woman hosting your bible-study group.  Did you know that?  Me neither.  Not until I was older and the soggy, blurred edges of the memory sort of took hold and I understood what that watering can (or maybe it was a small oil-can?, like, one for his mom's sewing machine?, something like that, anyway, it had a protrusion from whence the container's contents would pour out, and, uh, yes) was doing in the mix.

I was trusting.  Because I was told that *certain* people, *certain* men, would be safe.  Were safe.  Perfectly so.  And maybe you didn't say that in so many words, and maybe you even tried, brokenly, to explain something else entirely, but your actions spoke so much more loudly than the broken verbal communique.  Your behaviors, the prayer over me, nightly, where you asked, "Oh, lord, dear jesus, put a hedge about our sweet, precious baby girl, lord, god,"  and I could see the hedge; its thick screen, its spicy scent, its surround of me, and I was safe.

But I was not safe.

Was I?

I'm fairly certain that the answer is no.  Unless, to be safe means to never understand, sort of like those women and their children in the Texas Mormon sect, the ones that the Texas courts have determined must be returned to their families, which seems pretty cracked out to me, but then, I would've wanted the same if I were a kid in that situation.

Safe.

Hmmm.

The business, given to me by too many to count, is this:  I did not possess the tools to face the meanness and cruelty of the world, and your ongoing blindness in this is painful.

And I am pain'd.

And I forgive you.

I think.

to the unsuspecting eye.

While it may not be obvious, I dig through my repetoire of pain and anguished memory in order to save my child(ren?) from having to endure the things I have done.  To comprehend the madness, understand its angles and contours, see it for what it is, expose it in an uncomfortable series of essays and exposes and unhappily rendered portraits that render it weak and rattling in its feeble grasp on my soul.  I do this for my son, for Jack, and I do it for any other children I may (or may not, ...) have the pleasure of knowing, vis-a-vis, I do it for those whose children must eventually battle dissimilarly similar creatures of dark, haunting personal treason, and I do it, even, for some of the other parents (and non-parents) who find themselves in battles akin to my own.

And, so.  Though this weblog, more often than not, has the quasi-tangible feel, the sense, of a worn, pock-marked personal journal, rather than that of a mommyblog;

don't be fooled.  This is a MOMMYBLOG, coming and going.

You see, through it all, I hope.  I hope for the things to come. 

And, thus, I wage on in my ever-tiresome, yet never-ending battle.

(Beats hell out of describing all my intrepid, albeit minutiae-enriched, introspection as naval-gazing, huh.)

wow.

The stupid, it hurts my head.  I didn't read it all, because it made my brain feel sloshy.  Which is bad.  Because my brain is already decently sloshy on its own.

This, people, is where I come from.  My people, my forebears, my own, otherwise loving parents taught me this variety of slop.

'Tis a mighty scourge, knowledge.  It will burn thee.  Smite the Satanic knowledge!  Smite the wicked temptress of information and enlightenment!  (Er, please don't mistake The Secret as part of that whole "information" business I'm referring to.  Mr. Moron said it, not me.  But, still.)  Horror!  The New Age has infiltrated - wait for it - medicine!

Yes.  It's called SCIENCE.

yeouch.

p.s. picked the link up gratis over at Karoli's joint.  I'm sorta not sure if I'm grateful.  it's too much of a flashback.  Gwen.  You with me on this?  *shudders*

what it's like when you have a disability but can't get assistance because you forget to call because of the disability:

I'm on hold but it's already afterhours for the mental health triage for Kaiser and I have a feeling I should've tried to call maybe slightly earlier than I did, which was, hilariously, right at five o' clock.  You know.  Quittin' time.  So, basically, I nailed la hora solid.

What I want to know is this:  after I get the help I need, and b'lieve you me, I need it, N.E.E.D., should I write a book about my ADHD experiences?  Now don't you all (hee!  I said "you all," like there are more than three of you reading) kiss my ass and say, sure, honey, you should do it!, sure's shootin', don't just blow a bunch of hot air at me; tell me if you think there might be someone who would benefit from my semi-horrific collection of disarranged, colossally messy life puzzle pieces, none of which fit together in any coherent fashion.

