The Time-Traveling Brain

          It's a horrible thing when your mind breaks. It's even worse when the shards hit the person you care for. I've learned to accept that I can't trust my mind. When I feel a hand grab me, it may not actually be real. When I react in a certain way, it may be a reaction from decades before. In the worst case, a memory will manifest itself as fact in the present. 

          The safest, and perhaps most humorous, example would be my mind replacing Taco Bell's "usual order" with the "usual order" from over a decade previous.  My husband corrected me and I was convinced this was what we did, but no. The past infringed on the present and I still have to remind myself how it's done.

          Yesterday, though, this happened again where I went on and on about my penchant for not standing up for myself, and no matter what he said I rolled over. He said he didn't understand, and that he always valued my opinion. He asked for recent examples... and it was like my brain just... popped. I felt that crash like the world stopped, and I realized it had been over 12 years since I felt that way. 

         Ever since, I've been shaky. Whenever my brain betrays me I don't feel I can trust myself. It happens a lot with PTSD. I shut down with stress. I used to have staring spells up until 2008, the longest of which was 8 hours. Those diffused the pressures I couldn't handle, but they also removed huge blocks of my life. I don't have them anymore, and I don't know how to deal with the stress. Meanwhile, those things the missing blocks were trying to protect me from come back to bite me.

~DC

The Shrapnel of War

           It's amazing how far back cycles go, and how wide it spreads. Of course you can only blame so far. Individuals make individual choices - to repeat the cycle or not. Somehow, however, two generations later, I relate when I hear soldiers talk about their lives after war.

           I try to put blame right smack where it belongs, and there's definitely enough to go around. I blame my brother for mutilating me, torturing me, raping me with the most psychologically and physically damaging implements he could think of, for mentally experimenting with me and for using his poor dog and I both as tools in his ritual. I blame those friends of his who joined in when he offered me. I blame my father for not punching him in the head, much less not reacting in any way once he found out. 

          I blame him some more for allowing a convicted sex offender into our house knowing that he was, and, once he'd learned his best friend had been molesting me, simply saying "we couldn't be in the same room alone anymore". 

         I blame his best friend for feeling me up every night he was over and taking photos of me in my wet swimwear. Creepy fuck. I remember him doing it one night while I was watching ALtv - the week that Weird Al completely took over Mtv. At that moment, he was making the most disgusting hotdog ever and eating it. Man, I loved Weird Al. I'll always heart the genre he spawned, but to this day I get creeped out when I see him. (Yes, yes, have some levity - this is heavy, I know.)

          MOST OF ALL, and not many people expect this: I blame my mother. No she didn't *do* it, but she did worse. She not only knew all of it was happening, used me for her attention, refused me basic medical attention, and, enforced strict, hypocritical mortality on me. She beat me when I drew anything sexual or showed any signs of it, and always, always "how dare I" say anything about what happened and suggest she was a bad parent or bad person. She denied it to my concerned teachers who knew better and continues, to this day, to deny, discredit, or deflect if I bring the truth up.

          With my first flashback I was down for months and months. I spent a lot of time trying to reconcile... everything. With a Narcissistic mother and a Psychopathic brother, I started to wonder where it all began - what were the common bonds?

          I knew about my Father's side somewhat. He was gone often, and if any one of the three siblings had done anything wrong they all got beat when he got home. From what I hear, the beatings were merciless. There's more to it, I think. My Aunt - the coolest Aunt ever - ran away from home in her early teens. She's still living fast in the big city, and she still has big issues she won't talk about. We got together when I was 16, and we were two peas in a pod. We haven't seen each other before of since, but there's a bond.

My Mother's side though took the cake and ran with it.

          It starts with a love story and it's one of those that you don't hear for real every day. My Grandmother and Grandfather were so totally in love. It was the early '40s  and the world was their oyster. However, he was called to war and, on June 6, 1944, he had joined on the Allied invasion of Normandy. Soon after, he was taken captive by Nazi forces and imprisoned. He lived, barely, on a diet of rat turd soup and ... thoughts of her. He didn't talk when he got back. He had severe Shell Shock, or PTSD now, and wasn't treated the way it is now. He drowned it in alcohol - more and more alcohol. They had three children, which no doubt added to the stress, because he began beating my grandmother horribly... then his son. In fact, he'd take his son to bars and make him drink until he couldn't anymore, and then beat him. (My mother, of course, took all of this as a personal slight - they did it all to hurt her, though they didn't touch her.) 

          Eventually, they divorced. 40 years later: Grandma remarried 7 times, and grandpa once, but just before he died they exchanged letters (yes, exchanged) revealing that they were still in love with each other. He was coming to visit her when he died in a car accident. In a chest he'd willed to my mother I found his purple heart, his flag, and a burned swastika band - torn from the arm of a Nazi. There was history left untold. What he must have gone through, and what he passed on because of his pain.

          I understood once I saw that chest. I understood more than the story. The Nazis became real; I could smell them. 

        It's things like these that pass on situations like mine. They create - my alcoholic uncle who molested my brother in the outhouse and my mother who only cares for her own appearances.  How many more soldiers come back after extended terms, with symptoms like mine? Their care isn't much better than my Grandpa had, either. How many more people are they going to affect without meaning to? How many have I...?

       Like I said: All we can do is choose not to perpetuate the cycle - to be better than that.

