Heavy day

 

I feel as if I am one huge walking trigger magnet.

Locked in the past and desperately wanting the future

My body in shock and frozen in time

Still all these many years later

Reminders are everywhere, puling me in all different directions

I am overwhelmed with sights, smells, touches, and oh so much noise

All things that haunt a person's soul

 I did nothing but be with this sadness today.

 I just needed to sit, the feeling of heavy was so great, that I was unable to move

Triggers running no matter what I did, like a raging river threatening to drown me.

 Songs, parts of movies Facebook post all triggers all reminders of what I've been through

 where I have been, what I have seen

 and you sit on the couch covered in blankets trying to feel warm 

but all you feel is bitter cold .

The heaviness in your chest is overwhelming and you just pull the covers up a little more

wanting to disappear, wishing it all away

hoping for some kind of relief from the pain, maybe even some peaceful sleep 

the alone you feel inside is vast and empty like the grand canyon 

I feel like I'm too sad, Too needy 

 my heart is too much for anyone to hold 

Too intense too serious too hard to love

 sad for everything and nothing all at the same time even with the same breath

 my phone is my friend, scrolling scrolling

My head is pounding, too much all at once

tears come randomly, that knowing in the pit of your stomach

trying to keep the feelings at bay . 

 my sweet dog Mabel the only one to notice and she licks away the tears

until my body stops shaking then lays by my side my only comfort 

TV was on but just for background noise

 My eyes are swollen and burning

 I'm sure the lack of sleep doesn't help today's situation. 

the nightmares so real so raw and so emotional 

spunky cries and cries sounds that are so deep coming from a place too long ignored

 wanting to be heard and acknowledged 

every nightmare she's begging to be seen to be listened too

She is trying to use her voice begging for help, but everyone looks the other way

the screams are plenty, yet no one hears her

I am overwhelmed, I run around begging for attention, no one sees me

I am in a panic and so afraid, we are not asking for much but get nothing

  Just a heavy day, So much heavy that it steals any sense of peace

 I remind myself Tears don't last forever 

and I will be okay

 Today is just one of those days

I heart your heart

Memories

Memories are a strange thing.  I have always remembered, there have been gaps but for the most part I remembered everything.  I remember the smallest details sometimes, and I hate it. I guess in all my processing there were gaps pieces that I couldn't get to fit pieces that didn't make sense to me. I have gotten more than angry at myself because I didn't have those pieces. I was told my entire life I was lying, and to me if I didn't have those pieces then all those people were somehow right. 

So last week when I connected the dots about a memory, I was not at all prepared. I had pieces of the memory, somewhere I knew that my father was a bigger monster, things told me there were things that happened when I was younger, but I didn't have that concrete memory, and now I do. I have it and I am heartbroken. I have it, I can see it and I am crushed. I'm just so little. It was before we even moved to Texas, which would have made me 4. I can remember finding a picture of me still a baby maybe around 1 and I am naked sitting on his bare chest, and it made my skin crawl. It felt wrong and thought, that isn't what a father does. That isn't a warm picture that brings back fond loving memories.  I knew things probably happened that I didn't have memories for and that was ok. For most things I just knew things, and if things had not happened before then I would not have known.  It's so hard to explain really.  My entire life things happened that were just an understood.  What I always thought was my first time, really wasn't and for me someone how in my brain the word that keeps coming up is liar like see!! And I am fighting it, because I just didn't remember, which my brain totally understands.  My heart is just struggling with all of it, every single piece. There is nothing that can be done, I just have to sit with it heavy until it finds a place where the pain isn't a constant. 

Not done yet

 

I had so many of the pieces, I just couldn't connect them. I had so many of the pieces just couldn't connect them. I am more than angry at myself. At the situation at how I am feeling. I so wanted to be over all that happened in my court case. I know it was there, I went through it but there are parts that still break my heart.  I want to be over Everything that happened when I was little, and I am angry it still hurts and still affects me. I am tired of the anxiety and panic over the smallest things. 

I hate memories, I hate the last thing that my father was indicted for. It was a piece that there is so much shame for, and it is embarrassing. I will talk about it in a roundabout way never saying the words. How does a daughter say that about her father?   I climbed on my own bed to make him happy.  I hate that I knew what he wanted, I don't remember him telling me anything but that look, his beaty eyes I knew. Once I got on my bed his eyes were already closed and soon the moaning started, that just makes my stomach churn.  In the bathtub he wouldn't even look at me. In the tub he had me facing the faucet in front of us as he did what he did.  didn't care that he was hurting me, didn't care if I was crying, hurt or in pain.  I think when he was done,  after the intense pain he just put me outside of the bathtub.  4 years old, my legs felt like rubber and having to walk out of the bathroom and fend for myself. 

