Fighting Memories

Today was an unbelievably hard day. Like my memories are there all the time like a movie.  Sometimes they are worse than others, and often they are going on at the same time that I am trying to live my everyday life. Days like this I smile but it feels like the biggest lie I have ever told.  The sadness, utter shame is so intense. To show how I am truly feeling literally feels crushing, physically the hurt in my chest I don't know how to explain.  Today was a fight and I haven't had to fight the memories in what feels like a very long time.  It started with my mother and the rage that I felt was the kind that brings down buildings and shatters everything and anything that gets in the way.

My mother started it, and it hit such a nerve. I took Vincent to see my mom in the hospital, Mariska and i waited in the car since only one person can go in.  Then Vincent was Coming down to leave and she calls me.  I pick it up to make sure that she is ok.  The first thing that she starts talking about is her bed pan and bodily functions.  I hold the phone away from me in utter disbelief! Of all things why is this the thing that she is sharing.  She knows I don't want to know about her bodily functions,  to me that is just to much.  She doesn't care; she isn't totally all there yet. Lots of repeating herself. Lots of Poor me,  it is just things that add more stress to an already stressful situation.  Then Vincent calls and was like where are you, I kind of gave him the run down and I ended up yelling at him.  I apologized and told him why; that I didn't mean to I just got off the phone with Granny and all she talked about was her bed pan.  We all laughed in the car, it was quite funny. Such a needed relief for me. I told them that even when I am old , there is just certain information that I just won't share with them.  To me that just crosses way to many boundaries. As the afternoon went on, my heart was heavy and I kept playing the conversation in my head and was getting angrier and angrier.  And then the tears and then the realization why I was so upset why,  the panic began to rise from the smallest fiber in my being and began to take over.

The last time that I remember any abuse from my father, ans it had to do with his back being out and there being a urinal.  My heart felt like it was in a vise and the memory was all too real. I found myself fighting the things I know to be true and still that blame and that shame crept in and I wanted nothing more than to call someone and tell me that everything was going to be all right.  Of coarse there is no one, so I wrote for a while then worked in my art journals and the tears came again .  So many things about her back surgeries, and the medicines that she is on and being spaced out with too much medicine are all such reminders of growing up  in my house, so many reminders and today the memories were like a flood and there was no getting away.

I can still see my yellow room, my bed frame that was yellow, My little nightstand that the knob had fallen off and there was just a nail in its place, also yellow.  There was that little 6 inch TV that you could never get a single channel to come in on. My mom was out of town, I think she went to Florida with her mom.  Which in turn my brother and I were left at home with the beast.  His back went out.  Since they had a water bed, he ended up taking over my room. My space that was mine where dog posters covered the wall,  and that wicker shelf in the corner that was full of my stuffed animals.  All the special ones that I used to talk to and tell them it as ok when he came in my room,  that I would keep them safe and that he would be done soon.  I remember those conversations with my stuffed animals,  telling them that they would be safe.  How fucking sick is that.  No one was there to ever keep me safe but I was going to do everything to let even my inanimate stuffed animals know we would be ok.

He wasn't getting out of bed for anything even to go to the bathroom.  He had a urinal by the bed and had used he.  He called both my brother and I laughing wanting us to clean it out and bring it back to him.  We laughed at first thinking he wasn't serious.  Soon enough we knew how serious that he was.  My brother disappeared, he wanted no part of what might happen.  So I was left in my own room with the monster.  I laughed telling him that I couldn't. His Beatty eyes, he was serious and expected me to clean it out.  I guess maybe I can say that I won because I don't remember having to having to clean it out.  Not sure what happened to that urinal but I never touched it,  though it might have been easier if I did.  I refused and he turned angry and wanted oral sex.

Always repairing the pieces

I wish that I remembered words, or a threat something anything and I just don't.  I was older,  he was flat on his back what was he going to do miraculously get up and make me.  I don't remember any words, not specifically; it was just an understood. It was always that look, I knew what was expected. I remember the look on his face, his beety eyes and I remember knowing exactly what he wanted me to do, in my soul I knew and I wish that I could understand that.  But I don't.  My brother was gone. My father wanted me to make him happy.  So I went by the foot of my bed and I remember scrapping my knee on that stupid nail from my nightstand.  It was a good cut and I was worried about getting blood on my comforter. He didn't care I had a job to do. So I climbed on my bed and made him happy.  There are only bits and pieces that I remember.  For me this; making him happy was always worse than the rapes,  somehow it was more personal and made me feel so very dirty.  I was so ashamed that I knew what he wanted, and even more ashamed that I knew how.  Even more ashamed that I was the one who climbed on my own bed to do it.  I never did it right and would often make him more than angry.  I feel like as violent as the rapes sometimes were, this was worse.  That fear of not being able to breathe was real and he didn't care.  No matter the cost he was going to get what he wanted.  I see it so clear as clear as my computer in front of me.  This was one of the last times, I remember anything big happening, there were little things but this one sticks out as one of the last things.  I was getting older, I was refusing more and there was the inconvenience of a period and him afraid I would get pregnant.  I would always choose rape over making him happy, like that was a choice I should have had to make.  I was just parts to him.  I was just something that meant nothing.

I remember my mom coming home from that trip and brought me a jean jacket.  I tried hard to be excited, but all I really wanted was to scream at her and tell her never to leave me with him again.  I wanted to scream and tell her how my week was while she was getting a tan on the beach.There was a different level to his cruelty when she wasn't around. That entire time that she was gone made for a very hard week for me. I can remember her saying how she talked to the DR and asked him if she should come home, because of his back.  The Dr basically told her that he was fine and to stay. And she was quite proud of herself for doing that, because he was just wanting her to come home early.  My heart, is just so heavy.  A little girl knowing what  "making him happy" meant.  That was literally a soul murder no one cared. Bits and pieces have died over the years, this was yet another over-sized piece.  He was done and I get pushed off the bed, my own bed. I left getting sick just making it to the restroom.  He would always threaten that I better not get sick, from the time I was 4 or 5 that was a threat that I clearly heard words for.  What a fucking monster.

Today this feels like quicksand, I am fighting my way and sinking. I want to be told that everything is going to be OK, that I am going to make it.  As a loner I always make it, sometimes someone else having that same belief in you means the world. Sometimes a person like me just needs to hear it. The heaviness of a life like this.  It's one of those things meant for journal pages that will never be seen.  Blog's that are nothing but a bleeding of my heart.  Its the storm outside that feels like home, because the words aren't right yet they are all that I have.  Someday, Someday it's my wish that someone can be there to have and to hold this hurt heart and remind me I am not the awful that I feel. Or the pain will lesson and I will rise from the depths of this pain and suffering and find my very own happy.  Today neither of those options feels very likely.

I heart your heart