~DC

Relationship of the Living Dead

          What a pain in the tush! Christmas is always so difficult. I can't just go to the mall for a book or a coffee. I have to fight through throngs of rude people. Most things I shop online for this time of year, but a girl does need toilet paper, and I can't get it today. *grimace* We tried one year to do Christmas and found it far too stressful that we swore to never, ever do it again. Even being near it makes my teeth clench and my nerves tense all day. I never had to deal with that as a child, but... that's one very small comfort.

            Since I left home, my family has found religion, and suddenly all of the holidays that were sins before are mandatory - except that naughty, nasty eeeeeeevil Halloween, of course.

            Every year for Christmas I could expect a huge package full of... stuffed animals or Christian knick-knacks with a "Jesus Loves You" card. Every year I'd be crushed - right into a pulp. Their gifts were wrong on so many levels. So many times they infantalize me, sending me candy and merry-go-rounds and stuffed toys. Me, now well into my 30's. They knew well by now that I was an Athiest, after having read and noted many similarities between various world mythologies. I'd also long shared with them their god's long love of punishing children instead of the guilty party. Even IF I were wrong, they could never respect my wishes. They came year after year after year, and eventually I returned them.

            Birthdays were the same, but this was my Father's domain. I was born on his favorite performer's birthday, and he couldn't let it go. The problem was, I can't bring myself to care for the guy.  Every day on my birthday I hear their music on the radio, I see their movies on TV, and I just want to scream. It's my birthday, dammit. And my Dad... started sending me their memorabilia - after 30-some years of knowing how I felt. I said, please, please, send me something from "this comedian" or "that actress" who also shares my birthday, but send me something I like. Newp. Again, I began returning them.

           I know. This is really just the least way they could disappoint me. It's just the way they show they don't know me, and that they dismiss me, and that they don't try.

          A better part of the year ago now, I wrote them telling them finally that I had PTSD and what it was like. I said that I didn't see why I should keep up a relationship that was so terribly painful for me, and why I shouldn't feel that I need to keep quiet about that happened. I said I needed to recover from it and I couldn't ever do that with their presence in my life... and that they'd never see or hear from me again.

Here's your candle.

          I blocked all of her possible emails, and as I did I noticed she'd changed her icon to a candle in the window. Anything to seem the wronged, because every little thing I've ever done has to get attention for her. When I was two, it was the fact that I was reading. I was a little star she could show off how she'd taught me. That was great until, just as they were poised to move me ahead two years, the school stopped that program. I wasn't special again until she realized I was modeling (like I had been 10 years previous) - then I was her best friend, to brag about and show off, again. ...As long as I didn't bring "it" up and make her into a "bad guy", ever.

        Yesterday I got a postcard for Christmas asking me to get in touch. It's in the trash now.

Bah Humbug,
-DC

          

Crime and Constant Punishment

          I honestly thought that my days of bleeding for forgiveness were over. I made myself suffer in some hope  that the sins I'd claimed as my own would be forgotten.  I was wrong. I just realized last night that I still keep doing it again and again and again. 

        The funny thing is, I've always related to Tory Amos' song "Crucify", though I never was into her music - it resonated DEEP. 

Every day, I crucify myself.

.


..."I've been looking for a savior in these dirty streets
Looking for a savior beneath these dirty sheets
I've been raising up my hands
Drive another nail in
Got enough guilt to start
My own religion
Why do we
Crucify ourselves
Every day
I crucify myself
Nothing I do is good enough for you
Crucify myself
Every day
And my heart is sick of being in chains"

          I've always seen the "you" as "Me". Nothing I ever do will be good enough for "Me" - to make me feel worthwhile. I can make radio and television and magazines and be embraced in the top scholastic honor societies, but I need to keep proving to myself, and everyone else, that I'm loathsome and worthless. I need people to confirm to me how I much of a lowlife I am over and over. I keep doing things to make my life more difficult, to make my work harder, to miss opportunities, and to make people I love angry with me because deep down I can't forgive myself for something I couldn't stop. I keep making myself suffer because I deserve to suffer.

          I've done cognitive therapy before and I know these thoughts don't face logic well. I think, I'm going to look for a savior in a cognitive therapist's office.

-DC

The Exception and the Rule

       It was the end of my first mistake marriage to my best friend in 1993. I was miserable. He was a great best friend. We'd played D&D together until the sun came up night after night until we got involved - then the game died. As soon as moved it, it was over. He sat in his chair and expected me to cook, clean and otherwise ignore him. I was 19; I wanted to live!

        
         
 My cousin had moved to a Christian Commune several hundred miles away and was bringing her boyfriend and his friend from there home to visit... and that's how I met Him. The moment our eyes met we knew we were met to be together. We sat in a park, beneath a sign that said "No Reservations" and we took it as a sign (yes, I like the pun). We just stared into each other's eyes for hours and spouted romantic prose. Though my cousin and her boyfriend honked over and over, we couldn't hear them. We were in love, everyone around us knew we were, and remained JUST that in love for seven years... or so I believed. 

         He was the only man I ever enjoyed sex with, and "enjoy" is an understatement. Sex was hot and transcendent. I felt like we literally became one and like I'd lost myself entirely in the experience. For the first time, I felt orgasms over and over again, and we did it several times a day, every single day - no foreplay, just right into it. It was everything I wanted... a thought that disturbs me to no end now.

I seriously wondered why...