Or, conversely, tell me if you think that, oh, poor dear, she really *is* a big, sodden, ridiculous mess (and please take note of my having deliberately NOT described myself as a fierce, hot tranny mess, b/c I am simply not that interesting anymore, people), and she just needs to find somewhere quiet where she can whisper to herself and rock out in her kewl granny chair.

Book?  Or whispery chair scenario?

It all starts here, people.  IT. ALL. STARTS. HERE.  (It also all falls out of my ear, or ass, depending on your pov, or maybe quite possibly where you're standing, in which case, I apologize and -- you're right.  Absolutely no more beans/beer at the same time.  Scout's honor.)

Dweedle deedle dee!

it feels like the end. or, i'm hungover.

I'm sure it isn't, but it does.  Feel that way.  I mean, the hangover is only part of the equation.  There's also this awful broken feeling inside, beneath my gnawing belly, this sense that I'm beyond repair, and it (the feeling) was present prior to the hangover.  Which I came by honestly, in the form of delicious rose` (how the fuck does one make the little accent mark sit astride the "e" without having to perform keyboarded acrobatics of which I am decidedly unaware; anyone?) at Clyde Common, with uber-fabulous people to drink alongside, and properly offend by my drunkenness, and general boorishness.

It's the ADHD, it's the aging process, it's the failure to thrive.  I'm blowing it on every level.  I am watching my life swirl around the base of the drain and I'm thinking, how can I fucking stop this, or at least make it swirl beautifully before the giant sucking sound happens and all the life has swirled down into the black depths?

I am incapable of retaining things like learned social behaviors that everyone else is able to retain.  I'm stuck in this fucking toddler loop, and I can explain that shit to people I'm around until my mouth bleeds from the pressure of speech propelled through the tired maw (and delivered from the depths of a tired ma), but it doesn't matter, because in the end, I still come off like an asshole and people get tired of my excuses.

I'm tired of my excuses, too.  I want to change it, but the only way I can currently think to change it is to just hide, hunker down, slink along the lowest points, pretend I don't exist.  Sure, I have to exist on some level for Jack's sake, but I don't have to exist for my own sake.  If I'm only needed for familial support, I can do that without having to exist socially in my own right.

Granted, my husband doesn't love the energy I'm expelling into the atmosphere of our home when these are the turgid, clay-cloud thoughts that churn within the generator of my body, that I release this stuff and it deposits a thick layer of gray soot along the surface of the piano and the couch and the table and our bed and the chairs and the artwork and knick-knacks and the dog and the child and nothing and no one remains free of its drifting coat of heavy and clinging webs.

I am not able to do what others do.  I can't finish writing the papers or reading the books or completing the thoughts.  I can't flesh out the details and I can't complete the projects and I can't remember the important and the not-so-important.  I can't always remember to feed my child on time or keep him on his even sort-of-regular schedule and I can't recall to whom I told what and I can't keep track of my vocabulary so it slips in and out and there are plenty of occasions where I feel as though I've gone further backwards in my time on earth than forward, in fact, I am beginning to be convinced that the only things that have been allowed to grow are my ability to convey the pretense that I am an adult, like a great toddler-mimic, and my body has aged appropriately in order to push the pretense's believability up toward quasi-truth, but at bottom, in my gut, under my gnawing belly, I know that it's all just this gigantic farce.  I am a toddler who cannot remember how many months ago something happened, and thinks it was yesterday, cannot get beyond the oppositional behavior, cannot manage to pull off the necessities required of an adult life.

And I am beginning to be convinced that there is nothing that can alter this sequence. 

Which is why I was right to not want to have a child, ever.  It's why I always knew I shouldn't procreate.  I'm not capable enough to manage things.  I can, for awhile, but not for the length of time necessary.  (disclaimer:  I'm not suggesting my son is not amazing and wonderful; I'm suggesting that I am not capable of taking care of him well enough to merit his worth.)

I'm failing, and I'm failing hard and fast. 

And I don't believe there's anything I can do or think or inhale or swallow or drink or eat or work on or write or talk about or downward-dog or run toward or away from or above or around to fix it or heal it or aid it or even ameliorate it.

