So I Wrote

Fucking father's day.

It was father's day here last Sunday. I had blissfully forgotten it until I went to yoga in the evening, and the instructor told us to "reflect on our fathers" during the class. Yeah, thanks a lot.

On the way home I started getting flashes of good memories: Watching Lord of the Ring together, how we always used to laugh at the part where Merry and Pippin throw stones at the cave troll in Moria when arrows, swords or axes are making a dent in him.

When I got home I got flashes of things I feel guilty about: How I borrowed his English version of Hitchhiker's Guide and he had to read the Swedish version while at hospital getting chemo. I never ended up reading the book at all. To this day it sits on my bookshelf, unread, because everytime I look at it I get a surge of guilty guilt. Then one guilt ridden memory brought me to tears when I was in the shower. One of those surprise sob fests that you don't expect. You're fine one moment, lathering up your hair or whatever, and the next your face is screwed up and hot tears are spilling out at an alarming rate and you're not quite sure how it could happen so quickly and with no build up. I was thinking about how when my father was sick he had a hard time keeping any food down. One day I went to him and I made him this mexican style soup that had a lot of corn in it. He ate three bowls of it, and kept it down. He was smiling ear to ear saying it was so delicious and felt good in his stomach. I only made him the soup that one time. I was so scared to go see him. I was scared to realize how sick he was. I never even googled "lung cancer" until he had died because I was so afraid to really know what I already knew - he was going to die. He was dying. I couldn't watch it. I couldn't pretend cooking soup for him would save him. I couldn't go there and pretend that I was okay, that he was okay, that the whole situation didn't get me down at all. Many times after I had gone to see him I went home and and got absolutely plastered in my room.

But, as the duality of my psyche strives to be the most irritating and confusing it can, these guilty memories are always followed by memories of how I was treated by him sometimes. How his anger with life led me down dark paths and how hard it has been for me to survive that.

It is still so hard for me to reconcile these images I have of my dad. The dad he was the last few years he was a live, and the dad who destroyed everyone close to him. I wish I could take the blame for what he did because the guilt of even typing that he hurt us brings tears to my eyes and makes my stomach do a flip.

But I wonder if anyone in my family ever get tears in their eyes and a surge of nausea if they think of what they didn't protect me from.

God, I am so confused. I feel guilty for my family being unhappy. I feel guilty that it makes me angry at them that they  couldn't see past their own unhappiness long enough to see that the youngest member of the family was trying to kill herself every few months because nobody was even attempting to protect her, and yet she was bending over backwards to protect them. Taking the blame for things my mother did or my brother did just so dad would yell at me instead of them.

Fucking yoga teacher can go fuck herself with her fucking "reflect on your dad" nonsense.

Yoga is supposed to relax and center! Not send people into emotional turmoil. Fuck.

Harden! - It's Super Effective!

I am likely to consider it a side effect of my CBT therapy. I had to be hard on myself and demand things from myself that were very difficult and even downright sadistic at times. It worked for me - I have started doing it in all areas of my life now. I am much less likely to find excuses to avoid cleaning or studying now than I was before  CBT. I cheat less on my diet. Actually I don't cheat at all on my diet.

The problem is that I expect the same of other people. If someone, like my husband, has a hard day I am more likely now to take the "suck it up and deal with it" stance than the "aww, poor little baby" one. I am less emotionally oriented and more solution focused. This is not entirely a good thing. While it takes away a lot of my Hysterical Woman moments, it adds to other people's bad times because I am not neccessarily making them feel better with my "pfft, that's nothing. Pick yourself up and go." attitude.