          

           There were moments here and there that seemed "off", but I brushed them away, because they were him. * For example, his Father, he claimed, was Russian Mafia, yet I'd never seen or heard anything of his family. He wouldn't even let us talk on the phone when we got married. * His ex-wife left him and took the kids because she was caught cheating on him, yet he'd often encouraged me to have sex with other people. * When my Dad's best-friend called me for the first time to apologize and I was having a crying fit, he had no reaction, no support at all. * When my brother asked him, in front of me, "What's it like fucking my sister?" He nodded, smirked impishly, and said, "Pretty good." * AND Whenever I was babysitting my Niece, he'd attack me with kisses and groped me against a wall in front of her. While we always were lustfully affectionate, the timing never sat right and I seriously wondered why.

          Somewhere in the middle of our sixth year things changed. I'd begun modeling by now, but things were slow going. My best prospect, and the one which launched me into the public eye, was several hundred miles away. Where my husband had once lavished me with compliments and encouragement, he seemed to become insanely jealous of the incoming fan mail. After an extremely bad miscarriage, brought on by childhood uterine damage, he ignored the situation and began taking to great moments of drunkenness and cruelty.  It's then that my 10-year-old Niece confesses, very delicately, how, when I was away, he would hold her down and have his way. She said he told her that I wouldn't believe her... and that was a mistake. 

          I told her that through everything I've been through I have no choice but to believe the victim. After all, my entire family has worked SO hard to cover up the truth and demonize me for trying to tell it; I couldn't be that person, so I hugged her and cried like my heart was going to come out. 

          Of course he swore he didn't do it, but, like my current  husband says, "who gains?" I still have the worst time dealing with trust issues from that marriage - issues with love, with sex. Was I enjoying sex because the man was behaving like an abuser, with me the victim? That's so fricking creepy! I mean, he was 10 years my senior still. And love... I had what the storybooks consider true love, but it was twisted. He was... my worst nightmare. He was tight with my brother, too, did he have his blessing for what he'd done to my Niece? A wink and a nod? 

         It's 13 years later now; my Neice wears the scars every time she attempts a normal sex life in her marriage, though I'm unsure how much was him and how much her Father may have been contributed. I know she has a lot of similar issues I do. When asked point-blank, she told me, nervously, that he hadn't harmed her, but I'd have lied the same at her age. She added, adamantly, that she didn't want me to do anything to hurt him. She's been very oddly protective of a man so manipulative and cruel, physical abuses aside. All I can say if I hope she's right and there's nothing repressed in there. The memories of my ex are more than enough; she needs a good life now.  

          Meanwhile, I don't have the bells and whistles in my current marriage, but I have trust. I'm thinking that's got all of the Hallmark b.s. beaten by miles.

-DC    

        

Money (and sex) Can Buy Me Love

          It's interesting the things we learn to equate with love as a child. I've often heard people refer back to holiday dinners, sports games, or even candy. Of course, these all baffled me. It's not that I didn't like candy, mind you. The one or two times in my life we had dinners, my  abusers were there, all conversation was drowned out by sports, and nobody could hear each other. I remember the whole room turning to stare at me like I'd committed a cardinal sin when I, quite frustratingly, called them out for not listening. 

          I've always hated sports, and this is likely why. Even in bars I see how it draws people's attention from each other, and I don't see how any millionaire throwing a ball is worth that loss in real conversation, but I digress.

          Once, long after I'd moved out, my parents invited me for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a scary prospect, because, well, my cousin and I used to write thrash metal songs about the horrors of my mother's cooking, like our M.O.D. inspired "Goulash". Anyway, when I arrived, my Dad's best friend's car was in the driveway. I'd told  them what he did to me; what was he doing there? I reasoned with myself and, trying not to cry, I drove away to call my parents. Maybe he was just stopping for a few minutes. After all, I'd been the only person invited to this Thanksgiving. But, no. 

          My Mom answered and when I complained she simply said that if I didn't like it I could go elsewhere, and that's how I rated. I guess I knew that. It's like when our house burned down and my parents rented an apartment with no room for me because it accepted dogs.

          So, when you're me, you come to equate twisted things as love. 

Ye Olden Days

          Before my Dad knew about any abuse I had the belief that he would do something if he did know. I kept that vision of him as my hero with me far too long. When I was young, he'd take me out and play kickball, or badminton with me. He'd set up the pool so I could swim or take me fishing. Later on, he switched to a night shift and I never saw him. My whole life sucked and a new, life-long pattern began: my Dad made things as right as he could by buying me things. Soon, I came to expect what I wanted. If he didn't get it, he gave me nothing else - he didn't love me.  I found, over time, I became angry without them. I equated gifts with love, because everything else I had was misery - from my mother's narcissism, to my brother's sadism. With no affection and no relief, gifts made me live.

The doll.

          As a young teen, once my brother had gone, sex had become not just a means of over-compensating for my orientation, or displaying my independence over my family, but it was also a means of control over a situation. As a model-to-be, I always had, and have, men stopping me wherever I go. To me this meant one thing - I could acquiesce or have a very uncomfortable evening. So my life was a porno, and I was greatly despised in my community for it, which I found immensely hypocritical. Each experience was as disappointing as the last, but it didn't matter; I chose the field. It didn't take me long to realize  that men weren't accustomed to being ditched immediately after the fact, and swooning men became protective and libel to give gifts. A confirmed seductress by 16, I realized that my place in life was to be someone's doll. This was what I was to them, and what I always have been. If I couldn't have pleasure from sex, I could be the beautiful toy that they pull from their shelf to use and care for. Beauty and sex was at last all I'd distilled myself to. In retrospect, I recall my brother's favorite nickname for me as a child, "stupid whore".


