All the Words

 

After all this time

 

This is one of those things that I struggle to find the words for.  I struggle to understand how I can be so affected all these years later.  Many mornings when I wake up, I feel the weight of all that has happened to me.  I remember most of my nightmares.  There are morning when I don't, at least not specifically, but I feel them.  I feel what happened in those nightmares in my bones and I just don't have any words.  It's so hard for my brain today to understand.  All that happened to me was so long ago, and yet in the blink of an eye my body is back there and I want to curl up in a ball wishing that I didn't feel the things that I do. 

I don't understand my body today hurting when its been many many years.  When I was 5 there was not really an understanding .  My body hurt because , I was only 5.  Like I can understand that, of coarse it hurt. What my father was doing was painful and I can remember those nights when I got a break, the relief, the almost haha that I felt that for one night my body not to be in pain felt like some kind of  victory. I can remember being in physical pain a lot and there wasn't a thing I could do about it, really that was my normal.  I learned to live with it, that is just what happens.  You learn how to sit, and how to avoid being touched so that you don't flinch.  

But as I got older there was still so much pain.   I am grateful for the times I just went away somewhere safe in my head and during those times I knew what was happening but I was so far away from my own body that I felt nothing.  As I got older I think there were more times than not that I did go somewhere far far away.  I was there in the room I knew what was happening to me but I didn't physically feel any of the pain.  I think it was better like that, just knowing but not having to feel. I don't understand how I handled everything back then , I just kept going kept doing all the things that I had to do and yet today I wake up and all I want to do is crawl out of my skin,  How is that possible ?  I handled it all so well and today it doesn't feel like I am dealing with it at all.  I just do not understand. 

Today all these years later, somehow it seems that I can't get away from all the things that I felt. I am so very frustrated, because those things aren't happening anymore.  I am safe, no one is hurting me I am no longer being raped all the time.  I think of Charles and I felt nothing.  I knew what he was going to do and in a split second, I just wasn't there anymore.  I do not understand waking up and feeling like my body has been assaulted over and over and over.  Of coarse there were times I was present for the pain,  but reliving it today is something that feels so frustrating and overwhelming.  The shame is huge that those things hppened and then I can't even get away from how badly I was hurt.

I don't want to feel that pain anymore.  I want to be comfortable in my own skin.  I want to be free, physically from what they all did to me.  It feels like such a violation again when you wake up and everything hurts and there isn't a reason in the here and now.  I wake up back in the past, and this is one of those things that I don't feel like I have control over.  I hate this more than anything.  I am embarrassed and ashamed to still feel so much all this time later. I hate being in my own skin, feeling like I am living in the past when I work so hard to recover from it.  It feels like its happening more and more and I feel like the more that I ignore it,  the more that it happens.  Each day this week I have woken up feeling like I am back decades and experiencing terrible awful unimaginable things and I hate it so much.  It seems to be worse, dealing with that 13 year old I think because she had an awareness of what was happening and it made her sick.  

I just need this part to go away .  I need this part to stop.  After all this time there isn't a reason in the world to wake up feeling the weight of all that they did to me.  I would forget all of it if I could, not to have to experience this anymore.  This hurts my heart because i can't change it.  I can not make any of those things go away and I hate that.  I feel the pain and I know where it came from and the frustration that it isn't happening today but my body is back there.....I feel like I should be doing more so this doesn't happen.  

Even last night, I was dreaming about Bella and the pain started and I was in a panic going around o everyone asking for help asking for someone to see me and do something and not one person did.  Those are the kind of nightmares that I feel in my bones. That even when I wake up my skin hurts. I have come so far but the days I wake up feeling like I am still living back there , I want to scream at the world how unfair that it is, because no one should ever have to wake up feeling this.  I am at a loss and I don't want to feel what happened in my bones anymore.  I don't want to physically feel the things that were done, I have come too far to keep being pulled so far back.  I don't even know if this makes sense anymore, I know that it feels more crazy more sane.  After so many days feeling like this, how does a little girl do that when me at 46  wants nothing more than to crawl out of her skin. 

I heart your heart.   

Back to me

 

There are so many things that I want to say.  There are so many things that I have tried to ignore, because there are bigger things going on than me trudging things from the past.  My mother passing away was the greatest relief and harder than I ever imagined.  I long to be sad that my mother is gone, but there is a pain and an ache that she was not the mom that I needed. Its hard to grieve when the anger I feel at her words and actions are daggers through my heart.  I have spent every single day since December 3rd trying to figure out why she hated me so intensely, why she threw me under the bus, why she made me the bad guy in her small world. I have spent all this time trying to understand and I have gotten no where. I have slept little my body feeling all the memories, my skin sensitive to every small touch and my mind a tornado trying to find a place for all the thoughts and emotions.  

