I Can't Believe Things Can be Good

I still have a hard time believing that good things can happen to me.

I have a hard time believing that it's OK for these good things to happen to me.

I have a hard time believing that the proverbial "other shoe" will not drop.

I have a hard time believing that things can be good without a price.

...I try to tell myself that I've already paid the price.

The Nitty-Gritty

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, what the hell shook my ground so much? An accumulation of things, one of which was my younger brother. I can't write about his situation, only about my response to it...and not all of it...just a little tonight to keep from hurting myself.

I hurt for him. I don't expect anyone reading this to understand why without know the background. I just need to start getting the words out...I never talk about this.

How is it that a pain so profound can keep me from even writing to him? It hurts to write...and it hurts not to. I want to cry all over a letter, open my sobbing heart to him, let him read the smeared handwriting...so he would know how I feel.

But doesn't he need me to be strong? He needs my support. He needs my encouraging words. I can do that too, but then I'd have to shut the pain up again...so I don't.

The Ice on my Wrists

Why the fuck does it feel so good?...the ice on my wrists. It's like a sedative. I breathe deep, close my eyes and feel the wave of calm wash across my brain...all while holding an ice cube on my wrist.

I drove and hour and a half to be sure to stay out of the house today. I shopped with my kids. It was a good distraction...didn't think about any of this all day.

...Until I was back in my town. The thoughts and the feelings returned. I grew agitated and desperate for some time alone.

I reached for the ice as soon as the kids were in bed...just ice.

I will not cut today.

Don't Show Me That Wrist

TRIGGER WARNING: SELF-HARM

I don't cut anymore. I know this...but I'm sitting with my blade...afraid to unwrap it and afraid not to.

I don't want to cut. I don't want to go there again. But I am drawn to this blade again.

...Another trigger today. A woman came asking for a recommendation for her poison oak rash. She had covered the area with a large bandage...like I had done in the past. It was the inside of her wrist...my favorite spot.

"Please, don't show me that wrist." I wanted to say. "Don't show me that bandage. Don't show me what's under it." But she had to show me. I had to see it in order to make a proper recommendation.

It wasn't the rash, it was the bandage...on precisely that area.

What the fuck? What is wrong with me? How can I go back there? I don't cut anymore, but the blade is so seductive...the sting of the cut so satisfying.

I know it's been rough returning from vacation...a lot rougher than usual. I haven't really been well since I returned, but I don't want to fall this low.

I need help.

No Air

I am back here again because there's no other way to get through these thoughts than by writing. I am suffocating again. I dreamed of my claustrophobia. I was in prison, and I couldn't breathe. I tried to move to a room with more air, but the second room was even stuffier. I woke up with a feeling of suffocation. I felt there wasn't enough air in my own room and anxiously waited for the air conditioner to turn on so that I could feel the comfort of moving air. I would not allow myself to fall asleep again, for fear of falling back into suffocation.

Today, I was afraid to take the elevator. However, I found the stairway was very warm, stuffy and confined. I wasn't sure where it would lead me. If I chose this way, I would have to deal with the fear of getting lost as well as that of enclosed spaces. The elevator would be just one floor. I opted for one floor on the elevator. At least I knew where it would leave me.

Sometimes I feel like my fears are taking over.

I Remembered

I can't bring myself to write about him, or write to him...my little brother. I think about him always...and always the same pain in my chest. I cannot write about what is happening with him. Only that I wear this basal pain like an undergarment, revealed only in the privacy of my solitude.

I traveled back to my native country, and I saw him everywhere...so many young men who reminded me of him. They looked like him, they talked like him, they moved like him, they danced like him...and I remembered. I remembered him as he was when he was like them.

He will never again be this man. He is too broken...but I remembered.

Rough Adjustment

I returned from the best vacation of my life feeling rested, relaxed and mostly proud of what I was able to accomplish with my two daughters (more on that later). I had one additional day off before I went back to work today.

It's been awful. I don't know what's wrong. Returning to work after a vacation has always been dreadful, but never this bad. The headaches began yesterday while I was multi-focusing on laundry, the children, and several small things that needed attention.

Today at work, the headaches were persistent, unresponsive to any amount of anti-inflammatory. Transitioning back to my work life seemed impossible. I suffered through the longest eight hours I have ever known and went home feeling more exhausted than before I left for vacation.

I did things tonight to take care of myself physically, but my mood is very low. I am afraid of depression.

I am sad for reasons that I can't put my finger on.

Daddy Issues?

Fathers' Day has always come and gone without fanfare in my life. As a child, I imagine we did the regular Fathers' Day thing with my stepfather...although I conveniently do not remember a single detail from any particular Fathers' Day while I was growing up. After my stepfather disappeared from our lives, then Fathers' Day became a day that brought me neither joy nor sorrow. I never gave it much thought.

When I was a single mother, My son and I spent Fathers' Day the way we would spend any other happy Sunday...either at the park or at the beach. My dad wasn't around, his dad wasn't around, so we didn't really talk about fathers.

After I got married, my son would give or make Fathers' Day cards for his new step-father, but that was the extent of the celebration. After my STBX and I had our first child together, then Fathers' Day began to take on personal meaning for me. I focused my energy on celebrating the father of my children without giving much thought to the absence of my own father. Really, I have never had a hard time with this day...