His moaning, that face in my degradation he found pleasure I was nothing and that is unthinkable. I know in my head this is just another layer of healing, but that doesn't make it any less hard.  I know so many things in my head, but my heart is struggling to keep up. As far as I have come, its amazing at how the smallest thing, becomes so overwhelming.  I have let go and changed so much of my thinking, and at the same time there is still so much hurt.  My heart hurts beating in my chest, to live that life. 

To know at so little what was expected and the things that were done and the things that I had to do are incomprehensible.  Just the knowing, that as small as I was, I can remember I had a job to do, and I knew exactly what it was. I am not sure that there is going to be any kind of relief from that.  I have said it a million times before, I want to scream at the world, just how unfair that this is.  I want to scream so loud that everything stops and people do things different.  It's to late for me, but for others its not too late, and I think that is the only thing that keeps me going. 

I heart your heart. 

A new Normal

 

It's a fact once you remember something there is no unremembering. There is no chance to ever go back to a time when you didn't have all the pieces.  I am finding that I am going to have come up with a new normal for myself and I can say that I am wholly terrified.  I feel so guilty that I even said anything about it. A new memory, of my father and the absolute monster he was. Because in the grand scheme of things, it was just another assault.  I was just younger and in a different place. That shame piece is huge, because no one should have to know what he did. I was so comfortable where I was, moving forward, making progress.  I felt like i was taking steps in the right direction.  I have processed and worked on the abuse for such a long time then that one memory came in and was the tornado in my world that I worked so hard to calm down.  I mean I knew the things I remembered; I had this timeline in my head that helped me make sense out of the things that happened to me. There was never a time that I didn't remember.  I knew some things didn't make sense in my head. I just couldn't fit some pieces together, no matter how hard that I tried. I Wanted order and understanding more than my own breath sometimes. That need for understanding came from being called a liar, I felt like if there was order then I could prove all the things that happened to me and somehow that would make me credible, and people would be kind and treat me like I deserved help and understanding.  Somehow having a timeline, made everything have a place and made me believable.  If I could just explain all the parts and pieces, it would be ok. I just wanted to prove to people just how hurt that I have been. I wanted others to see and have an understanding of the suffering. I wanted others to know why I did the things that I did.

I know that part of it is my own fault.  I was frustrated at the pieces of the puzzle that I didn't have.  For as long as I can remember, I wanted everything to fit into a pretty perfect category.  One where I would fit into everyone's box about how a victim should act. I wanted to be and feel all the things that they made me believe I should say and feel for them to believe that I was telling the truth.  I wanted to remember how they told me I should feel and act; how I should be doing things.  In it all I wanted nothing more than to be believed , held and made to feel like what happened to me mattered.  For that to happen I believed that I had to remember everything perfect.  Every date every detail every response; literally every everything had to make sense for others and have a place and a reason. Aside from that being impossible, that was a goal, that was always my goal. For everyone else to understand my world, but in reality they couldn't even fathom it.

But today I am still in the middle of this raging severe tornadic thunderstorm trying to find a place for this new memory so that I matter and the things that happened to me mattered.  After all this time I still need so much reassurance that I am not the awfulness of the things that happened. I am in this frazzled state trying to fit the unthinkable into my perfect system that I have created in my head.  It's wreaking havoc in every fiber of my being. I am so afraid of more memories, so angry at the new one and so sad that it was even a memory that I remembered at all.  

I am going to have to come up with a new normal, a new way of thinking. With all that I am I hope there will never be any more memories, but I cannot guarantee that. That is going to be more than hard for my heart. For me I have to have a plan, I have to create something normal in the life I was given that was everything but normal.   

This memory in some ways feels worse, because it was before we even moved to Texas; so, I was probably around 4.  There are so many disturbing pieces. And they all fell into place like nothing I have ever known. I had so many of the pieces and just couldn't connect them. I was so young, I remember things from 5 when we moved here to Texas, but before that, I was so little.  What kind of monster. As if there is a huge difference between 4 and 5.  Being that young somehow bothered me so much.  For as long as I can remember there have been times when taking a bath that things go black.  Sometimes it's a quick all of the sudden blackness while other times it's a slow fading because I know what's coming.  I knew what was going to happen to me and needed an escape.  I used to think it was just me, just another weird thing about me, that my world would fade to black, that just was. Another piece that was horrific to me is that he didn't even have me facing him.  I didn't even mean enough for him to look at me.  I was just a used good for him, making him happy. Of coarse I would go away , while he was hurting me I just stared at the faucet.  So as an adult taking a bath facing the faubcet, my mind went there going dark keeping me safe and never remembering.  All I had was the black.  Hearing the water and thinking, why was it ok that I was in the bathtub with him,  how could she not have heard anything.  I can still remember his moans, gand it makes me sick.  Such a bastard, an evil sick monster.  I cannot get my head around, being so hurt, and everyone ignoring. I was so cold, my body in shock, and no one to help. Part of me is looking for something to tell me maybe it didn't happen like that, maybe this and maybe that, maybe it wasn't that bad. I know that it happened and  I just have to turn off all those voices of those who said that I was lying, that it wasn't that bad if I didn't tell or run away crying.  This was my normal. 

