Church

 

Every single Sunday these last few weeks, there is an anger that comes up.  It comes so fierce and then the rage sets in.  You turn the TV on and there are all these pastors and preachers each one telling their own version of things that they want you to believe.  Each one voice louder than the next and I struggle to understand, why would these people be yelling at us about how great the things that they are saying are.  

Religion and church have hurt me more in my lifetime than I even want to acknowledge.  I think that when you pray to die at 5, it really changes a person.  It is something that stays with you forever.  Some of the people that have hurt me the most in my lifetime were people that claimed to love god and built their life around the church.  Those were people that I knew I never wanted to be like. 

The people that have meant the most are the people that have been really genuine and true because of who they are as people not because of a god that they believe in. To me that speaks volumes.  The people that can accept my questions, that still love me even when our views are so very different those are the people that I want to be around. 

For me growing up I was always questioning and wondering.  I was never one to just believe because a person told me too.  I wanted to know more and believe in something with my whole heart, if I couldn't do that then it was not something that I wanted or to be a part of who I am. I am sure that growing up with people who so severely hurt me then went to church the next day talking about how wonderful they were had really affected me.  As a little girl I was surrounded by people in the church, who said one thing then did another. I never found caring and comfort. All I found was violence and disbelief.  There was never an understanding or a sense of family.  I was always the outsider, because as long as I can remember I would question the things they wanted me to believe; and that didn't work in the catholic church.  You don't question you just comply.  I saw evil all around me, that was so inconsistent with all that they were talking about. 

I saw the man who violently rape me, then proceed to kill my tadpoles and tell me that next time I wouldn't fight receive communion the next day staring me down like I had done something terrible. 

As a family we had to carry the communion and wine to the alter then on the way home get screamed at and called horrid names and receive the silent treatment for as long as he thought necessary. 

I was gang raped by men that carried the cross during Sunday's mass. 

I was told that the only way that I was going to heal was through God and the church.  

I was not believed or helped when I was made to tell what happened to me. Instead, I was made the black sheep, called a liar and ignored. 

There was the Christian counseling center who told me I made my bed and had to lie in it. 

Church, Religion and God are not things that hold my heart and make me feel at home.  Those things have hurt me beyond repair.  I do not believe in a god that lets a little girl of 5 pray to die because her father comes in her room every night. I will not believe in something, that tells me all about going to heaven and in the same breath says my father will be there. 

I do not want to believe in something that has damaged my life in ways that I can't fully comprehend. 

I will not believe in something that is more about being the popular person than about who you are in your heart.  I just won't do it. 

There was a woman who was married to a woman and wanted a church family.  I asked the pastor, and he said Well she can come but we don't believe in her life. I was more than shocked.  The judgement. 

There was the pastor when my mother worked at the bank who told her I should have kept my legs closed, which she then told me. 

It was a woman in the church that said to me Well you can't be everyone's friend and that has stuck with me, no.  You are absolutely correct. 

So, no I don't believe in God, or Church or anything that resembles it.  

I have lived this life on my own.  Relying on the things around me, on the birds and the trees and the animals, those are the things that have kept me going and have given me hope. 

I am fine with believers.  If that is you, and it works, wonderful.  But it does not work for me.  I am not less than because I don't believe in the god that you do.  I am not less than because I am a kind human because that is just who I am.  

I remember asking about the Dali Llama once.  I said so, you're telling me that he won't go to heaven because he doesn't believe in god?  The short answer was Yes.  So, if someone that gentle and kind is thought to go to hell, that is not something that I want to subscribe to. So many rules and unkindness's that don't feel right for the person that I am. 

I do not believe in some kind of God that lets children be brutally raped throughout their life.  

A man once said that he thanked God that a light turned green or that there was an upfront parking place.  Wow that seems trivial compared to the rape of a five-year-olds body.  Can you explain that?  He will let a violent attack occur and yet change a light or give you a parking space? I know it isn't that simple but there are things I just don't understand.  I understand choice and free will.  For me there is suffering that destroys and there is no way around that. 