          Now: It took an immense amount of work. The doll act worked for my fans who enjoyed the sexy, absent look, but not for my husband. He explained that he knew I had more, yet whenever he discussed anything important or tried to share, I interrupted with advances. Eventually he cut me off - completely. It hurt. It felt like a personal affront. I was angry for a long time. I felt unloved, because if he loved me, he would want to use me at every opportunity, but... the sex sucked anyway, right? What did I gain from it, ever in my life? I was in some death throes of the past when I woke up to remember that I actually *was* a genius. Somehow, I'd forgotten those I.Q. tests. I was more that the sum of my curves and selling myself short simply being a doll. I rekindled my old love of History, Mythology, and Quantum Physics and had a bit of a Renascence then. Once I realized my mind was the most important thing, I finally understood - nearly 8 years into our marriage, that he actually loved me for Me. How novel.

Pink and Pretty 1981

          I still can't get past presents, though; it comes down to shopping. While I NEED my solitude to survive, it's hard to feel like a couple when sleeping in separate beds. It's not that we're fighting, more that snoring disagrees with my sleep. So, I don't feel the connection I have in previous relationships, with all the cuddling and so on. I feel lonely. LOVED, but lonely. And so... I need gifts to compensate. A lot of gifts, apparently. 

          It is a bad habit, but it's been that was from the day my Dad brought home that Pink & Pretty Barbie. That said, "I can't be here for you, but I love you." What replaces that feeling? Hopefully someday I'll find it.

-DC      

With Family Like This...

          I don't have many friends, even though I make them easily. I just don't keep them. I'm likable; in fact I'm too likable for my own good sometimes. I'm also very picky. I've educated myself out of the realm of conversation with most people, and not having watched television or listened to terrestrial radio in well over a decade doesn't help either. It's hard to find anyone who understands me on a surface level, much less anything under the shell. Still, as I said, I'm charismatic, and so I've met people I've liked who want to be my friend, BUT I've backed off very fast from that. As you know by now, I have a lot of trust issues.

          It's been kindof hard to be so solitary. I remember years on years when my husband worked 90 hour weeks when I sat alone in the pure white house; I thought I was going mad. The flashbacks had just started and I took several years away from modeling then. I dropped off the map. While some isolation in the beginning worked for inward reflection, complete isolation over an extended period of time can change a person for the worse. 

          I wrote down all of my flashbacks in my journal, once I was done diving under blankets, crying and screaming in the fetal position. I remember lying in the bathtub with the lights off just wondering, for the first time, how I was going to reconcile what I knew with what just forced itself into my reality. These days, I understand that the reconciliation will happen on it's own, but it doesn't lessen the horror. 

Chinese New Year

          Around that time, Chinese New Year exactly, I had my parents down and told them everything I'd remembered - from my brother torturing me, to my Dad's best friend feeling me up every night. My Dad cried and my mom sat there, blank-faced, sometimes making excuses or denying knowledge. I told them I was giving them this one-time opportunity to make things right and be forgiven - to start over. Dad, who at some point discovered religion, said only god could do that. I told him that was unfair. I said only the person you wronged could do that. He's always had a problem facing reality.

           So, it was February, 2008, and I gave them one month to face my brother and make things right. My Dad wholeheartedly swore he would, and at the time I believed him. I always believed he was my knight in shining armor. My Mom, well, I knew better, but I never knew what to expect.

           A month passed and I wrote them a stern letter saying that if they cared, I wouldn't have to even ask, much less remind them. And, so, my Dad replies saying he doesn't know what to do. I said "Something! Anything! Get upset about what he did! Be a DAD! Punch him in the face!" ... ... He said he couldn't because he might go to jail. My Mom decided to do something, alright. She went to my Dad's best friend and chewed him out... keeping in mind that I'd already done so 12 years previous. 

            The man called me, crying and apologizing  as he had before, and we'd already had that conversation. I told him the same thing: I was thankful and glad as he sounded truly remorseful; still, years of feeling a girl up everyday (while nothing compared to what else I was going through) could never be forgiven or forgotten.

          My Mom called me, triumphant, expecting her forgiveness on a silver platter and I threw it in her face. I wanted her son confronted, and nobody was doing it. Why was nobody doing it? That February was the first time I'd ever really confronted them on their lack of protection and held them accountable, and I was actually hopeful that they'd make it right... 

The Great Manipulators

        My brother's wife came to visit my mom in a crying fit. They'd just had a horrible fight. He's still the worst kind of manipulator, and she is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of HER brother. Also, they're as closely related as two people can be and still marry. Anyway, she came to my mom for help and advice. She wanted to leave him, but he threatened to take their son away if she tried. She has ADD, he said, and he'd win. Instead of being supportive or comforting, my mom thought this would be considered "confronting him... somehow" and told her everything I remembered. Not only did she deny it all, but the backfire sent her home, and now he knows that I know. 

          She expected accolades for her performance, and my response was a refusal to see them for years.

          Last time I came to visit, my (youngest) nephew and I wanted to see each other SO much, He's the coolest kid, and though I haven't seen him much, I love him. I was excited, because we were into a lot of the same things and I was bringing him a numbered, collector edition sonic screwdriver from the 11th Doctor (Doctor Who). However, moments before we were supposed to pick him up, my brother told the boy he couldn't see me without giving him reason. From what I heard over the phone, the poor kid's heart was broken and his conversation was cut short as he was forced into his room - again, given no reason. I was so so so so pissed....but that was his whole point. He's malicious; he'll take even the smallest victories because we wants to hurt anyone who hurt him, even if it means innocent people get severely damaged in the process. To this day, I fear how he's using that gift to make the poor boy regret that I cared. From hundreds of miles away, however, all I can do is know him from experience - for who he is.