I know it happened with all that I am and I am crushed.  I am going to give myself some time.  I will find a place for it.  I will think of little Callahan and hold my heart.  I am grateful I had her to keep me sane.  I am grateful for the work that I have done, that this memory doesn't phase her in the least.  That is progress.  So I will work on this I will find my new normal.  When all is said and done this new memory doesn't change a thing. It doesn't change the person I am today, It doesn't mean that I am destined to go backwards.  It is just that a hurtful, awful, unimaginable memory, something that happened to me, by a man that knew better.  By a man that was supposed to love me and keep me safe.  There are no memories that are going to make him any more of a monster.  Mark always says we can fill in the gaps with what we do know today and that has to be enough for me. There is nothing else I have to remember to prove All of the awful. What I know is enough, how I reacted and what I did was me and what I knew to survive. I will never fit into boxes. Unimaginable things don't fit into a box, its about how I can find my place, and my new normal.

I heart your heart.

Belonging

 

There are so many things to say and it more than breaks my heart.  Sometimes there are so many things so hurtful and not one person cares, or even notices for that matter.  Not one person realizes the pain that they have caused.  Even if they did I am not sure that it would make a difference.  

For a time, I belonged to a group of women, I thought I belonged.  For a time until I started asked questions, until I started to stand up for myself.  Then all bets were off, and I became the outsider.  This group of women has caused me more heartache than I ever deserved and not once did anyone choose me.  I really don't know why it hurts so much, because I don't want to be a part of them.  I don't want to be a part of something that is hurtful and unkind.  These are women that I have nothing in common with, but for a time I fit with them. It still hurts, because my heart has been more than hurt by those women and not one of them cares. Maybe it's not that I am missing being a part of them it is the fact that I was not chosen, my heart was not heard.  I think that is the problem.  

These are women that have bruised my heart, with their words and actions.  One of them has said, well you can't be everyone's friend.  And I still hear those words and think, I should have taken them more seriously.  I should have known; I should have seen but I didn't. I am a person that notices the smallest things and there were many small things that told me I wasn't a part.   One of them was a woman that I used to live with, when I could no longer live with my mother.  Everyone always asked and checked on her.  Not once did anyone ask if I was ok.  Not once did someone care if things were ok for me.  I was working full time taking care of my own children and expected to take care of hers at all times.  She always said to ask for help when I needed it, and the second that I did I was asked to leave.  She started dating and that was fine, things got more and more uncomfortable. Different men around all the time, and for me I was always on high alert. They would be hanging around on the couch, I understand it was her house.  There was a sense of disregard, I didn't matter anymore.  There were lots of late nights, and I was asked to care for her son.  Respect went one way; I was expected to be at her Becking call.  Towards the end, the leaf was even taken out of the dining room table, there was nowhere for us to sit and eat.  Many many nights those last few weeks, I would grab take out or get something at the grocery store and we would eat in the car.  Yet I was the bad guy, her the hero and no one ever asked about me and my experience. Even after we moved out one of the women had the nerve to make excuses for the other, never once asking about my experience.  Either way she was chosen, and I was not. There are stories with each of these women that have cut deeper than deep.  I helped one woman unpack and fix her house, none of them reaching out to check on my heart to see if I was ok and finally finally I am done. 

I have severed the last string that I have held on to for dear life.  I just don't matter to them, there is no real relationship.  I am not their people and I deserve better. So, I am done.  I will never have to see their pictures, experience the fake words or things done out of habit. I will never have to experience the words about how great things are and how special they are.  I am worth more than what I was given, and I am ok with that. I am sure it may sting for some time, because they were really important to me, but the feeling has to go both ways.  So it is done.  I am not sharing the good things in my life that they don't deserve to be a part of.  I want what is real and true, I want relationships where there is give and take.  I want friends that can take my tears and my joys.  I want friends that support where I am today. So for a season they were everything and I won't live that anymore.  

I heart your heart. 