I believe in the goodness of kind good people because that is who they are in their heart, and not for any other reason. 

So yea, Sundays and church and all that includes sometimes makes me sad.  It just isn't all it's said to be. 

I heart your heart. 

I can't breathe

 

When I think about her, when I talk about her, it takes my breath away.  My favorite wants to do a ceremony of sorts to get that little girl in the here and now with me. I feel like there are pieces of me that are still chained to the things that happened when I was 13.  I want her here with me in the present more than anything. The second, I think about closing my eyes and really paying attention to my breathing the panic sets in, it feels terrible. I don't want to be in my own skin. I feel like there were pieces of me that left that day and have never been back.   She can't speak because she doesn't have the words and that has to be ok.  I just want her to find some peace in this world.  I just want us to be on the same page. This is not like I am holding on because I want to.  What is happening is that the things that happened to me are so engrained that they have a hold on me.  I am more than ready to let them go, but as I was once attached to them they have attached themselves to me.  I almost think of it as a haunting.  I have let it go I don't want it there anymore, but there is so much unfinished business that it won't remove it's grasp.  

I am working more than hard doing everything that I know and still it is a huge part of me that makes me want to crawl in a hole and come out when it's all over.  It's hard to work on something when there are no words.  It's hard to figure things out when you don't have any breathe behind the words. And that is where I am and it's a terrifying place.  That so scared thirteen-year-old part of me is stuck in a place of hell trying to figure out the things that are unfigure out able. There is no way to make sense out of something so humiliating and shameful that you wished they just killed you.  I know there are days I truly wished that they just finished me off.  It would be better to be dead than to have to face the things that were done.  I am so afraid that I will never move on from this part of my past.  It's too big, too terrifying and what does a person do with something that there are no words for.  I have come such a long way and works more than hard to heal the things that have hurt my heart, this is just so big and I am still so afraid.  She needs a rescue.  She needs a rescue and time to heal with no words needed.  She needs someone to come to her with every reassurance that things are different now.  I can not give her guarantees.  I can tell her that over my dead body will anyone ever hurt her again. She fears the same thing happening again,  and the chances of that are so slim. But to her in her mind and body the chances of that happening again are great and she knows that she wouldn't make it . 

I am terrified of being back in my own body and I fear that it is going to be necessary in order to heal that so young sweet girl that just wanted to belong somewhere.  I hate her for being 13.  I hate the fact that she was so excited when he showed her attention.  I hate the fact that once he showed me any attention I wanted more.  I never in a million years imagined that when he said he would see me again that he meant, what he did.  When he showed up at my house, those first few seconds there was this excitement, he had come to see me.  In the next breath, I realized he was a very different person, he had no intentions of being the good guy and making me feel special.  In my head I know so many things, I know the right thing to believe, there is a part of me that knows I didn't do anything wrong but the part that believes I did is gigantic. My heart is struggling.  I know the right things to say and think and in the same breath I hate that she was so naive and believed that something was good.  Did she not learn anything from years of rape and abuse by every man that she came in contact with.  Why would she think that this would be any different.  I want to believe good things for her, she deserves so much love and care.  And she doesn't know how to even let that happen. I don't know how to talk about her and keep breathing.  I don't know how to be present as she cuts the chains to experience the good things in this world. I am so afraid maybe it won't happen for her.  Maybe just maybe, she is too afraid, too damaged.  I will never stop fighting for her, but I can tell you it's absolutely exhausting.  this is more than hard to explain and even harder for me to comprehend.  There are still moments I don't know how I am still here standing. I know that surviving was all she knew how to do.  She just kept moving, but there are days I just don't have a clue how she kept going.  

I heart your heart. 

