Nothing to forgive just the way I am

I keep hearing this line in a song, and I smile. 

There is nothing to forgive its just the way that we are. 

That so much that. 

 I am who I am and that is just the way that it is.  I have been told my entire life to be something different.  To act different. I do things in a different way.  In way too many situations who I was was not accepted or valued. I have been told to fake it until I make it, but that isn't me.  I am quiet until I know you.  I will sit back and watch until I am comfortable.  I talk when I have something to say not to hear myself talk.  I have been told to ask for forgiveness for just being me and that is not ok. The way that I am is not acceptable to so many people and I have been told to change, and do things different.  I don't want to do things different.  Who I am is not something that I need to change into something else.  I am quiet, that is me.  My heart has been deeply hurt and there are things that I am always going to do.  There are going to be times, when I get quiet and just need my alone time.  Nothing wrong with that and I should not have to apologize.      

I have had to apologize for who I am my entire life, I have been told to fake it until I make it, I have been told that my thoughts and feelings were wrong.  I have been dismissed and judged my entire life no matter what I have done. My thoughts decisions and way of being has been dismissed and excluded.  I am weird i know that, I watch and I do things different but that isn't a bad thing, its nothing to change, it;s just part of me. 

I do not need to ask for your forgiveness because you can't understand this soft, gentle heart of mine.  I do not need your opinion.  I am not going to fake it until I make it because that just isn't who I am, or what I want  . I will not pretend to believe in something that has not been there for me.  

What I want

 I want to feel brave. I want to be BRAVE.

I want to be able to speak the things that have happened to me without crumbling under the weight of  shame that is a constant.  I want to be able to say those things and feel proud and brave that I survived them.  Instead I feel embarrassed and oh so gross,  somehow those words make me so much less than and I feel that in my bones.  I have this picture in my head , of the moment that things all come together for me and I finally feel some peace.  I struggle with the things that were done to me and somehow that makes me less of a person.  I am embarrassed and ashamed of so much and I have found nothing to lessen that sting.  There are moments that I think, these people would never come close if they knew what I had done.  I struggle with the fact that at such a young age I knew things that should never have been known.  I struggle  I just knew what to do. I struggle that I was so aware.  There are times I wish that I could wake up and not remember a thing.  Sometimes I wonder if feeling free and brave is an option for me.  I work so hard trying.  I work so hard trying to understand and figure things out in my head.  I feel like I am in new territory and there are so many things to figure out and find a place for.  I see those moments of brave in people and I think that is what I want, someday I am going to find my very own moment instead of watching everyone else's trying to figure out what I am doing wrong .  I live in the middle of what happened to me all these years later and its exhausting.  I am 46 and still in the middle of so much trying to live in the moment if that isn't confusing.  There are pieces of me back there terrified and broken just as much as I am here today a teacher and mother. Some days the back there wins and somedays I can be here in the present. Lately it seems the back there is winning, and I must work harder to find that strong and brave. 

I want to feel clean. 

I think once again this is attached to so much shame !   I want to feel clean and that is something that I am not sure is meant for me.  It's really hard to describe, there are times I so much need and want a hug and feel like I am too unclean.  Like who would want to do that with all that has been done.  I don't get comfort, I don't get that reassurance often that I am not such a gross and disgusting person. I hug my little guys at work, but for me to get a hug.  I get a hug once a week.  And there are many times I don't want to let go like can't I just be safe and ok being me just for a little while longer, even a few seconds.  I have worked so hard to battle gross and disgusting and I feel its coming back with everything that it is. I can never imagine getting married, being a wife when I am so unclean and used.  Those things feel so very foreign.  To feel like an outsider in your own skin, to not even want to be there and not having any other way to live that is a dilemma that I face all day every day.  I wonder if even for a day I could be in someone else's skin that doesn't know all the has been taken from me. All the ways I have been used can I feel different , would being in clean skin make me feel worthy and full of life ? I am not sure I know what this would feel like, buts its something I imagine is so very freeing, feeling clean in your own skin. Yes, I want that.  

                                                                                                                                                                        

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          I want to be proud.