Weaving

I am sitting here not believing that I revealed a new memory tonight.  I am ashamed and feel like the cat that ate the canary.  It feels like i have done something terribly wrong, in my heart I know that I didn't.  I am sitting across the table from my sweet Mariska and listening as she tells me about her day.  She is talking about how she turns 20 in April and how crazy that is. Then she starts talking about my birthday and how she should start preparing. I sit her engaged and listening with my whole heart marveling that she is mine. I have come so far from that memory.  Sitting here the weight of the kind of life that I had to live is so very sad. But here I am thriving, growing and healing.  I want more for myself than the memories that haunt me. Now comes the weaving.  I have to figure out how to weave this memory and all the pieces of my life into one amazing work of art.  

I was not at all prepared for remembering, yet I had all pieces. I just was never able to connect all the dots to create a cohesive experience.  It's hard because I was so young, it happened before we even moved to Texas.  We moved when I was 4, that is just so little.  I have always known that my father was a monster in every sense of the word, and somehow this makes it worse.  I knew so early on that he hated me, and I just got in the way. Knowing that a persona hated you that much is just painful.  That I was never special to him, that I was never important, never valued and cared for.  It wasn't even a thought to tell what had happened.  That says so much. This one piece makes me examine other things to see how it all fits together.  I am trying so hard to even name the feelings and I am not doing a very good job.  There is a part of me that is completely at a loss and another part, that wants to scream from every rooftop what is happening.  

There is a part of me that can't believe, such a little girl survived such hell.  And it's trying to wrap my brain around, the world of that little girl. Just how I kept smiling.  There is this one picture, and I am sitting on a dolphin, and all looks well with the world, and I think oh sweet girl.  I am just so sorry that these things have happened to you. I will always be in awe of that little one that never let the things that happened to her dim her little spirit. 

I know that I have often searched for the missing pieces of my story, wanting all the answers wanting things to form a complete picture. Today I can say, I don't want any more pieces.  I know that he was a monster and there are no pieces that will change that. The pieces I don't have can only cause more harm and that is the last thing that I need in the world. I remember enough and have been heartbroken so many times.  There is no memory that could ever change, me or the person that I am today.  I am me, regardless.  With or without those pieces, nothing changes.  People were unkind, people were more than cruel.  Way too many people hurt and ignored me and yet, here I am.  

The moment that I am in right now reminds me of a line from Mark Nepo : 

Everything is beautiful, and I am so sad.

Yes that.  That is what I feel as I continue trying to weave the things that have happened to me into the life that I have today.  I am moving forward doing things I never imagined.  All of those pieces of the past are parts and pieces that I will forever carry with me, and hopefully with each layer of healing with each ray of hope some of the hurt will fade.  I am confident that by the end of this life all I will be are rays of gold, there will be none of the hate, none of the sadness, none of the pain ever ever again. 

Someday. 

I heart your heart. 

The perfect Storm

 

It's like the last few days has created this perfect storm of memory.  Things coming together that I never imagined.  Pieces of this and that that I never knew were so personal.  Maybe I had the memory in parts just never as a complete piece.  Somehow, I got the piece, now I don't know what to do with it. I always remembered everything, and then this.  A perfect storm and it makes sense, But I don't want it to be my memory, I don't want it to be my memory. I want to forget it and just have the pieces and not the whole thing.  It doesn't change anything, but it does make some things make sense.   I am at a loss for words an unfuckingbelievable moment really, because I don't have any other words. I think more than anything it is a confirmation, that what you thought is a reality.

The last few days maybe more I seem to be stuck in my head replaying things wanting to find a different outcome, and I am more that frustrated. I found some of the court papers and I am finding it really difficult. I have come so far, and I know I am moving forward but it seems that at the same time I am trying to bring my past with me when I want to leave it as far behind as possible.  I am not sure how those two things can happen at the same time.  I find myself longing for people that were there for a time.  I find that I am remembering things, that are confusing. How after all this time is a memory going to come up, HOW?  Am I crazy after all this time.  It makes sense, but I don't want to remember anything else.  Things make sense and I don't want them to.  Is that why I was so upset when I found out that my father had her in the bathtub with him.  Is that why when I take a bath things go black?  So many things fit but I don't want to remember.  If there was some kind of a box to stick it back in and I can just remember what I do without any new memories?  I don't want to remember anything else.  I don't want to have to deal with it.  I remember enough.  I remember more than enough. I can hear the words now "What do you want?"  I want to not be raped in the bathtub.  I want to not be a victim.  I want to close my eyes and never ever see a single new memory of trauma ever again. 