...until this year. About two weeks ago was the first Fathers' Day since my husband and I have separated. Everything was set up perfectly. The kids had gifts for him, two handmade, one store-bought. He was to have them for the weekend, so I managed to get the bag of gifts up to the girls' bedroom without him seeing them when I brought their weekend bags over. I was scheduled to work the entire weekend and was actually happy to be covering for a pharmacist who is a father, so that he could spend time with his kids.

I also recently opened a Facebook account (yes, for the first time EVER), and that's where everything went down.

Still new to the Facebook world, I found myself exploring and checking out what my Facebook friends were up to. So far, the majority of my Facebook friends are married women with children, and on Father's Day weekend most were posting saccharine accounts of what made their husbands the perfect guy and the best father ever.

I got hung up on the "perfect guy" thing...all this appreciation for this model man that somehow happened upon their lives...gag me with a spoon...

It's not that I want to be bitter and cynical. Really, I went into the weekend thinking that I would post some kind of positive message, a link to a pretty daddy song, something that had nothing to do with my own situation. But who was I kidding? The whole thing was my own situation...I just wasn't aware.

It was while talking with my therapist about it last week that I became aware of what I didn't know I was feeling. I realized that I am still mourning. As my therapist succinctly phrased it, everyone was at a cheerful party while I was at a funeral. I am still mourning the loss of my dream.

This is something that I have not really allowed myself to think about during the past year. In fact, when people ask me how I am doing, my response if often, "Life is so freaking good!" (or fu**ing good, depending on my familiarity with the asker)...and it is...but there are layers.

The thing is that I had a dream (I know, Martin Luther King did too), and this idyllic, grateful and fulfilled life that my women friends were portraying with their pictures and their words of praise and gratitude was indeed what I had envisioned for myself when I got married. My dream was there in Facebook pictures of happy daddies and helpful husbands with appreciative captions from grateful wives.

Ouch...it still hurts to remember it. It was like watching a movie of a life I'll never have. What I realized in my therapist's office last week is that what I am trying to come to terms with is knowing that I will be happy somehow, but not in the way that I once imagined. I am trying to come to terms with the fact that the type of comfortable family life that I imagined is not going to be mine. That dream is not for me. Yes, it hurts to know that something I held so precious is now dead. There is no going back. There is no chance that things will work out, This I know, and it is this absolute knowledge that hurts so profoundly.

I am not beating myself up for feeling this way. It is a pain that demands to be felt. It is a dream that was dead well before I left my husband, but one that still merits mourning. I am sad for the hopeful and ingenuous young woman who married with visions of a happy and close-knit family. I am sad in the same way that I am sad for the wife and mother who was instead emotionally abused in so many different little ways that it is impossible to add them all up and explain in an average conversation how they amount to breaking a person down.

I am still healing, and there is still sadness to be felt. I will not deny myself a single cleansing teardrop. I will feel it all.

Therapeutic Touch

Touch can be an issue if you have been sexually abused. I, myself, have varied degrees of tolerance to touch depending on numerous conditions.

Last Friday, I decided to indulge in the services of a professional massage. I have been hurting all over ALL the time. Retail pharmacy takes a beating on your hands, your neck, your back and, of course, your legs and feet. It's GOFAR season, so I have been training to run a 5K with my kids...on an injured foot! I hurt all the time. I ached for someone to touch me and make the pain go away.

I set up an appointment for after work, taking a chance and not even asking if the therapist would be a man or a woman. In the past, I had almost always requested that my massage therapist be a woman. It's not that I didn't care. I certainly was somewhat apprehensive about the possibility of receiving a massage from an unknown man, but something inside me told me that I would be OK. There was a grown woman inside me, a gentle mother, telling me that I was strong enough...that a professional massage from a professional man would not hurt me.

I walked into the spa with joy and confidence and was greeted by Mary Ann...my massage therapist :) Good thing I hadn't wasted time fretting.

When I walked into her beautiful and cozy escape of a room, I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted to forget the world for an hour, to think of nothing and no one else but me (just for an hour). I wanted to relinquish my voluntary movements to someone who knew exactly how to manipulate every bone and every muscle in my body to counteract the repetitive pain and exhaustion that I have subjected it to.

I climbed into her toasted sheets and immediately felt cared for and safe. She touched me, and I wanted to sigh and exhale...like the feeling of your first cold drink after hours in the hot sun, or finally sitting down after a long day on your feet.


I surrendered and allowed her to heal me...my neck...my back...my arms. She made her way down my arms releasing...releasing...expelling stress and tension, eventually finding my wrists...my wrists whose cuts have healed beautifully and completely. I did not recoil when she touched my perfectly intact skin. For a change, I had nothing to hide or to be ashamed of. Her touch felt like a hug, like affirmation, like love. She had no idea the emotions that she was drawing from me. She had no idea how far I had come. "Do it again", I wanted to say.

It's Bedtime Again

It's bedtime again. Since my last EMDR session, it's been difficult to fall asleep. Unlike with previous EMDR sessions, this time I have been alright during the day. It is at bedtime that all the memories want to return.

Everything is fine until I lie down, turn out the lights and close my eyes. All the pictures come back. They roll by like the scenery outside the train window. I feel them. I inhale strength and exhale sighs in an effort to calm myself...and then, in my mind, I travel to my safe place - the only spot where I can sleep.

It's bedtime again, and I don't want to remember...so I don't go to bed.