          So, you get the idea. My family have been on-again-off-again, but once I heard that news story about the father who killed the man he caught molesting his daughter - and was acquitted - that gave me the strength to cut the ties. In my mind, my Dad had always been my knight, but I couldn't reconcile that picture of him and the reality of him. I loved him SO much that I was blind to it, but it's true. If he loved me - he'd have been that Dad. 

          That news story set off a huge set of flashbacks and month-long bed-ridden depression in me, but it also spurred an amazing new openness when it came to my modeling. I began taking on some horror shoots, as well as glamour, and it helped me expand. I suppose it's all a part of filling in the gaps and becoming a whole person.

          I officially divorced my parents as well, though my Mom tried to send me things right away. She likes to show "how much she love me" when I don't want it - so other people can see how much she really and truly tries and how unreasonable I am. Someday soon, I intend to change my surname as well, and erase them from me entirely; they don't have the right to have a stamp on me.

        Anyway, short story long: that's just the very tip of my trust issues. It has taken me aeons to make friends, but I have a couple of good ones, who know me and my issues. They both know what I do and my issues, so... I guess they like me. They had to work for it though. One online friend had to wait 7 years before learning any personal details. Still, when actually meet someone I can trust, it's like befriending a unicorn - I keep worrying that it's actually been a lion all along.

-DC       

My Friend John

          When I was a kid, I had a best, best friend whose name was John. He was a rare, good moment in my swiss-cheese memory. 

We saw the cool movies and fished...
not all at once.

          I don't remember when he showed up, but that he was suddenly my parents' best friend and that he loved me. In fact he cared a great deal about what I thought. He took me for walks and played ball with me. He took me digging for worms and went fishing with me. He took me to all the cool movies that were out - Star Wars and Indiana Jones.  He bought me video games and played them with me. It crushed him when he couldn't get me something I wanted, and sure... I was a brat because the only way my father showed love was through buying me things. Unlike my father, I forgave John - and quickly.

          He cared about who I was and what I thought. He had conversations with me. He was my friend... for a moment. 

         The day that ended is one of my clearest memories: We were outside on a sunny day, and he asked me to sit with him. He faced me, somberly, but spoke to me respectfully - like a person. 

Still bound by honor.

         He had inappropriate feelings toward me, he said, feelings that, if he remained near me could hurt me, and he didn't want to do that. He was obviously pained as he continued. He cared for me too much be any cause of pain for me, so he needed to leave and never see me again. 

         I remember crying and I hugged him so sincerely. I mean, I loved this guy. Even now, though, I'm surprised at the level at which I understood what he said, and how very much I respected him for it. I even told him so. The others never cared, or even thought, to restrain themselves, but he had; it could be done. Odd that a pedophile should be one of the few people I respect in my life. I still admire my friend John; would that they all learn from him. 

       The most depressing part of this relationship came many years later when I learned that my parents knew that he was, in fact, a convicted pedophile when they first invited him over. I hear most parents try to keep those people away from their kids, but my parents aren't most...

-DC          

The Cult of Personalities

          I've been thinking a lot about my other personalities - the ones I left at the game table decades back. I'd always thought that was a good thing. My psychologist said that was a good thing, but... since I've been writing this blog I've been facing some things I guess I normally don't think about. Things like: those personalities carried some of the best aspects of me.

What else could it be? :-O

          I didn't know that's what they were at the time. In my superstitious crazy-christian, serial-killer capitol of the world there was one term for what I had: Demon Possession. So, that's what it had to be. Only, they were too cool to be demons. They were helpful to me. Everyone said that they were helpful and protective and nice. In fact, they began to build a mythology, and their own language. Soon, before I knew it, a full-blown religion was born with symbols and special drinks and holy phrases and everything. It went beyond me and my circle of friends, too. One day, I walked into a trailer of a man I'd never met who lived in a far-away town and found him knelt before a candle with his hands in the symbol of the faith I'd somehow invented. I asked him, "You know Cassandra?" He answered, "Who doesn't?" 

       Cassandra was never a main personality of mine. She'd become a dark figure in my set of personalities - one I feared and one we desperately tried to exorcise. She kept trying to usurp the good and strong ones. Apparently this sect had made her their primary figure, though they'd adopted them all.

Cloaked people.

        I had always seen people moving, as if cloaked, wherever I was. I always wondered why. It was like another world was going on while I watched, unable to see me as I was to see them. It was interesting how their story developed that they came from another dimension. Each of us here, they said, had a counterpart there, and at night, we could visit them if we practiced enough. All my friends practiced and did rituals. I channeled their counterparts and, yes, loved ones. I became pretty well-known as a psychic. 

        Khrysti was the strong one, and a bitch. She kicked my ass a LOT and was the epitome of tough love. She got me out of bed and made me work out, go for walks - anything to keep me from being a wuss. She was my counterpart over there, according to the Mythology. I know now she was the thing that kept me going when I just couldn't. I probably wouldn't have made it through school without her. Now, no part of me makes me do anything.

          Moon was Khrysti's husband, and therefore the counterpart to my soulmate on Earth (wherever he was). He loved me, without question or reservation. He worried about me and cared for me and had no demands. He just wanted me to be happy. My psychologist said that there's a part of me who is him and feels this way about myself... but I haven't felt it. 