Everyone is having seconds, they're filling their bellies with second babies and more life and bigger chances for fear and failure and success and their courage in the face of such odds appalls me because I don't have that option.  I shouldn't have optioned the first belly full.  I am failing him, and he knows, he knows the way I knew with my parents.

Fuck.

(I'm leaving comments closed because to see the sad, round zero staring back at me two days from tomorrow will just make it worse.)

cooking is my new bag, baby.

I've suddenly learned that cooking is not only not all that terrifying, but it's also totally healing my relationship with my husband in ways that I never before thought possible.  I can't believe it. 

Wait.  Let me stop myself before I turn into a verbal avalanche, which is inevitable, but let's see if I can pause it; we're also getting better sleep.  I dug out all my favorite books a few weeks ago, because Caleb brought them into the house finally, since we'd finished the basement and then the kitchen, and the holidays and the dizzying ride of illnesses had kind of abated for the moment (which is back, but that's another rant altogether).  The books were still cramped and pissy, all smashed together uncomfortably in their boxes, but I remedied that for a lot of them, trekking upstairs into my room while cradling them lovingly in my arms, stacked too high so that I dropped several on the way - just like old times!  And after sorting them out and spreading them through the upstairs, randomly, so wonderful, that random spread of books, so comforting and cozy and sumptuous, I noticed the Ferber book, and I grabbed it along with my complete short stories by Fitzgerald, and toted it to the living room with some tea and cookies and snuggled down into the sofa cushions.  And after re-familiarizing myself with its contents, I grabbed my husband and forced him into the chair across from me, and explained how we'd be revisiting the Ferber process.  To my amazement, he agreed; we've both reached our maximum quotient on sleep deprivation, it seems.  When I consider the rounds we've gone on that whole business, it blows my mind.  But that's all past.  Now is what matters!  Now is in our clutches!  So we set off to reinstate sleep in our home, and it was accomplished within a night.  All we did was ignore the tiny bits of weeping, just plain ignore it, and sleep was had.  It got us into a better sleep place, which sort of stimulated me to get better organized in general (I see that now, looking back), and I started having stuff done enough in the evenings that I just sort of *wanted* to get to bed earlier than usual, and then I was in a better mood, and then the organization process lent itself to my having the headspace to work out meals in advance, and get the requisite ingredients, and begin making dinner during the week. 

Which leads me to this post.  The marriage-salvage, the succor that is my making dinner Monday through Friday. 

I've dreaded this becoming a truth since I was a kid.  My mom made dinner every night of our lives, and at one point she tried to induce me to start making it, and from my current vantage point I cannot blame her one wit, but at the time, I remember thinking, ew.  I hate *eating* dinner; why would I want to make it?  I like dessert, so I'll make that.  I started baking all the time, in fact, and would make a batch of cookies or a cake from scratch at least once a week.  She managed to coerce me into housekeeping and ironing, too, which I am grateful for; but I simply wouldn't budge on the dinner-making.  The reason?  My big resistance to dinner?  At the time, I couldn't have given you an answer, not much more than a shrug and an I-dunno.  Now?  I know it's because my mom, bless her honest, awesome, hard-working heart and soul and every other bit of her, is really not much of a cook.  That's being nice.  She tried.  She came home exhausted from her tiring role as executive assistant to the president of the division of the company where she was employed, every single day, and cooked dinner.  I remember how, after clean-up was complete, she'd collapse into bed, and nothing I could do to keep her out of it worked.  She was plumb wiped.

In my twenties, I insisted I'd never become domestically skilled.  (Even though I would've killed in any housekeeping challenge that didn't involve cheffery.  I can clean like you would not believe.  I love it.  It thrills me.  I wish there a clean-cathalon.  I need that ribbon, just for validation.)  So I'm not sure why I was trying to bother convincing anyone about my lack of domesticity.  I guess it was the link between my mother's lack of desire to live beyond her work and her dinner-making.  It didn't seem like much of a life.  Not one I'd want, anyway.

