I have had several people recommend this book to me, and I have been intrigued by what I’ve heard.  Plus, I enjoy the mystery genre very much, and I enjoy mysteries set in other countries, and there were tattoos!  (At least, I assumed there would be).  This book sounded tailor-made for me.  Because I was going to read it, I didn’t look to see what it was about.  I rather not read blurbs if I know for sure I am going to read a book.  If only I had read a bit about it beforehand.  Then again, I just read the Wiki entry, and it wouldn’t have been enough to put me off my feed.  A pet peeve of mine, but I will get to it later.

Now, I bought the some time ago.  And I meant to read it at the time; I really did.  However, I kept putting it off, and then, I never read it.  Then, the books and the movies became a sensation, and I felt compelled to pull out the book and read it.  Someone at BJ jokingly asked if I was one of Lisbeth Salander’s alter egos (titular character).  Briefly, Stieg Larsson wrote three books (his Millennium trilogy) before dying.  People have mourned that he hadn’t been able to write more.  Intrigued, I dug out the book and started reading.

The first thirty pages were deadly dull.  I struggled to get through them, and I almost put the book down several times.  However, I plowed through, and I was soon glad I did.  The story really picked up steam, and the introduction of Lisbeth Salander was…well, let me put it this way.  I have not identified with a character like this in some time–and, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

I’m going to get all spoilery below the fold, so again, if you want to read the book without knowing what happens, leave now.

Lisbeth Salander has many tattoos.  She is a misfit, a ward of the state, probably has Asperger’s, and she’s a loner.  She is omnisexual (or as I like to say, sexual), has a photographic memory, is a computer hacker extraordinaire, has difficulty trusting and loving others, and is in her own eyes, a damaged freak.  She has sex when she wants with whom she wants, and it doesn’t trouble her much.  However, love, on the other hand is a whole different story.

In the beginning, we meet her as she’s a researcher at an investigation firm.  She is antisocial and doesn’t form relationships, but she is really fucking good at her work.  She is an anorexic blond (that’s how others describe her) who is slovenly in her personal habits, but razor-sharp in her professional detail.

Now, obviously, I do not have Aspberger’s, and while I’m a loner, I do have friends.  I am not a hacker, either, but I’m pretty obsessive when it comes to my work–or anything, really.

Lisbeth had a bad childhood which she doesn’t discuss.  She doesn’t actually talk about much of anything–until she meets Mikael Blomkvist, the other main character of the book.  By the way, the book is a really good portrayal of the current economic situation in our country, just FYI.  Anyway, she meets him because she was hired to research him, and then he found out she hacked into his computer to research him, so he hired her to help him with his current case–a forty-year old murder mystery.

In the meantime, Blomkvist (who is the main protagonist in the book) is dealing with his own situation–which includes jail-time for libel.  The book is set in Sweden, by the way.  After the first thirty pages, the book just hums along, and I am engrossed.  The storytelling is solid; there is little to no scenery to break things up (good); the characters are compelling.  I am turning pages like crazy (it’s as long as a Potter book, but way better), when the first troubling thing happens.  Now, really, major spoilery here.  Final warning.

Lisbeth’s old guardian dies (she’s a ward of the state).  Her new one, Nils Bjurman, is creepy as hell.  At first, he’s just a major pain in the ass, telling her that he will control all her finances from now on (her old guardian let her do it), and I think, control-freak and a pompous asshole.

I should have remembered that every chapter starts with stats on women being sexually assaulted in Sweden.  That should have been my warning.  Alas, I failed to heed it.

Non sequitur:  I was talking to a friend why I don’t like movies in general.  If there is a disturbing or graphic scene in a movie, it will haunt me for months to years afterwards.  Even though I know it’s *just* a movie, my mind and body can’t differentiate between real and fiction.

My best friend took me to see Girl, Interrupted when I was really depressed and The Virgin Suicides right after a break-up.  Note to Kiki:  Not the best choices, girlfriend.  Anyway, in the former, there is a scene in which one of the girls (I believe it’s Angelina Jolie) completely breaks down another girl emotionally (Brittany Murphy, I want to say) in order to get something from her (the latter).  That was hard enough to watch, but the next scene is of Daisy (Murphy) hanging from the shower curtain rod.  Suicide.  I felt it viscerally, and I couldn’t shake it for months after.

Now, I don’t feel the same way with books.  I can read about pretty gruesome shit, and it doesn’t really bother me.  Except, I forgot the one exception–rape scenes.  Especially rape scenes of characters with whom I identify.  Lisbeth’s new guardian starts to ask her inappropriate questions about sex.  She tries to answer with minimal cooperation.  The next meeting, he tells her that she will have to be nice to him in order for him to be nice to her (she needs money).  He forces her to give him a blowjob.  I’m starting to freak out.

Lisbeth cannot take being a victim, so she plots her response.  Her idea is to enact the same scene and videotape him so she can get him in trouble.  Alas, he is not just a control freak, but a full-blown sadist.  He handcuffs her to the bed…and he rapes her.  But, he doesn’t just rape her–he rapes her anally with a dildo of sorts.  Then keeps her chained up and continues to abuse her.  Until he lets her go.  He thinks she won’t do anything to him (predators usually choose compliant victims).

My body immediately seized up on reading this scene, and I could barely make it through.  I kept reading because as I said, the book is really fucking good, but my body wouldn’t stop shaking.  An hour later, I still had tears in my eyes.

Now, let me say that Lisbeth got a spectacular and brutal revenge on the creep–and I was viciously cheering her on every step of the way.

I had to quit reading when I couldn’t stop shaking after an hour.

This happened to me when I saw Leaving Las Vegas as well (except that movie sucked balls).  I couldn’t help thinking that when Pulp Fiction came out, much was made of the rape/near rape of a man scene.  I even had a friend tell me it was worse for men because they weren’t used to it.  I blasted her at the time, but now I can see what she means.

I know that rape is common place in books and movies (and real life), and I know that I can’t expect not to read about them, but for some reason, this really got to me.  And, I felt ashamed because I wasn’t past my, well, past.  It felt as immediate as if it had happened yesterday.  Since my flashbacks, I have thought more about the guy in Thailand than I have in all the years since it happened.  I can feel the helplessness and the hopelessness he inflicted in me.  I remember what it was like to be a nonentity with someone forcibly fucking me.    I can feel the victim label I wore on my forehead as surely as if it were emblazoned there in neon lights.  In the book, Lisbeth’s boss keeps thinking how she’s the perfect victim–he might as well have been talking about me.

I finished the rest of the book tonight, and it’s really fucking good.  Seriously.  If you haven’t read it, you should.  However, the rest of the story concerns a father/son serial kidnapping/torturing/raping/murdering duo, and horrific incest.  The second book is all about these horrors, and yeah, they are indelible.

I am drawn to this book and to Lisbeth (especially when she calls herself a damaged freak), and I want to read the next book (an excerpt was at the end of this book), but I don’t know if I can.  I also want to see the movies, but I have heard the scenes are in the movie, and yeah, don’t think I can deal with that.

I feel ashamed.  Ashamed that I am not over my past.  Ashamed that reading a book can be so much of a trigger, and ashamed that I can’t distinguish reality from fiction.  I don’t know why this particular book, either, as I have read other books with graphic rape scenes that have not affected me this deeply.  I feel weak because I’m so shaken by this book.  I’m rattled, damn it, and I hate feeling this way–especially for no good reason.

It brings out the self-loathing and the doubts that I am more than what I was trained to be.  A whore.  A sex-toy.  A victim.  Even though Lisbeth takes revenge on the biggest monster in the book, she is still a victim, and she is still damaged beyond repair.  She is unable to forge lasting romantic bonds, and she is even puzzled as to what constitutes friendship.

I am not Lisbeth.  I know this.  And yet, I identify so damn much with her.   Sometimes, I feel as if I, too, am damaged beyond repair.  I feel as if my sexuality was so twisted when I was a kid, I can’t possible get it to be anything approaching normal or healthy.  I think I am further along than I’ve ever been down the healing road, but I despair of ever making it to whole.

P.S.  If you suggest a movie or book to me, please let me know if there are graphic rape scenes.  I can deal with it better if I know ahead of time.  Thx.

So, here’s the deal.  I took my first step to becoming an adult yesterday.  My fiction writing is very important to me.  I talked briefly about it at the party last Saturday, and I realized that I really miss it.  I have always looked at my ability to tell stories as a gift that was given to me.  I have characters living in my head most of the time, and they are the ones who narrate the stories–not me.  In fact, most of my best stories come to me intact, and I have to do very little tweaking on them once they are on paper.  Anyway, I went to Poets & Writers to look at the current crop of contests.   I found a few that I have decided to enter.  One is a Flash Fiction contest (under 1,000 words) due by the end of August.  I wrote a story in about an hour, and it was pretty good.  I looked through my archives (I have a shitload of old stories) and found two stories that fit the category and that were really fucking good.  Creepy as hell, one of them, but that’s only to be expected.

Then, I started reading other short stories of mine because the next contest is Glimmer Train’s (under 12,000 words), also due at the end of August.  Glimmer Train is an excellent and respected literary journal, and I will continue to submit to them even though there is no chance in hell they will publish me (I’m not literary enough for them).  Anyway, as I was reading my pieces, some that I have not looked at in years, I realized something:  I am a fucking good writer.  No, really, I mean it.  I used to say, “Well, I enjoy writing, and I think I have some talent for it, but, you know,” but really, y’all–I can flat-out write.

My strength is that I create such vivid characters.  In fact, when I re-read my pieces, I am most struck by the throwaway characters who only appear for a few scenes.  There are a few I would like to branch off into stories of their own.  Many times when I read novels, the people don’t seem real to me.  There have been threads over at TNC’s place about literature.  This one spawned this one.  I participated in both threads.   One thing that is simultaneously refreshing and frustrating about TNC’s place is that threads are pretty strictly topic-related.  There is some veering, to be sure, but not as much as, say, over at BJ.  This is refreshing because it keeps people on task and to the point.  It’s frustrating because there are often tangential threads that could belong on the original thread, but not really.

The reason I’m bringing this up is because these threads deal with what is considered the norm in literature.  White male.  Hell, it’s the norm for pretty much everything in our society.  Thus, we have fiction, and we have LGBT fiction or Asian American fiction.  Most people wanted all fiction lumped together.  I actually like the separate categories (or would if the implication wasn’t that the other is lesser) because I don’t particularly care to read white males.  Someone mentioned that with technology being what it is, soon we will have books in multiple categories, which I like.

People were talking about the Pulitzer Prize and how much weight does it really have with the average reader.  Many people pointed out that the little sticker on the book gives it cache.  One commenter even said that since she had so little time and usually went into a bookstore without really knowing what she wants, she’s apt to give a stickered book more consideration than a non-stickered one.

I didn’t get into it too much over there, but I am the exact opposite.  You know Oprah’s Book Club (also discussed over there)?  Well, in a used bookstore in SF, they have the anti-Oprah’s Book Club (books which will never be make it to Oprah’s Book Club).  I am the same way.  I am not drawn towards books with any kind of stickers on them.  In fact, I am less apt to pick up a book with an Oprah sticker on it or a Pulitzer sticker.  Anti-elite snobbery?  Hell, yeah.

Another mini-rant I went into over there is how certain trends must be followed.  In chick lit, it was the quirky twenty-something who was with Mr. Right Now and under-utilizing her talents.  She takes a journey to her soul throughout the book (with many amusing adventures along the way) and ends up finding the meaning of happiness–which usually included finding Mr. Right.   or Mr. Right Now turns out to be Mr. Right after all.  In addition, all the covers had women’s body parts on them.  A torso, a leg, an arm, an ass, but rarely a head.  It’s as if the women were interchangeable, and they really were.

I read a few of them, but I couldn’t connect at all to the characters.  It’s not just because it’s chick lit, either.  There are many authors who are considered serious (Wally Lamb and Dennis Lehane come to mind) whose novels also left me hollow.  I was in a Barnes & Noble the other day to pick up a birthday gift for my nephew.  I browsed through the fiction section just to see what was out there.  It all left me cold.

I feel the same way about many of the classics.  They are so far out of my realm and so not my world, they have little interest to me.  It’s probably why I also don’t care much for trad music or classic movies, either.

I have come to realize over the years that it’s the unusual that interests me.  My place is with the freaks and the oddballs, the misfits and the loners.  When I used to perform, I always had people thanking me for my work because they never knew that others felt that way, too.  My BA is in psychology, and I think I draw from my psych knowledge when I write.