I was so hurt

 

I have sat on my couch for the last hour and the tears haven't stopped, the kind of tears that are tired of being alone, tired of pretending the everything is fine.  Nothing is fine, not even close.  I am more than tired of being alone and having to keep everything together.  I just keep going and keep going but there are pieces of me that are frozen. Pieces in a place that so sark and devastating that it holds that innocent 13-year-old girl as a hostage.  There are pieces of me that have never been able to speak never been able to express just how badly that she was hurt.  That 13-year-old that was so young and just wanted to belong, was hurt brutally beyond understanding. She was hurt so badly and yet no one around her ever acknowledged that she existed little lone what happened to her.  The blamed and pointed fingers. So, she shrank in shame and has lived in that place ever since.  She is so afraid still trying to find answers for the things that no words can ever begin to explain.  She is so afraid that staying in that place is safer than being here in the present.  I am not sure that there is even a way for me to explain just how complicated that her world is.  I have been working so hard in counseling for her to come into the present and work on healing and it isn't happening fast enough for me.  I want nothing more than to be done.  I want nothing more than to be free of this and for it not to hurt my heart anymore. I am drowning in the sorrow of that spunky girl, she just wanted to matter.

She always covered up so much, all the bruises all the marks, all the everything. Things would happen to her and you would never know it.  She would be a 10 on a pain scale and yet keep smiling.  That was how she survived, that is how she kept breathing and for that no one believed her. When you have grown up having to pretend that your body didn't hurt it's amazing how good that you get at ignoring your own body, and the things that happened to it.  The first time that Don came there was a shock.  He was supposed to be a good guy, but he was not.  He threw me on the floor right there by the door, the floor was so cold and he was so different. I kept saying no telling him to stop, there was this conversation in my head but you are a good guy, why are you doing this.  Right away the self-blame kicks in I danced with him, I kissed him, I had butterflies that an older guy was paying any attention to me.  I cried, and I begged him to stop, that was not going to work. I can still see the pattern on the floor, and the wicker shelf that was in my room when I was little there was one of the little slats that was broken.  I remember the shadows of the TV on the wall, and the faint voices from some TV program.  He was hurting me, so very rough.  I wasn't a person, I was nothing.  He had his hands on my neck and all over anywhere he wanted.  I wanted him to stop and just go away.  I wanted him to be the good guy I had met on that weekend.  Things get so blurry; he rapes me again in the living room.  I remember him sitting on the couch with this Look of accomplishment on his face, he was laughing at me.  I had curled up in a ball on the floor.  My mind was everywhere and nowhere, I was just a slut, and this is what happens when you want attention.  He finally left and I spent the next moments of time, fixing the living room.  Fixing the pillows, the fringe was perfect, and I made everything look as it did before he came.  I can remember the pain in my body, walking was painful, and everything hurt.  Everything Everything.  And you do what you know hoe to do, you go to bed and wake up in the morning another day.  There wasn't even a thought for someone to know and to help you.  There wasn't a single thought that I needed to tell someone so that they could help and make things better.  I just dealt with what had happened to me.  Why wouldn't I , it was my own fault.  I flirted and I danced, and I was the one that wanted to see him again, well I guess that I got what I wished for didn't I.  

And life goes on until it doesn't.  Done comes back bringing his friends and I am no longer a person.  I don't have the words that I so desperately want to have just to get it out of skin, and out of my bones.  I feel like I carry it everywhere all the time and I am exhausted.  I see the window, and the waterbed and that burnt orange chair.  I relive the details of that day in such great detail.  The smallest of things etched on my very soul.  The sun on my face as I was laying by the back door.  The feeling of the rope on the hands behind my back.  The rug burn from when I tried to run and fell in the hall.  The fan in the living room as I repeated their names hoping that each turn would be their last.  I remember the turn taking in my brothers room. I remember the panic, when I thought they had gone but another one was coming. I remember them chanting and laughing.  I remember being so very cold.  The kind of cold that no amount of warmth would fix.  I can remember thinking that if I just curled up tight enough in a little ball then somehow, they would give up and leave. I can remember the moment that I thought they were going to kill me.  Laughing and waving the gun around, him ending my life would have been a relief.  He used the gun to assault me laughing. That second when you realize just how hurt that you are. Them laughing at the blood, I was their joke. I can remember screaming and at the same time there was no more sound coming out of my mouth.  Things were more black then in color, I just went to a place far far away so I didn't have to experience or acknowledge the things that were happening to me.  It was never ending, there were more turns and more abuse, more taunting and teasing.  There were moments in the day I gave up and moments in the day that I fought like hell. There were screams that sounded less than human and I begged them to stop, but I was wasting my breath. They tore at my body and took pieces of me that I will never get back. When they left that day there was nothing left of me.  I was a shell of a person; I was a nothing that deserved what she got. I danced with him, I got butterflies, and thought I was something special.  I am pretty sure that I missed a few days of school.  I am sure that I made up something a migraine, a stomach virus something anything to give my body a few days of rest.  My body was black with bruises and everything hurt. 

