Here is more on the book I read by Orsen Scott Card like I promised, as that book fascinated me... I think this is the theme:
Even the most hideous truth is less painful than the lies meant to repress it- when we destroy or try to dominate and suffocate what we cannot understand, and therefor fear, we lose all of the truth and the qualities of authentic civilization.
That's the message I got anyway, and I believe it's true, and I believe that if another race were to rise, humanity would do anything to separate it from us and to, eventually, destroy it. We seem to be like that, as a whole. We are so afraid of what is alien that we would destroy a new species before we would ever consider that we could learn from them, that perhaps the way we do things is not the right way, and surely not the only way.
On another note... Oxytocin, I think it's called, the 'cuddle hormone.' It makes people touch, trust, connect. I must be deficient in it. My pituitary gland must be disabled when it comes to cuddling production. That would explain something.
But it wouldn't explain the psychological hunger I have for all of the things I cannot seem to do: hug, touch, trust.
The more I write the more I uncover within myself, the more I understand the depths of the oceanic world. But the more I write the more I lose sight of the bladelike surface where I get the feeling they want me to live, my parents, my therapist. They call it reality and say I am floating. Maybe I am diving to a place they will not go, not floating- a place I may not be able to return from, if I were to ever want to.
Random Emily Dickenson quotes: (I don't really like her poetry for the most part but she too has her moments)
"Forever is composed of nows." (very true)
"That it will never come again/Is what makes life so sweet."
"The truth must dazzle gradually/Or every man be blind."
"If I can stop one heart from breaking/I shall not live in vain;/If I canease one life the aching/or cool one pain/or help one fainting robin unto his nest again/I shall not live in vain." (This is my favorite bit of poetry of hers, and I believe it thoroughly, and live by it... I seem to have always lived for others. I seem to lack the ability to live for myself at the moment).
"I many times thought peace had come/when peace was far away/as wrecked men deem they sight the land/at center of the sea/and struggling slacker, but to prove/as hopelessly as I/how many fictitious shores/before the harbor lie." (welcome to bipolar, tourists).
And a quote not by Emily Dickenson:
"Man can live his truth, his deepest truth, but he cannot speak it. It is for this reason that love becomes the ultimate human answer to the ultimate human question." (Archibald MacLeish).
With life comes dissociationg and I dissociate more and more. I don't remember driving places. Whole classes are eaten away. This saved me once, when I was three and four and could not handle what was happening. Now, it only serves to cut me off even more completely from the world. Everything is so far away.
How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there *is* no going back? There are some things time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep... and take hold."-Frodo (J.R.R. Tolkein)
I so wish I didn't believe that quote. I so wish it wasn't the theme song to my life.
I want to believe in myself as a human being, but somehow I can't seem to. Somehow my life seems to only exist in the art I create, and it is all dark... everything I write is about pain, abuse, misery, isolation. Some stories end happy, many end with the same clean-cut nausea I feel every day just at the physical horror of being alive and not being able to truly believe it, or want it, or care. Maybe the only real sense of happiness is in the suspension between heaven and hell, in this gray area I exist in.
Everything is just so numbing. I try to hurt but life is an anesthetic thanks to my dissocative disorder.
Josh told me he had oral sex with his brother again. And I've been having more dreams lately, nightmares I wake up from hot in a cold room, dreams about all of that, all of that stuff I hate, I try to forget.
I'm not unhappy. I've quit eating meat, which is a step up from quitting eating. I figure it's progress.
I drift away... the world is a smear under a coverslip.
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8 comments:
that tolkien quote is one of my favorites, and I understand why you feel that way, but keep in mind that the lord of the rings ends hopefully. You can't change the things that have brought you so much pain, but you also don't have to accept it. when frodo made that statement i think he was doing two things: 1)recognizing the tragedy of what had happened and how he wasn't the same and never could be becuase of it, and 2)finding life anyway and acknowledging and aserting his own existence. all three books of that story would be absolutely pointless if there wasn't some sort of self-realization/healing involved. part of it is just recognizing that the hurt is there to begin with. it's hard, and i don't have it figured out myself by any means, but i do believe it is possible to be able to feel again.