My writing touches people.  It doesn’t matter that my characters are mainly Asian American females with fluid sexualities.  After reading an excerpt from an essay I wrote on what home meant to me, an African American man walked up to me and burst into tears.  He told me he was adopted by a white Christian couple, a Republican, and privately gay.  He thanked me profusely for my piece, and I ached for him.

As many of you know, I started this blog because I wish I had something like it to read when I was growing up.  When I write my fiction, I know it’s not going to appeal to the masses (though the movies might with all teh hawt sexing going on), and I made my peace with that a long time ago.  It’s the same with my tastes–they are odd, eclectic, and not very mainstream.

Non sequitur, tangentially:  I have found that there are people who take it personally if you don’t like a movie/book/song they love.  I have found this odd because I pretty much know that people in general are going to not like what I do.  Therefore, when someone says a movie I like is slow, dull, crappy, whatever, I don’t care.

The same is true with my fiction.  In my MA program, my cohorts didn’t quite get what I was trying to do.  Granted, some of the stuff I wrote was shit–that’s the nature of the beast.  However, I slowly realized that just because they didn’t like or get what I wrote, it didn’t mean that what I wrote was all shit.  It just meant different people have different tastes.  I had a small cohort group, so they weren’t really representative of the population in general.

My strengths as a writer:  My characters and my engaging plots.

My weaknesses:  Total lack of interest in scenery and descriptions.

But, I shouldn’t even label the weaknesses as such because it’s really a matter of style.

My writing:  Fuck, yeah!  I will never be considered mainstream or an author of literature, but so what?  I am a voice for the misfits and the freaks–and we shall be heard.

Actually, this started a little bit ago.  I have a party to attend this Saturday, and the dress is sexy/sophisticated.  I don’t wear makeup as a general rule for many reasons, but I suddenly had the desire to girl it up a bit.  I went to the MAC website (a colored girl’s best friend), and I did a little surfing.  I wear lipstick now and again, and I favor dark, bold colors.  I remember the last time I visited a MAC counter, they told me they were getting black-colored makeup in a few weeks.  I promptly forgot about it, but remembered it upon my visit to the website.  Now, in case you don’t know, black is my favorite color.  It’s like a second skin to me, and I wear it often.  So, I found a shade of lipstick called Cyber that is bluish-black, a lip pencil, and black nail polish for my toes.  I have no nails of which to speak on my hands, so I won’t bother with them.

Then, I got it into my head that I needed a cute pair of shoes.  I hate shopping.  I am extremely picky, and I have wide feet.  All I wanted were a pair of black platform heels in wide.  I scoured the intertubes, but I couldn’t find anything.  An offhand remark by a friend led me to looking at stripper shoes, and while I really liked the styles, I don’t DO four inch heels, let alone eight.  Plus, I don’t like patent leather–I prefer satin or suede.  So, while I love the look of this, this, this, and this (this is just hilarious), none of them matched up my specs.  I did find some cute black platforms with sensible heels (sensible stripper?)–for drag queens.

I gave up because I couldn’t find what I wanted–which is pretty much the norm for me.  I do have a pair of shoes that will work–and they are ‘in’ this year if my intensive research isn’t wrong.  That’s funny as I bought them many years ago, but fashion does like to cycle.  I also have a pair of go-to boots (you women know what I mean.  The pair you can always count on to match pretty much anything).  I have a sexy little black dress I’ve never worn, so I’m good to go.

“Minna, why the hell are you talking about clothes and makeup?” I can hear you say.  By the way, thank you for allowing me to put words into your collective mouths.  I really appreciate it, and it helps move things along.

I’m talking about them because I can, of course, but I’m also talking about them because for once, I feel like talking about them.

My history with being a woman is fraught with peril.  I have had very mixed emotions about being female, some that I wouldn’t even admit to myself.  When I was younger (in my early twenties), I got along better with men than with women for various reasons, and I was wary of other women–though I wasn’t really conscious of it at the time.  I eschewed all things typically considered feminine while at the same time declaring myself a feminist.

An aside:  Sarah Palin, I know feminists, and you, Madame, are no fucking feminist.

OK.  Had to get that out.  Back to feminine v. feminist.

I have a very byzantine mind in that I can twist anything into a pretzel.  I discovered feminism in college and became a strident feminist.  I stopped wearing makeup (which I only really started wearing in my last year of high school) and stopped shaving (not that I had much to shave, anyway).  If guys didn’t have to do all that shit, why should I?  Besides, I have very sensitive skin, and at that time, makeup was murder on the skin.  And, I decided getting forty-five more minutes of sleep was way more important than slapping on a face.

That was my stated stance and one I still believe to some extent.  However, it covered nuances such as how stupid I feel because I can’t put makeup on very well.  I’ve practiced, but most of the time, I end up looking like a clown.  When they handed out the girl gene, I was absent.  Lipstick is about the only thing I can put on without making myself look ridiculous, which is probably why I chose it as my signature piece of makeup.

In addition, and it took me years of therapy to figure this out, because of the abuse, I started identifying with my abuser, so to speak.  As much as I hated my father for what he did to me, I hated my mother more for not protecting me.  It’s not rational, and it’s not fair, but there you go.   I was saying something about this to my therapist years ago, and she said, “You’re equating feminine with weak.”  I was pissed, but she was right.  If I had to be honest, I did associate being feminine with being weak, and I wanted no part of it.  Now, you could argue that being a child, I wasn’t very feminine when the abuse happened.  True.  However, my experience in Thailand only reinforced that vaguely-held notion that being feminine was dangerous.  I was stalked by one guy in Thailand and date-raped by another.

The former was not my fault at all.  The latter though, was not my fault, but I had to take some responsibility.  Because of my own fucked-up view of sexuality and sex and all that shit, I put myself in a dangerous situation without truly thinking about the consequences.

It’s weird because I thought of being feminine as being helpless and weak, but I thought of feminine sexuality as too-powerful.  It drove men to do crazy things, and it destroyed people in the process.  I am not saying this was a rational way of looking at things, which I know, in retrospect, that it was not.  It was, however, the result of my messed up childhood and experience in Thailand.  My femininity was not to be trusted because it was powerful and because it made me weak.

A decade ago, Kiki and I had a friendly disagreement about being girly.  I had bought a couple barrettes with glitter on them, but I was hesitant to wear them.  She said it was OK to be girly now and then, but I didn’t trust that.  Recently, I had the same discussion with Choolie, and she said essentially the same thing as I revealed my hesitation about buying makeup and shoes.  Kiki told me she loved it that I was girling up.

One reason I have such a hard time with wearing makeup and intentionally dressing sexy is because it garners attention.  I know that there are people who find me attractive for some unfathomable reason (yes, I had to add that on), and it makes me uncomfortable to draw attention to my assets, as it were.  Now, one would think because I have such a laissez-faire attitude towards clothing that I wouldn’t have a problem with drawing attention to myself, but in my mind, there is something distinctly different about throwing on a tank top sans bra and a pair of boxers to run to the local store and actually dressing up with intent to be hawt.

It’s difficult for me to think that I can be consciously sexy and not have it used against me.  But, I am willing to take baby steps in trying to reclaim my femininity and to stop thinking of it as a bad word.

I am still working through this issue, obviously, so I am sure I will blog about it again.

Moving on to my therapist’s office.  One of her specialties is mothering so she has many parenting magazines in the waiting room.  One of them is Brain Child, which is an interesting read.  In the one I picked up, there was an review of three books about childfree women.  I thought, “Oh, interesting” and started to read.  The writer, I’ll call her Jill because I can’t remember her real name, and I can’t be bothered to look it up, starts out by saying she’s childfree, so hey, she’s a good woman to review the books.  Fair enough.  But then she talks at length as to why she’s childfree (genetic faults in the family) before reviewing the book.  Disclosure:  I haven’t read the books she was reviewing, so I am actually critiquing her review of the books and not the books themselves.

The first was divided in three parts.  The first part was by women who were firmly childfree.  The second was by women who were ‘on the fence’ (I think the section was even labeled that), and the third was by women who decided to have kids (if I remember correctly).  Jill talked very briefly about the first part, but dismissed it as not interesting.  She said the other sections were richer.  Huh, what?  It turns out what she meant was the other sections were more compelling to her because they featured similar stories of women who struggled with the decision before deciding not to have them for mostly genetic reasons.

Jill’s conclusion of this book was, “It’s OK for women who are childfree to say they regret not having kids and for women with kids to say how hard it is to be a parent.”

Now, while I don’t dispute that many of the women who haven’t had children may have regrets about their decision, I am not one of them.  And, I don’t think it’s verboten to say that you have regrets about not being a mother.  When I was in my early twenties, it was damn-near expected that I would express my deepest remorse for not wanting kids.

Jill decried the second book because it was written by a twenty-something who was trumpeting how great her life was as a childfree woman.  As for the third book, Jill emphasized how many of the women focused on nurturing children even though they were not moms.  Jill’s conclusion was that you, too, can be a nurturing woman without kids of your own–and it’s an inherent part of a woman’s being to be a nurturing person.

Again, I fully acknowledge that I read the review through my own biased filter, but she pissed me off.  The whole damn time she was apologizing for not having kids or rationalizing and focusing on the essays that reinforced her belief that being without is somehow lesser.  Again, I don’t doubt that many women who choose not to have kids have mixed feelings about their decision, but not all of us do.

By the way, the second book apparently uses the term unparenting to describe her childfree status.  No.  Just no.  That’s a stupid word.  I don’t even like childfree, but it’s better than childless.

Anyhow, as I have said before, deciding not to have kids was the easiest decision I ever made, and the best one I ever made.  I don’t regret it, and I don’t wonder what my life would be like if I had kids.  Do you want to know how often I think about the fact that I don’t have kids (when I’m not blogging about it)?  Never.  It’s a non-factor in my life, incidental at best.  And, I resent the implication that I have to think about nurturing kids in some way because I don’t have my own.  I don’t hear that being asked of men without children.

As for the richer reasons not to have children, sure, not having kids because I don’t want them isn’t sexy or a rich, complex reason, but it’s true.  I mean, I could add on the fact that I was abused, that I think I would be a horrible mother, blah blah blah, but that would just be embellishing to make other people feel more comfortable with my decision.

Something about the simple phrase, “I don’t want kids” made people uncomfortable when I first started saying it.  I don’t think it’s as true now, but if this article is any indication, it may not be entirely false, either.

Finally, Oliver Wang is guest-blogging at TNC’s place.  He posted an entry about the correlation between hours of housework being done and how much sex a married couple was having.  Predictably, the thread evolved into a ‘men want this, women want this’ discussion.  There was one man in particular who irritated me by stating that men need to be drained at least twice a week and who wants to sit next to a woman watching reality TV for hours just to get laid?  I am exaggerating, but only slightly.  You can read the thread if you like, and I am sure you can figure out who I am by my handle.

Anyway, I called him out in part because I am tired of the meme that men are horndogs and women are frigid bitches who only put out to please their men.  This guy was making it seem like a universal with a few guys backing him up.  My point was that this was his situation and I have consistently been in the opposition position, which, again, I will admit is probably not as usual as his situation, but I know other women who have very high sex drives, so it’s not as if I am completely alone in this.

The interesting part to me was that some of the mothers commented that after spending the whole day fending off their children, they don’t necessarily want to be touched by their husbands.  After spending appreciable time with my nephews, I could emphasize.  One woman said she wanted her body to be her own.

Anyway, the first guy got hammered by several women and a few women, not just me, but it left me wondering as to how much of an outlier I am.  Then again, he was talking post-children, so who knows?  His main point was that if the wife doesn’t put out, she shouldn’t be surprised when the man cheats.  He gave lip-service to both parties being satisfied, but it was clear that he only meant himself.  And, he said if a woman wants sex all the time, what man isn’t going to be OK with that?

Um, dude.  Seriously.  Back that truck up.  Not all men have high sex drives.  That’s a myth.  And, while men may think about sex a lot, they aren’t always so eager to actually have it.

But this is my point.  He was talking about his experiences and extrapolating them to other men.  Another guy said, “You just described my marriage!”  However, these guys married these women knowing full well what they were like.  And, the first guy married TWO women knowing full well what they were like.  So, to some extent, they must want those kind of women.  It’s like my ex telling me that men liked to complain about their women not liking sports because it’s a way of bonding.  They don’t want their women to like sports.  I agree.