I want to stand up and be proud.  I want that less than feeling to go away.  I want to be able to say yes this is my story, these are my scars but I am still here living breathing .  Once again that shame of all that is happened keeps me from feeling proud. I want to feel proud and I want to stand tall and tell the world YES these things happened to me, but they are not who I am; bur first I have to believe that.  There is a part of me that believes all those things that have happened to me make me less than, used goods,  make me something that deserves to be shoved aside and looked over.  I think so many people have done that and there is a part of me that believes well of coarse so much has happened to me who in the world would want to stay around.  I am a burden and my story is a burden.  I am not sure that I believe someone wants to be around me with all my scars and wounds all my bleeding often oozy parts of me that makes me so sad. I want to be able to be ok with the sad sometimes and know what happened is sad but that doesn't make me less than, it makes me real and healing.  I want to be proud that I am choosing to heal instead of so many other things.  I want to be proud that I am working so hard to conquer and overcome so much that is unimaginable.  I want to stand tall even with my scars and my sad and be proud of the woman that I am today. 

Every Morning when I wake up

 

Every morning when I wake up there are those moments that I think please not yet.  Because the moment that I am awake and aware the moment comes that I have to figure out what to do with the nightmares from the night before, and deal with the day ahead.  I have to remind myself that those things are over and I am safe in my own home.  There are days it takes me time to even figure out if a shower will be a good thing or a bad thing.  Will I take a shower and feel clean, will I take a shower to memories and forget to wash the shampoo out.  Will today be the day something happens to my house that I don't know how to handle.  Will today be the day that something else happens and I will be completely on my own to figure it out. I wake up some days and I just don't want to.  And I think of my children, I think of my students and I put on a face and I get out of bed.  I can promise you that most days are harder than you can even imagine.  Most days I would love to hide away under the covers wanting things to be different wanting things to feel more in my control.  Each day I wake up wondering if I am going to be enough, if I am going to make the right choices.  Each day I wake up wondering if the memories will stay away or creep in like a gust of wind knocking the breathe out of me.  I am too old for this. I am a kind of tired that most can not even begin to understand. Every morning I wake up and have to pretend my way through, pretend that I am fine that my heart isn't broken that I don't hate the situation that I am and feel powerless to change the way that it is. I wake up fighting,  I wake up just as tired as I went to bed.  I sometimes imagine what it must feel like to wake up refreshed and alive,  then I realize I have never had a clue what that is like even when I was small.  Sleep is for the weak, terrible things happen in the dark where a child is supposed to sleep safe. For me sleep is for the memories of those terrible things that were to brutally taken. Sleep for me is where I try to fight them , desperately trying to change the story. So you see sleep isn't a respite a break, I sleep when necessary when I  can no longer stay awake,  but not something I look forward to, just something that I wish I didn't have to have.  

I wake up every morning knowing there are things that have to get done, knowing that there are bills to be paid knowing that everything in this house that I live in weighs on my shoulders. Every broken piece is my responsibility alone and that is a weight I do not wish on anyone.  I wake up knowing it will be another day of alone,  to come home and be so tired to even make dinner and the gratefulness that I feel when Mariska has once again been amazing and made dinner for us.  

Every morning I wake up because that is what I do, I keep going, I wake up and pretend all is well. I ignore my need to stay in bed, I ignore my need to scream at the world. I ignore the need to shake my mother from sleep and scream until there is no voice left but instead I smile and get out of bed.  I laugh with Mariska, clean her glasses and walk down the stairs.  I listen to music in the car  that has all the words I can never find then I go into work, trying to take care of it all, trying to be wonder woman when all I ever really wanted every single morning is to stay in bed trying to find the piece of peace that my heart is so desperately trying to search for..  I want to wake up ready and renewed instead of still tired and weighed down by the things that I can't change. 

Life goes on

 

Life goes on and you see that's where I am struggling. No matter what has happened to me, no matter what was taken life just kept going.  I was dying, dying to be kept safe and  dying to hear that the things that happened to me were not my fault. I was dying and always pretended that everything was ok.  So many times I just wanted everything to stop, I wanted to go away.  I wanted the world to stop until I was able to feel better. I wanted to be noticed, I wanted someone else to stop the world and help me feel better.  I wanted the world to stop for someone other than me,  I wanted someone to stop with me.  I wanted someone to hold me and tell me they were so sorry and that they would stay until I was feeling, ok until I could find my feet again.  I wanted someone to see me and just for a time, just for a short time stop the world , help me heal, teach me that what happened to me mattered and it was awful terrible but there is so much more to this life than those things that happened. 