I woke up yesterday and I felt like all the things in my life had happened yesterday and it hasn't been like that in some time.  I have done so much work trying to heal and free those parts of me still so hurt by all the things that have happened.  I think somehow I believed that when my mother passed away some of the things that I have held onto were somehow going to magically disappear.  Somewhere in my mind, well she is gone, I can quickly and quietly pick of the pieces of me smashed by her and just put them where they belong and just like that I would be healed in some magic way.  Well it just hasn't worked like that.  I think there is a deeper sad knowing that there was no one.  Knowing that she knew things and she chose herself over her child. She knew things and made everyone else a priority as I struggled to clean up and be the little wife that I had to be.  I hate that more than anything.  How she could get on a plane leaving me behind knowing that I was going to be hurt but her tie on the beach was more important.  That hurts on a soul level that I am not sure there is any healing for. There is so much more hurt with her passing away than I ever imagined.  

And there is still me.  I have worked ever so hard and little callahan is being a little girl. A normal little 5 year old girl.  She doesn't have a care in the world.  She is free, she will never forget, and there are times she is still all too aware of the things that have happened to her but she lets me take care of those things as she plays, and runs and laughs with out a care in the world.  She is not so close anymore,  but I know that she is safe and sound experiencing some of those things that she never had the chance to do.  

And there is still me that scared , no terrified 13 year old afraid of herself and the world around her.  She can't imagine ever being free. She can't imagine a day when she doesn't feel their hands, when she doesn't smell their cologne.  She can't imagine a day when the nightmares will go away and she will be able to sleep with no bruises.  She can't imagine all the things that I think about as a 36 year old woman.  I dream of a love and a husband o share my life with and she thinks are you serious ! No matter what has happened we are in this war. Her and I.  She needs to hold on to prove that all those things matter. That all of those terrible things happened even if no one acknowledged them, She is in survival mode,  quietly going through life waiting for the other shoe to drop, and another person to smash the remaining pieces of her heart.  At the same time she is waiting for someone to help her, save her even.  I think she wants someone just to hold her make all the bad things go away.  Let her cry until there aren't any tears left.  Hold her until she stops shaking then hold her some more just to make sure that she knows it's ok. She needs some much comfort and understanding.  She is terrified of the world; still after all this time.  I worry about her, if she ever make it back.  I worry that someone she has been through too much to feel worthy, and brave and amazing.  The door is open, I am trying really hard to let her in, and out of the dark but that is what she knows.  She is more comfortable in the dark because at least she knows what to expect. 

Then there is me in this in-between.  I have this crystal clear picture of little Callahan and there is no one stealing her joy.  There is no one hurting her little body.  She is free.  She plays, and sings and dances.  She is doing what all littles deserve to do and I am grateful for that.  I have this picture of thirteen year old me who has to be so strong. She is bruised and battered after all this time because she lives there, back during that time when evil was all around her.  She wants to understand the life around her but just doesn't, there isn't love and kindness.  There isn't care and concern.  She doesn't understand the loss of little Bella and not remembering so much.  She can explain the curtains and comforter in that room with yellow walls yet she can not remember what happened to her or her daughter.  She doesn't understand why not one person has jumped in to help her.  She doesn't believe in the world anymore.  She doesn't believe in people,  she doesn't believe it will get better. She is scared to keep living,  at any second she knows that one person could end everything  but she also knows that she ill fight tooth and nail to stay alive. 

And there is me trying to keep it all together.  Grateful for the work that I have done and am able to see that Little callahan isn't hiding anymore.  She isn't in some dark corner, scared and I could not be more grateful.  !3 year old is more than hard.  I know what she needs and I am terrified to give it to her.  I am scared to carry the things that she does.  And yes I have to carry them because she doesn't deserve to have to do that alone.  I am scared to help her, scared of her survival.  I say all the time I don't know how she kept breathing and that is terrifying.  There was an innocence to little Callahan that 13 year old didn't have, maybe she has it but I can't find  it yet. She has survived the unimaginable and I know the work it took to free Little Callahan and I feel 13 year old is even further away.  Because she never got to feel, by then she just learned what was necessary and kept going.  She feels more than broken.  I worry  I am not enough to help her heal.  I want so many things and I think of her and think I just can't.  Somehow the things that I want and helping her can't go together.  I dream of being in love, that feels fatal for her.  I want a husband to her that is more than dangerous.  To her that is putting herself in a situation to be hurt again.  There are so many things to figure out with her.  Things are not so clear, not so black and white and I struggle.  I am all i for the fight, I just have to make sure that I am healing her and not adding any more hurt.  I would never forgive myself if I were to add any more hurt in this life time and so here we are.  A daughter with no father, a daughter with no mother and a mother trying to keep herself and her children safe in a world that feels fundamentally dangerous.  So now is the time back to me and I am all in, I am scared and I feel more than needy because I am not sure what these next steps are going to be. I am not sure that I am ready, but I know more than anything that I want to be. 