As for sex, in my personal experience, guys are threatened by a woman who wants sex more than they do, so while they may complain about their girlfriends/wives not wanting sex, they would complain more if their wives were constantly after them for sex.

I will fully admit that my tendency in the past to choose people who talk more than they put out is partly because of my neuroses.  I have had exceptions, but for the most part, it’s true.  However, I have other female friends in the same boat who don’t share my neuroses, so it’s not completely just me, either.

It seems that the root of the gender divide is still there.  There are more men and women who have moved past it, but there are still plenty in the trenches fighting that tired war.  As I am struggling with my own issues re: femininity and sexuality, I really need to stop participating in what I consider non-issue subjects (that women can want to have sex as much if not more so than men).  I just need to stick to that resolve.

P.S.  Fourth vid is my official stripper song, even though the lead singer has a very tame idea of what a crazy bitch actually is.

At any rate, I was still in a funk over my father when when I went downstairs to nap.  I had just read Kel’s offer to house me, and I was thinking about that.  I knew I couldn’t do that (for many reasons), and I was despairing over what to do as an alternative.  With those unhappy thoughts in my head, I fell asleep.

When I awoke, I was violently ill (dry heaves) for a few minutes, and then I was determined to fight.  I thought of my boys and how I couldn’t leave them alone with my father.  He wouldn’t do anything to them, but he does not like animals.  He tolerates mine because they are mine, but he is not fond of them–though he does say they are not bothersome in any way.  High praise, indeed.

I do not want to move them or board them because this is their home, too, damn it.  Besides their foster home, this is the only home they’ve known.  They don’t take too well to change, and I will not move them.

In addition, I’m tired of flight.  I have done flight all my life, and while it was useful and necessary in the past, I cannot do it any longer.  I don’t know why it especially sticks in my craw this time, but it does.   I think it is because I’m just starting to live again, and damn it, I am not going out like that.  Seriously.  I lived through the shit he did to me when I was a kid.  I can fucking live through this, too.  And, to be honest, I am tired of giving him so much power.  Yes, he fucked up my childhood.  There is nothing I can do about that.  If I could I would go back and change it and never had to have experienced that.  However, it’s not gonna happen, so there’s no point in dwelling on that.

The only thing I can do now is work on how much power he has over me in the present.   I am in the process of untangling from my parents financially (to some extent), and my mother and I have worked hard to cobble out a workable working relationship.  By the way, I have to remember that I thought there was no chance my mother would change at all before she came for her two-month stay.  I thought that discussions of my childhood would be more than she could handle.  I was wrong on both accounts.

This is not to say that I think my father will change; I don’t.  Back to my mom for a minute.  Yes, she changed, but so did I.  Or rather, I changed in my interaction with her.  I started acting more like an adult with her, and in response, she treated me more like an adult.  True, I was discouraged at the end because our personal relationship had only gotten a little bit better instead of an appreciable amount better, but as I was reminded by several people, what did change was amazing.  And lots of work.  As my therapist pointed out, in the first week my mom was here, I was saying I couldn’t fucking say anything to my mom about my father.  By the time my mother left, we had hashed out some of my issues from childhood that included my father.

No, not that one.  My therapist asked how I felt about talking to my mother about the…damn it.  I hate saying/typing it, so I will use the least ugly word possible, abuse of me by my father.  She asked if I felt I needed to talk about it with my mother in order to have a relationship with her (my mom).  Much to my surprise, I said no.  I realized that my mother and I could have a real relationship, albeit a limited one, without me bringing up the abuse.  You know what?  I was fine with that.

Back to my father.  I don’t think he’ll change, and there’s nothing I can do to change him.  My mom claims he has mellowed with the years, and I do have to say that he called her while she was here to tell her about a change in his plans so she wouldn’t worry (he never would have done that when I was a kid.  In fact, he would have screamed at her for daring to ask about it).  So, he does care about her on some level.   And, she has chosen to remain with him, so I can let go of my need to protect her.  Yes, I know it’s fucked up, but that is what she taught me when I was younger; I was responsible for her emotional well-being.

Now that I see she has made her pact with the devil so to speak, I can let it go. And, may I say, she never protected me when I was a kid, either.  So, any guilt I may have at not being vigilant about her emotional well-being is wiped out by the knowledge that she has consistently chosen my father over me.

Back to my interaction with my father.  First of all, I don’t want a relationship with him, so any idea of pleasing/mollifying/catering to him can be thrown out the window.  Second, and I have to keep emphasizing this, he can no longer hurt me.  I am not that little girl any longer.  I am not seven years old (though I sometimes feel that way), and I can use chin na techniques on him if need be.

I tend to slip into the victim’s role fairly easily.  Now, while that’s understandable given what I’ve gone through, it’s not especially helpful in this situation.  Victim implies not being able to control the situation and having things done to me.  It was how I felt in Taiwan, and it nearly killed me.  My therapist rightly pointed out after I returned that after my initial attempt at setting my boundaries and speaking up for myself (and being ignored), I folded.  I didn’t try again, and I just did my best to survive the experience.

That’s the dastardly part of feeling I have no control–I cede whatever little control I do have and then basically reinforce my perceptions.  I have mentioned before how I can see the stupidity when my mom shoots down every solution to a problem, and yet, I find myself doing the same thing time after time.  It’s the same here.  I construct a box that is very tight-fighting, but that is mostly of my own imagination, and then I refuse to get out of it.

In Taiwan, I could have said, “I don’t want to go” and meant it.  I could have said, “I do not want to do this activity” and stuck to it.  I did not because I let my feelings of helplessness overtake me, and I retreated into my shell.  This has been my default response for all my life.  Again, given my childhood, it’s understandable.  However, it is not useful now (if it ever was).  And, after awhile, it became a reason not to do anything.  It’s horrible to feel you have no power, but it’s also a way to avoid any responsibility or to take any action.  After all, if I cannot affect a situation, why do anything at all?

I was ready to fall back into myself about my father’s visit.  I might still do it–who knows?  The demons were sure poised to push me back into the abyss (as they always are).  I still have some residual self-negativity left from the visit from my mom.  I mean, this would have been the perfect opportunity for me to just collapse and return to Minna 1.0.  For those who read the entry previous to this one, you know I was on the edge.

However, something inside me said, “No.  Just–no.”  It was a small voice and it came from some deep recess of my brain, but it was very firm.  That little voice stopped the panic that was infiltrating my mind with the repeated insistence of, “No.”  No. You are not going to fold back into yourself and lose the progress you’ve gained in the last year.  No.  You are not going to numb out and become a walking zombie again.  No.  You are not going to allow that man to victimize you again.

Me:  What?  WTF?  I have to self-destruct–

Voice:  No.

Me:  I have to come apart–

Voice:  No.

Me:  I can’t do this!  I’m too weak!

Voice:  No.

This is the first time I’ve heard this particular voice in my head.  She is quiet, but firm.  She is no-nonsense, cutting through the bullshit, but she is not mean.  She just states what she sees as the truth with conviction.  She is unfamiliar, but she is a welcome addition to the cacophony in my brain.

And, I need someone in my head who is on my side.  I mean, I have the damn demons telling me what a piece of shit I am.  I have my superego telling me that I should feel guilty because of this and that and the other thing.   I have the scared, damaged little girl who is afraid of everything.  I have the bitch who, well, just bitches about everything.  There are more, but those are the main ones.  This new voice is a refreshing change.  She isn’t noisy like the others, and she doesn’t demand my attention.  However, I can’t help but hear her through the chatter.

No.  I am not going out like that.

I have been a victim.  I held on for many years after (15, but who’s counting?).  Some would say that I am a surviver, but that implies a more active participation in said survival than I feel I have done.  I endured.  I numbed out, hunkered down, covered my head, and tried not to get hit by the shrapnel.  I existed, yes, but survived?  Eh.  Not so much.

Despite my current set-backs and plunges into the darkness, I am in a better place than I have ever been.  Let me rephrase that.  I am in a place to potentially propel me to the best place I’ve ever been.  I would say that in some ways, I was in a slightly better place a year ago, but that was before the flashbacks hit me full-force.  So, in the light of that, it’s not surprising that I’ve regressed a bit.

Here’s the thing.  I have always been more comfortable with my weaknesses and flaws than with my strengths and assets.  I think it’s good to know one’s negative side, but not at the expense of embracing one’s positive side.  And, over time, I have warped my weaknesses into my strengths in a way.  I mean, I know they are weaknesses, but I tout them as if they were strengths, even if I decry them as weaknesses.  It’s like I said about victimization.  If I think I am too weak to do X, Y, or Z, then I don’t have to do X, Y, or Z.  It’s twisted and backwards, but it’s how I’ve operated for far too long.

It gives me a way out.  It allows me to do what I’ve always done and not do anything differently.  Of course, the results are the same, which is something I do not want.  I do not want to keep feeling like shit.  I do not want to keep giving my father power over me.  I do not want to allow the damage he’s done to me to break  me even more.

Strengths were verboten in my family.  It was unseemly to be proud of something.  I learned that lesson well, too.  However, it has gotten me jackshit to focus on my weaknesses while sacrificing my strengths.  In addition, some of the things that are flaws in some circumstances (such as my OCD) can be strengths in others.  It’s a flaw to be obsessive about stupid shit (like my insane need to control everything trivial), but it’s a strength to finish something once I put my mind to it.

So.  Here’s the thing.  I am not going to self-harm while my father is here.  I am saying that now because I need to see it in writing.  I have a habit of hedging on these things–keeping the option in my back pocket, as it were.  In the past, it’s saved my life to give myself that out, but now, it’s no longer useful.

I am stronger than I was five years ago or two years ago.  I am even stronger than I was while I was in Taiwan.  My therapist said that while the experience in Taiwan was horrible for me, it did bring things to the forefront that needed to be dealt with.  It’s true.  The trip to Taiwan was the catalyst for my mother sending me the letter telling me what was wrong with me and my inner realization that things had to change.

I need to let go of my habit of seeing the worst of me and using it as a reason not to do things differently.  Despite my focus on the worst of me, I can see a few of my strengths as well.  I am stubborn.  I question authority.  I have a twisted sense of humor.  I fight for the underdog.  I can use these things in my defense when needed.

In addition, I have good friends locally and around the country–indeed, the world, who would be more than happy to lend me a hand, a shoulder, or an ear (or a house, thanks, Kel) if I need it.  I don’t have to do this on my own–which is in itself an odd thing as I have long since tried to keep my burdens to myself.

Look, my father is going to be who he is.  A narcissistic, unfeeling, domineering, empty, charming cipher.  That’s who he is.  There isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.  However, I can change how I react to him–that is within my control.  I don’t have to let him make me feel useless, worthless, broken, and damaged.  It’s not going to be easy, but it’s also gonna be in my home country rather than his this time.  I don’t have to let him walk all over me.

Feelings, as strong as they are, are just feelings.  I have to try to remember this when I get overwhelmed with negativity, as I know I will when my father returns.  I am no Pollyanna, and I have no illusions that just because I made this breakthrough, I am not going to slide back while he’s here.  I will.  How I deal with it, though, is what matters.

I have my therapy session tomorrow.  I am going to bring this up, and I am going to formulate a plan as to how to deal with the imminent visit.  I said awhile ago that if I go down, it’s not going to be without a fight.  It’s time to back up those words with action.

P.S.  The first vid is because I have always liked Pat Benatar’s in-your-face attitude.  The second vid is from a good friend who declared it my real personal anthem (instead of Hurt by NIN/The Man in Black).  I didn’t believe him at the time, and I still don’t quite believe him now, but I am trying.  The third vid is because I love the Femmes, and this song is the attitude I am feeling right now.

But, I don’t want to do that for him.  More to the point, I am not sure I can do that for him.

When my mom came home, it was difficult because of all the shit between us.  However, there is also love between us.  I can now say that I know she loves me and wants what’s best for me, even if what she envisions as best for me is so far off the mark.  I trust her to a certain extent (but not completely).

My father?  No.  I do not love him; he does not love me.  I don’t trust him one bit, and I don’t know or care whether he wants what’s best for me.

I thought I was over my anger at him, but I discovered that wasn’t true when my mother was home.  There are wells of fury hidden under my surface, but there are also layers of…other things.

He cannot physically harm me any longer, so I do not fear that.  He is old and in bad health, and god, I do not want to touch him at all.  I know I will have to hug him (have to as in feeling guilty if I don’t), and I am cringing already.  I think I have related how when I was in my twenties, he liked to walk with his arm around me.  When I informed him that I didn’t like it, that it made me feel more like his girlfriend than his daughter, he scoffed at me for being silly.  He did quit doing it, though, so there is that.