          Trae was the romantic. He was the poet who loved to be in love and to give love. He found beauty in people and things and wrote beautiful things about them. He came out fully when I'd met my first love, but I couldn't bring myself to admit how I felt to a woman. He beat me to it, I guess, and swept her off her feet. When I heard her go on about him I'd get so upset. Pleh. Anyway, I've written lyrics since then, but mostly from an angry, indignant place. No part of me is Trae; I'd probably make fun of him if we met.

           Venn was the intellectual. He had a great love of math and problem solving. He could have very well have been the least popular guy among my friends. A couple of people would ask for him, but geeks just weren't quite cool yet. Me? I hate math. I avoid it as much as possible. I used to love logic problems back before Venn left and now I'm kindof lost. I've studied Egyptology - the ancient Hieroglyphic language, the culture, the religion, the Pharonic dynasties, etc. I've studied World Mythology, Pirates, Old West Gunslingers, etc. etc. Like I said, I study for fun. However, there's this chunk of... logic that Venn has that I don't.

         Okay, I know that sounds silly. It all sounds silly. These are all me, or were. My husband says that I have the capacity in my brain to do what these personalities did. I'm just not sure how without splintering again. I want to raise these qualities and re-claim them, without... becoming them, and just talking about it gives me this pressure in my head that I used to get before the switch. I think next year I'll find myself a new psychologist - one who won't lie to me, and try to re-integrate some of these things.

Thanks, Blog, for making me think some.

-DC

The Pain in the Ass... and Other Fun Places

          I've never been very healthy. I have a lot of pain and to this day I get sick a lot. It makes sense in retrospect; parts of me were being torn and broken because they had no business being used yet. AND, they weren't being used for what they should have been. My house was full of unfinished wood, mold, rubber dust, mouse feces, dog and cat hair and urine, and so many other health hazards that could seep into any open wound at any time. 
         

          When I was a kid, I remember spending every night practically on the toilet with ungodly cramps. I couldn't get up for hours, and all I could do was cry. If I wasn't too dizzy from the pain, I'd read National Geographic that fed my future interest in Egyptology and Mythology, so I suppose that fed my love for the knowledge I have now. On occasion, my mother used to bring me in a blanket and wrap it around me. These were some of the few times I used to think of her fondly. I'd try to take baths sometimes to help ease the pain, but the tub was usually full of rotten clothes, food, spider webs, icky-gooey-slimy stuff, and pet poo.
          
         Of course, my flashback remembering how I knew she knew what was happening made any bit of help she'd offered me so bitter. 
        
          In 2007, I remembered sitting on the bottom stair with my arms around my knees. She was gone - at  jazzersize, I think. She always left us alone with him to babysit us, and it had been a few hours. It had gone from light to dark, now. I remember how my "tummy hurt"; that was the only way I could describe it then, but flashbacks are reliving a moment. I knew that pain. These were familiar cramps - like someone just shredded my uterus, but I winced, I rocked; I bit my tongue, and as much as my eyes burned, I did not cry. He would kill me.
        
          My mom came home to the dark house, and, without wondering why it was dark, turned on the lights. She looked at me, as I was, and asked where my cousin was. Just then I heard the dog yelp; I looked up and I imagined what was going on. I said, "upstairs", but when I turned back, I saw her walking away.
          
          As I got older, those cramps remained, only transferring into the daytime as well, and occasionally became debilitating. Some days, before work, I'd be unable to move for hours and started late, hoping  my boss wouldn't notice. I'd miss entirely for 2-3 days a week sometimes. Fortunately, at my first job, because I was beautiful, and I got a "warning" with a smile, and a raise. I always got that special treatment if the place was run by men, and it helped me get by. Female bosses, however, were generally merciless. I still have these cramps to this day, and some days I can't leave the house. At least now I can make my own schedule generally. 

          My tailbone, or coccyx, has been a pain in the ass on-and-off forever. Some times it's so difficult to get out of bed, I have to pull on my headboard to sit up, and twist myself up. I went to see my doctor about this, and while I don't remember anything specific about it, I remember my actions as a child suggesting what he said. This kind of damage to the coccyx suggested repeated childhood anal intercourse. If I wasn't ready for it, it could have fractured and suffered nerve damage. Knowing how my brother shared me with his friends, and how I played at double-penetration as a 4, 5, and so-on year old, when I had no business knowing about such things, chances are there's flashback with my name on it somewhere in the future.

          My "female troubles", i.e. curse, has always been a pain without measure. That was always a day I'd miss anything I had scheduled. Nobody understood either. I was fired from jobs for this issue. However, after my first flashbacks, and after having doctors have a look inside, it made sense. My entire system was mangled practically beyond recognition; it's a wonder it worked even slightly. So, while people made fun of me or derided me for suffering so much, no one had seen those pictures.

         Since the scar tissue had been cleared out, my system likes to think it can grow uterine tissue all willy-nilly and crowd out all of my other organs. At one point, uterine flesh pushed my intestines into one small side of my body, exasperating my lovely bathroom problems. Fortunately, that's back to normal  but it's been three surgeries, and while the menstrual pain went away the first time, now, into perimenopause  it's back with a vengeance as everything comes grinding to a halt. 

          Yes, yes. I'm amazingly young for perimenopause. My doctors day such severe abuse can trigger it early. It's cool by me. The way I see it, the reproductive system is the bane of my existence; it's been nothing but evil to be since the moment I was born. I'll be glad to see it die.