OK yet a sad that is encompassing

Full but something is missing

So many feelings even  many more confusing thoughts

I can't get out of my own way

It's a feeling of alone, even when you have people

It's in replaying details and conversations trying to make them different

Its replaying events over and over, looking for what you needed

It's remembering and forgetting at the same time

It's a scene that I remember but never have before

It's seeing those pictures and not wanting it to be you, not wanting it to be real 

It's a questioning, because how do you forget that

Its an understanding, a feeling in your breathing body 

Pieces coming together, that you wish were never your pieces

How does a person explain a memory that they have never had before.  Suddenly all the pieces came together and there it was black and white clear as crystal and I would give anything to give it back make it go away and pretend that It didn't remember. I am not sure how it makes me feel, sad, angry, ashamed, hurt, it physically makes my body hurt and that is the worst part.

I can remember the burning.  The soap was burning, and he had me in his lap, in the bathtub, and the world starts to go black, and everything hurts. His hands on my hips, this wasn't the first time.  I can remember that burning feelings, and how the world started to slowly fade away because there was no way to comprehend what was happening.  Is remembering like this even a thing?  Surely, I could be wrong, right?  There was a blog about a woman talking about how the soap burnt as she was trying to wash herself and there was a very clear me too in my head!   I remember that feeling all the time.  Then taking a bath last night, and the blackness comes in, everything starts to fade away.  And the feeling his hands on my hips being in his lap in the tub.  That is why I was so devasted and so sure that he was hurting Angela because he had done the same to me.  I am not sure what to do with this really.  I want to forget it, it doesn't matter, there is no point in remembering this, there is no value to it and yet here I am feeling it in my bones and seeing it as it happened.  What does a person do, it's so much just another fact but it makes me more than angry and fits together.  

It makes sense as clear as I did the dishes yesterday.  How can that be?  I do not understand. I am not sure that I want to understand. I know why I forgot, it makes sense, but to remember today, I remember enough.   I have always said that there were things I didn't remember but they were not important I remembered enough.  

Then comes the shame well if you just remembered earlier maybe that would have been the key and they would have gone for felony charges.  The shame is huge, how dare he do that to me.  And I don't know what house that bathroom was in, I think it was before Texas that would have made me 4 years old.  No wonder my body hurt.  No wonder I always hated seeing him in the bathtub, and what a slap in the face when my mother would go in and sit with him while he took a bath. As I got older, he would not have been able to rape me in the bathtub, the way he was.  I was just small enough, for him to man handle me.  UNBELIEVABLE!   What a sick bastard does this to his own daughter.  Yea, I remember it all and I don't want to.  I don't know what to do with this. The sounds, the water, the pain, he didn't care.  

What a perfect storm thing coming together, how they did. I want to ignore and just pretend that I didn't remember, pretend that it never happened but doing that is what happened my whole life, NO I remember; I felt it, and I was hurt.  I will not pretend.  I will talk about it, and I will be ok.  

I heart your heart 

This Time

 It's something strange that seems to have come from finding all the old court documents from my case.  It seems to be more about me and my feelings.  Even the feelings are different, like they just are, there is no running from them no trying to make them something else they are just what they are and that is something very hard and something that I am not sure I have experienced before.  I have experienced things as little Callahan, or for someone else.  My feelings are already for someone else, this time they feel like they are for me. All the things I feel are mine.  Even in the feeling as unsettling as they are it feels like a season and not a forever.  So many of the things that are going on even in the hard truths and realities there is a calm, that these feelings are ok, right and even deserved.  I have a right to be sad, I have a right to feel these things and not have to explain them.  That is something I have never experienced like this before.  I am not sure if these words are even going to make sense or do the thoughts and justice at all.

I remember the days of my case and being so afraid all the time and getting so angry at myself.  I wanted to feel stronger, I wanted to be brave and all that I wanted to do was climb in a hole.  Feeling has never been something that I have been comfortable, I always had to avoid any feeling because they were never ok.  They are not fun, they are still more than comfortable but at the same time, they feel necessary and almost welcomed.  It feels like these things should be embraced and cherished.  It feels like the final steps to finally put this piece away.  It's like these are the feelings, these are what they are and my heart hurts.  I feel I have a right but this time it's not crushing, it's still more than sad but these things are sad.  There are no pretty boys or any kind of words that can make them anything other than what they were.  No daughter should have to press charges on her father, to try and protect other children.  This is so new.  This is so new and so different.  It's an acknowledgment on my part that I was hurt and that my feelings are valid and excuse my French but fuck you if you can't handle it.  I was told so often that the things I was feeling were too much or unnecessary and it was exactly the opposite.  These things were the most necessary and it's taken me all this time for that to be ok. All the things that caused me to press charges deserve to be felt.  Everything that he did was more than hurtful and somehow there is a feeling that finally I have a right to be sad; that it ever happened to little Callahan.  All I can think of is the sad that I have for those tadpoles and not being able to save them, is the same kind of sad that I feel now for that 5-year-old girl who lived through hell.  That 13year girl so ashamed for the things that she did.   No excuses no amount of explaining will ever make the crimes that my father committed ok, no matter the outcome.  Whether it was a felony or a misdemeanor that changes nothing that happened to me.   