Then there was the last time that Don came.  I still beat myself up because I answered the door.  After everything that happened I am not sure why I thought it was ok to answer the door but I did. I know that the world stopped and took my breath away.  The tears started right away, I can remember their warmth streaming down my face.  By this time I knew what he had come for.  There was no fight in my heart.  There was nothing, just let him take what he wants we can make this easier or harder. I chose easier. I think that he was looking for a fight and was unprepared for my reaction.  I unbuttoned my pants and I laid down right there on the floor .  The same scene as the first rape.  He was looking for a reaction, I didn't have one.  All was taken, I just wanted him to get what he had come for and leave me alone. I will forever be guilty I didn't want to be raped I didn't think that there was any other option for me.  I was alone, no one cared to ask if I was ok or why I seemed so sad so you do the things that you have to do to live another day.  That is what I did.  I think that there was also a part of me that that believed if I had just laid down the first time then he would have left me alone.  So either way there was no way for me to win.  Fight and be hurt, or lay down and let him do what he is going to.  Really nothing mattered, he had already destroyed that spunky girl, the last time he seemed so unsure, I didn't fight didn't make a sound. He got up when he was done kicking me, spitting on me and saying awful things, and just left.  It made him so angry that there wasn't any fight left.  There was nothing left and I wanted to die.  I was barely breathing going through the motions of life but I really didn't even feel human anymore.

I wasn't ok after that.  Calvin was the one who knew I wasn't ok. And there are parts of me that still aren't ok.  I feel terribly guilty even writing about this time.  Somehow this is something that deserves to stay in the dark.  I feel like I don't even have the right words to convey all the feelings that are inside.  Things are so intertwined.  I have done this hard hard work and yet there are parts of me that can't let this go.  I am struggling that no one stepped up and did the right thing.  I don't understand why I wasn't important enough. No one cared for my heart, no one was there even after they knew.  As hard as it was telling I thought that maybe maybe I wouldn't have to carry it alone.  The truth is , things just got heavier because, people knew, and I still had to carry it on my own.  This place is so lonely because there are worlds that I need to get out and I don't have a clue how to get any relief.  I don't understand why this piece has such a hold. I see the pictures in my head and it's almost like I am still in shock. I am still on repeat trying to make things different.  I get more than angry with myself because all these years later I still haven't figured out that there is no way to make it different to make it better.  There is no way in this world to pretend that it never happened.  I wish that girl would have had a normal teenage life.  I wish she could have experienced all the fun things in high school.  I don't know what to do with the sad that because of all of this I missed out on any sense of a normal life and I have spent my entire life searching for what I will never find.  I just want to let go.  I just want to feel like I am not some kind of damaged human. I just want to forget that it happened at all. 

I heart your heart 

Pictures that mean the world, that are my heart

It's kind of crazy, I am working on a presentation that I don't even know if I am going to be presenting yet. But I want it more than anything and I am hoping that I will get a yes. The need to have a voice and get it all out is something that I don't understand.  There is something that comes alive like somehow people will hear me and they do things better for others. I cannot change the way I have been treated; I cannot change the things that have happened to me.  Today I just have to keep fighting and make sure that others understand the need to do better for people like me.