No going back, whatever it is or was . . .

So while I've been pretty quite for me in here of late, it's not for want of things going on. I've just been uncharacteristically short of words. There's plenty going on, especially thoughts whirling in my head. Talk of changes, of people we once were, and who we are, or can be have had me looking at my place in time and space.

Last night while listening to a friend recount some recent closure she got about one of her own past traumas, I was trying hard not to lament the fact that I'll never get that chance. In short she got to face her attacker, and take back from him her own power. Quite frankly, this was awesome for her, and I think it will make a difference in her life. So obviously I was really happy for her, even if the conversation triggered some of my own nightmare for me.

In "mopping up" from this I was suddenly reminded of the terrible B grade movie a friend of mine subjected me to years and years ago. These poor folks were marooned on this prehistoric island. In fighting to get off, they kept moving further inland, as each section of island was an evolutionary step forward. In fairly short order one of them remarked, we have to keep moving forward, because there's just no going back.

Life, regardless of what we do with it is very much like this island. In the multiverse theory of the universe everything that ever was, is or will be exists at the same time, and were we able to cross from dimension to dimension, plane to plane, possibility to the next we could "sort of" go back. For it postulates that time in a given place is just one possibility. That we can technically just from one to the next to "undo" a change by it never having happened. Assuming that our alter in that potential chose to leave. Otherwise, terrible things result like Entropic Cascade Failure at the cellular level. Not something you want to go through.

Anyway, each choice we make, is not unlike turns on a road, left or right, which way to go. Once you make a turn though, you can never really go back. Because even when you realize you mistake and imediately turn around, those are still seconds or minutes lost one will never get back. Then of course thoughts in your head during those moments once pondered are gone and so on. Like the island in the movie, you can never go back.

I am no more the same person today as I was yesterday, let alone 50 years ago. And yet, I am more than a sum of my experiences. I've trancended temporal reality so much and so often it's often difficult to distingusish now from when. My friends and family share a bond of common experiences and references that focus us in each others hearts and minds. Tomorrow I will not be the same person I am now, and that is every bit as it should be.

So, I am simply me, and you can choose to walk with me for a time, and make both of our joruneys better, or we can catch up down the road. Our connection to each other will remain, our history will have changed.

Do not lead me,
For I may not choose to follow.
Do not follow me,
For I may not choose to lead.
Just walk with me,
And be my friend.
For if you are my friend,
So shall it always be.

There is a song I'm partial to that is apprapro this post.

"She’s gonna make it
And he never will
He’s at the foot of the mountain
And she’s over that hill
He’s sinkin’ at sea
And her sails are filled
She’s gonna make it
And he never will

And you know it’s not like she’s forgot about him
She’s just dealing with the pain
And the fact that she’s survived so well without him
You know it’s driving him insane

And the craze thing about it
Is she’d take him back
But the fool in him that walked out
Is the fool who just won’t ask."

Oddly enough, at one point, for about the first year or so, I'd have taken him back. A year after that, pretty much right on schedule, he died. Yes, dead, as in dead and buried kind of dead. He wouldn't change, wouldn't grow, refused to see past his own poisoned heart, mind, body and soul to realize that we got together for a reason. We WERE (past tense) good together for a while.

After about that first year, I started on the slow path to healing and growth. I was working hard on being a better person, on surviving this. I'd changed, grown and was intent on continuing that direction in my life. He wasn't. Both our lives depended on investing in ourselves, our relationships, our heart, mind, body and soul or we'd die.

It didn't help that I known so many years in advance. It didn't help that I explained exactly how, why, and when he was going to die if he didn't change. "Don't change for me I begged, don't do it for you parents, friends, or anyone else. Do it for you. Do it now, start today, or just set the count down clock and watch it tick out the last few years of your life. You can live to be a crotchety old fart telling your grand kids to pull your finger, or you can die. Soon. You have three years of life left at this moment unless you change and grow. I cannot tell you the exact day, but you will not be alive for our anniversary three years from now."

She's gonna make it, he never did. She's over the hill he's burried under.