I know that I felt it before, but this time it's so very different.  For the first time ever it feels, like it's me, every cell that feels this wants it to lose the weight that it possesses. It's like instead of fighting it I am finally making space for it. This is always going to be a part of me.  What I did all those years ago, was the hardest thing and the rightest thing that I have ever done.  It was the most emotionally painful experience, doing it on my own, being questioned, having no one to lean on.  At the time that I pressed charges, I was in my mid-twenties I had just started UNT, and I was working as a live in Nanny.  Life was crazy and full.  All I ever wanted was to keep Angela safe.  Today it's more about me I am so sad that I never felt any relief, that there was no justice for me.  Pressing charges was something that felt so far away and it's the closest that it has been, and for once I feel like I am strong enough to feel the emotions, be grateful that I came out of the experience and look towards the things that are next.  I am not sure that I am explaining this correctly, it's so new and something so different for me.  I have never been ok with feeling and something about this feels necessary and even ok.  I should be sad; those things were unquestionably hard and someone should have been there.  There are so many things that should have been during the time, but they weren't and it's ok.  It's ok, it's all ok. 

 

I heart your heart 

Merry Merry

I think that this season I am more in the feeling of the season that I have been in some time.  But there is also an ache that I am trying to understand. I don't have family; I don't have people that are my very own. I have my children and we are our very own little family, but I don't feel like there is family for me.  There is no extended family, no one that is excited to see me, or celebrate the magic of Christmas. I hate all those hallmark Christmas movies where; people have all these relatives and people that are excited to see them.  All the miracle love stories where there is always a happy ending.  I don't understand that.  There is a certain magic in Christmas, that I am desperately trying to find again. There is nothing like playing Santa and staying up all night to make sure that everything is perfect.  The carrots are chewed on the porch because the reindeer have been there.  The stockings are way too heavy to hang anymore and are placed ever so carefully by all the presents.  I cry every time watching the grinch when she sings where are you Christmas, I can't you.  I feel like that so much of the time.  This year my house is more decorated there is an abundance of trees and lights, I am trying to find the spirit, but that family part is missing.  There are no big family dinners and stories being told, and there is a sadness in that.  There is no sitting in the living room all the trees on having hot chocolate and just enjoying the things around us.  I have said it a million times, everyone has their own families and then there is me.  I have a few people don't get me wrong but there isn't that family setting, people coming over and laughter in a room in that wants nothing more.  No sharing of stories and inside jokes. Maybe it's a season, I don't know.  

I think that there needs to be a cycle breaker movie, and how things actually work.  The real-life loneliness that no one wants to see or admit too.  Being a cycle breaker is more than worth it for my children, they are going to get to experience things so much different than I ever did and I am grateful for that, where does that leave the cycle breaker?  Even today I took off work and I would love to call someone to say want to celebrate my Grad grades being a 100 for both classes? Come over and let's have some tea and talk about life?  Come over and see all my Christmas trees.  I want people like that, that want to be involved in my life and a part of my every day. The lonely life of a cycle breaker. So fragile and so heavy.

I know that there are many cycle breakers out there in the world doing things different making things better for the world, where are they?  I need to find other cycle breakers! How do they deal with these things? I want to know, l I want to share, I want to have an understanding.   how do others like me navigate waters that no one should have to experience.  I want to know others that struggle with the same kinds of things that I do.  How do they do it and keep going?  Do they have days when they just can't anymore?  Do they have a place that they call home and people that may not be blood but are family?  Where are those people? Those are the ones that I need that can understand, that can come over and say let's forget it all and just watch your favorite movie.  I am looking for those kinds of people.  People that I can be my crazy self with on my great days my good days and on my days that I want the world to go away.  

This time of year these things are just blaring, and I am struggling my way through trying to find a new path.  I am doing the things that make my heart happy.  I got a Christmas card in the mail the other day, and I glanced at it and threw it in the trash because you don't send someone a card that you pretend doesn't exist. You don't send someone a card when you have ignored suffering for years.  It felt really good.  So I will finish decorating the Christmas trees on my own tonight and make everything look beautiful for me and hopefully someday soon I will have people that I can share with.  Maybe next semester, I can have a party with my people and celebrate another semester of all 100's. I am in a place different than ever before, I want others around. I want to share the person that I am becoming. I have always said that living on a deserted island was the place for me. I am learning that its not. I don't want to be alone, I want to share and be the person that I am.

 Christmas is different. There was always a magic in Christmas, that I held onto. Even in the middle of my horror, I would grab on to any magic moment that I could. I so easily was able to pretend that all was well in the world. 

I heart your heart. 