Caleb's been making dinner, along with all the other meals, since we've been together.  His whole family cooks like crazy.  All the kids, on both sides, are mind-bogglingly skilled.  They can all do that whole throw-it-together thing, the dash-of-this, pinch-of-that, cooked-to-perfection bit, without breaking much of a sweat.  It's beautiful.  I'm a foodie, in the eating sense, and it is AWEsome to eat the food that any of them make.  His little brother is a sushi chef; has been one for about eight years, and throws the most incredible fusion meals together on a whim.  It's frigging fantastic.

It's been an issue, all these years, my staunch refusal to share in the cooking duties.  I do everything else housekeeping-related - in the beginning, he shared laundry duties with me, but I eventually took over, and he's fine with that.  I am, too.  I'm so damn particular about folding and put-away and whatnot, although not as much lately, because of time constraints, which bums me out, but mehhh.  I'm learning to live with it.  But I've cleaned the toilets since we first began living together, and at my stubborn insistence, with his willingness, it's been my purview ever since.  I. Clean. House.  He Fixes Dinner.  The End.

Then we had our son, and that just shook everything up like, you know, just as you would expect, only in ways that you wouldn't expect if you didn't know what to expect and didn't read the what-to-expect book because you'd heard it was a crock.  And then read that crap-ass Sears bullshit and it made you insane for months, until you somehow managed to shake it all loose, and then you were *still* lost because of the sleep deprivation and the stubbornness about refusing to cook, although you were actually cooking a good portion of the time for that kid in your life, because you had to, but who counts heating up frozen peas and mashing them in that little food mill as cooking?  Not me.  But then, one day, you're making lasagna, without your husband's help, even though it's this ridiculously simple recipe from your kitchen GENIUS step-mother-in-law (seriously, she's the best cook I've ever encountered in the flesh), this sinfully delicious recipe that makes people ask for third helpings of, but also easy in a way that makes someone who lacks all the cooking skills in the world, like yourself, astonished that you made it.

And then you don't cook for a long time, because that lasagna, plus some lentil soup (also sinfully good, but in a way that makes you have some very painful interludes of gastronomic distress, plus it gives your breastfed baby similarly horrid bouts of bad gas that make him convulse with pain and make you break up with that recipe altogether, albeit totally sadly, and with sidelong glances, because it was *such* a good recipe, dammit, esp. with a side of fresh sourdough, oh my GOD it was good) was all you knew how to make, and the lasagna -- well, you can only eat lasagna so many times in a row, we're talking months on end, before you kind of want to never eat lasagna again, ever, ever, ever.

Ever.

So.  We started to get some sleep.  And I started getting organized.  And to meal-plan.  Simple stuff.  You know.  Spaghetti (a dish I've hated from time immemorial, because of the weekly church-spaghetti-dinners on Sunday evenings, with all that slimy pasta and that oily, runny sauce, sweet and cloying and yet somehow still flavorless, and the slippery-with-margarine french bread, mysteriously dry and simultaneously squishy, and the grey-green iceberg salad chunks, with the reddish, spoiling center pieces, and that white-pink chunk of tomato, hard as rock, off to the side, and the green cans of parmesan spread in bunches around the auditorium tables in the dank basement of the church quarters).  But this time, I made my step-MIL's recipe, with all that good red wine, and garlic, and wine, and liberal amounts of salt and pepper that just FLY in the face of church spaghetti makers everywhere, the flavor in it is quasi-obscene.  It's GOOD.  Amazing.  Good and spaghetti *can* live together in the same sentence.  My mind slid sideways out of my ear when I found it out, that it can happen, that *I* can make it happen.

Hamburgers.  Breakfast for dinner.  Taco night. 

I roasted a chicken and made garlic mashed potatoes, with the potato skins on for added texture and nutrients (the potato skin's so good for you, which just sounds exactly like something a mother would say, doesn't it) on Friday night last week.  Lots of butter and cream and salt in the potatoes, too, and fresh-ground pepper, and all I used on the chicken was butter, salt, pepper and some dried rosemary, and it actually turned out juicy and flavorful.  I made gravy, too, and blanched some fresh spinach.

My marriage has never been better.