Hold on to your dreams, your feelings, your memories, friends and family folks, because everything else is one day going to be gone. Even your archaic preconcieved notions will one day desert you and truth will wash away those false gods of dogma. In the end it will all look different.

Yes, I'm changed, I'm not the same person I once was. Same for everyone else, even poor Earl who now knows the turth I spoke those years ago. She's gonna make it, he never will.

I miss you Earl. Sometimes more than others, sometimes so much it's like my heart is in a vice. So much that I wish I could die and get it over with. But what would that accomplish? Of course I'm different, so are you. Garth was right, she's gonna make it, you never will. I'm sorry.

"Strawberry Wine"

It's kinda funny that Donna was talking about how you can listen to songs hundreds of times, thousands even, and then finally it clicks. The lyrics suddenly speak to you, and deep inside something clicks. Then it becomes more than just a song, it really becomes a part of you, or at least does for me.

"Strawberry Wine" is a country song that I've heard a thousand times or more. Just like "Hell is for Children" is suddenly hit me today.

"Is it really him or the loss of my innocence I've been missing so much . . ."

Admittedly She's talking about her first time, and how it's stuck with her over the years. Today that line has been going around and around in my head. I'm guessing I heard it earlier today at some point. Yes, when I'm not listening to Pop, Rock, Classical, Opera or my sweet secret love Jazz, I'm listening to country. I can't listen to Jazz these days except for what I've got stored because there are NO Jazz stations in this part of the country. Unless I go back to Sirius (Planet Jazz) or get an HD Radio. There ARE two country stations. One of which I lose to NASCAR whenever there are races. So I listen to that.

Yes, I willingly, even deliberately, listen to country. I mean come on, I grew up on a farm in New England, how can I NOT listen to country. I am a country girl born and raised. Jeans, a t-shirt, and a hat to block the sun are perfectly normal things to wear. To this day even.

So anyway, back to the song. That one line has been running in my head all day. And then, in light of yesterday, it suddenly clicked.

Yeah, innocence. I get that now. I grew up thinking that evil wasn't somehow real, and that the horrible things I saw on TV and in Movies wasn't quite real. Then again, as I've learned since I lost Earl, I didn't really have a healthy understanding of Evil growing up. After all, in many ways my Dad was pure Evil. Yes, he had serious mental health issues, and was, I can see clearly now, a sociopath. [Thanks Laura] Earl too, a serious, textbook sociopath. Lucky me. But you know, I didn't learn what was a healthy relationship with men around my Dad all those years, so of course I went on to repeat the pattern with Earl. I didn't know any better.

While I was talking to my sister last night into the wee hours of the morning, and I do mean the wee hours, like sunrise wee hours, I realized that it might have been easier on me, and more humane, if Earl had just put a gun to my head in 1999 and dropped the hammer. My sister agreed that yes, way more humane.

So of course, the lines of the song suddenly clicked and I began to wonder. Is it really him or the loss of my innocence I've been missing so much? I could have easily lived a hundred thousand years without having to go through that. As I wrote last night, it was every bit like being killed, because the person I was, could have been, died back then. Trauma changes a person. Goodness knows I've had more than my fair share. And then some. My life has in one way or another been all about Trauma since I was five. I look back over my life, or what passes as one, and I see all the major twists and turns it took, and the trauma associated with each.

But the worst of them all was when I freely gave myself heart, mind, body and soul to Earl. For all the right reasons I did this, and what did I get? Violence, trauma, betrayal, violation, pain and death. No small wonder I'm so different. In the past I wasn't emotionally involved. Since I was five I'd had my heart locked away and buried under thirty floors of concrete and steel, UNDER a mountain. But with Earl, I was fully his.

So today, I'm not really certain if over the years since he's been gone, if it IS him I'm missing, or my innocence. It puts the "good memories" I've been able to salvage into question. It shinys a whole new light on the entirety of this life.