Found: Court Papers

 

While I was cleaning up and organizing, I found a folder of court papers that has thrown me for a loop.  It has brought a great deal of emotion and feelings that I haven't felt in a very long time.  I know it's there; I know that I pressed charges, but it is not in my everyday anymore.   I really thought that I was over it, that I wasn't affected by it anymore.  Well, those are the things that I thought until I found all these court documents.  Yet another layer that I thought I had already mastered.  I am heartbroken at how things went.  I am heartbroken that I never got my moment of justice, and that things turned out the way that they did.  I am pretty sure that for the most part I have always felt like I did it to keep Angela safe.  I pressed charges so that another little girl would never have to survive or experience the things that I did.  Through the entire process I felt pretty worthless.  I didn't feel brave or that I was doing something that a lot of people don't do.  For me there was no other choice I just had to keep others safe, and I was willing to do that at any cost to myself.  

When I looked through some of the paperwork there were things that stood out, things that I didn't remember and so many feelings were brought to the surface.  Feelings that I thought I never had to deal with or feelings that I thought were long gone were there in full fashion and my heart is tender, my soul is sad, and I am so incredibly disappointed in the entire justice system.  I wrote Neil the producer on the Documentary and of course he always has just the right words.  He said that there was nothing else that I could have done that it's a, systemic failure. I cried for hours after reading his email.  He gets it, as an attorney he more than understands.  He has a compassion and heart for people like me. He said they should have pursued felony charges. They should have yes, and I don't understand why they didn't.  Maybe I would not have been a good enough witness. Once the tears finally started to dry, I got more than angry.  Why would a person go through everything that pressing charges includes and then have the DA say oh, we are going to offer a plea.  If you have no desire to get evil off the streets, what are we doing? I went into this knowing that it wasn't going to be easy.  Easy was never something I expected.  I wanted to keep others safe.  I didn't want another single person to be hurt by him, not on my watch. 

 I wasn't at all prepared for this layer of healing and it caught me so off guard.  My entire life I, was doing this for Angela.  I wanted her to have a chance at good things in life.  I wanted her to have a life that I never got to experience. Somehow finding all these court documents, it's more about me.  I felt worthless my entire life and these papers just reinforced all the things that I already thought. I wasn't worth a felony charge we are just going to give him a misdemeanor.  A lesser included offence. A lesser offence?  How could that even be an option, I have paid for the things that he did to me, my entire life.  Someone who hurt their dog, and was convicted could get the same punishment as my father?  I am all about animals.   But somehow this felt more than unfair.  I think this is the first time ever in my life I am able to see why I have always felt so worthless and for the first time today that just is not ok.   I was just a witness in my own case.  The DA even said those words to me, I was just a witness.  What was that supposed to mean.  No, No they had that part very wrong.  I was everything else besides a witness.  I was a victim of the kind of cruelty that you cannot imagine.  I was much more than a witness I was a little girl who survived the unimaginable and still managed to smile and find good things in life.  As a 5-year-old girl exhausted from a night of my father raping me. I was able to see that little bird drinking from a puddle of water.  I was able to notice the clouds moving and changing shapes. I was the little girl, whose every inch of my body hurt but still made sure that everyone was taken care of around me.   I was a girl whose body ached from things I never should have known. The little girl that was exhausted every day in school, because a good night's sleep was something I knew nothing about.  No, I was not just a witness, I did not just watch as these things happened, I was a part of them those things happened to me. My father did those things to me and for you to tell me I was just a witness is insensitive and cruel because the things I endured deserved a felony charge and the longest jail term that was possible. I didn't get those things for me.  I lost things that nothing can ever replace.  Things were taken from me, before I even knew that they were something special, I believe that those things, all those things make me more than just a witness. This was my case, I was the one who survived those things, it was my mind and body that paid the price for my father's sickness.  All I wanted was justice all I got was more pain.  

This is going to take some time, to sort through. I haven't been able to look through everything, it's just all too much.  So many dates and signatures and people's names that I have never heard of. Did all these people know what happened to me did any of those people even see me as a person or was I just a witness to them as well?  Was I ever a little girl to them; that fought her entire life to grow and fight for others?  I am not sure that part was seen. My heart aches, for me for the girl that I was so many years ago that just wanted him to stop hurting others. 

My heart is so angry at the injustice of it all.  All that time and energy, and for what?  The toll this this entire process took on my life was immeasurable.  Today it's just so much.  Details and pieces of information and trying to remember how they all fit together.  It's a little more than overwhelming and is going to take me some time to dig through.  I find myself missing Detective Plemmons. I think about him and hold my heart he saw and cared for that little girl so hurt by the world. He answered every phone call and never once made me feel like I was a bother.  He did his best always to answer every question even if i had asked it a thousand times before.  There are so many things that I want to ask, I want to know his thoughts and find out how some of the pieces fit together.  I have missed him for such a long time not once did he ever blow me off.  I think that to him I was more than a witness.  Someday, someday, I just want to share with him how far I have come.  I was so ashamed speaking with him,  I would know his hands.  I still remember his hands. 