But, then again, I've always had a problem receiving other people's emotions as well as my own. My brain overloads very quickly and shuts down the empathy/sympathy/any-feeling-at-allthy. My family never expressed any emotion except angry ones. So any expressed feelings = trouble, oh shit I have to get out. Those times never turned out good in my family. When my dad got mad I sometimes had to protect myself by shoving heavy things infront of my door so he couldn't get in. Not that he would hurt me physically. He would just make me really afraid that he would. Sometimes he raised his fist and stopped himself just in time. Most of the time he would just yell in my face with those furious eyes and I would stand and glare right back, terrified of showing that I was scared at all. I think if I had shown myself weak he would have tried harder to dominate me just so I would be crushed and under his control... and then what would have happened? My poor daddy, he was so conflicted.

I had to shut off my feelings so I wasn't overwhelmed with fear in those moments. Maybe all that fear that I pushed down were channeled into the emetophobia. Or maybe they are still there. I know when someone very dear to me prodded those feelings a little and suggested I listened to music that I listened to back then that I have avoided because it reminds me... well. I had a very "pure" PTSD moment. I was back in my room, my father was drunk and angry and I wanted to die. My husband later said that the energy around me was so intense after that hour with my friend (who is a therapist) that he literally couldn't be near me because it was giving him bad anxiety. I couldn't believe the intensity of the emotion myself. It was like I was in a bubble and all the things I could suddenly remember were stuck in there with me and there was not a breath to be had and I didn't quite know if I was in my kitchen or my dad's apartment and if my husband was my father and was he drunk? Or just angry?
I never told my husband this (I don't want him to inherit my daddy-issues) but as I watched him sitting across from me his face kept morphing from his own to my dad's. Every time it did I felt like I was going to vomit. Or start screaming. Or have a heart attack from the fear.

My dear friend later told me it was all normal.

After that I have never gone back to exploring those feelings. That was a year and a half ago. It scared me. I know I have to go there sometimes and face it. But I guess I'm not hardened enough yet. And I don't have a therapist. And I'm scared.

Well this blog post took a turn that I wasn't expecting.

To get back to my original topic: I shut down easily when it comes to emotions because they overwhelm me so easily. If my family ever showed anything but anger you knew disaster was just around the corner. I can only remember a hand full of times that every happening. And each time it set off emetophobic reactions in me. It's a protective shell I have. I guess the strength I used for my CBT has translated into abrasiveness and hardness toward others.

And it's really not my place to tell other's how to deal with things.

Man. Everytime I write one of these I really make myself look worse and worse in my own and probably everyone else's eyes.

What am I so far? A fat, cold-hearted, terrified-of-everything, socially inept stripper in the making.

I almost deleted you, internet!

Internet, I got a wave of wanting To Go Public With My Awesome Blog Which I Post In So Often. I went through my posts and started Drafting those that I couldn't bear for my mother to see. However, I started noticing they were my favourite posts. My most naked posts. The posts I would have loved to have seen written by someone else because they would have encouraged me.

It didn't feel right removing them. It sounds horribly arrogant, but what if they are meant to help someone? That is worth more to me than being able to post photos with my face, my cats, my life even if it means I post less because there's only so much I can say without being more open about my life. Which is kind of ironic because I am so open about my life. To be open about one part I have to shut another. And I choose to open the hard part.

Maybe one day I won't be ashamed, or feel guilty or whatever else is keeping me from being honest with my family and the Internet At Large.

My emetophobia issues are slightly worrying at the moment. The darkness up in dis bitch of a country is getting to me - my anxiety levels have risen. But as I am so free of my emetophobia it's a general, constant, nagging anxiety focused at nothing - and sometimes it tries to focus on vomitting. I get a rush of a very familiar feeling and it takes me a second or two to get a handle of it.

But I'm scared I will lose control of it and spiral and lose everything I've worked for. And I simply don't want to. Reading my old posts reminded me what it felt like to be the un-CBTed version of myself. I forget how lucky I am not to be that way anymore. Panic attacks are so rare now that when they happen I genuinely don't know what the hell is happening and I think I'm dying, until I something clicks in me and I think "oh, right. That. Man this sucks. How did I do this so often?"

I have several goals right now. One being "do not work yourself up into such a state about Christmas that you walk around in a constant cloud of anxiety and RUIN EVERYTHING."