I brings into great relief what I've lost. Who I've lost. I guess it's good in ways that I cannot remember so much of the past, of who I was, cause I think it just might make all of this hurt so much more. Which of course has me thinking back to 1958. And the child I was then. I was 20, and finally, for no other reason than to try and reach a compromise with my father, I agreed to a date with the boy he'd promised me to. Yeah, like I was chattel, property, a business transaction. I wanted an education, some study, time to myself, and a chance to see more of Europe. My father expected me to become a wife and mother. Then again he'd expected that since I was in highschool.

That's a story for another day.

But I wonder now who I'd be if I hadn't been raped. Where I'd be.

Trauma changes people. You cannot go through something like that and be the same person. My innocence is long gone. My ignorance too. So I'm healing and growing, but it also means learning about how all of thise has changed me. I'm going to close for the nonce, and come back on the morrow because I cannot stay up until sunrise again.

Sorry this is again on the dark side, but hey, welcome to my life.

WARNING, This post is dark. I'm sorry in advance.

A comment I left on another blog struck me as something I needed to preserve here. This isn't pretty, in fact it's nothing even close. This is about the most harsh, dark and horrific thing I've shared here. Worse even than Everything and Nothing four years ago. But it's part of my healing and growth, it's part of how I feel, and what I've been through to become who I am now. It's why I've often said transition, wow, that was easy compared to some of what I've lived through in my life. This may be triggery for anyone else who has ever been abused and raped, so read carefully and at your own risk.

I was a good girl my whole life. I waited to have sex, I waited to get married, I tried to do everything right.

And then he took my life and ended it. He would have been more merciful if he'd just killed me dead and dumped my body somewhere. God knows it would have been easier on me.

In some ways, you're lucky not to feel anything. It's called dissociation. It's healthy believe it or not, it's your mind trying to protect you from the horrors of what happened.

Fantasies? Yeah, wow. I was a good girl. All those years of being a good girl I fantasized about falling in love, getting married, building a future, a family, an enduring love that makes life more than marking time between cradle and grave.

That was before he killed me. Before I died. Before he introduced me to a horror so real, a death so hard, that I don't know why I'm still alive at times. Other time I wish I wasn't, so I didn't have to keep feeling the helplessness, the isolation, the filth, the shame, pain, flashbacks and nightmares that make me want to kill myself so I don't have to do THAT again.

And then of course are the fantasies now. That I'll be walking somewhere and some complete stranger will rape and murder me one more time. Slowly, painfully. ONE. LAST. TIME. So that finally I really will be dead, and the pain of it all will be behind me, and I don't have to think, feel or remember it again. So that I won't have to stay locked away in my house forever because once you've been destroyed like that, it's so over. Life. Love. Everything and nothing. Done.

So I'm numb in a different way. I go shopping at three in the morning at well lit, well protected grocery stores with self check out lanes so I don't have to be near people. I don't let people close, because once someone you gave yourself to willingly, uses and abuses you and then throws you away like garbage how can you ever trust anyone again. Once someone uses your heart, mind, body and soul against yourself, and violates everything, what's left?

When someone tell you that your feelings, your desires, your boundaries mean nothing, and will just be ignored, well it more than hurts. I kinda envy you in ways. You and Britni both, because you're both stronger than I am. Britni's right, you are an amazing woman.

First time I was raped was ten years ago this year. But it was a slow, painful, abusive build up to it. From there it was all down hill. I was just a thing to him, less important than his cat. But I stayed and it happened again, and again . . . But that's a whole different story.

So I guess what I'm saying is in ways, you're lucky. Growing up, I dissociated. God knows I had plenty of reasons. My father abused me from the time I was five until he threw me out of the house at seventeen. I still don't feel anything about that, and I hope I never do. Living with what my husband did is enough like hell.

I'm dirty, damaged, worse than a . . . I don't know what. The darkness he poured into my heart and soul onto my flesh, I'm trying to get it off me, out of me, away from me. So yeah, I have dark, horrific fantasies that both horrify and repulse me, and at the same time turn me on. Why? Because HE told me, showed me, that was all I was good for. Rage and despair? Yeah. I feel some of that. I'm so terrified of anger that it all turns to soul crush despair. So I fight every day to stay above the water and keep from drowning in all the darkness. To find some bright spots, to hold on to whatever bits I can and slowly heal and grow.