God <3s Blood Sacrifice

          There were more less painful, but more disturbing ways for the blood to affect me growing up. You see, I never really was big on God. I didn't see why I should when my dad didn't show any religious inkling and my mother let him hurt me but insisted on perfection from me - perfection which wasn't even in the Bible. All of my evil thoughts were from the Devil, but I said often, "the Devil is in this house". What I was big on was fear and paranoia. I didn't do anything for God out of love or belief... but out of self-loathing and self-hatred. The God of the Bible would appreciate this more than anything; he loved blood sacrifice. He turned down Cain's leafy greens for Abel's meat.

         So, as a wee one, I began cutting myself and begging Jesus to forgive me for what I'd done. I bled and bled and bled some more. I never stopped. Cuts became opening wounds. Opening wounds became a compulsion, and soon I always had open sores in that dilapidated house. Each time I bled myself, though, I begged Jesus to forgive me. 

         Who knows what I caught during that time, but I never was, and never have been well. 

          I'd still open my wounds if it weren't for the miracle of fake nails, which are too thick to gouge like normal nails are, and I still have gods who enjoy sacrifices... albeit not-crazy ones. I mean, I seriously I can't go around all gouged up for photos now. I guess it's fortunate that I've long-since lost the need for forgiveness. I'm angry if anything. I'm angry that I was made to feel I'd done something wrong. I'm angry for all of these problems 30 years later. It's not like I did anything wrong and somehow deserved it. Yeah, I'm pissed.

        ...and I haven't even gotten into my migraines.

-DC          

Fun With PTSD!

          I mentioned in my second post how the White Knights like to claim they know what's best for "people like me", then go and blanket white-wash everything so bland nothing is fun anymore for fear of offending someone. I also mentioned how these same people got downright angry with me for telling them that I thought that nerfing their games "for me" was supremely patronizing. I figure *I* know what's best for me, not them, BUT... I was faced with three things:

          1. They ignored my point and continued to insist their way was best. After all, they couldn't let anything they said "make things worse" for anyone. 
          2. They accused me of wearing "PSTD as a badge of pride", even though it was the first time I'd ever shared it online...ever, and was scared to death. 
          3. Anytime I showed a glimpse of humor, they took it as a sign that it wasn't possible for me to have actually have been abused. If I had, they said, I'd be more serious.

           And thus, once I'd just barely managed to dip my toesies outside of my life-long fear of being murdered, I was given all new reasons to remain anonymous. If these are the type of people "going to bat" for me who needs family? I'd never come out before, as I said, but I took it so seriously. After all, these people were ruining my hobby and nobody was speaking out for the people they were "protecting". Ultimately, I found out what would happen if someone did. I've always held hope for humanity only to be consistently disappointed; this was just one more straw. 

           So, why bring this up again? Because I can't imagine what kind of horrible, horrible life this would be without a sense of humor. Okay, so I spend days, if not months, in bed, crying, and I'm often-times suicidal; I spend a great deal of my time in physical pain thanks to all of the damage he did... and that's no fun. Still, can you really imagine that life without a sense of humor at all? Granted, it may be sarcastic and dark. I mean, I was the kid who, as the class crammed into the elevator on the school trip to the hospital, said, "Well, if the elevator crashes, we're in the right place." Okay, okay. I like word play, and puns too. My husband says I could write for the Hell's Kitchen narrator; he often says things as I say them. Consider me raised by Monty Python... and I don't see why expressing emotion, in a sarcastic or witty way somehow negates a fact. In fact, a lot of violence comes out in my humor, and I wonder where that comes from?

Oh, CRAP!

          That isn't the only humor in my life though. I'm startled VERY easily. I jump when someone enters a room or shows up behind me, and my heart *pounds*. It can take me some time to recover. I've always been this way, but being just diagnosed a few years ago... now I know why. Well, my husband finds this amusing as all get out. He's tried to do it on purpose, but it's uncanny how, when he tries, I don't scare. /shrug I should be upset, but I've always been like this, and it's not going away. Now I just facepalm.

          That's exactly it. If you have a major quirk or life thing that's never going away, eventually you adapt. With me, I have new flashbacks and have to integrate the old memory into life as I know it now, but once that's done I'm still me. I was still raised on Monty Python, Mystery Science Theater, and George Carlin. I'm not what happened to me; it's just a REALLY crappy part of my life that affects me a lot.

-DC

The Cousin Who Wasn't There

          Have you ever forgotten your keys? Your mail? Your watch? Maybe someone you lived with for years? If you answered yes to all of those, then you can relate. 

The Past

         Oh, I had memories here and there of her as a child - sliding down the hill at home and smacking into the swingset, or eating from a bowl of cough drops together, or sharing a bed and whispering to my disembodied brain-prince as she slept. (Yes, that was my imaginary friend.) Still, I always figured that she'd been sleeping over. 

         Fast forward several years to the apartment of my sixteen-year-old burnout cousin and me, now fourteen, who'd gotten a bit too hard-core for the burnouts. She was always the coolest to me, though. I always carried a flask or a bottle and I always found a party; she gave me a place to pass out or somewhere to say I'd been. She gave me a safe place to get high and never made me do anything I didn't want to do. Sometimes, we just ran in the rain or took glamour photos of each other. She is the one who put the idea in my head to begin modeling, and helped me start on that path... not that I was quite ready at this particular moment.