Another is "Don't flunk out. Don't flunk out. DON'T FLUNK OUT."

Another is "dude, you're losing so much weight. DON'T MESS IT UP."

People are always telling me to have positive goals and not "not" goals. So to revise:

- Be peaceful for the holiday of Santamas
- Ace shit in school like nobody's business (oh noez, there's a "no" in there!)
- Become skinny and wear lovely clothes.

I am considering spinning this blog into somewhat of a weightloss blog as well. Because this time last year I was all about emetophobia, and now I'm all about shrinking these child-bearing hips.

Sometimes it's really hard to LOL

I'm having the worst money problems right now. I am pretty much penniless. I don't know where money for this, that and the other thing is going to come from. If my family wasn't helping me out right now I would be fucked. Very fucked indeed.

Unbelievably, however, I am not in bed with the covers pulled over my head, shutting my feelings off or eating them all up omnomnom. I would have been a year ago. Instead I spent the day crying, raging and loudly proclaiming my intents of suicide because fuck this shit! YOU'LL BE SORRY WHEN I'M DEAD, LIFE, YOU'LL REGRET THIS! But look at me all expressing emotion and communicating how I am feeling. Hot damn! Even after I slipped while chopping onion for dinner (I even made dinner! wtf.) and nearly beheaded my middle finger (let's enjoy that imagery and symbolism for a second shall we? ......) well I started sobbing again because LIFE, YOU'LL REGRET THIS! Y U NO LOVE ME? but then even though this money stuff feels like the end of the world, and I don't see a solution in my near future but I am feeling kind of okay.

I am tripping myself out. I am so mature and shit.

It could be worse. It could certainly be better. But this is where I am right now and this is my reality. One foot infront of the other, one day is a day closer to the solution and MONEY.

I've something to admit.

I've something to admit, internet. I am ashamed of this admission in the same way I roll my eyes at myself when I call my teen-life hard because my father drank on the weekends. Pfft, alcoholic? I'm sure there are millions of kids who could properly school me about their parents who are full-time alcoholics and not part time like my dad. Wussy. Suck it up. Three days out of seven he would drink, only!

The next 'important' sentence I will write sounds to me fake in every possible way but I have been told that it is true. I've also been told that I should Just Get Over It. 

I am a 'victim' of sexual abuse. Except I'm not. I only witnessed it. Apart from the times I was felt up by the school nurse (and then left school, and did not return for a few years) and almost raped in Bulgaria. I cannot be too detailed because it is my worst nightmare that my family will somehow come across this blog and It will all be Exposed and we will have to Talk About It. But yes, it was within the family. Close family. But as far as I can remember, it was never done to me. But I lived in fear that it would.

Wussy, right? Tell the people who have actually been abused to come slap me across the face, because what am I whining about? Really? Nothing actually happened to me.

Except now it seems my vestibulitis comes from that time. The fact that I acted like a little slutty whore when I was a teenager comes from that time (but just online! Because I can't even do that properly.). The fact that my weight goes up and down like I'm bouncing on the scales comes from that. The fact that intimacy and sex is repulsive and makes me feel Dirty and Gross and Not There comes from that. The fact that my husband blames and resents me comes from that time.

The fact that I have PTSD comes from that.

Please, someone. Slap me across the face. Suck it up, suck it up, suck it up, suck it up you fucking pussy. Someone just yell at me to just to drop 20 pounds, spread my legs for my husband and do what a wife is supposed to do.

Please.

Day 6 of the bandwagon

Day 06 Something you hope you never have to do

Man, these questions are tricky. I really don't know what to answer to this, internet. There are a lot of things that I really don't want to happen but are going to happen... because they just do. Illness, death and other unfortunate events. I can't stop these. Boo.

Yesterday I said that hoping for something positive to happen feels like looking for a needle in a haystack. I don't feel the same way about hoping for something negative not to happen. Hoping for something negative not to happen is just added juju, some positive energy to smother the bad energy. So I hope away.