Kel offered to put me up if I fly out there while my father is here.  I have friends locally whom I know would be more than happy to shelter me.  I did it once before right after college when I first started having inklings about the abuse.  He was so hurt and so rejected.  I felt so fucking guilty, and no matter how much I tell myself that I shouldn’t feel guilty, I did.  I do.  I will.  At any rate, it’s nice to know I have that option if I need it.  If I can take it.

Goddamn it.  He’s trained me well.  Just thinking about him invokes all sorts of strong, powerful, conflicting emotions.  I was made to be his servant with no thought of my own.  My purpose was to cater to him and his mercurial moods.  I am suppose to put his needs and his wants and his feelings before my own and as much as I fight against the mentality, I find myself faltering in his presence.

I’m panicking and I’m freaking and I’m withdrawing, becoming numb.  It’s been two years plus since he’s returned, and I remember all-too-well just how much I spiraled in Taiwan.  Granted, that was on his turf, but this will be me in the house alone with him.   That skeeves me out, honestly.  Any time he’s here, I plummet.

This will be the first time I’ve seen him alone in two years, which means the first time I’ve seen him alone since I’ve started becoming more cognizant of my body.  As much as I hate my body right now (and that’s a lot), I cannot deny that it is very ripe-feeling at the moment–and not just because I have my period.  It’s been a cruel joke that when I am heavier, I feel more sensual and sexual.  I feel sexier when I’m thinner, but not really sexual (because I’m trying not to faint).  I am especially conscious of my boobs right now.  They are big in general, and when I am on the rag, they are especially full.  Ripe.  Juicy.  Dripping.  Yeah, that would just about describe me right now.

An aside:  Big gals want cute shoes, too.  All I wanted was a pair of black platform shoes in wide with heels that were less than four inches.  Is that too much to ask?  Apparently so as the only shoes I could find were stripper shoes (too much heel) and drag queen shoes (too big).

Anyway, as much as I love sex, I have always had mixed feelings about being so sexual.  If I lived in a country where it was OK for women to have very high sex-drives, I wouldn’t be so self-conscious about it, but I don’t live in that country (if it exists).  And, to be honest, when my father is around, I don’t want to be a sexual person.  At all.

He ruined that part of me.  He took my sexuality and made it a very ugly thing.  He twisted it and molded it for his own pleasure, and to this day, I struggle with the ramifications of his actions.  I have written about it before, how I was made into the perfect sex doll.  I have considered it a blessing that I like sex as much as I do given my history, but I also question if it is in part a result of my training.  Some of the things I’ve done in the past stemmed from the belief that what I wanted didn’t really matter.  If someone wanted to have sex with me, then I should have sex with that person regardless.   To be fair, this was in a large part as a response to what happened in Thailand as well, but that happened mostly because of my fucked-up-ness that stemmed from my childhood.

I was raised Christian, and I believed that sex was sinful and dirty until you got married and then it was beautiful and holy.  I was molested as a child and told that what I wanted didn’t matter; only my father mattered.  I was a fat, ugly, lonely teenager who didn’t really have many dates; I was stalked in Thailand by one guy and raped by another.  I had sex for the first time (by my choice) with a man I loved very much who was also a virgin; I had a year-long binge of experimenting just for the sake of experimenting and because I wanted to validate my desirability.  I allowed a man to almost kill me during sex (not on purpose), and I would have welcomed it.  I abstained from sex for years on end  (twice) in an attempt to figure this shit out.

My sexual journey from childhood until now has been a long, twisted, serpentine road, and it has been fraught with danger and lots of pain (physically, emotionally, and spiritually).  I look at the young woman I was, and I wonder how I ever survived my youth.  I have said this in other contexts, but I was so broken back then.  I am damn lucky that I didn’t run into a psychopath or a killer because I wasn’t being very smart or safe, no matter how much I thought I was.

I hate this.  I hate that thinking about my father reduces me to this.  I have fought hard to define who I am sexually, and yet, my sexuality still remains tainted by my father.

Putting aside the issue of sexuality, my father diminishes me in other ways, too.

Damn it, no.  I can’t put aside the issue of sexuality just yet.  I’m still simmering about it, and I want to rant a bit more.  It’s not fucking fair that I have to still deal with something he did to me so many fucking years ago. Even in the best-case scenario of emotional incest (and let’s face it, I’m past the point of thinking it was ‘just’ emotional), he mind-fucked me to the point where now I still can’t always separate what is my sexuality from what he imposed upon me.  Do I like pain because I like pain or do I like it because it’s what I had to get used to at a young age?

There are things I can confidently say, “This is mine.”  I like sex itself–that much is clear.  I like laughing while having sex–that, too, is mine.  However, the kinkier stuff is in question.  Why do I like being dominated?  Is it because I have to be in control in real life (for my own benefit), so it’s a relief to let go in bed?  That’s the benign answer, and it’s probably close to the truth.  However, other things such as my desire to be hurt and degraded.  I am not sure I really *like* that, per se; I think it’s more I feel I deserve it for one reason or another.  Again, I haven’t done this kind of thing in a quite some years, but I have a hunch that I could quickly fall back into the desire again–even if it makes me sick afterwards.

I am used to pain.  I am comfortable with pain.  I have an affinity for pain.  Is this because I couldn’t stop the pain when I was younger so I decided I might as well befriend it?  I don’t know.  The pain/pleasure link is weaker for me now than it has ever been, but I am not sure it’s completely gone.  Or rather, I fear it’s lying dormant just waiting for the right opportunity to spring to life again.

If I start thinking about the flashbacks, it’s like I’m seven again.  I go very still and very quiet, and my mind can’t let go of the pictures.  Him grabbing me by the throat and holding me against the wall.  Him on top of me, warning me not to cry.  Him penetrating me with his fingers as I try so very hard not to make a sound.  I can feel my body shutting down as the pictures flood my mind.  The worst part is that I don’t even know if each individual picture is real or not.

On some level, it doesn’t matter because I know something happened.  Something bad.  Something horrible.  On another level, it eats me up inside that I have to make a best-guess effort when I crave a definite answer.  Did my father actually…have sex with me or did he ‘just’ molest me?  Did he do it every night or ‘just’ once a week?  Did he physically abuse me, too, like he did my brother, or did he ‘just’ restrict it to sexual with me?

Damn him.  Damn him for twisting something so essential into something evil.

The pain is incredible.  Even when I hold very very still, I ache.  And, I feel guilty because I didn’t protect that little girl so many years ago.  I know it’s unreasonable to expect that of me at such a young age, but it’s there.  And, the more I think about my father, the more disgusted with myself I feel.  Broken.  Damaged.  Ruined.   These are three words I have often used to describe myself; they are some of the nicer things I have called myself.

I do not know how I am going to deal with my father.  For those of you who have been reading since before December, you know how quickly I spiraled while in Taiwan.  I am already starting to get the same feelings about him coming back here.  I can feel myself shutting down.  I don’t think that’s the best way to deal with the situation, but I don’t know what else to do.  While he can no longer hurt me physically, he can hurt me emotionally.  I am particularly vulnerable in this matter because he has an uncanny ability to hone in on my weaknesses with surgical precision.  He doesn’t take anything I say seriously, and he laughs at me sometimes when I am trying to say something that isn’t just superficial.

It’s partly my fault.  For all my talk of having zero expectations from my father, there is still obviously a small part of me who keeps trying to connect to him in some small way.  I have no fucking idea why except that I feel I ’should’ have some connection with my father.  And, maybe there’s a little part of me that still wants his approval–which is fucked up because I will never get it.

I hate feeling vulnerable, and I feel nothing but around him.  One of the worst things is how quickly I fall into despair and hopelessness when I think about him.  As much as I don’t fear him physically, I obviously fear him mentally.  He is still a monolith in my mind, no matter how diminished he is in real life.

I hate him for what he did to me.  And, I feel guilty for hating him.  Then, I feel stupid for feeling guilty for hating him.

I hate him for ruining me.  I hate him for breaking me.  I hate him for damaging me beyond repair.  Yes, I believe there’s a part of me that will remain broken for the rest of my life thanks to him.  I have made adjustments to accommodate this broken part of me, but it will never heal properly.

I hate myself for not being over this yet.  I hate myself for not being stronger than this, for not being better than this.  I hate myself for being so fucking weak when it comes to him, and I hate that I am still giving him so much power.  I hate that I cannot put this behind me and just move on with my life.  It was thirty years ago, for god’s sake.  I hate that it’s still messing me up so much at this late date.  I hate that I am panicking and going numb at the thought of him returning, and I hate that I am going to think about it every day until he arrives.  I am spiraling down already, and he isn’t even here.  This doesn’t bode well for the actual visit.

First, let me say that I only had one rule for my niece as she was growing up:  Do not break your head.  I figured anything else was fixable.  She got a kick out of that, but she was a really good kid.  High-energy and high-spirited, but not destructive or pushy.  As I’ve said, we sat for hours making up long, complicated stories about being fairies or wizards or other ethereal creatures.   Now that she is twelve (and looks twenty), she really has grown into a lovely young woman.

When the boys came along, I had to start making up rules on the fly.  Most of them included “No” or “Don’t” and some form of banishment from hitting me/throwing things at me.  As I’ve said before, for someone with PTSD, this is a recipe for disaster.  Until recently, I had to sit on the aisle seat in a theatre or the end seat at a restaurant in order to have easy access to the exit (I still prefer that seat, but it’s not imperative).    You can probably see where I am going with this.

Let me give you some background.  I was born in the Year of the Boar so I collect pigs.  Stuffed pigs, glass pigs, ceramic pigs, wooden pigs, piggy banks, jade pigs, etc.  I have had pig socks and pig slippers before, and I currently have a pair of boxers with grumpy pigs on them.   To that end, I have a giant stuffed pig (about three feet tall and two feet wide) that only has one eye because SOMEBODY who shall remain nameless (*cough, not Raven, cough*) likes to scratch his claws on it, and my nephews love this giant pig.  Of course they do!  It’s a giant pig.  Anyway, the time before last they were at my house, they decided it would be great fun to swing the pig around and throw it at me.  You can imagine that I, on the other hand, vehemently disagreed that this was a good idea.

So.  This last time.  On Saturday, the boys were mostly good.  Of course, I was asleep for the morning and had Taiji until around three-thirty, so that cut into a good deal of the time.  Still, when I got back home, the boys wanted to watch baseball, so that’s what we did.  My bro and SIL were coming at five for dinner.  My mom decided around four-thirty to get ready for dinner.  The minute she leaves, the boys started acting up.  Nephew the Younger grabbed the giant pig and started swinging it around while Nephew the Elder giggled madly.  I put on my best stern voice and told NTY to cut it out, but he just swung it at me and laughed.  When I ordered him to give it to me, he put it on the ground and sat on it–still laughing.  I grabbed the pig out from under him, causing him to tumble to the ground (still laughing), and I went to the kitchen to do something after putting the pig in my bedroom.  The boys followed me into the kitchen, and NTY had my giant pig slipper (about two feet long) in hand, and he started whacking me with it, laughing happily.  NTE was also giggling and threatening to go get the other pig.  They were backing me into the fridge, and I saw red.

This is where I snapped.  Pure rage overcame me.  I turned on NTY and said in my deadliest voice, “You. Do. Not. Do. That. To. Me!” and advanced towards him.  I was terrible in my rage, and he immediately reeled back to get away from me.  I was thisclose to beating the shit out of him, which I’m sure he sensed.  NTE continued to pester me and ran for my bedroom with me racing after him.  My mom popped out of her bedroom and using her best stern mom voice got NTE to stop in his tracks.  She sent him to the basement (where he spent time petting Raven, who actually let him.  In fact, earlier, NTE asked as he was petting Raven, “If we are quiet when we pet him, will he stay around us?”  I said yes), and I went back to the living room to try to control myself.  NTY apparently fell asleep on the couch with the pig slipper over him.

With that one moment, my ideas of myself in relation to kids shattered.  I know people with kids are rolling their eyes at me, but I never wanted to be the authoritative bully when it came to kids.  I know how it felt to be ordered around without having any say in the matter, and I didn’t like it.   I hate the fact that with my nephews, I seem to be saying no all the time and reacting to whatever it is they are doing.

I know, I know.  They need to know boundaries and to respect other people’s persons and properties.  By the way, we had a fine dinner after their parents came.  During dinner, I noted that NTY hit his mom, too.  It didn’t make me happy, but I will admit to a bit of relief that he didn’t just hit me.