My mind is so tired, my heart feels battered. I just need to give myself some time, just another layer.  Just another layer, I know I did the right thing.  I would do it again in a heartbeat, I do wish for me that the outcome was different.   I can't ever go back; nothing can be changed.  Somehow this has lit a fire that so much needs to change.  People wonder why people don't come forward; my case is an example from beginning to end of just why more survivors don't.  In all the work I do the rest of my life I will forever and always talk loudly and often about my story so that someday, we can change the way things are done and we can honor each victim, instead of making them just a witness.  I will never ever stop until we treat survivors differently. 

I heart your heart. 

 

A new day

 Hard to believe that it's 2024.  I have been a little quiet the last week or so.  So many thoughts and emotions.  I feel like it's a good place but a hard one.  Saying goodbye to things that don't work anymore and welcoming new things. I am setting new goals finding ways that are going to make my heart happy. Even in this moment I am finally sitting in my room that I call the library.  All my pictures all the things that make me happy and there is a peace. I have my favorite incense burning some old Sara Mclaughlin and the tears are streaming.   This room tells a story of a journey that has taken me so many years to achieve.   There was one of these things on Facebook, and the first 4 words that you find are your words for the year.  Mine were pretty awesome and made my heart smile. They were Miracles, Connection, Love and Breakthrough.  I have to say I like those.  In this new year I have to take care of myself.  I have to take care of myself.  Because I don't.  I have to make that terrifying Dr appointment and make sure that I am ok. All hard things and so necessary.

 

The last few days have been more than emotional.  I think that there are more reasons that I can explain, the last 2 weeks have been exceptionally hard and yet there is a sense that things are going to be ok.  My mom has been in my thoughts and there is an anger that I don't want to have.  I was fixing up the garage and I found my old yearbook and the picture of Calvin and what he wrote to me.  I found papers from my case that I never remember having.  It was hard because you think you have come a long way and then a wave of sadness.  Still a lot to process, then an email from Neil when I told him about the information that I found about my case, his words were everything and the tears just wouldn't stop, and are still falling.  Sometimes it feels like it was in another lifetime then sometimes it still feels like it was yesterday.  I think I was not strong, I was not brave and today I think how in the world did I do that on my own.  I did it on my own and that is everything brave and strong.  Things that are so very hard for me to accept and acknowledge as being a part of who I am. 

 

Mariska spent all day with me yesterday, helping me put away Christmas,  I was more than grateful and we got 90% of it done. All the trees all the Santa's all the festive lights all neatly wrapped and safe until next year.  It feels so good, getting my house back.  I think that I am coming to the realization that Christmas from now on is always going to be different.  I am changing the kids are changing and we have to do things to make them our own. I am throwing so much away that doesn't soothe my soul anymore.  My mother had so much clutter and clearing that out, and throwing away what isn't me has felt so good.   I think it's just a fact that when someone passes away at a particular season for good or bad, it changes the season and adjustments have to be made.  I am sure that not having family, and not being considered during the holidays is just a hard place to be. 

In this new year my life is about finding people that have a passion and that can see things outside the box and do things different.  I want to be around people that are deep thinking and compassionate.  I am a different person in this world because of what I have lived through; and survived and I need people that scared of that.  I need more people like Beth Ray who cares for me and holds my heart like nothing I have ever known.  She shows up for me, and is always there to say My girl I love you.  

I have to keep healing, I have to learn to truly live in my own skin, because most of the time I don't.  But it's more than time.  This next layer of healing is going to be hard. This next piece I feel holds a great deal of hard but necessary things and I have to be willing to go there. The girl that I was at 13 suffered well beyond what she should have, and she deserves all good things.  She deserves a place where she can rest, where she is safe and where there is an understanding, I can take care of things.  It is my job to keep her safe and that is something, she can forever count on.  I am more than grateful to have Mark with me on this journey and know that the day is coming closer, and closer when I will be strong enough on my own. He is also a forever and for that there are no words.  I think he will always have my heart, and that is something i can say about very few people.  

Classes start again soon and I am more than ready, I am taking 9 hours and am ready for my Saturdays to be filled with new things and new knowledge and questions.  All good things. 

For this 2024, I hope this year is kind, is amazing and I learn as many new things as possible.  I  am going to hold on to the first 4 words that I saw and believe in a few small Miracles for myself. 

I heart your heart