I was little and my world was smashed into millions and millions of tiny pieces and I was left all alone to put those pieces together. So I struggled and fought barely breathing to collect all these broken pieces and I kept  fighting, kept moving forward because that was all that I knew how to do. But with so many pieces all over the place and smashed beyond recognition, I didn't have a clue how they were supposed  to to go back together.   There was no acknowledgment or care of me, there was no acknowledgment of all the things that were taken. So a part of me knowing , no one was there I kept smiling packing those atrocities, the pieces of things I can never forget into  into boxes, of all sizes some that could hold elephants and others to hold shells,  but they were all my boxes none the same.  

And so my entire life I have just kept stacking these boxes, holding on to them for dear life as a reminder that someday I am going to be able to open them and let them go. I was going to win, opening each one feeling stronger that I made it. Someday I am going to open them and see just how much those things mattered just how much I was hurt, and just how much that they made me the person I am today.  I have been waiting ;Waiting for the day that would allow me time to open them and give what was needed to each precious part that is in each and every box. 

This life is a crazy thing and when things are taken, when thing are missed there is no way to get them back no way to make things the way that they should have been. I have to somehow find a way to live with that.  I know that the world should have stopped for me, everyone that was around me failed to do all those things that needed to be done. Those people should have stopped the world giving me everything that I needed.  They should have given me safety and rest.  They should have given me reassurance that I wasn't the one who was so awful. I wanted to be held, I wanted to be told that it was still ok to play.  I wanted to be told that I didn't have to hang on to those big adult things because those were not things that were made for my little heart to carry.  

So today I sit here with a death grip on this cargo plane filled with boxes of pain , disappointment and suffering because those boxes have to mean something. Those boxes are my life.  Those boxes are everything that has never been acknowledged or cared for.  Somehow letting go is forgetting everything that got me here,  how terribly devastating they all were and somehow that has become a badge of honor, like look at this Cargo plane and all that has happened and look at me still living, still suffering and you all did nothing.  I hold on to them as a fuck you,  all these things that you never cared about are things that I can never forget and will never let go of.  At the same time there are parts of me still back there in that time  that don't even realize we aren't there anymore.  Maybe that is another reason letting go is so very difficult, there are pieces of me still back there fighting monsters that no one can see.  

I want to go back and acknowledge each little tattered part of me in those boxes, and give that girl exactly what she needs.  I want to make everything stop until she is ready to move forward.  I want to give her time and space to catch her breath and for just once not feel like she is so behind . I want to believe that we are strong and brave and were meant for better things in this life. 

So sure life goes on, but for me there are parts and pieces of this life where I wanted everything stopped because I needed someone to see and to acknowledge my pain.  No one taught me that it was ok to move forward.  No one taught me that I was never meant to live in that violence and pain. NO one taught me that all those things that I ever needed were good and ok.  So I have learned to hold onto the pain with a death grip, because that is what I know. That is what I have known my entire little life and today as a 46 year old women I still don't have a clue how to let go, and there are pieces of me back there dying because all they want to do is let go and I don't know how to let them.    

I was Raped

I see those words, three little world that carry the world, those words in the title and my heart stops. I hear those words and the world stops.  I can write them and it feels like those are words that are very far away, words for another time and place.  Those are words that happen to good innocent girls, those are words that happen to people who tell and find support and love and care.  Those are words that fit others but not me.  Those are words that some how don't fit me because no one noticed, no one cared. Things happened to me as usual  and  I just kept on living doing everything that a little girl is supposed to do. No one stopped to care that this little girl was being hurt like this all the time;

 no

 one

 cared

 to

 notice

 Things were not seen and so much looked over.  All these things left a little girl all alone trying to understand things that should never have been a part of her world.  

Someday I want to be able to stand up brave and strong and say those words. Say the things that have happened to me  without feeling less than and gross and disgusting. I want to be able to say the truth and not be ashamed; not feel like I am less of a human, not feel like such an outsider. I want to say the things that have been silent, and hiding for oh so many years.