You know, one of the reason I didn’t have kids is because I knew I had the capacity to hit a child.  Granted, it wasn’t the main reason or even in the top five, but it was still a reason.  However, that doesn’t mean that I like having that hypothesis confirmed.  No, I did not hit my nephew, but if he had pushed it one more time, who the fuck knows what I might have done?

Goddamn it.  I hate the fact that they can so effortlessly make a liar out of me.  I hate the fact that I keep mixing up my old family dysfunctions with the new ones, though they are the same, really.  Lack of boundaries, being laughed at, a feeling of threat to my personal safety.  The difference is, I’m the motherfucking adult this time around.  I need to act like it.  However, I am at a loss as to how to do that.

I will say that the few times I have been able to say to NTE, “I will not answer you if you shout at me like that,” he has responded positively.  However, I feel as if I immediately go to the ‘no, don’t touch that, it’s mine, no, don’t pull up my shirt, pull down my short, etc.’ mode right away.   And, I feel cornered.  I hate that feeling.  I do not want to manhandle them, but they simply refuse not to touch me when I don’t want to be touched.

Again, I wonder if the victim stamp is still visible on my forehead.  I try to think of a way to deal with them that will work, and I am stopped short.

Then, the day after, my bro called my mom because NTE was having a meltdown (which he does once or twice a day).  They were going to go to the pool, and NTE was ready to go.  However, NTY was dawdling, making them late, so NTE said he was going to go by himself.  Of course, his parents said no, and he had his meltdown.

I suspect that NTE might be autistic or have Asperger’s.    He freaks out if things don’t happen exactly as he NEEDS it to happen.

Anyway, my bro said if NTE wasn’t around, NTY would be fine.  This breaks my heart.  My brother has always shown a clear favoritism for NTY, most likely because NTE reminds him of himself.  I have tried to get him to realize that this is not helpful.  He can have a favorite, but he needs not to advertise it so blatantly.  Plus, he is wrong about NTE being the source of trouble.  My bro says because NTY idolizes NTE, NTY does whatever NTE does.  I told him that he can’t blame NTE for that.  Besides, NTY is the instigator about half the time.  He knows full well that NTE will be blamed, and he milks it for all it’s worth.  NTY has been told all his life how charming and cute he is, so he knows how to use both.  He reminds me of my father in that way.

Anyway, my mom said she would take NTE for one more night (it was originally supposed to be his sleepover as he pointed out until my mom offered to take NTY as well), which means that I have to sit the kid for one more day/night as well.  In all honesty, I can deal better with NTE when it’s just him.  The two of them egg each other on as well as compete with each other.  Still, I’m a bit disgruntled that my mother so blithely offered to sit without asking me how I felt about it.  Then again, what could I say?  So, my bro is bringing over NTE Thursday at noon, and we are keeping him until Friday morning.  At that time, I’m bringing my mom to the airport so she can visit her sisters in Philly, and then I’m dropping off NTE at my bro’s house, which is seven minutes from the airport.

Then, I’m having a wild sex orgy over the weekend before picking my mom up at the airport on Monday.

Just kidding.  I wish.

So.  Dealing with my nephews makes me feel like shit.  The dysfunction is similar to the dysfunction in my nuclear family, and I don’t know how to break it.  I feel guilty because I don’t like spending time with my nephews.  It just seems so wrong to say that.  I used to say that I would make a shitty mom, but I was a great aunt.  Now, I am not so sure I can say the latter any longer.

Second piece.  My mom is still here.  She’s leaving for good a week from Friday, which is not a moment too soon.  We have done hard and good work on repairing our relationship, but having her around is really deleterious to my mental health, especially in regards to my body image.

In other words, I think I am a grotesque slug right now.  This is important because of the performance I am doing.  As I wrote about earlier, I have realized that I need to perform.  The first rehearsal was really good.  The second was difficult because I was in a bad space.  Besides my self-castigation over my inability to find a way in which to deal positively with my nephews, I was hating my body big time.  So, getting nearly naked and undulating under a scrim with other nekkid people was difficult.

One of the women, Kendra, has what I consider the perfect body.  She’s athletic, in her mid-twenties (if that), slim, and gently rounded.  I aspire to have that body.  So, of course, seeing her nearly naked under the scrim made me self-conscious as to how corpulent I am and how pendulous my breasts are.  Plus, there are my scars.  I’m not ashamed of them, but they ain’t pretty.  Before, we had individual scrims.  This time, we decided just to be under the one big scrim.  It’s definitely the way to go, but as I’m undulating on all fours with my breasts dangling, I feel uncomfortable.

This is how bad I am in my ED thinking right now.  I thought to myself, “Hm.  The performance is in two weeks.  I can lose ten pounds in two weeks.  No, it wouldn’t be in a healthy way, but who cares about that?”  This is my default thinking, and I don’t know how to correct it, either.

Finally, it’s the last two weeks of my mother’s visit, and for some reason, it’s grating even more than the rest put together.  Oh, I know why intellectually (the finish line is in sight!), but it still bothers me that I’m regressing.   I am starting to really chafe at some of the things she does.  For instant, the minute I get up, she is yapping away at me about what needs to be done.  She thinks I should do this or that or blah blah blah.  I need at least half an hour of silence before I can handle someone talking to me when I first get up, but she needs to talk talk talk talk talk to me the minute I step out of my bedroom.

I just want to say, “SHUT THE FUCK UP I CAN’T HANDLE YOU TALKING TO ME RIGHT AWAY!”, but I don’t.  I just grit my teeth and give her terse answers and feel myself sliiiiiide back into the person I used to be.

I don’t want to go there.  I do not want to be that person.  And yet, I feel myself stalling on what I need to do in order to move forward.  I was going to title this entry Dissatisfaction Guaranteed because that’s pretty much how I feel about myself in general.

My thoughts:  Fuck.  What the fuck have I done with my life?  Nothing.  What am I going to do with my life?  Nothing.  I am going to end up old and alone, living in the Irish Dancer’s mountain inn with thirty-two cats to keep me company.  Who the fuck is gonna want me, my freakiness, and my fucked-up baggage?  I mean, I don’t even want me, so how can I expect someone else to want me?  I am a grotesque blob.  Yes, that might be good for primordial oozing, but it’s not good for my self-image.  I want to perform, but I’m doing shit-all about it.  I want to be published, but I’m doing shit-all about it.  In fact, I’m doing shit-all nothing right now.

As y’all know, I follow national politics, and I feel pretty much useless there.  I know I have to get more involved in the local scene where I could actually make a difference, but I’ve done fuck-all about that, either.

So, I start thinking, I am a piece of shit.  Does my life really matter at all?  Yes, I’m going down that slippery slope.  I have no idea how I got there–wait, that’s a lie.  I do know how I got there.  It started with my epic fail concerning my nephews and then it just spiraled from there.  It really takes so little for the demons to set up camp and have a field day.  Even knowing that they are the ones at work here, it’s difficult for me to pull away.  It doesn’t help that I have a horrid headache and my beloved Excedrin Migraine isn’t doing its job.  I took my usual three capsules (I finally read the directions.  I’m not supposed to take more than two capsules in a twenty-four hour period, so I will forgo my second dose of three capsules), and it usually helps within fifteen minutes.  This time, no.

I’m not quite back in the abyss yet, but I’m sliding down that road.  I don’t know how to stop the slide, either.  They never taught that lesson in school.

She went to pick them up around two and brought them home around four.  We played downstairs for a bit, then they wanted to watch half of the movie they brought (Up) before playing on the computer.

But I get ahead of myself.  I was on the computer when they came (surprise, surprise), and the middle child (first boy) immediately declared that he was going to use my computer and commandeered my mouse.  I took it back from him and turned it off (wireless), but he continued to fiddle with the keyboard, and his brother followed suit.  The youngest idolizes his brother and does everything Nephew the Elder does.

This immediately flummoxed me because my niece would never have done that when she was a young kid (she’s six years older than Nephew the Elder), and I had no clue how to deal with blatant disregard for boundaries.

See, this has been a burgeoning problem.  My niece and I are close.  When she was growing up, we would spend hours making up stories about enchanted lands and such.  She would be content to have me tell her stories endlessly.  And, when she got older, she loved it best when we read together.  Then, along came the boys in rapid succession (less than two years apart), and everything blew apart.

Nephew the Elder is officiously known as the problem child.  He is the most like his father and prone to tantrums at the drop of a hat.  He is also the smartest of the three kids, and if he makes it through his teen years relatively intact, he is going to do something extraordinary.   Now, as you know, once a child is labeled the problem child, he grows into the role.  Granted, Nephew the Elder is a handful, but it doesn’t help to have him blamed for everything that goes wrong.

In comes Nephew the Younger.  Until he hit three, he was gregarious, charming, personable, etc.  He was the ray of sunshine, and it was easy to tell who was the favored boy in the house (according to my brother).  My brother would glow when talking about Nephew the Younger, and I tried to gently dissuade him from being so definitive about his sons, but to no avail.

So.  The problem is that my nephews vie for my attention, but they do so in a negative way.  They hit me.  And, they throw things at me.  I am the only one in the family they so target.  I think it’s partly because they are jealous of my relationship with my niece, and I feel guilty about that.  However, for someone with PTSD (that would be me), having to constantly be on my guard for an attack is not desirable at all.  The funny thing is that they mostly do it in front of their parents.  Their parents say nothing.

Nephew the Elder started it.  I have done the “Do not hit me” in a firm voice–to no avail.  I have done the holding him in my arms–to no avail (he kicks me).  He stopped doing it for a bit, but after Nephew the Younger was born, they both took up this sport.  They like to throw things at me while laughing gleefully if they hit me.  It’s usually a cat toy or a stuffed something or the other, but sometimes they threaten to throw something heavier.

Tonight, they didn’t throw anything at me until about five minutes before they went to bed.  Then, Nephew the Elder threw a cat fuzzy mouse at me saying it was a football (despite me telling him NOT to throw it).  He laughed and said it was a football when I said I was displeased with him.  I kept the mouse, but I was fuming.  Nephew the Younger did not throw his fuzzy mouse, so I suppose it’s a step in the right direction.

The other thing is they try to pull up my shirt to see my tattoo.  This happened the last time they were at my house, and it took half a dozen times of telling them to knock it off before they quit.  This time, it was trying to pull down my shorts.  It took my mom using her mom voice to get them to quit.

So.  Here’s the thing.  I have no fucking idea what to do.  What’s more, I have no idea why I am the one they do this to.  I feel as if I have a victim label stamped on my forehead, and it’s not pleasant.  I can feel myself getting pissed off, and I know once I start engaging with them, it’s a power struggle, and I’ve already lost.  You know what they respond to?  Authoritarianism.  My mom is very authoritative with them, and they listen to her (more often than not).  I am not an authoritarian, but I can’t do this any longer.

When I am not feeling under attack, I am able to find some enjoyment with being with them.  I’m trying to find a way to minimize the negative behavior on their part in order to increase my own desire to be with them.  But, instead, I end up feeling shitty because I am fuming, and I am thisclose to losing it.

My mom asked if I liked them.  She said they would be able to feel it if I didn’t.  I hemmed and hawed, but if I were to be honest, I would have to say, no, in general, I don’t.  And that makes me feel even shittier.  I mean, they are my flesh and blood as is my niece.  WTF is wrong with me that I don’t want to spend time with them?

I love them.  I do not particularly like the way they behave around me.  I actually have more problem with Nephew the Younger because he reminds me of my father.  Charming, charismatic, manipulative.  And, then I feel bad when I snap at Nephew the Older (like when he said I wasn’t any good at ping-pong and that he was better than I was) because I’m the fucking adult, for god’s sake.

However, when I am around them, I feel myself erecting my shield so that I am not hurt–emotionally.  They never hurt me physically because they are too little for that, but they make me incredibly edgy.

Then, there’s the movie Up.  You know, the one that garnered so much critical acclaim and consumer appreciation.  The one that adults and children alike adored.  Yeah, that one.  Well, I watched half of it with my nephews (funny note.  Their mom told them they could watch half the movie today before going on the computer.  Nephew the Elder kept asking if half the movie had gone by.  I said we didn’t have to watch half the movie before going on the computer, but he insisted we did because Mom said so), and I just could not get into it.  From the beginning, I was put off by the improbability of certain scenes (such as the Mr. F being taken to court), and then with the addition of the kid, I completely lost interest in the movie.  Yes, it’s well-drawn and well-directed and all that.  However, I kept reading about how people cried ten minutes into the movie, and I wondered what the hell was wrong with me that I didn’t shed even half a tear.  (Since this is not a review, I am trying not to give spoilers).