I heart your heart.  

Longing

My heart is crushed .  I am worried beyond words about Vincent .  He has made me enemy number one and I am at a loss.  I am all too aware of the hard life that he has had to live but in so many ways he has had an easier life than what I have known and I wish he was able to understand that.  The death of his grandmother has sent him in a downward spiral and I am doing everything I know how to do, to stop the fall; to make him understand how he is loved and how important that he is , but it just doesn't seem to be working. 

My once sweet son is gone and I want to find him again. 

He doesn't laugh anymore.  He doesn't talk to me.  He doesn't like me , for a single second and I am fighting things I don't even know about. I feel it in my bones that he blames me for his grandmother passing away.  She was his got to.  I understand that was important for him, I understand she was his person what he doesn't understand is how unhealthy of a relationship that she created. She created their relationship as a wedge between him and I  and I felt that every single day.  She was a secret maker, a secret keeper and he was placed in the middle and now I am in a fight to get my son back and I am not sure there is any winning side.  What was lost is lost and there isn't a side that she hasn't damaged.  She placed Vincent in the middle and he is too young to understand that that those things weren't ok.  Those are the things that have always broken my heart and also the things that Vincent is too young to understand.  So where do I go from here ? 

To the very core of my being I love him more than anything, and what I am doing isn't working. I am more than worried.  He carries the weight of the world and isn't letting me in.  He wants to be so adult yet takes responsibility for nothing.  He helps with nothing in the house and I ask for so little.  I only ask when its something I just can't do.  Something I can't lift or reach and I do everything I can to make sure that I can do things on my own.  Even with my broken foot, I still did the trash brought everything upstairs .  Which is fine I am used to doing things on my own , there is no initiative to help me with anything. 

It feels like he is mad at me for being a single mom, he is made at me that there isn't more money, he is mad we live in Anna,  he is mad that he doesn't have a car he is mad that things are not handed to him on a silver platter.  He is angry that it's just me. I go out of my way to include him to try and be fair to make him smile and it feels futile. He always says Mariska is the favorite. No she isn't the favorite, she just reaches back.

I ask Mariska if he is fine when I get out of the car and she says yes.  He smiles and laughs.  He is more than miserable around me , at home and its like he has to try to stay that way.  I don't understand what he is punishing me for.  Every conversation I try to have he says it doesn't matter.  I tell him over and over yes, it does matter, it matters so much you don't even know.  He is angry he doesn't get his way , that he can't just get what he wants.  But life doesn't work like that.  

I am to a point, you don't get to treat me unkind then expect my car.  You don't come in at 2 am and expect no consequences.  He is making choices and those choices he is making are hurting other people and he doesn't care and that kills me.  He doesn't respect me at all, and I just don't understand.  I have always given him everything but it seems it isn't enough, or it just isn't what he needs.  But he can't even tell me what he needs.  I tell him I' m here, I tell him that I can't read his mind that he just has to let me know how I can help and   I will be there, but right now he wants nothing to do with me. I want more than anything just for him to reach back.

He hurts my heart weekly and there is no amount of care.  I am sure my mother had many words for him about me and those are weighing heavy on him and those are things that I can't fix or help him understand. Little does he know how heavy those things are for me, because I feel like I failed him.   Those are things that only time will tell how he is going to handle that.  I think there is a part of me that feels terribly guilty that somehow I didn't shield him enough from her and that web of lies and hate for me that she had Vincent was a front seat passenger for.  For that I will forever be sad.   

I know that things are changing he is a senior and will be moving on,  I just want him to understand how so loved that he is and just how important that it is not to hut me out .  I want him to talk to me and understand that there is so much more to the story than my mother may have led him to believe. 

Vincent Guy, You are my heart I love you I love you I love you. 

I heart your heart. 

I can't say Good-bye , I am one of them

 I need new memories.  I was driving  home the other day and every song that came on had some kind of memory that hurt my heart.  That I just want to forget.  I love music.  Music is always on, I like so many different kinds,  . It makes me happy, makes me sad when I don't have words I can find a song. If I don't know a feeling I can find a song and say yes, that's it.  The same with words and pictures.  This is just a part of my journey.  The people I have met, the things I have experienced.  I am learning to accept things in my life ; acknowledge them and place them in a safe place. 