Somehow speaking those words makes things clearer and more real than they have ever been and its more than difficult. Somewhere In my head I know those are the things that happened and somehow by not saying those words I can keep it far away and use other words that don't sting so much.  I can say I was hurt, I can say people were not nice.  I can say that people took things that were not theirs to take. I can even say that people just didn't listen. Those are things that I have learned to say and can  come out of my mouth so much easier than the real words.

The real words don't apply to me because I always just cleaned up and kept going.  There was no time to rest and recover,  there was not time for healing.  Night after night, day after day this is just something that happens to you. 

The shame in the things that have happened to me is enormous, and that is also a part that keeps things silent. Things have happened to me that I don't have words for.  Things have happened that I remember every detail of and can not bare to get them out of my mouth.   These are the words that have happened to me my entire life,  Before I even knew what it was that was happening. These words have happened to me before I can even remember.  These words are so full of violence, and to fully comprehend that is unimaginable. 

There are bits and pieces that I try to explain but words seem empty, when my heart is scarred. When  My words today feel so heavy,  I feel terrible that I need to speak them.  I feel like a burden,  that I don't deserve the love and support all this time later.  I mean I am living and breathing, why burden someone else with the things that have happened to me.  

There are so many factors that come into the picture with words like this.  There are the truths, the reality the hard facts that are to terrifying to understand.  Then comes  the body memories.  There are nights that I wake up and I literally can not feel my legs.  There are nights that I wake up and the literal pain that I am in doesn't even have words.  My body hurts just like it did on those exceptionally hard nights when his parts were fully working and I was the one who had to suffer.  There are mornings my hips kill me because of the sins of my father and his little girl whose body wasn't made for what he wanted.  I often get angry when my mind went away , I have said that a million times.  Somehow that feels like the easy way out.  Yet in the same breathe I believe that the pain was so great there was no other choice for my little mind as I had to endure things not meant for anyone ever. My little mind had no way to comprehend the things that were happening and the things that I was feeling. My little mind just wanted to be seen and so loved

I can remember a counselor once saying that it might have felt good ,what was happening to me and that was ok. That sometimes a body would just respond And I felt my insides screaming because there was nothing that was done to me that felt good.  My body didn't respond, there were no good feelings just pain , such pain that I had to go away because it hurt too much to be in my own skin.

There are pieces of me that know the pain and pieces of me that know the real words that happened to me.  Those things happening at the same time feel so completely overwhelming.  Like my brain can't comprehend that I was in pain because of those things because I was being raped.  

I feel like my words aren't making any sense and I am rambling, because they have been quiet for so long.  There is a part of me that says it was just sex don't make such a big deal. As a little girl it was a big deal because the pain was inconceivable.  As I got older, things were so much less painful, and I just learned to go away rather than have to experience the look on their faces, they liked what they were doing and I was just there for parts. For so much of my childhood I was floating as far away from my body as I could get.

Those things were just for my father and Albert.  For Don and them there was a different level of violence.  I didn't have a small body anymore, at least not like a little girl of 5.  I was more aware, I knew what they were doing at least some of the time, but then again things happened that I don't have words for that I didn't even realize could happen to a person.  I think that once I realized what was happening there was a fight, I fought with all that I had , it wasn't enough, they were bigger and there were so many of them but I tried,  I tried to make it stop, make them see me as a person.  There was nothing I could do,  and after fighting for so long, I felt like I lost. Much of that day is a blur, there are pieces of things I remember, then there are parts still so clear .    

The pain in the physicality of what was done is horrendous  Today I struggle all this time later there are moments that I can still feel what was done to me. There are times I can still feel their hands, I can smell the smell , hear the sounds and taste the tastes.    There are times my arm goes numb because I used to have to reach up and hold his cross so it didn't make any noise. That deep ache inside that I know today exactly where it comes from Those are the shameful things that are my life.  I don't know how to process all that was my life. So much hurt, all alone.

As I matured and got older the pain lessened, and for that I will be grateful.  The physical pain of a five year old is far different than the pain being caused by those same things at thirteen.  At 5 I knew my body was in pain with no real knowing , as you get older the knowing comes and the shame that comes with that I can't even measure.  I am ashamed of who I am, what was done and that still to this day, my heart is so broken.