I hope never to be poor. Is that superficial of me? I've gone hungry, I've scraped by and not been able to spend money on fun things. I don't want to live like that. Money = fun stuff, good times, hurrah! Sure you can go out for walks and be all communing with nature and that's free and awesome but sometimes you just want to go bowling. Or buy a new dress without getting a knot in your stomach because Oh God that was so irresponsible, we will starve now.

I hope to never have fertility problems. I've read enough blogs about fertility issues to know that is not something I want to deal with.

I think, above all, I hope and wish that any children I may have won't have my crappy depression genes. I don't want anyone to have to go through the pain I've felt, especially people I've created through the passion of my loins. I hope I won't freak out and become either of my parents. I hope my husband will make as great a dad I believe he will. I hope we don't damage our kids more than what is normal. I hope to have a happy family. I want to know what that is like. I want to build it.

And also have a valid excuse to break out my lego set and build with those too.

 

Day 4 of the bandwagon

Day 04 Something you have to forgive someone for.

I thought all evening and a lot of today about this. I am a pretty forgiving person. I'm really good at seeing other people's perspectives and wearing their shoes - there isn't much you can't forgive when you do that.

Although, I am very confused right now. I don't know up from down, in from out. I am so confused about how I feel about my parents. I've always been adamant in my conviction that my parents were as little to blame for my shitty childhood as I was. I am sure this cycle of abuse and fucked-uppery didn't begin with them. I've always protected them if someone - say a therapist, my husband or a friend - put forth the idea that they actually fucked me up and they are to blame because they are my parents and I was only a child. I've fought people hard to protect my parents. Or the idea of my parents.

But, fuck me, they haven't done much to protect me. This revelation has shifted my way of thinking these past two weeks dramatically. As I've written in past entries, I've been fuming with rage. I've gone so far as to throw things into walls and just yelling questions into the ether.

Why didn't they love me?
Why didn't they protect me?
Why was I witness to such horrors?
Why wasn't I allowed to be a child?
Why didn't they do anything to help me?

I described more of my childhood to my therapist this week. It was very difficult. I don't think he expected to hear the things that came out of my mouth. He said I should have been put into foster care.

Foster care.

I... have such a hard time accepting that what I tell is really the truth (a PTSD thing) so hearing him say that was difficult. I've told myself to suck it up for so long that the horrors of what was my reality have become silly to me. Silly girl, you are just whining. Your father gave you this and that, and you lived in a beautiful home. Shut up your whine hole.

I am so angry at my parents for what they showed me a relationship is because I am emotionally retarded now. I have the relationship maturity of a child. I am so afraid of intimacy that sometimes I panic when I get a hug. I'm, as with everything else (FUCK!), fighting tooth and nail to learn how to open my mouth and communicate at even the most basic level because in my house there was literally no speaking. The only noise apart from the TV and hum of the computer was my father yelling. Preferably right in my ear. When people get angry I flee for my life into another room, out of the house, into my meter thick shell. Away away away away away.

I'm pissed as hell. I am 23 years old and I am so emotionally handicapped, and I know who made me that way.

My parents.

Fuck, I am such a cliche I can barely stand to write this. But it's the truth and I write the truth. I deserve to let my truth be heard now. I've hid everything for so long. I've let my parents secrets, their marriage, their shortcomings fester in me so long that I'm starting to become them and I DO NOT WANT. I would rather die than to live their life. I am so sick of being their rubbish bin, their parent, their protectors, their rehab, their nurse, their rehab, their punching bag when. I. was. the. child! I needed parents, I needed protecting. I deserved these things! I deserved a childhood that didn't leave me so damaged that I have a list of mental diagnoses that I have to work through to live a happy life.

But I didn't get these basic things. I have to give them to myself now. It's hard work and fucking hate having to do it. And I am angry about that.