I know my saying that probably doesn't mean a whole lot, but i hope maybe you can at least see the possibility of believing it for yourself.
morgan
I too really relate to what Frodo said. But Frodo took a look at the past, accepted it, and then moved on. He got on the ship with Bilbo and Gandalf and the elf dude whose name I can't remember. He didn't stay in his old life. I think you're in that position too: to look at your past pain, analyze it, then realize you don't have to stay in it anymore!! And you ARE realizing it!!
Mostly, though, I know you don't want to hear this -- but I just want to scream, please please please don't continue your relationship with Josh. Even if it rips your heart out, please don't do it.
do you think it's possible, to just let it all go, to absorb it and move on? i keep thinking i've done that and it turns out i haven't... it seems to keep coming back. or maybe i keep coming back to it. maybe i need it. maybe i haven't learned enough how to make it a part of me.
so i recognize the tragedy... how can i not let it affect me? it just feels like that... like the pain runs to deep or something, like it can't be fixed.
i think maybe because i keep thinking i'm over it, it's not my fault, it happened to me but i didn't cause it, but then when i think about it i always realize i do believe it's my fault, all of it. i can't seem to get over that! i think that's the key to everything... it shouldn't still hurt this badly. then again that aphorism time heals all wounds is junk... work heals wounds. time buries or infects them...
the things you guys are saying make a lot of sense to me. but like that emily dickenson quote, i keep thinking i've got it all fixed and then i realize i don't. maybe it's just the bipolar. that won't ever go away i suppose... then maybe this pattern of healing and... i don't know unhealing... won't either.
on josh... i know i know i know... trust me, i know, i believe you... every time he tells me these things it wrenches me apart... it's so unfair. every time he does this to my brother i can only remember my brother doing it to me... and what my brother did contributes to all my problems now, so it's so hard to handle that he's doing that to someone, when i have nightmares about it every night.
so i know i shouldn't go out with him. i know that. it's killing me. but it would kill me more to lose him... to give up on him... he can change. i know he can. my brother did. i can help him. i need to help him. he doesn't really have anyone else.
and... and for selfish reasons... because i love him, and he's the first person i've really loved like this. i didn't even really believe in love until i met him.
how can i?
I HATE THIS!!!!! (and do you think i should tell my parents?)
and morgan- is it ok if i read your blog?
For me, dealing with my past has pretty much taken time and distance. Since I've been on my own -- and physically not lived close to my parents -- I've been able to see how messed up things were.
And to be honest, I think my scant three/four months of therapy really helped too. Just sharing all this painful stuff with a wise adult, whose opinion I trust, and having him affirm that yes, this was screwed up, and yes, you were not at fault here.
I know what it's like to feel like it's your fault. And no matter how many times people say IT WASN'T YOUR FAULT, some part of you still doesn't believe them. According to my therapist, this stems from wanting to control things. If I remember him right, the victim doesn't want to feel like she's at the mercy of her surroundings. That's why I have this tendency, for example, whenever somebody around me is angry or moody, to automatically ask, what did I do? I know that's crazy, but that's the way my brain works!! It's because I want to find a way of preventing their anger (and thereby ease the environment, make it less tense).
I don't know how you'll let go of the horrible things you've experienced. I know I haven't let go of everything; it comes back and drowns me sometimes. But the good news, and I surprise myself by saying this, but time does help. It does help.
I know the Josh thing kills you, but I just can't express how unhealthy it is given your past. Do you think your parents would flip out if you told them about his issues? If so, and I know this sounds so cruel, tell them.