I kinda liked Mr. F, but I hate Russell.  Then, when Kevin and Dug bounded into the scene, it pushed me into active dislike for the movie.  The whole premise seemed contrived, and I didn’t believe the love story, and and and…yeah, I’m just defective.  I didn’t hate this movie, and I will watch the second half with the boys tomorrow, but I could have happily skipped ever seeing it.

And, this is another reason I’d be a shitty mom.  No way in hell I could watch half the crap that passes for TV/movies these days.  No way I could put the wants of my children ahead of my need to stay sane by not watching, say, Hannah Montana.  By the way, my niece made an awesome video for her birthday of her and her friends dancing and singing to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, but the Miley Cyrus version because, in her words, “The original girl can’t sing.”  Oh, no she didn’t dis Cyndi Lauper like that!

I feel like a shitty person because I struggle to enjoy my time with my nephews.  I feel shitty because I don’t make more plans with my niece.  However, I am working on the issues from my nuclear family, and dealing with my brother’s family is very similar to dealing with my own.

I hate feeling defeated, but I do.  No matter what I do, the boys just will not listen.  No, wait, that’s not true.  There is one thing.  Nephew the Elder has taken to shouting at me and demanding that I answer him.  My response is, “I don’t like when you shout at me.  I will not answer if you continue to shout at me.”  Then he asked the question in a normal tone.  I’ve done that with limited success before, so I may have to build on that.

And, to be honest, when there is just one of them, things are much better.  The two feed off on each other, much to my chagrin.

Watching them for one night just reinforces my gratefulness that I did not have kids.  I was talking to my therapist about my decision not to have kids in part because I didn’t want to continue the family legacy of spectacular dysfunction.  My therapist said that it doesn’t necessarily have to be that I would continue that pattern if I were to be a parent.  I said it wasn’t the main reason I didn’t have kids, but it did play a minor role.

Let me tell you a cute story.  When my mom first came here, she was feeding my cats food from Cub, the local supermarket.  I only feed my cats organic meat, so I asked her a few times not to feed them Cub meat.  She grumbled a bit about it, but she eventually complied.  We went to Fresh & Natural where I do my usual shopping, and when my mom saw the food I bought for my cats, she “jokingly” complained to the cashier that I had organic-food-only cats.  The cashier smiled and said, “I only feed my dog raw food because she’s allergic to everything else.”  Inside, I was snickering.  I mean, my mom thought she’d get sympathy in a co-op?

More seriously, fifteen years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to stand up to her.  She would have had her ideas of how a child should be treated, and I would have been too weak to say, “No.  Not with my kids.”  I couldn’t trust my father to be with them, but I would have been too weak to say no when my parents asked to take them for the day.

In addition, I know I have it in me to be an abusive parent.  With the nephews, I could feel my ire raising.  I had to walk away a few times so I wouldn’t snap.  When you are a parent for realz, you don’t have the luxury of saying, “Well, I only have them for twenty-four hours.”  One time my mom and I got in a huge fight, and I had to leave the house because I realized I was thisclose to hitting her.  I am tightly-controlled with my emotions–until I’m not.

Watching over my nephews is pushing other uncomfortable feelings to the surface–such as how alien I am from mainstream life or traditional life or normal life.  I mean, I know I reside in FreakTown, but it’s hard to keep coming up against examples of that and not feel somewhat battered.  My mom mentioned that I would be a good psychologist and that if I ever wanted to go enback to grad school, yadda yadda yadda.  I didn’t get defensive, and I thought, “Not now, but maybe in twenty years” (which in itself is a novelty as I never envisioned I had a future before).  I realized that in her desire for me to be happy and secure, she cannot even imagine a life like the one I have.  To her, going to grad school and being a psychologist would be a good, stable, traditional thing to do.  And, I can’t fault her, because what parent wouldn’t want her kid to be secure?  I will have more to say about that in a future entry.

Dealing with my nephews reminds me that I am not equipped at all to be a good parent.  If I ever wanted to have kids, I would have duplicated the mistakes my parents made with my childhood, and I would have ended up with kids who were as damaged as I was.  That’s a shitty realization to make.  I mean, it’s one thing for me to say, “Hey, I’m not having kids because I don’t want them.”  It’s quite another to realize just how fucked-up any kids of mine would have been.

I used to pride myself on being a good ‘crazy auntie’.  Now, I’m not even sure of that.

*H/T to Kel for the title.  Hope you don’t mind that I borrowed it and bastardized it.

Well, let’s just take that illusion and blow it the fuck up, shall we?  Remember the entry I wrote about how I couldn’t talk to my mother about my father?  When my therapist asked me which part I couldn’t say, I retorted, “Fucking any of it!”  No way I could talk to my mother about how my father ruined my childhood.  Uh uh, no how, no way, never in a million years.

Well, I did it.

Let me recount to you how it went down.

Tuesday, my mom and I had a few errands to run, then we were going to go to dinner at Taiko, a local sushi bar.  My mom had gone there the Friday before with a friend of hers (moved to a new location), and she said it was as good as ever.  So, we reach the location, and the place is deserted.  There isn’t a car in the parking lot.  The sign says they are closed for the fifth and sixth of July.  Oops.  For me, it was no big deal.  Yeah, I was disappointed, but we could go another time.  For my mother, it was A Big Deal  She started griping about how they hadn’t told her they would be closed and why would they do that?  She kept up with it as we drove until I finally said, “Mom, it’s not a big deal.  Let it go.”

I have to tell you it’s really frustrating to watch her do what I do because it reminds me of how out-of-proportion such a reaction is.  But, it also helped me see that I come by my control issues honestly.  At any rate, we ended up going to Acapulco, which is a decent Mexican chain.

We started chatting about this and that.  We got into a tiff because I will state something strongly (this time, the value of tradition), and she will listen, but not say a word.  Then, she will completely change the subject.  When I pointed out she did that, she said that she didn’t agree with me, but she didn’t know how to say it without making me mad, plus, she needed the server to give her a separate salsa dish (I put hot sauce in mine).  I said that to me, it seemed like she wasn’t interested in what I had to say.  We hashed that out a bit, and I got to see that my avoidance personality also comes from her.  She let slip that she learned from arguing with my father that it wasn’t worth it because of his terrible temper.

That led us into talking about my father, and this is where it gets surreal.  As I have written about in the past, my father was the kingpin of the family.  We had to cater to his every mood, tiptoeing around his very loud silences lest we disturb him even further.   I told her how it affected me to have to do that.  She said that her first therapist told her something she’d never thought of–my father was the outsider of the family.  I said, “Well, yes.  I knew that even when I was a kid.”

Then, my mom said, “So it made it easier for him to be angry because it was one against three.  He was actually the weak one because he could not break us apart.”  I admit, I have a terrible temper of my own (especially with the family), and I got pissed.  I said, “That doesn’t give him the right to have acted the way he did.”  She said, “Not an excuse, but an explanation.  He felt left out.”  I said, “But, Mom, he was the adult.”  Mom, “Yes, but, he worked so hard and then couldn’t be a part of the family.”  Me, “But, Mom, he was the adult.”  And, I told her that he didn’t want to be a father.  I had no memories of him attending my performances or plays or whatever.  He never said, “Minna, good job.  I’m proud of you.”  Mom:  ”He was a better father than most at that time.  He changed your diapers.  He did the dishes.”  I said, “Maybe he was a good husband to you in that way, but he was not a good father to me at all.”  And, because I was getting even more pissed off that she was defending him, I added, “He ruined my life!”  It’s the one line I wish I hadn’t said because it was so melodramatic and is a real stopping point.  However, it’s true.  Even taking away the abuse, he had a very big negative influence on my life.  I learned from him that I as a person didn’t matter.

As an aside, but related, I was talking to my mom about my frustrations with dating because it’s hard to find a man who is, quite frankly, strong enough to be with me.  She said a woman as smart as I am can be intimidating to men.  Then, she said, “You don’t have to show how smart you are all the time.”  Well, you can imagine how I reacted to that comment.  She added, “You have strong opinions which can also be intimidating.  You don’t have to show that all in the beginning.”  This was mixed in with the discussion about how she doesn’t know how to disagree with my strong opinions.

So, to recap, I should act stupid in order to get a man.  This is pretty much what my father told me twenty years ago.  I said to my mom, I have spent most of my life hiding the real me (largely because of my father, as I pointed out), and I wasn’t going to do it any more.  I mean, I can understand in certain situations like work, yes, one has to moderate one’s view points.  And, I am not going to spew my opinions on someone the first time I meet him (believe it or not, I am actually not so in-your-face in real life with people I don’t know very well).

However.  I have a brain.  I have strong opinions.  These things are not going to change any time soon.  In my intimate relationships, I do not want to have to hide these two things.  The former, well, no way I can hide the fact that I have a brain.  As for the latter, I choose not to hide that any longer.  I know a reason my mom doesn’t voice her opinions is because she’s afraid of the reaction.  She said that that was a big reason–she didn’t want to make someone mad at her (like my father).  That means she feels she doesn’t have the right to have those separate opinions, which I have felt for a long time.

If I am going to be with someone on a daily basis, I am not going to hide a large part of my personality.  First of all, it’s tiring.  Second of all, I would lose respect for a guy if I had to do that to keep his fragile ego intact.  Third, I have realized that I do best with people who have strong opinions and are willing to argue them with me.  I may not like someone knocking my opinions, but I respect that a hell of a lot more than someone who nods to my face and then feels sour about it afterwards.  Fourth, I am not a coddler.  I am not really good at doing the cooing feminine thing.  I don’t bat my eyelashes, either.  Don’t get me wrong.  I support my partner, and I have no problem telling him that he is great in many different ways.  I love many things about men, and I can be very vocally appreciative.  However, I am no longer willing to cull my own likes and dislikes for fear I might hurt a man’s feelings.

Even though I have been itching to be in a relationship lately, I know that I am fine with being single for the rest of my life.  It would be nice to be able to explore being in a relationship, but it’s not a necessity in my life.  And, I have also realized that in the past, I went into relationships from the vantage point of weaknesses.  I mean, I wanted to be with someone, and it didn’t matter whom.  Plus, I hadn’t figured out what I wanted from a relationship, so I got into relationships that reinforced the negative impressions I had of being with someone.  And, my own damn ambiguity about being in a committed relationship reared its ugly head over and over again.

In the past year or so, I have realized that I prefer to come to a relationship from a place of strength.  I know what I can and can’t compromise on, and I know what I want from a relationship.  I want someone who is strong and who can also come into the relationship from a point of strength.  There are men who think strong, intelligent, opinionated women are sexy; I just have to find one or a dozen.  I have played my mom’s role in relationships before (the placater, the one who anticipates the other’s every need, the cipher), and it didn’t feel good at all to me.

Shit.  When I digress, I do it with gusto.  Anyway, back to the convo with mom.  It was uncomfortable.  It was unnerving.  My heart was pounding in my chest.  But, neither of us died.  Neither of us checked out or got up and stormed out.  We both stayed present for the conversation, and I have to give my mom lots of credit for that because I didn’t think she could handle such a discussion.  I was telling my therapist how two years ago, there was no way I could bring up the topic (that’s when she pointed out what I said a month ago), and there was no way my mom could have dealt with it two years ago.

My mom asked if my father lived for ten more years, what would I want from him (in terms of a relationship)?  I took a deep breath and said, “I don’t want anything more than what we have right now.  A superficial, civil relationship.  He doesn’t know me or want to know me, and I don’t know him.  I don’t see that changing.”  She absorbed that and added, “If I live for fifteen more years, what do you want from me?”  I floundered on that one.  I said that I wanted a relationship with her, that it was important to me, but I wasn’t sure what that relationship would look like.  She asked me how I would deal with her being with my father.  I said, “How so?”  She said, “He’s the most important relationship in my life.”  I half-smiled, and she said, “What?  It’s true.  He’s one of the most important relationship in my life.”  I said, “You had a Freudian slip of the tongue.  You said he was the most important.”  She vehemently denied it was true.  She said my brother’s happiness and mine were the most important things to her.  I said it wasn’t true when I was younger.  She said because their relationship was so unstable then.   I pointed out that when I was a kid, she always stood up for my father.  When I used to beg her to divorce him, she would do a one-eighty on her complaining of him.  She stared at me with incomprehension and said, “Why would I have ever divorced him?”