Fuck looking at the situation from their view. They never, ever looked at it from mine.

Today, they do not have my forgiveness.

(Guilt. Sorry mum. Sorry dad. I wish I was stronger for you)

Day 3 of the bandwagon

Day 03 Something you have to forgive yourself for

I don't really believe in regrets, so there isn't much that I feel bad about in my past. A couple things bring a sting to my heart though.

When my father was sick he had to get chemo. He didn't want anyone to go with him, much rather bringing his favourite books with him. I had borrowed a book from him - The Hitchhiker's Guide - and he had forgotten about it. He asked me if I knew where it was and I knew very well I had it but I said I didn't know. I'm pretty sure that would have been the last book he would have read in life. And I kept that from him. I've never even read it. It's on my bookshelf now, and everyday I see it and I think about what a compete jackass I was. What the hell was I thinking? I can't bring myself to read it, even though I want to very much. It feels like a jinxed book now. I've tried a couple times but it's only ended in tears and only a page or two read.

It's strange what I feel guilty about. When he was sick I barely went to visit him because I was scared. Scared of his mortality, scared of him vomitting infront of me from the chemo, scared of how I feel seeing him sick. I have no problem forgiving myself for that, it's never been an issue to me. I was scared. I get that. But I can't forgive myself for this book. I feel like I don't deserve that forgiveness. Who does that to someone with cancer? Or maybe I do actually feel guilty for more things concerning his illness and I'm projecting all those feelings on to this rather silly thing. I don't know.

The second thing that I feel guilty and stingy about I've already covered in this blawwwwg. My difficulties with sex. I'm so ashamed thinking of how sexual I could be a few years ago compared to now when I even have to turn away from a movie if there is a sex scene being shown. I'm so ashamed to think about how it's affected my marriage. I'm so ashamed to think about how it affects my husband, how unhappy it makes him. I'm ashamed how it makes me less of a wife, a woman, a person. I'm so ashamed that my trauma concerning sex is so fucked up that not one therapist has even tried to help me with it. I don't know how to forgive myself for this. I know it's not my fault. I didn't ask for this. But, as usual, I hold myself to an impossible standard.

To my husband; I am so, so, so sorry. If I could snap my fingers and be amazing at spreading my legs I would for you. You are the only reason I even try to face this. I'm sorry.

The One Ring

After my father died I searched obsessively for his wedding ring. My parents had been divorced for a few years at that point and as much as I tried I couldn't recall the last time I saw him wear it. Years and years. I started to believe he had thrown it into an ocean a la dramatic moment in divorce movie.

Turns out my mum had taken it when she moved out. 
Oh.
When she gave it to me she said she knew that I would one day want it - I believed that at the time, but now I call bullshit. I think she wanted it for whatever post-divorce angry revenge voodoo reason she had.

Anyway, here it is, posing in a flower petal that fell on the table when I was setting up the shot. Clearly, a sign from my father: "Please place my man-ring in a camp flower shot and put it on the internet."

One must respect the dead.

 

I wore this ring from the moment I received it from my mother until just a few days ago when I looked at it and thought "Why the fuck am I wearing this? This is not the marriage I want." I tugged it off and twirled it Frodo-style with my fingers. Then I remembered all the things I've tried so hard to forget, and I threw it on the floor. It rolled under the bed, which gave God the almighty ass-crack view of me when I bent down to retrieve it yesterday.

I now wonder where my obsession with this ring stems from. I'd never given it a second thought until my father's death. Of course I wanted my father close after he died, and a piece of jewelry can always be worn. But a wedding ring symbolizes so much. I could have chosen one of his necklaces to represent him, but I chose this ring.

After my mother left, I took over the role of my father's wife. I took care of him when he was so drunk his eyes were crossed and he swayed even while sitting. I forsook myself in my sense of family duty and I cared for him. Like a servant. Like what I thought a wife was.

Did that last paragraph give you a little case of the heebie-jeebies? It did for me. Brrrr, the inner workings of my psyche are weird and disturbing.