I know.  It's kind of silly.  Part of the reason I've stopped being afraid of the kitchen is because my mom stood nearby and coached me while I cut up a whole raw chicken a few weeks ago.  There's something about doing that - it really makes you feel like you can do anything in the kitchen.  (It's also not a little gross.  Yeah.  I said it.  I've handled raw chicken before, in its various forms, and I even helped my mom cut a whole chicken up when I was a pre-teen, but I'd never done it myself.  With my own two hands to rely on.  It's a -- thing.  And given my lack of desire to cook partially because my mom was not so good at it - that's funny, isn't it?  But I think we all can see that it's a little deeper than that.  And we can also see that my cutting up a chicken actually managed to heal my relationship with my mom, which is a nice touch of irony, isn't it.)

Let's end it there, for now.

i was right about stink-eye.

Disclaimer: this post will not be polished.  Just spitty.  Er, shitty.

We didn't get a lot of sleep last night; J woke up several times and it was a rough one.  We all woke up late.  Etc.  I'm already worked from this week of pink-eye and the medicine that we were applying four times daily.  It stung, according to J, and we were really fighting him to get it into his eye -- it was a salve (kind of like vaseline) and I was supposed to, with perfectly clean hands (what a laugh - esp. when having to repeatedly aim for the eyes only to end up wiping it in his hair and then having to rewash, multiple times), deposit a thin strip of it inside the lower pouch of each eyelid, but when I was trying to do it solo it was ridiculous.  Impossible.  I managed it on Tuesday, but Wednesday I enlisted my dad's help, and yesterday I'd already thrown in the towel because I scheduled an appointment to see his pediatrician in the afternoon and, though she said to keep using it (it *is* an antibiotic, eurythromicin, and so the obvious attempt was being made to use the whole round, blah blah), I tried once, totally unsuccessfully, to get him to allow me to apply it, and then I was just like, you know what?  Fuck this.  It wasn't even working, anyway, because his eyes were just as red and swollen and goopy as the first day I observed that something was amiss, so I really didn't give a flying fuck if I got a lecture for not applying it, because it was such a total pointless endeavor.  So the appointment, it blew, because when the doc was checking his ears she noticed that the right drum was slightly red, but couldn't get a very good look with the chunk of wax that was in the way.  She tried to remove it with that little white plastic spoon thingy, which is part of our routine, because he's inherited my predisposition for wax build-up, something I'm not thrilled about, but whatareyagonnado *shrug*, only it wouldn't budge, and he was starting to get really uncomfortable, and his sobs were starting to crescendo, but I had to help her, I had to know whether he had an infection in his ear (he started complaining about ear pain a few nights before the appointment so I suspected that it might be a problem prior to her raising the issue during the check-up).  I held him, dutifully, but it was so hard to listen to him sob and say "Mommy" over and over again, and cling to me, with "Nooo!" mixed in, and that clinging, it was hurting my heart so much, but I thought it was right to find out if he had an infection.  I mean, shit.  I don't know.  I just melt into the hands of the doc when I'm there, she's a good person, we've been seeing her since J was just a few months old, I trust her.  I do.  I know that's probably rather naive but I -- she really does care about him, I know.  I'm a good enough mom to be able to determine that.  I think.

Anyway.  I was holding him and trying to reassure him and then our doctor said she'd rather have the nurse use a syringe and some warm water to help coax out the satanic wax chunk, and not chance scratching the ear drum, which I was all for avoiding, too.  But then between the time that the doctor left and the nurse came back in, he'd gotten cozy on my lap reading the book we'd brought, and didn't want anything to do with the business she was undertaking, especially once she started using the syringe, and I was trying to soothe him but it was fucking impossible.  Squirming and shaking and screaming, he was a wet, hot mess and it was all I could do to hold him in place.  She was unsuccessful, too, so I had to hold him again while she applied some iodine to soften the wax, and we waited and I got him *somewhat* calmed down, and we read again, and then she came back and he saw her coming toward him with the syringe and it was worse than before, and I had to tell my head to SHUT UP, because I was doing the right thing even though my gut said, JUST FUCKING RUN AWAY NOW, just run, grab your baby and run out that damn door.  I wanted to, I was crying because he couldn't see my face, his face was pressed into my neck like he was trying to get back into my womb through there, I cried softly and without anything shaking so he wouldn't know I was upset, and I turned it off, *snap*, when the nurse started opening the door to rinse his ear that second time.  But I cried.  Because my heart was open and bleeding on the floor of that white-and-gray space.  And the wax came out after the iodine had softened it, but also because I was praying openly at that point for it to do so.  Me and my personal jesus were at bat for that wax to leave.  Well, okay, the iodine and warm water may have had some effect as well.

