I thought it couldn't get worse.

it did.

There is a variation of the theme, but nonetheless . . the theme is in many ways. God won't give you more then you can handle or . . . the universe gives you what you need to grow or. . . whatever. Apparently the idea is that when your in a place to grow, shits gonna hit the fan. Walk through it. Run from it. Hide from it. Whatever you do . . . its going to change something for you.

This must be that day.

I honestly can't believe today happened. I am sitting here staring out my window, wondering how the hell today lined up how it did. I'm also wondering how to escape it, and realizing with a heavy feeling that I can't. This day had to happen. There was no other option. I'm sick already and hell, it hasn't even happened.

Doing my family mapping for a project was hard enough. I get sick in my stomach every time I even think about having to do a map. Yes, it sucks to make the marks and to see that every family member I have is marked with either drug abuse, sex abuse or mental health issues. I mapped back three generations of family and saw that there were two intact relationships. One is my grandparents the other is my aunt and uncle. That's it. No other long happy marriages. Even sadder when I realize my grampa died young and that they wre considering divorce. My aunt and uncle are married but hes a drunk. Shes a bitch. They stay married to torture one another. And, to prove to everybody else how perfect they are.

So, i call my aunt Lisa, figuring she can give me some glimmer of hope in my family. Some concept somewhere that I can grab to tell me that maybe, just maybe we aren't as unhealthy as our family map would seem. She begins the stories . . . who left who . . who hurt who . . . As I marked the family members I felt worse.

Then, out of nowhere she asks why I didn't ask my mother these things. Nervousness builds as i begin to think about what would happen if I asked mom. See . . . Mom would tell me how wonderful everybody was. How there is no drug abuse or sex abuse. She would tell me that there are no mental health issues. Thats how she does it. Denies everything. Always. So, I explained that to my Aunt, who understood.

Then she said something that rocked me. She began to talk about my cousin Amanda, and how Amanda's young son was just raped. Brutally raped. My little baby seven year old cousin was hurt horrifically. And, she began to talk about how lucky Amanda was that she learned what to do from my aunt when she was molested. I got it . . . I was there. Sad for Amanda and my baby cousin but glad she did the right thing.

Then she apologized to me. She said she was sorry that my mom felt the way she did. She told me that my mom and her just talked and that mom was talking about how I took her man from her. Recently. My mother. My MOTHER told her sister that I took her lover from her. RECENTLY. My stomach dropped. I don't think my aunt meant for it to come out like that. I don't think she meant to tell me. It slipped.

And my heart dropped. Goddammit. Why. WHY? Why after all these years does she stll think that when I was thirteen . . . I took him. Jim. I hate him. I hate her more. Why does she still think I took her boyfriend? My god she still hates me so much that she . . . twenty one years later . . . blames me for getting pregnant by a man who claimed to love her yet tortured me? I just wanted to run away. i wanted to get in my car and drive . . . anywhere . . . I don't care where. Away from here. Away from her. I felt like my heart was imploding. Just . . . folding up.

I can't even think. But, did it stop there? No. I never stops there. That would be too easy.

I couldn't focus and I am learning to not run but to sit in the pain. Not to block it. Not to get drunk. Just to sit. Still. Listen to my own pain and not push it away. I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling. Ironically the same way he would rape me over and over. Looking for patterns. Using the patterns I learned to cope with rape to cope with the pain of rejection twenty years later.

It hurt. It does hurt. I'm crumpled and don't know what more to do.

The day moved on. I don't even know how. I feel like it was just dark, so dark. I began to realize I didn't feed anybody, I didn't communicate. I didn't do . . . anything. So . . . I get up and begin moving around, doing chores and check email.

I can't believe it happened this way. If i wasn't me I would think that it wasn't true. There, sitting in my email, is an email from his sister. My stepfathers sister. My daughters fathers sister. Her aunt. Annette. My heart hasn't beat that hard in years. Fear shot through my body . . . fear is still pulsating through my body. I guess it is a good sign that I can feel right?

Her email is an attempt to tell me that the family knows all about everything. They struggle with what he did, and they think it was wrong. However they want to know Jayme, they want to accept me as part of the family. The door is open. I appreciate that.

And

Jim wants to see Jayme. He wants to meet his daughter. How can I accept that he is a father? How can I trust that he won't hurt her or do to her what he did to me. Or, that he . . .how? How can I stand and face him again after twenty years and pretend that its ok, or that this is a reunion or . . .

What does one do?

But I can't let him meet her alone. That would never work. I don't think she would be safe. I wouldn't be safe worrying.

I have known this was an interest of hers for a very long time, yet, I always thought of it as . . . some day. Not this day. Not tomorrow. Not this month or this year. Some other awful scary time that I didn't have to face right away.

It looks like that day is coming.

I feel hope again, for the first time in a long time. I feel that I am on the brink of a new path in my life, a path of being a stronger more confident woman. So long my view of myself has been that I am broken, crushed, damaged. I was not able to truly see myself moving into a healthy place in my life, a successful place, because broken crushed children aren't successful. I had this idea that I wanted to be calm and stable, yet the connection was never there. I felt like a farce, a fake . . . As if I was fooling every single person around me and eventually they (whomever they were?) would figure it out and come yank my stability from me.