If my creepy analysis is correct though... maybe I have started truly healing and letting go. I hope so. Last time I thought I was ALL DUN!!!11!1 with PTSD#2 I was punched in the face quite rudely.

ALL DUN??!!?!!1111??!eleventyquestionmark

 

I'm cured!!! (Sort of) (haha) (not really)

I went to my bi-weekly therapy appointment last Friday. As usual my head has been spinning a mile a minute afterwards with emotions and little flashes of painful memories. We begun our conversation with discussing my emetophobia - apparently I am quite close to being rid of it. I've definitely felt that it's under my control, rather than the other way round. I have my hard days with the big challenges (like the airport one) but I don't have panic attacks every night anymore. It's unreal just typing that. Just a few short months ago I had horrid panic attacks each night until I fell asleep out of pure exhaustion. Unreal.

We moved on to... more difficult things. Things that I've been able to largely ignore for a long time thanks to my emetophobia taking up so much of my brain power. But now that my emetophobia is going bye-bye more and more, I can deny these things less and less. I've touched upon the subjects here on my blog, and it seems to have sparked a new crapstorm within me. And it's the most cliche kind so it makes it really, really hard not to roll my eyes at myself. But perhaps that is another form of my denial. It wasn't so bad, get over yourself. Or become a stripper, you loser.

My therapist asked me to go to an al-anon meeting. A meeting for family of alcoholics. To that I simply replied "My father is dead, he isn't an alcoholic anymore", and my therapist sort of smirked and said that I am still here, his death hasn't erased any of my past. He suggested that maybe his death has made me free of The Family Secret that I held on to so tightly.

No.

I didn't tell people my father was an alcoholic. I don't know if people would believe it. He had a very prestigious, well paying job that he never took one sick day from (until he got cancer, that is). We were all provided for and we lived in a enormous apartment in the middle of our city. He only smelled of alcohol on the weekends. I never told anyone how much he drank. I never told anyone how angry and violent he got when he was drunk. I never told anyone how scared I was. I never told anyone the reason why I didn't sleep at night.

And I still don't want to. I feel like I'm spitting on the memory of my father by telling this particular truth. I feel like I'm betraying my family. Why do I bother feeling this way? They've betrayed me.

This weekend I was so angry. Furious. Why don't my parents love me?! Why, why, why, why, why did they not do more for me? Try harder? Why was I left to fend for myself when everyone else (my siblings, friends, friggin strangers) they would go out of their way for. Why was I left out? And, in my mother's case, I still am. I cannot for the life of me get attention from her. I've never really reached out to her - due to the guilt, due to feeling like taking care of their feelings was my responsibility etc - but she's always asked me to, and I always assumed that if I ever did she would take super duper awesome amazing care of me.

No.

I was at my lowest in my autumn depression. I was crying left and right, becoming very desperate for it to just stop. I called her. I sobbed so hard I couldn't speak. She asked me to come over for "some tea and a chat", and I went. I arrived, got a hug, a cup of tea and then spent the following two hours listening to how much her job sucks. All the while I felt like I was herp derping with my face out of desperate desperation mingled with why are you talking? What about me, ma?! 

And that feeling stuck in me, internet. What about me? Hello? Is this thing on? 1-2-1-2 testing. Hello?

This weekend I realized: Oh, It's not the microphone. It's you.

I've cried out for help, as they say, many times. Perhaps not always in words. Blasting the same song that I felt depicted exactly what I was feeling over and over (once I actually blasted on repeat, while shouting the lyrics, For You by Staind), hoping someone would hear it, or dressing in all black with torn up pants because that's like, totally how I felt inside omgz, or not going to school, or not getting out of bed, or not eating, or eating all the time, or accidentally revealing wounds that I had 'I fell down the stairs' and 'I walked into a cupboard! I swear!' type explanations for. But they weren't capable of dealing with me.

Why.