And *then* the doctor came back in to look, and she used the scrapy-spoony thing again, and I was literally spread across his body, pinning his elbows, thinking, with that teeny-tiny piece of brain-space I was allotting myself to look down at the whole thing, detached, I suppose that's the id, right?, saying, um, IS THIS REALLY RIGHT?, and feeling like it wasn't.  But then she still, STILL couldn't determine whether the ear was infected but did happen to notice that after all that skirmish, his ear canal had gotten scratched and was now bleeding. 

Awesome.

So we quit with the antics and I got him dressed and quieted him down and we departed from that tiny, dank space of fucked-up-ness and out to the lobby so she and I could actually hear ourselves because he was no longer screaming insanely, instead, he was happily exploring the toys that probably gave him eighteen new illnesses to carry with us to Cali on Sunday.  But at least he wasn't screaming anymore.  And I got the instructions for the new medicine, eye drops this time, not salve, and it sounded like a dream of ease and luxury to apply it instead of having to somehow keep him pinned down while simultaneously grappling to get each of his eyes squeezed open wide enough to smear that salve into, rather, with the drops, to just drip one in the mere vicinity of each eye, no prying required, oh, dreamy.   Still, four times a day, and this time for 10 days instead of 5, but in the end, better.  Also, after we used it last night, he said it didn't sting, and that's so great.  It's bad enough to have to wrestle your kid into a half-nelson, to then apply painful stuff to his already painful spot, when there's a less painful option.  Phew.

But today, today I was tired.  Today, after I gave him a cupcake and we sat on the bench outside of the cupcake store and he ate it, swinging his small legs freely, waving his cupcake at passersby and saying, "ook!  ook at my cup-cake!  hi!!", with his little chocolate goatee and his little mutters of "yummy, mommy" - when we got home at the end of the trip, lunched, read books, and then I snuggled him down for a nap, and was falling asleep, I was so sleepy, I just couldn't not.  I could not resist the sleep's siren song.  But J, though he begged me not to leave his room, kept coughing in my face, and I was so sleepy and had to go.  I said, "I'm leaving, do not get out of this bed or I'll get upset," and crept into the living room where the sofa said, oh, hello, darling, and reached out for me and pulled me down into its cozy embrace. 

I regret saying those words.

For, upon waking an hour later, disoriented, almost drunk, I spoke briefly with Caleb, then wandered back to J's room, and was met with a scene that made me physically falter.  A stunning visual greeted me:  J, naked, half-smiling, pulling at the skin on his tummy, and his bed, covered haphazardly with poo, and stuffed creatures, also covered and smeared and besmirched with shit, and his bed, the ends, and the rug, and even the floor near the walls, and all his bedding; and there was shit on his feet and legs, and hands, and I began to cry, and he laughed.

And I swore, and spun on my heel and went into the hallway, where I found the very expensive rubber-coated wire whisk made by Le Creuset turned-mangled-plaything lying at my feet, and I threw it at the wall at the other end, I threw it hard.  It bounced off.  Good thing it's rubber-coated.  Made for a very satisfying projectile.

It was an ugly day.

Hug me?

noone is to blame. adhd is, though.

Remember that Howard Jones song?  It totally takes me back to the eighth grade.  Not necessarily in a good way, but also not really horribly. 

My arm aches from painting, which I did, again, for around six hours yesterday.  Caleb came down with the death-by-phlegm cold, and bolted to bed after dinner.  My parents, who make my head spin from the amount of crazy they make me, are beautiful, wonderful people who came over to help knock most of the rest of the painting out.  They were here until almost 11 p.m.  These are people who have had a standing bedtime of approximately 9 p.m. since I was small.  They are lovely, these strange, crazy-makers, and I love them. 