The shame just grows and grows and grows as you come to understand as things get names and you suffer in silence because please who in the world wants to hear the things that have been done to you.  How in the world does a person talk about the horrendous things that have happened, it doesn't lessen the pain or the knowing or the hurt in your heart that no one really cares what has happened to you anyway.  So you keep breathing keep living, keep putting one foot in front of the other trying to remember to breathe and be a real live person.  

Then again I just wanted to be normal  and things were taken,  only this time he put a pillow over my face on purpose.  I knew as soon as I saw the pillow coming , I was gone .  I was in a place far far away that he couldn't reach .  

I don't know how a person survives all of this in one life.  This just was my life.  Somehow adding those words seems so hard.  Parts of my brain know but an even bigger part of my brain wishes more than anything that I didn't so understand these three little words. 

I

WAS

RAPED.

I heart your heart. 

This well of sadness

There is such a well of sadness that comes from the smallest parts of me.  I think that  Callahan is running free and there should be no sad left. I see her smiling and happy in ways that she could never be.  I see her little spirit able to play and make noise, and yet I start talking about her little life the things that we missed and the sadness seems to ooze from every cell.  It is such a deep sad.  A sad that I am not sure I can even put words to.  

I think of little Callahan and she no longer has to hide in the corner,  Really, she doesn't hide at all, she is everywhere .  She is not worried about the noise that she is making.  She is not at all concerned about much,  she doesn't have the world on her shoulders anymore and that is a feeling we do not have much experience with.  Just when I think that I am done with the tears, I hit another well and it knocks me off my feet. I want to be done with the sad, that deep deep sad that feels so overwhelming.  It's the kind of sad that I wonder if it will ever end.  I wonder if I will ever see the bottom of the well with no more tears left in it.  

Wednesday the well opened for a time, and the tears just wouldn't stop.  They came like the rain and are exhausting.  Because each time I hit the well I think surely there can't be any more, and yet there are so many. 

My little life so many things that were missed, things that were taken away that I never got to experience.  So much missing , being left out, being abused and tortured, raped before I even knew what was happening,  battered and bruised yet expected to live the carefree life of a child. 

And so that well of sadness seems to fill instead of drain.  So much was taken so much was lost and that is something so unimaginably hard to understand.  When I think there can not possible be any more tears , they still come. 

So many sadnesses, oh so many and I want there to be a day when I can talk about them and they not break my heart.  I want there to come a day when I feel strong because I have survived them.  Not ashamed that they took what wasn't theirs to take. I missed being innocent about the world, I missed being special, I missed having a body that didn't hurt all the time. I missed being cared for, ,and protected.  I missed being heard and kept safe.  I missed everything childhood and that is hard to get my head around. 

I have worked more than hard, letting little Callahan have all of those things, and I can smile and hold my heart grateful that she can be free, that she can run .  Her mind is free, she knows that she is safe and her little body doesn't hurt anymore. 

At 46 I woke up this morning and my body hurt.  I felt it in my very bones,  the hurt the ache the pain and I want to crawl in a hole.  After all this time I don't want to feel it, I don't want to remember .  I don't want to understand why my body hurts and why I can't make it stop.  These are the days I could run a million miles and then some just to try and forget.  

Today that well of sadness is overflowing, my body aches and I remember that little girl being at work with my father hiding in the bathroom wanting my body to stop hurting.  The UTI was more than painful.  I would dread using the restroom because my body hurt so much.  It's amazing the things that a little girl can learn.  The longer you hold it the less pain that you create for yourself. I was so afraid in that restroom the lights only half on, and then he came looking for me.  Such fear in my heart the moment that I heard him.  My body in pain from the night before, still bleeding why would I even be sent to work with him. I am not sure if I have spoken about that day before. It's still in my mind clear as crystal,  that poor poor little girl.  Every sense on high alert, I remember every moment,  I was maybe 6 or 7.  That poor girl.  I can remember the lights the sounds, the pain, even the smell of that bathroom.  How does a child understand that,  how does a child just do what needs to be done with no thought in the world to tell someone that I was hurting and needed help.  That I can not get my head around.  

Such  a monster of a man, I sit here and my eyes see it as someone else,  and yet I know that little girl is me and her strength is undeniable.  I see it as a third party yet am aware of every feeling. She survived and I am oh so sorry that was her reality , this was her life; this was the way that things were for her.  So small and so used to what happened. 