And I wrestle with the demon inside me that makes me want to go out and put myself at risk. To have someone take me again, and this time as he's raping me to say, by the way bitch. the moment I have my fun you're life is over. Because I'm going to fill you with AIDS. And have him laugh manically as he's raping me. And in that fantasy when he tell me that I'm going to die from this, I just lay back, relax and enjoy myself. Not because he's raping me, but because I will know finally, that death is coming for me. That I'll finally be able to sleep, that it will be over. Or at least I tell myself that, even if I know it's not true. And because it means it really was my fault all along, and that it was my fault and I should just get over myself. That I brought it on myself. That I asked for it.


Wow. I'm sorry. This was one of the hardest things I've ever had to write. Harder even than "Everything and Nothing" that I wrote four years ago. Why? Because I wasn't detached from it quite the same way as I was back then.

This is a long, long way of saying that I hope you find your way slowly and gently to some feelings. Or that maybe you get to skip past the worst part and find yourself at the end of the grieving cycle. Cause I wouldn't want you to have to go through some of the stuff I'm . . . dealing with. I hope you don't mind but I'm going to cross post this on my blog. In part because I can't believe I wrote this and because somehow, and I don't this, I feel a little better than when I started reading you post, after finding my way here from Britni's blog.

Yeah, deleting and retyping words? Oh yeah, I get that. I get how hard it was to say "I was raped." Wow, there, I said it too. Wasn't exactly my first time talking about it, and I don't know if it's the first time I've said it in so many words, or those words exactly. Why? Because while I can remember in perfect detail what he did to me. I cannot always remember other things.

I feel quite often like "Sam Beckett" in "Quantum Leap" my memory all Swiss cheesed. Can't remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but I remember everything he did in startling clarity. I'd much rather remember breakfast. Heck I'd even be happy with not remembering how it all felt. That would be a start.

Wow. I'm sorry you had to go through what you did, and I'm sorry I kinda vomited all over your blog.

Life, or something like it.

I'm going to cover a few things in here. May even flesh them out in their own more detailed posts later. For now, I feel like I've been neglecting my blog, my readers, and I guess myself. Why myself? Because enjoy writing. All recent evidence to the contrary.

Waiting is: For Fullness.

Okay, yes, this is right out of Stranger in a Strange land. One of my all time favorite books. It is however also very true.

My life has been a series of journeys, some happening concurrently. One of those has been surviving domestic violence, recovering from the harm done to me, and building a new life. One that hopefully will not be a repeat of the past. Parts of it however have been so much like starting over that it's more like having appeared fully grown and 40 something years old out of thin air and everything that means. Like having a higher car insurance premium for the last three years. MUCH higher. I've been paying well over a thousand a year for a car that I don't drive that often. No history of any accidents, tickets, nothing. No history of having been a licensed driver for decades either. Also, no credit history. Not a bad one, NONE! Like I'd never existed. So, my rates have been REALLY high.

Well it's been three years that I've been driving without so much as a warning on my record, not even a parking ticket. Three years of fighting the conundrum of not being able to get credit unless you already HAVE credit. Three years of being a good girl, paying my bills, and working slowly toward not being punished for having to save my own life.

Today, the insurance company I've had since day one cut my rate by more than half! I just took a huge bite out of my budget. Waiting IS they say. Well the waiting has paid off. Now I have three years of a perfect driving record, a real credit history that is in the good range and have "proven" that I'm NOT a high risk to the insurance company. Which of course is saving me a thousand dollars a year on car insurance.

So I'm a happy girl. I exist on paper, I have a history I've worked hard to build, one I've been protecting. I'm no longer a high risk for the insurance company. I have credit. And, my monthly budget just got a much needed infusion of cash. Woot!

Okay, I said I was going to cover multiple topics, but honestly I think I'm done for now. I want to end this entry on a high note. So, here goes: "LA a note to follow so!"