Lindsay, I wish I could show you what a beautiful person you are. I know that five, ten years down the line, you'll be some famous writer/philosopher/etc. and I can say, I knew her when she was a teenager!! :)
yeah, feel free to read it. I only just started it though....
no, i don't think it's possible to 'move on' or 'get over it', and that is not what i meant to suggest. i think trying to console yourself with phrases like those is just another form of denial. what i mean is that while yes it happened and there is nothing you can do about it and it can't be 'fixed', you don't have to let the fact that it happened control you now or ever again; you can recognize that it affects you, but also that it doesn't determine the rest of your life. i don't think it is right to accept it, and i never will becuase i think that entails saying some part of it wasn't wrong, which all of it was. I think the pain will always be there, the difference is made in how you react to it.
that isn't really an answer, and i don't know what to say to the blaming yourself part, because i feel the same most of the time, but i also think being able to recognize your worth and 'heal', so to speak, is a process that doesn't happen all at once. and by healing i don't mean not being affected by it, but being able to deal with it in such a way that you affirm your own life rather than undermine it.
oh- and i have no idea who josh is, but it doesn't sound like a relationship that you should be involved in. i understand the desire to help someone, but ask yourself whether you really have the resources to help and whether it is healthy for either party for you to try, especially for yourself. if your answer to that is no, then i would suggest seeking the help of someone who can actually intervene effectively. i'm just going off of what i've read here, but that is my first impression for what it's worth.
morgan
Lindsay, you are an amazing thinker...I hope that you will find someone who will love you for that, for who you really are. I feel like you have an outstanding capacity for love, and I just pray that God will show you how to use that gift, despite all of the ways you've been hurt in the past.
I think that Frodo's quote at the end of the movie is simultaneously one of the saddest and selfless (and therefore beautiful) moments of the whole trilogy. They sacrifice their personal relationships for the greater good; they lay down their old lives, if you will. It is sad to see everything changed and to see them go, but that's how much they love their friends.
(By the way, that wasn't a platitude. I really am praying for you.)
my goal in life: 1. to start feeling like hurting somebody ELSE when things go wrong, perhaps the person that i choose to blame, rather than hurting myself always and 2. to eventually not feel like hurting anyone.
it is a growth, from a fixation on self-hatred and guilt to a realization that i don't need to hate anyone or hurt anything to deal with things. i think that has to do with the past.
and like happiness, maybe 'healed' as a destination is impossible to reach... maybe it's only about healing, and the healed person is the one that is healing? i'll have to think about that.
and reacting to things goes in with my developing life theory- all people share common emotions, but have different reactions. same with some murderers, sex offenders, everyone. the action is everything. so i agree with you morgan.
also, thank you everyone who has prayed for me or thought of me etc. the thoughts and prayers are really appreciated.
shea- again, it's consentual. his brother is allowing it to happen, has told josh it is okay. it's not abuse. i know it sounds like it, but it's really just incest.
all of you- i can't cut it off. it's too late. it's too deep. he means too much. i know i know... if i really love him i would get him help and such. but he is already talking to an adult about it, his bishop from church, and i don't know what else i should do. i think he needs counseling, but he won't tell his parents, and he doesn't want to ask about insurance.
i don't know! i know he'll do it again, it's part of him now... i want to stop it, squash it, erase it... i know what it's like, trust me, my brother did it to me, i can empathize with his brother. shea, i'm talking to you when i say this- i know it's bad, whether it's abuse or not, and i know what it feels like to be screwed up by incest and sexual abuse. i KNOW that. but there is the other part of me that knows josh... he is more than this. if i leave him i betray him. i can't do that. he's never hurt me.
i know it's not a healthy relationship. it still feels unfair to have finally really liked someone and have found so much of your abuser in them. so it can't be healthy. i never expected my relationships to be healthy. i'm doing better than i ever predicted.
if he were to do something to me, yes, i would let it happen, i would freeze, dissociate, and it would kill me. but i trust him not to. i just don't know anymore... logically i want to cut it off... but in my heart that feels like cutting out a piece of me as well.
When you get shot with a bullet, it is painful to get it taken out. If you leave it in, it will cause more pain and possibly death.
Matthew 18:9 says this:
And if your eye is causing you to fall into sin, tear it out and away with it; it is better for you to enter into Life with only one eye, than to remain in possession of two eyes but be thrown into the Gehenna of fire.
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