Tracking back I can recognize this began very early and has built over my life. I was fearful of the loss of my children because they would figure out I was a bad mother, fearful of the loss of my home because I wasn't good enough as a wife, fearful of the loss of relationships because of my anger and frustration, and finally fearful of the loss of my degree if they figured out I wasn't smart enough for it. I have been projecting this fear into my future . . . thinking I am too broken, picturing that broken child as a successful therapist and believing that it was not possible. How could I possibly be successful when I am so broken inside.

Then I heard this . . . . "In my brokenness I find my wholeness" that hit hard. The conversation progressed to talking about how this work, this path I (we) have chosen is forcing us to emerge. Emerge. I can Emerge and become something more then just a broken child. What will I become? This is a thought that has never truly hit home until now. Who I am now is completely based upon who I was then. My brokenness then will create the whole woman in the future. That is powerful.

What does the future hold for me? I have always pictured myself away in a cabin, in the woods, surrounded by trees, completely self sufficient and having a need for nobody. I have planned ways that I could work for myself so that I would not have to interact with others. I never saw myself with a partner. I planned isolation for myself in an intense and deep rooted effort to protect myself from rejection of others. Any others. My need to control the surroundings in an effort to lesson the impact of others finding out I was broken and not worthy.

Now, I can see that. I don't exactly know what it all means but I do know I am aware of it. I know being aware means I can rewrite that story. I can build a new future. I can choose trust in my self and others instead of recoiling in fear and pain. I can be a woman of my choosing. I can emerge.

Waking up with fear an anxiety pulsing through my body. Today I have to drive up that long windy road, knowing that the awful cabin sits there. I want to confront my fear and say its no big deal, that it is just a house with no power but I don't feel that way. I feel panic just picturing the cabin. I try to visualize it being a safe place or even a nuetral place but the image is so frightening I can't even hold it in my mind without shaking and blocking it out. I realize more and more through the years that my defense mechanism is to shut it down. If it hurts, don't go there. Let it go. This is not helpful.

How am I supposed to work with clients and do therapy when I can't even follow the simple directions that i am giving? How can I lead them to a place of sitting in the raw pain and working through it when I am woefully unable to do it myself? I don't know what all my pain is, what all its from. I want to close it out and say it doesn't matter but it does matter . . . or else it would not be so terrifying.

Why the hell did I choose this internship? To prove something to myself? what the fuck was I thinking, I have nothing to prove. Why do I torture myself in these ways. I must have known on some level somewhere that this would trigger painful issues. Issues that would have been far better laid to rest and not touched. Why did I choose this therapist to work with? Why somebody who is so difficult and so pushy?

I wish I could get sick and not go. Just curl up under a blanket all day and forget that this area even exists. Not have to face her comments about me and my sexuality, about the work I do, or about the ways I should not be concerned about anything. This whole situation just is as messed up as it can be. I want out. Now.

This is ridiculous. Night after night sleep escapes me. I can feel the tension in my body, feel the anger and raw emotions that begin to rise when exhaustion is bordering. I know the depression and dark place I go to. I see it. I don't want it. I just want to lie down and sleep . . . long enough to replenish and refurbish my body.

Sleep comes so quickly. I'm exhausted and the second I stop I collapse into a deep e xhausted sleep . . . but within hours the dreams begin. Dark swirling dreams of choking, dreams of running with nowhere to go. I hear them coming after me but there is nowhere to run, no place to hide. I'm scared.

I want to have a place to run and hide, somewhere safe, some place that is soft to land. The nightmares have to stop.

Depression scares me, hurt and pain scares me. Why can't I just force my way through this?

Is this the part when i pull my hair out because I can't figure it out. Somebody needs to make me a set of dating rules, what you can do and what you cant. yes you can keep friends and go out but no, not if it makes your partner uncomfortable. But what makes your partner uncomfortable. how do you know. Thats why dating sucks. Thats why people should just be single or get married. No in between. If I was married I would never go out during the week and have drinks with friends.

I love him. Thats what it boils down to. I love him and feel like just with one choice to go out and have drinks I have lost him. I think its more then that but I don't know what it is. this is the first time he has refused talking to me and it feels like shit. I'm sure I am pulling all my own bullshit into it but it hurts, it feels like shit and I don't understand.

I see a goodbye coming. The closing of a door because I am too much of a pain in the ass. I'm not worth the time to work it out. This wasn't my intention and sometimes I don't know why I am such a stupid bitch about this stuff. I am so confused, my mind is spinning in circles. I don't know what made the problem. was it going out? was it drinking? I don't get it . . . we go out and drink . . . was it not asking first? Or . . was . . I don't know??? What happened so that even a phone call is not alright.

I just want to know the rules. I just want to know how to love him and have him as my own and yet keep the piece of me that he was drawn to in the first place. The piece of me that is active and outgoing and lives a full life.

What happened? Where did I go wrong? Why does this always happen . .. its like im woefully uncapable of keeping a man . . . any man . . . happy. It never mattered before but, it was never him before. This relationship is different. This is the man I want to grow old with, the one I want to watch the age weather his face, I want to see him grow and learn and expand . . I want to walk down the street holding his hand when we are old and grey, I want to explore this world with him. This matters. This is worth fighting for. I don't know what to fight for though.

God . . .. did I throw it away over a few drinks? Really? Or is it something else. Something I can't see. I don't know. Why can't I figure this out?