I am sitting here and can hear the birds outside, its even a little cool and I am grateful that I made it, that somehow I didn't fade away, somehow I was able to see and hear those birds and  find some peace.  I am grateful that there was always something to help me through to make me feel not so alone. To help get my mind off the pain, and I am forever grateful.  

So many pieces of this puzzle that is my life.  I don't know how or why I survived such cruelty, sometimes it doesn't feel like surviving at all, because today it feels as if I am barely breathing.

 Everyone is still sleeping in my house, I am grateful as the tears continue to fall, that my children have had a life that is so far away from the life that I lived.  I don't know how to understand this, I don't know how to process this.  Such evil and so many questions.  I hope as this day goes on, the pain will subside, and I find even a little peace.  My life was not ok and today I am not sure if that well of sadness even has a bottom, it feels oh so never ending.   

I heart your heart. 

 

I cried in Wal-Mart

 Last Sunday I got up early and ran to Wal-Mart.  And while waiting in the checkout line, there was a dad .  A kind dad a gentle dad a dad whose face lit up when he talked to his little girl. Those dads , that kind of man was something that I never knew.  It made me more than sad.  I was sad for me that I didn't know what that was like. I was sad for me that I will never know that feeling.  I will never have someone look at me, like that dad looked at his little girl.  His whole face lite up as he was talking to her,  it was in his eyes and you could see that through his mask.  That is something special.  I do not believe that I was ever anything special to my father.  I do not believe that he ever truly loved me.  I do not believe that he valued or treasured me as his daughter.  That is such a huge loss.  And its on days like this I can see just what a huge loss this is.  

I have never been one to look around and think I want them for a dad.  I do often think I wonder what they are like, or if they are good dads.  I know that I look around constantly wondering if each and every man is a good dad.  I wonder if the person that they are putting into the world is the same person that they are at home.  I wonder if they are loving and kind. I wonder if they leave the light on at night just to ease a little girls heart.  I wonder if its ok to run into his arms at night when he gets home and feel safe and sound.  Those are things I didn't have. I want to know what its like to be held and feel like nothing in the world matters.  I want to be seen as valued and important,  I never ever felt those things. 

Sometimes I pretend it doesn't matter that there isn't a huge hole in my heart then other times, it becomes blaring and aching and I realize that I missed out on so much.  I never had a good kind man on my side that is supposed to love me forever.

The first time that I realized that was with Neil.  It was after we had filmed for the documentary.  He was going to be with his son, whose grandson was coming into the world and was saying his goodbye.  He put his hands on my face, so gently and said that I was brave.  He gave me a hug.  And for the first time ever I felt heard and safe and I went into the hotel crying asking why couldn't I have had a dad like that.  And the tears just wouldn't stop.  I wanted Neil to be my dad in those moments more than I ever wanted anything.  That kind of gentleness and comfort.  I can only imagine that having a good dad would be something like those moments with Neil.  I will never forget that day, and I will be forever grateful for a glimpse into what it might be like to have that all the time. 

As I get older, I think those wants and needs diminish.  I think they have to because there is a realization that those things just weren't meant for you.  But there are times, when the kindest man says things that I imagine a dad would say and I could tell him all my worries and he would be there and with those words; all would be well with the world, because someone has your back and someone understands.  There are times with Mark, I think you know what if he was my dad and stood up for me and was kind and made me believe good things about myself.  Oh, how my life would be so incredibly different. I wonder things like if he likes being a dad and I want to ask so many things.  Because there are times his kindness is overwhelming and I wonder if just for a day I could feel and understand having a good dad a dad that would keep me safe and protected and do everything to make sure to make sure my heart was taken care of .  

So for whatever reason,  that dad in Wal-Mart hit a nerve and I so wanted to be that little girl who for nothing more than breathing she made him so very happy.  I wanted to be that little girl , she made him happy just because she was.  That is something special.  I never had that. My children have never had that I am hopeful that someday my children will have their own families and have that. Vincent will be a dad and Mariska will have a husband who loves and cares for her with his whole heart.  I wish that for them that they will have an experience with a good dad a kind man and their children's lives will be better for it.  That is my wish, because for me I will have days like Sunday when no matter how old I am I will wonder what that must have been like and be lucky enough that if even for a few moments I was given a glimpse into what it must be like to be so cared for.  

I heart your heart.