(But if I could actually have the opportunity to say such things without being interrupted around seventy-two times during the thanking process by their need to inform me of their giant, unbounded glut of love for me, of my beauty and worth and general fabulous perfection, of how glad they are that I'm their daughter, how wonderful my son is, how beautiful, how lovely Caleb is, how large their amorous affections blossom in the knowledge of our existence, etc, because when I'm honest with them, quietly so, it makes them rather more uncomfortable than if they were positioned with their tokheses over the back of a porcupine, and I guess my acceptance of their resulting need to block my attempt to gracefully, quietly tell them that I'm grateful for what they've done for me due to that discomfort is part of the whole mess of being grateful.  Lesson:  Being grateful is messy.  Oh.  I get it.  Now if I could just remember it - story of my fah-reaking life.  But then, if one cannot remember one's history, and is therefore doomed to repeat it, that just means -- I'll be writing this post again at some point.

Please don't ever read through my archives.  I won't, either.  Deal?)

like a faucet.

I was just spouting off yesterday.  I need to do it occasionally, so the damn doesn't burst, etc., but I feel better today.  Well, okay, anyway.  J is at my parents' house and that helps, but mostly I just want to finish having to slice deep into my gut and reveal the black memories that dwell therein to my therapist in order for him to add it all up, all the pieces that will help him best determine what kind of pills I can pop that will bandage up the wound I had to slice open in order for him to make that determination and OY.  Well, alright, to be fair, because I'd already sliced it open when we moved, but it was a messy, imprecise cut, less cut and more rend, and this latest one was medically administered with a sterile knife, but after I leave a session of pulling out spaghetti intestines and the blood has spilled anew and I have to somehow shove it all quickly back in and run through the gray rain to my gray car on the gray road and keep it sealed for a week, for another session of poring over the grisly, tar-coated innards, well, I'm not entirely capable of keeping things sealed properly.  I was always that kid who picked at the scabs, pick pick pick, and yesterday, I had not allowed the bandage to adhere cleanly to the wide-openness directly beneath its immaculate surface, I had to peek along the edge.  Just to see, you know, whether it was still there or whatever, and then - hey!  Oh!  Right!  I was raped in high school, and also molested in the eighth grade, which, while I don't count it as my first kiss, it technically was, and then there was Alaska, and god.  I shiver over sharing these things, these scary details, because who wants to see the wreckage?  People want to read blogs to laugh, even at the goriest of news items, we want to see them and shiver darkly and then get a good punch line to lighten the load, and I have no punchline.  Instead, I'm angry, I'm pissed, PISSED at those FUCKERS who have made things so much goddamn harder for me, this life that is already not a simple trot through each day, even for those who have been lucky enough to escape molestation on any level (of whom I am convinced there are but few).  So, I'm angry.  And I share because - you wanna know why?  Because there shouldn't be a ban on talking about having been taken advantage of.  I was stripped of my power in those moments, and -- here's a funny (although not punchline-y, sorry) thing:  when I was a stripper, throughout the entire experience, I recall hearing people say things like, Oh, you know, women who are in the adult entertainment industry have all been molested or raped at some point.  And I was always like, huh.  Well, that makes me an anomaly, doesn't it.  Since I'd somehow managed to completely forget that I was molested *and* raped before I finished high school.  You know why?  I'm gonna tell you that, too!  Because I didn't relate to the textbook definition of molestation or rape.  I thought about those precise, defined specifics, and compared my versions to those, and went, oh, nope!  None a' that here!  And when I shared the stories brokenly to my friends, their blank looks and non-responses or the occasional "Oh." brought me up short, made me think I was over-sharing and frightening people and I should probably just stop telling those stories that frightened people and made them not want to hang out with me.  Shame on me for having told anyone, was all I could feel and think. 