My own mouth dropped (not really, but it felt like it) as I said, “You used to tell me all the things he did that hurt you.  That’s why!  Then, you would say you would never divorce him.  That hurt.”  My mom said divorce was never even a thought back then, and she said she probably shouldn’t have told me those things.  I said, “No, you shouldn’t have told me.”  She said, “But we were so close.”  I said, “But you are my mother.  Those are the kinds of things you tell a girlfriend or a therapist, not your child.”  She apologized, but then it was as if she dismissed it.  She didn’t want to talk about it any further.  That bothered me.  ”Oh, sorry for repeatedly crossing boundaries, but now that’s in the past.   What’s for dessert?”

Then, she asked how I would deal with my father.  She added, “Are you more angry with me or with him?”  I said it fluctuated and that it didn’t have to be mutually-exclusive.  I could be mad at both of them.  She wanted me to quantify my anger (as is her wont), but I couldn’t.  She made it clear that she wasn’t leaving my father, and she wanted to know if I would be all right with it.  I said as long as she doesn’t talk about him all the time.  That’s when she said “He’s the most important relationship in my life” remark.  I said that I was really mad at him right now (which surprises me because I had thought I’d resolved that issue) and that because I am working on my issues with him (in therapy, she asked?  Yes, said I), I cannot be neutral about him right now.

Note:  If you are going to have a painful, intense, uncomfortable conversation, it’s best to have it in public so it doesn’t get too out-of-control.  Caveat:  This only works if you’re someone who doesn’t like to make a scene in public, obviously.

This whole conversation is mind-boggling.  The weirdest part is that it was pretty much organic.  For some reason, I can’t do the same amount of hiding and dissimulating that I once did with ease.

I related this convo to my therapist in my session yesterday morning.  We marveled at how many untold family strictures are being eradicated this summer.  I don’t say no to the family–until I did.  I don’t talk about my father-until I did.  I don’t stand up for myself–until I did.  And, as I said earlier, I have to give my mom credit for being willing to go there with me.  It can’t be easy on her, even without the heavy context of sexual abuse.

You know what, though?  I am dealing with an overwhelming amount of sadness right now.  Partly, it’s mourning the past and letting go of the woman I was.  Partly, it’s a sense of how much time I’ve wasted with my severe depression and the lost years.  Beyond that, though, it’s also being sorrowful for the person I was.  She never really had a chance to live.  So, phrasing it like that makes me realize it’s like a death in a sense.  The person I am now is so different than the person I was, say, two years ago.  That woman was a mass of fear, hurt, pain, insecurity, misery, and dumb agony.  The irony is that now that I am not her any more, the pain of who she was is almost crushing me.

I am trying to be gentle with myself during this time, but many of the old insecurities are flaring up.  I have the urge to slip back into my ED thinking.  I want to be a twig, but I also want to be strong and resilient.  I feel like a freak and sometimes wish I could be normal, but I know that I would chafe in such a life.  I see all the things I still have yet to do, and I get discouraged.  I am in a place of turmoil.

I need to remember to breathe, but not deeply.  That makes me dizzy.   I need all the oxygen I can get.

Then, I said no to driving over to my brother’s, and that really loosened the flood-gates.  A few days ago, he came over with the boys (my niece wanted to stay home with her mom, her mom’s friend, and her mom’s friend’s daughter, who is one of her (my niece’s) best friends), so that’s what they did.

The biggest difference, though, is that my mom and I are having honest conversations.  I am losing my ability to dissimulate, and though I do mourn the loss, it is, overall, a good thing.

So.  Last night she was telling me about two dreams she had.  One had to do with me telling her I was getting married (go ahead and laugh.  I did–inside) to someone who was introverted, scholarly, had a stable job, and was more conservative than am I (traditional, I think she meant, not politically conservative).  She was relieved that I was marrying this guy, someone she thought of as a good man, because then I would have someone to take care of me.  Now, my mom is a Jungian, which means she thinks that most of the people in one’s dream represents oneself.  Or in the case of this dream, she thinks the marriage is actually an integration between my masculine and feminine side in search of a more perfect union.

The other dream was involved and complicated, but it had to do with her feeling there was a distance between us (true) and that my father was supporting me (false).

Then, she told me about another dream she had in which she lost the diamond to her twenty-year anniversary ring (from my father, naturally), and while she was looking for it, she found another diamond ring.  The diamond was bigger and prettier, so she thought about keeping it.  She didn’t, but she never found her diamond, either.  She asked me what I thought of the dream, and I immediately said, “Divorce Dad and marry someone else.”  We both laughed heartily, but she admitted that was her first interpretation as well.

Now, at this point, normally, we both would have backed away and just let the white elephant in the room loom between us.  This time, however, she did not let it go.  She reminded me that I had told her to divorce my father since I was a teenager.  I said that was true.  She asked if I still felt that way.  I said it’s not really about me–it’s her decision.  Then she asked the oddest question:  ”Would it make you happy if I divorced him?”  I was flummoxed.  I didn’t know what to say, but I finally told her that my happiness should not be a factor at all.  It was her decision and her decision only.

You want to know the big reason I was so noncommittal?  I mean, I actually do believe it’s her decision and whether she divorces him or not is actually tangential to my life.  However, the biggest reason I did not answer was because I was not going to be pulled into that game again.  When I was a teenager, she would tell me all the ways my father mistreated her.  Hell, I could see half of them with my eyes.  She was desperately unhappy with him, and she made sure I knew about it.  At the end of her litany, I would beg her to divorce him.  I was sure that life would be so much better with him out of the picture–and this was after the ages of molestation.   I pleaded with her, but to no avail.  She would always tell me that she couldn’t divorce him, and I would be devastated anew.

I’m not letting her do that to me again.  Plus, I don’t want to be responsible for the decision, as in, “You told me to leave him” years later if it turns out horribly.

Bear with me.

In my therapy session today, I explored more of my feelings towards my father–and my mother.  I realized that my father never wanted to be a husband or a father and that he did it because he thought it was what he was supposed to do.  My therapist asked if I truly would be fine without him in my life.  I thought about it and said, yes.  Then I amended it.  I would be fine with never seeing him again.  I can deal with talking to him on the phone twice a year or so.

Then, I realized that the trip to Taiwan would have been much better if he hadn’t been in the picture at all.  When my brother, my mother, and I get together, we work pretty well together.  Throw my father into the mix, though, and everything goes to hell.

The thing is, I think my mom is inching towards talking about him.  I have to give her credit that she is working with me to redefine our relationships; I think some of her own delusions are dissolving as well.

Anyway, when she talks about something standing between us, I want to say, “Yes–your husband.”  I haven’t yet, but I feel like we’re closer to that point.  After therapy, I went back home, picked up mom, and we went to the co-op.  In the parking lot afterwards, an older gentleman from the army flirted with my mom.  I pointed it out to her, and we got into a discussion of whether she would date a white guy if she were single.  She said she would.

So, the foundation is there.  But, as I said, I’m not going down that road again.  Quite frankly, her relationship with my father is none of my business.  It never should have been, and I really, really, don’t want to make it my business now.

Ed. Note: The prior paragraphs were written on June 23/24th.  The following paragraphs are being written now–June 26/27th.

I talked to my therapist about this.  I tried to explain how I didn’t know my father at all and how he didn’t know me.  She said lots of people didn’t know their parents and vice-versa, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t have a close relationship–as long as there was love.  I said immediately, “My father doesn’t love me.  He’s not capable of it.  I don’t love him, either.”  I told her how when I was a kid, my father never went to any of my plays or recitals (though, I admit, I might be self-selecting to make it look worse than it is), and he only went to my graduations because he was supposed to go.  He’s never read any of my fiction or showed any interest in it–or any of my writing, actually.  Hell, he wanted me to get married in a motherfucking castle, for god’s sake.  A castle!

Talking about my father with my therapist roiled me up.  I had thought I had pretty much made my peace with my father, but I realize that I haven’t.  I don’t fear him any more or hate him, but there is a quiet, seething anger that is steadily directed in his direction.  It’s not as explosive as it once was, but it’s quite unsettling.

My mom had another dream about me.  She’s been dreaming about me a lot.  And, as I noted earlier, she is commenting on how there seems to be something between us.  This is actually a huge step for her because in the past, she liked to pretend that we were BFF.

Maybe she’s realizing that every time she brings up my father, I answer tersely and never ask any follow-up questions.  In the past, I would have asked questions because I would have felt I had to, but I don’t any more.

Through it all, I have been feeling really down.  Shedding the past is necessary, but it’s not easy.  I keep thinking about how much of my life I’ve wasted and how I’m middle-aged and have fuck-all to show for my life.  All the things I coulda woulda shoulda but didn’t are eating away at me.  I know it doesn’t help to focus on the regrets, but my mind tends to latch onto the negatives and not let go.

I feel like I’m still failing because I’m not making concrete movement on my goals.  OK, the one goal of being self-sufficient.  Oh, and the other goal of being published.  I look at how far I have yet to go, and it gets me down.  I try to think of it like the Taiji solo form.  I mean, I started Taiji knowing nothing of this particular form.  There are 150 postures in the form (many repeats, but still.  There are over fifty original postures), broken up into three sections.  I felt like I learned the first section fairly quickly, and then took an ungodly amount of time with the second and third sessions.  All my own damn fault because I do not practice as I should, and I got frustrated with how slowly I was proceeding.  However, once I ‘graduated’ from the form (and I use quotes because I don’t have it all memorized), I felt so damn good that I had stuck it out.  And, when there is a new person in class and I see Julie teaching said person the beginning of the form, I realize how much I’ve actually learned.

Today, we did the whole form to music (which is just a fabulous way of doing the form).  It takes approximately twenty minutes to do the whole form.  There were maybe three or four postures near the end that I don’t get at all, but I at least know how to do the rest of the form.  The steps were incremental from week to week, but taken as a whole, they are pretty impressive.  Even if I still hate certain postures (fuck Fist Under Elbow!).

So, I try to look at my goals in the same manner.  My goals are pretty serious ones, and I can’t expect to reach them in no time at all.  I also can’t expect to go from having no job to be getting paid six figures to write crap for a national newspaper.  It takes years of ass-kissing and stripping one’s brain of any rational thought to reach that exalted position.   Still, I beat myself up for putting obstacles in my own way as I did in learning the solo form.  Why the fuck do I always do things the hard way?  I know it’s part of the coping skills I learned as a kid that no longer work, but I really wish I could just jettison them without a thought.

I am frustrated with myself.  I feel fat and bloated and ugly and slothful and lazy and just ugh in general.  I don’t know if it’s growing pains or what (maybe the fucking heat), but I really wish it would just leave me alone for a bit.  I don’t need the Greek chorus in my head bleating about how terrible I am for not getting everything done RIGHT now.  Choolie and I talked about the hamster wheel that keeps spinning in our minds.  It starts out as, “I have ten things to do.”  Then, I pick one.  However, as I’m doing the one thing, the voices say, “You stupid fucking idiot!  You still have these nine things to do!”  Then, I don’t do any of them because I am so overwhelmed by all I have to do.

Then, of course, the voices are more vicious than ever.

I started writing fiction again for the first time in a long time.  I don’t know why I don’t do the things that I enjoy more often.  I think it’s partly because I feel if I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing (work, finding work, making money to buy my house, losing a bazillion pounds, finding a mate–no, it’s not a priority, but it’s making itself one, etc.), then I shouldn’t be doing what I want to do.

I dunno.  I’m just sad and frustrated and worn out.  Same as it ever was.

I did not send my father a card today.  I did not call him.  I did not acknowledge him in any way.  I was going to last night (after I napped from midnight until four in the morning), but when I sat at my computer to send him an e-card, I just couldn’t do it.  Something inside me rebelled (again!), and I ended up not doing anything.

I thought my mom would comment today, but she didn’t.  Frankly, she’s probably scared to bring it up because of my mention in the epic letter to her of “family dysfunctions, especially when the four of us get together” as a reason that she saw me as so unhappy.   And, to be honest, I have no idea if my father even realizes it’s Father’s Day without her around to remind him.

Normally, I ignore Father’s Day.  I ignore all the treacly commercials talking about how wonderful fathers are.  I ignore all the Happy Father Day wishes on FB or whatever, and I go merrily about my way.  Sure, I either feel icky because I grudgingly sent my father an e-card or guilty because I didn’t, but other than that, the day didn’t really register in my mind one way or the other.  I am not married, and I don’t have kids, so I don’t have to grapple with Father’s Day for that reason.  I don’t even have a partner who considers himself a dad to my cats (by the way, I do not consider them my kids, though other people, including my mom, call them that), so there isn’t that bit of fun to deal with, either.