 I found this poem and picture, and think maybe this it it. 

Maybe I am someone not meant to say goodbye.

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There are people who cannot say good-bye

They are born this way , this is how they die

They are the keepers of promises ,what moves them does not wear out

Their loyalty will tear apart your clocks

These are the people who can hear the music in songs

They are the Vow carriers

The grandmothers who always leave the porchlight on

No one is lost to the one who sees .

These are the women widowed by men they never married.

These are the girls who wait even when you don't come.

These are the mothers of orphans , they can turn a fake into an original

They will hear the prayer in your self-contempt.

As distance is measured ,people do not end

It is one of those stories that cannot be written down except across a lifetime of open doors .

There is a holding on beyond the letting go

There is a reunion in everybody's chest

This is how we come to make a family from strangers

This is how we light candles

These are people who will remember you when you meet them

These are the people you can always call at night

They are humans turned angels by your asking

With each separation they go to seed again

These are the men who carried you on their shoulders

This is the one you are lonely for

the one who begins and ends your hunger

This is the man who said "Always"

There is something that does not wear out

It is the third part of any two people who join .

It opens and closes.

There are people who are alone who are not apart

This is why we listen to the madman when he speaks

People change but they do not stop

This is how we learn "Forever"

There are people you can count on

They are the keepers of promises

They are candles lit from each other

They can teach us eternity

We can get what we can give

This is the instruction

There are people who do not say goodbye

As distance is measured

You are one of them ..

~ Merrit Malloy, The People Who Didn't Say Goodbye ~

Artist Albena Vatcheva

Isn't this just beautiful. I think I am one of these people.

So called women of God

 

This is something that has been heavy my entire life.  I have always had questions.  I have always had doubts.  When religion and god seemed to bring people peace , it brought me anger and and other feelings that I don't even have words for.  It was something that never brought peace and comfort.  I have reached out and tried so many times to belong to understand and yet was not met with open arms,  or welcoming comfort. Some of my biggest heart hurts have come directly from the church, and the people there and I will never understand.  What I thought were forever people threw religion in my face. What I thought was so real was turned against me , I just never totally fit in.  I used to want that so much,  to fit with them to be a part and I jut never did.  I was always left out for one reason or another.  Always excluded in certain situations.  My sadness was never as deep as theirs.  My fears and wants never as important as theirs.  

I see pictures of these women on Facebook, and they talk about god and being a good christian, and I don't at all understand.  It makes me more than angry, because , I see all the ways that they are not. All I really want to do is leave a terrible comment, exposing them as liars. I want to scream  how I was the things that they say, they talk about and they really don't mean it.  They are those things to others if you fit into their pretty little box. I was treated more than cruel by these so called christ like women.   Once I was a part of that, once for a second I thought that I had something real and true with them and in the blink of an eye I didn't anymore.  They turned their backs and trampled my heart.  I want to scream and yell at them.  I want to tell them all to fuck off and go to hell, really.  Then I think these are not women that I share anything with. These are not women that are worth my effort, or my tender heart. These are not women that I want to be a part of, these are women that hold daggers; Big sharp daggers and they use them and think nothing of it; and that is something I want nothing to do with. These are unkind women that exclude, that judge and take sides.  These are women that leave others out and make a person feel as if they are the problem. I am not a problem, I am not something to be fixed by them. I am not a person to fit in some kind of pretty box that fits the role they wanted me to fit in. These are not my people and for a time I believed with ever fiber in my being that they were.  They pretended to be , but when truths are shared, when things happen and sides are taken,  I was the odd man out.  They pretended I belonged, I pretended to go along and in the end, I was left as before. Not a single one of them turned around to check on me.  They pretended I was one of them as long as I went along,  the second I grew; the second I voiced my heart it was all over and I saw truths I never imagined could come from all the things they pretended to be. 

I think there is going to be a piece of this that always hurts,  because I wanted to belong, and for such a short time I was and in that time I felt things I never got to experience before, as I grow and heal, I would rather be real and true then be something I am not just  to belong. I gave so much and was so hopeful I had something real but in the end they were not real and I was the one that paid the price.  That will always hurt, but as I get stronger,  I will let them go more and more and someday I will no longer even be Facebook friends.  They no longer deserve to see the life I have or where I am.  Not there yet but I am close.  Closer than I have ever been before.  

I heart your heart

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