Isn't that all terribly funny?  Funny-weird, I mean.  I know it's not funny.  I don't feel like laughing.  Rather, I feel -- like I don't want to have a daughter.  Because I'll be compelled to tell her what I went through, and though in a perfect, best-case scenario, my explanation is clear and clean and her reception is solid and logical, and she learns from my stories and is careful about where she goes and what she does, but -- dude.  The guys who molested me in the eighth grade?  Were in the middle of a party of kids who were not drunk or stoned or high on anything other than their own selfish agendas and thought the whole thing was funny anyway.  So do I ban my future daughter from attending social functions altogether?  Well, no, but I would hope she would know to push someone away and call attention loudly and clearly to the inappropriate behavior, strong enough and confident enough to know that the molester should be humiliated to attempt such a thing in the midst of a fucking party.

But would she be successful, even then?  What if it didn't matter - what if she were molested anyway? 

How could I live with myself, having not prevented such a thing, and having allowed this precious charge of mine to experience something that has fucked me up like a rake in a hurricane?

Ah.  This is all such a THING, this mess.

SEE why we have to talk about it?  The more it's out there, the more stories we share about our losses of power at different but still important moments in our lives, the more "textbook" definitions there will be available for people to learn from, to see as mirrors or useful comparisons, to watch out for as roadsigns, to draw strength from, to recognize their own experiences as having been something more than a private, shame-filled thing to closet and keep buried.

Let's talk about it.  Talk about it here.  Please.  Don't give it any more power, not just over yourself, but over the future would-be molesters.  Let's use our old pain as a weapon for our kids.

If you don't want to identify yourself, you don't have to.  Be anonymous.  Or email me your story and I'll post it sans name.

This is one way to keep our kids safe.  You see, I'm aware that this could happen to my son, too, whether I ever have a daughter.  I don't want it for him, either.

damn this bear trap on my body.

Oh, what to do, what to do.  Should I check myself into a mental health clinic - when there's such an excellent one just around the corner, in this very neighborhood?  The same one they put my brother in when he was still around town, being all homeless and shit?

Should I tell myself to keep sucking it up, the knowledge that I was raped on prom, the same stupid night I got ditched by my date, the night that I already felt like the asshole of a baboon?  That I'd forgotten until I started writing something else horrid about high school a few months ago?  Because nobody likes a whiner, Debbie.  Shush that shit up.

Should I try to keep it all together like I always have?  What about all the mental cracked-up crap?  Push it together and sew a jagged line of fuzzy woolen thread over the top, keep ignoring the child coughing from his crying jab in the other room so I can write these selfish devils down, entrap them, ensnare them as I am ensnared?

Do I say all of this, knowing that my father-in-law reads this blog?  Do I keep writing down the ugly, miserable, hateful, horrid things when they could hurt so many people? 

Do I insist that my husband come home today so that I don't rush into the street and wait for oncoming traffic (well, okay, the stray, occasional minivan doing about 3-5 mph) to do the job I would avoid at all costs because it is so messy to handle - not the handling, really, but the planning?  Seriously, gross, the planning.  So goddamn messy.  Many's the time I've wished for my residence to be the penthouse.

And, furthermore, do I write these things here in this free-for-all space, knowing that even my therapist could pop 'round?  Find out I'm possibly worse off than I'd like for him to perceive, even though I really do want him to perceive the truth - whatever that might be?  Because I really don't know just what that is.

I know that I *don't* want to call my mom and ask her to come over and help, because I'll have to explain the gravity of the situation and then she'll make a huge fuss, which would only exacerbate my feelings, the thing that I absolutely DON'T need, rather, I need her to underwhelm me with her non-response (other than the response of, yes, okay, be right over, babe, and then come in and let me go curl in a ball on my bed while she hangs with the crying kid).

Shit.

******

Keeping comments closed, 'cause I don't want to deal with the guilt of not responding to heartfelt concern that I already know you have 'cause you've shown it to me so many times, but please - not to fear - I won't do anything stupid, at least not deliberately.  Caleb is coming home and I'm alright, really, I am.  Just getting the bad thoughts out here so I can keep myself accountable.  It's what I do.  It works for me.  It always has.  I'm gonna make it (and now we hold hands and envision me tossing my wooly beret in the air).