       I don't know if I mentioned it, but my family never celebrated holidays. I suppose if I owe them anything it was that one honesty, that Santa didn't exist and birthdays were about everyone but you. I did hate being pulled from school for Halloween parties though, and never getting to experience any artistic holiday. This brings me to the day my cousin, who was raised the same way, and I decided to buck the system and decorate Easter eggs.

Easter Egg Revelation

          Ah, me with the half-shaved spikey-head, black lips, Megadeth tee and pastel eggs; it must have been cute. :-)

          Anyway, I'm not sure how we got around to the conversation, but we started talking about what happened to me. I remembered one moment, in the closet, very distinctly, but I felt that there was more. She said there was! She said she was there! She put her eggs down and looked at me with disbelief as she told me she'd lived with us for two years - didn't I remember!?

          What she told me next I still don't remember: She said that her step brother had come to stay with us as well from time-to-time, and that my brother molested us all. She said he used to put a penny down his underwear and make us reach for it. He'd had his dog trained to lick his penis on command and he made us watch the whole event. He played games with us together like that, but then he would take us separately, and she didn't know what happened then. 

          She remembers much more than I do. She was older, and my brain broke to protect itself. She's since said that she was trying to protect me, and that I'm selfish and ungrateful. Needless to say, we're not close anymore. It's hard to be grateful for what I don't remember, but I have remembered more.

          My brother liked to test me. He'd done it now and again before I left home. I didn't know what he was doing at the time; I thought it was odd though. Now, given perspective, I understand. Once he told me about a man seated at the bar near us. Supposedly, the man said to him, "I wonder whatever could have happened to a girl to make her feel the need to dress like that." Yes, what indeed.

-DC

Squalor, Rod Stewart, and Pencils

          As I said, I grew up in a cesspool. Our house was well over 100 years old and my Dad was convinced he'd "fix 'er up" someday, but the most he did was board up windows. 


         I remember very well finding mouse poo in every kitchen cabinet, under the sink, and in the stove. The floors were bare wood and it stuck into our skin sometimes. The bathroom floor was weak and smelled of urine. There was trash, mud, socks, wet dog scent, fur, and rubber dust from the factory my father worked at everywhere. My room looked like a tornado hit it, and that's hardly an exaggeration; I slept late and stayed away as long as possible. The sink was always FULL of rotting dishes. Everything we ate, we scrounged for which usually meant McDonalds food from next door, dog biscuits, a bucket of cough drops, a potato chip and mayo or frosting sandwiches.

          My mother's philosophy was "if I clean now, I'll just have to clean again later." Unfortunately, it was one I adopted, though mostly out of a lack of learning any better, but I'll get back to that.

My song trounces your song.

        The upstairs hall had no banister to keep anyone from falling and my brother liked to use that fact to scare me - a lot. And his room... well, his room was pristine except for the wall where my head had gone through. To this day I don't allow red in my room, remembering his red velvet bedspread. He had a closet built into the wall where he'd sometimes take me when he wanted to be more clandestine, but usually he'd just blast his music so the parents couldn't hear my screams. To this day I still have flashbacks on hearing Rod Stewart since he'd dance, the strobe light going, to "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" before approaching me for whatever revenge he had in mind. ...and that is what it was.

          Fortunately, I learned to block that song when it enters my mind now, and stop the flashbacks, with the triumphant Voltaire's "Last Laugh". Just another way my psychologist got excited about my self-healing.

          When I got his room, I kept feeling like someone was grabbing me, or holding me down. With my memories gone, I feared a ghost. I even called someone to exorcise them, but that wasn't it. Even then my PTSD was reliving what happened there. The new paint job, and the constant drunkenness, and even the repressed memories couldn't bury the truth.

         So when I got my first official flashbacks I needed proof they were real. I wasn't content to believe my mind. 

         As I said, he was out for revenge. He has since confessed to me that he hated me for taking his mother from him and wanted to make *her* suffer for having me. Well done there, since she hasn't cared. He said he wanted to destroy me for being my father's daughter and getting between them. So, he set to do that.

        I am an artist. I've been an artist since I could hold a pencil, and I've always, always drawn. Everyone knew that it was my great love. One day about 8 years or so ago, I found myself collecting number 2 pencils, though I didn't know why. I hadn't touched them since I was a kid. In 2007, when the flashback came, I broke every one in the house.

          He said he wanted to destroy me, so he raped me mercilessly, over and over again with number 2 pencils. Decades later, my Gynecologist couldn't even fit the pin-sized camera inside for all of the scar tissue. A year later, when they managed it, she said, "whoever it was sure did a number on you" and I knew my flashbacks were for real. I had photos.

          And this is only one flashback. I'm constantly amazed how low he went, but this is about squalor. The dent in my skull - the cuts inside, the cuts outside, the squalor all around - how am I not dead?

         I try to improve in my own place, because I love my space, but I have no sense of it. Nobody made me get out of bed, and I was too depressed to get up anyway. Nobody made me clean or taught me how. I rather learned to hate it, but I don't want to. It's just terribly hard to get into when I feel oppressed and  dominated again in a housewife role; I feel weak again. It's especially hard having a man around the house telling me what needs doing, because I'm already paranoid and defiant. So, I feel sorry for him, dealing with my trauma. If it's something that I'm going to learn, and enact a system, I'm going to need to take lead. Maybe it's like finally picking up Number Two pencils in art class this year, one I claim it, for real, I won't feel so helpless. I do know this: it's yet one more way I don't want to be like my Mother.

-DC