In other words, I have no reason to pay any attention to Father’s Day.  However, for some reason, it is chafing me this year.  I don’t know what it is, but every time I read something telling me how great fathers are, it  irritates the fuck out of me.

I am not going to go into the details of why I find my father less than great (plumb the archives if you don’t know and are curious).  I think, though, that it’s another way for me to feel alienated in this culture.  Let me explain.  And, yes, I’m going to take the long way round to get there, so deal with it.  On Balloon Juice, one of the never-ending fights are between the progressives and the so-called centrists over whether Obama is a god or a soulless, corporate sell-out.  There doesn’t seem to be a middle, which is too bad because I am on neither end.

Anyway, the progressives like to say that Obama hasn’t thrown any sops to the base.  I have heard this often in the past year and a half.  Obama has sold out ‘the base’.  The more I hear about the base, the more I realize what most progressives mean by ‘the base’ is middle-class white people.  Blacks’ support of Obama is consistently high.  But, they are not the base, apparently.  And, I gotta say, most of the queer folks calling Obama a do-nothing on queer issues are middle-class white men–many of whom have racial/gender/class issues of their own.  I probably will expand more on this is another entry, but for now, I just brought it up because it allows me to say what my reply was to all the people saying they were the base of the Democratic Party:  I am not the base.  I have never been the base.  I never expect to be the base.

It’s the same with Father’s Day.   I don’t expect to have a father who acts like a father, but I don’t need it rubbed in my face that I am don’t have one.   In general, I am not down with holidays–including my birthday.  They all seem so artificial to me, but none more so than Father’s Day (and, to be fair, Mother’s Day.  And Valentine’s Day).

This year, I am bitter.  I am bitter that I had a childhood pretty much wrecked by him and his issues.  I am bitter that I made the choice to be severely depressed for fifteen years rather than face up to the family dysfunction and tear down the illusion.  I am bitter that my relationship with my father warped me in such a way that all my romantic relationships since have not been in my best interest.  And, I am bitter that he broke me so thoroughly, I’m only beginning to sort out the pieces in my thirty-ninth year on earth.

All that fucking bullshit I went through, feeling that it was all my fault.  For what reason, I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter.  Everything wrong in this world was my fault.  Any time I read about a child dying, I would think, “Why wasn’t that me?  It should have been me, rather than an innocent child.”   I should be dead.  That was my mantra for thirty years of my life.  It still is on my worst days.

On this day, when we venerate fathers, I have an empty, painful spot in my heart.  I have no veneration for my father in his personal life.  As I have said before, I can respect the tireless work he’s done to make Taiwan independent and the work he’s done to help out the environment and economy of Taiwan.  I can admire that in his position as president of the Taiwanese Institute of Economic Research, he has put in policies that are truly progressive for women.  Currently, he is also an economic advisor to the Vice President of Taiwan.  He has done amazing work in his professional life.  People adore him.  They think he’s charming and funny and sooooo good-looking.  My boss at the county, an African American who only likes African-American men said to me after meeting him (with a twinkle in her eye), “Your dad is SO handsome!”

I was used to hearing that lilt when women talked about my father.  He has that charisma that makes him so damn appealing.  Even when I wasn’t sure about the details of my childhood, any talk of him in that manner made me grimace.   At the very best, he was an absentee father who had no clue how to relate with children.  At the very worst, he violated me in the most basic way possible.  For a time, I hated him with all my heart.  I never said it out loud, but it was true.  I felt a white-hot anger any time I thought of him, immediately followed by intense shame, guilt, fear, and revulsion.

This was interspersed with the depression.  I thought if I let out the feelings I had for my father, I would scorch the earth with my anger or spontaneously self-combust.   I was afraid of my anger because it consumed me any time I let even the smallest bit escape.  I have a terrible temper, and I have tried all my life to keep a lid on it.   I don’t know how to properly express anger, so I hold it in as it builds and builds and builds until it explodes all over the place.

It doesn’t help that it was verboten to show ANY anger in my family–unless it was my father doing the displaying, of course.

So.  I have stated that I no longer hate my father and I am not angry at him any longer.  The former is true, but the latter?  Not so much so, especially right now.   I don’t fear him any longer, at least not physically, because he is old and frail.  However, his power never came from his size nor his strength–it came from his rage and the strength of his convictions.  See, he was always so sure that he had been wronged and that he was the paragon of virtue.   In some cases, he was right.  He was discriminated against at his work place, which is one reason he went back to live in Taiwan.

In other ways, he was wrong.  He used to never call to say when he would be home after work.  Many times, he didn’t come home before midnight.  If my mom would ask where he’d been, he’d flip.  He didn’t think he needed to account for his actions to her–or, apparently, to my brother and me.   To this day, my mom cannot call him at work or he gets angry at her.

This is what my father taught me:  He taught me how to lie.  In small ways as well as big ones.  As to the former, he once yelled at me for telling one set of friends that he was playing tennis with the other because that, apparently, was telling the first set of friends that they were not important enough to be invited to play tennis.  I was supposed to just say that he wasn’t available.  I didn’t see the big deal about saying he was playing tennis, but I soon learned to hold my tongue about anything he did.

He taught me that my needs and wants did not matter.  When he was a child, he would often order me to put on a sweater because he felt cold.  We used to argue about it.  Even now, he thinks just because he demanded I put on a sweater, I should have jumped to it without question.   It didn’t matter if I was hot or cold–it only mattered that he was.

He taught me that the man is the head of the household, and everyone else should bow and scrape to him.  Whatever he wanted/needed/desired, he simply took.  Or, he took for granted that someone else would get it for him.   His moods were utmost important,  and the rest of us were just bit players on his stage.

He taught me that a man didn’t have to treat his wife with respect.  To be fair, he and my mother collaborated to teach me that.   He treated her like shit, and she put up with it.  She continues to put up with it, though she has insisted he’s gotten better.  As a tandem, he taught me that a woman should be whatever her man wants her to be.  Before I ever dated, he told me the way to get a boyfriend was to raise my voice an octave (I get called ’sir’ on the phone all the time), allow a guy to beat me in a sport, and let a guy fix something for me.  To my credit, I told him if that’s what it took to get a boyfriend, I didn’t want one.

He taught me that I, as an individual person, was of no interest to him.  He brought me a French doll from Taiwan when I was thirteen or fourteen, despite the fact that I never played with dolls, and I was too fucking old, even if I did.  Plus, he never went to any of my recitals or performances or readings or anything like that.  He did go to both my graduations, but he wasn’t interested in either of them.

I have no idea what my father thinks of anything for real.  I mean, I know he’s pro-independence for Taiwan, pro-green environmentally, and anti-KMT.  I know he loves his privacy and that he needs the constant reflection of other people in order for him not to disappear, but I have no idea if, say, he likes the way an apple tastes.  Actually, he doesn’t like food at all.  I know that much.  He has little interest in trying new foods.  He travels all around the world to give speeches, and he approaches each lavish dinner with all the enthusiasm of a man eating snot for his last meal.

He is empty inside, and he taught me that there is no there there.  There is no core of him–nothing that makes him substantial.  He is so invested in what others think of him in part because he has no idea what to think of himself.  He can’t remember much of his childhood.  I doubt he can remember much of my childhood (his response to me telling him my belief he abused me–”I don’t remember that happening.   You would think I would remembered if it happened.”) .  I doubt he remembers what happened six months ago.  He is curiously blank, and I have never known if there really was a man inside the mask.

For so many years, my father has dominated my life.   So much of whom I am (or was) is based on reaction to him.  In other words, I learned my lessons well.  I learned how to tiptoe around people, gauging their every emotion in order to not upset them.  I learned how to lie without blinking an eye.  I learned how to hide the real me for fear that she would be used and abused.  I learned that love was just another four-letter word, and a dangerous one at that.

I thought I had made my peace with all that; I really did.  However, this year, as I am in the midst of unlearning all the shit he taught me, I am not happy to be reminded of the father I was supposed to have.  I hate feeling like I’m a shit for not being grateful to my father for whatever it is I’m supposed to be grateful to him for.  This falls in line with the forgiveness bit that also irritated the fuck out of me.  Today, I feel obligated to feel something for my father that I do not.  I do not love my father.  I do not even like my father.  I have no warm feelings for him.  I would not choose to spend time with him.  In fact, I would choose NOT to spend time with him.  I care more about my therapist than I do my father, and that’s a really, really sad thing.

And yet, just as with the forgiveness thing, I cannot talk about this in a casual way.  When my Taiji classmate talks about family and how my family must be so proud of me for graduating the solo form, I can’t give the real reason I’m on the outs with my father.  When those women talked about forgiving their parents for the shitty things their parents did in their (the women’s) childhoods, I can’t bust out my own story about my father and why I refuse to forgive him because it’s a real party mood killer.

And on this day, I cannot send the card I really want to send.  There is no, “Happy Father’s Day, thanks for fucking me up (literally) when I was a child.”  I avoided the topic with my mother, and every time a Father’s Day commercial came on the TV or the Twins announcers started blathering about Father’s Day this or that, I held my breath, hoping that she wouldn’t bring it up, either.

In a way, it’s like Valentine’s Day.  For the most part, I can ignore VD.  Some years, though, it’s just a painful reminder to me that I don’t have someone who loves me in that way.  I have never had anyone who loved me in that way, and I seriously doubt that I ever will (no matter how much I may want it).  There is a line from a favorite movie of mine called Charlotte Sometimes that pretty much sums up how I feel in this matter (and this is how I remember it, which means it’s probably nothing like the real thing):  I’m the woman men take home to fuck–not to have as a girlfriend.  That sums up what I feel is my role in romantic relationships.   Yes, I know the day itself is made-up and arbitrary and a way to make heterosexual men feel guilty if they don’t buy their girlfriend/partner/SO/wife something really nice, but once in awhile, it just hurts.

It’s the same way with Father’s Day this year.  I know that most families have their dysfunctions and that nobody has a perfect father.  However, I also know that many people have good fathers or great fathers–something I don’t.  Over at BJ, someone posted a video showing what a great father Obama is, and it made me hurt inside.  The way he looks at his girls with such love…I never had that.  When he dances with them or hugs them or places a hand on their heads, you can feel the love he has for them (and, by the way, the way he looks at Michelle makes me envious as well).   All these stories about great fathers and missing one’s father and so on just hammer me in the gut because I have a father, and yet, I don’t.   Like I said, I had thought I had made my peace with it, but obviously, not completely.

I think the problem is that this is the time I’m unlearning all the things my father has taught me.  I’m putting away childish things in hopes of being able to stand on my own two feet as an adult.  He did a lot of damage to me when I was a child, and sometimes, I despair of ever fixing it all.  My friend, whabs, wrote a post today wondering if she was permanently broken.  I wrote a reply saying that she was not and that each step she has taken (and she’s taken leaps in the last year) has proven that she is no longer broken.

Wise words, right?  Yes.  And I meant every one of them.  To her.  To me?  Not so much.  The more I fix myself right now, the more I am aware of that needs to be fixed.  So, while I’m mourning the loss of so many years and all the coping mechanisms I had to develop that are no longer necessary, I am also starting to feel just a bit angry.  It’s not the seething rage of “I’m gonna burn down the motherfucking world” that I used to feel when I thought of my father.  It’s just a steady raw burning anger, more in the realms of, “What that fucker did wasn’t right.”  And, while it scares me to feel the anger, it also is welcome.  See, it means that I don’t have to reel out of control with the fury of a thousand burning fires.  I can feed the flames of half a dozen burning candles, nurturing my self-worth along the way.

The lessons my father taught me were not right.  No child should have to feel that her essence, her soul, her basic personhood is worthless, inconsequential, or downright wrong.  No child should have to roll up her real self into a tiny ball and hide it for safe keeping for decades.  No child should be told over and over again that her wants, needs, and desires did not matter.  No child should ever have to deal with being broken in half, almost literally.

So, on this Father’s Day, I have to acknowledge the importance of my father in shaping who I was.  Was, being the operative word.  Most of my personality, traits, and being today is a direct reflection of living with my father as my father.  In addition to giving me many of his positive traits (creative abilities, acting abilities, charisma, people skills, writing skills), he molded the worst of me as well.  Like a predator, he sensed my weaknesses and used them against me until I no longer had any confidence in myself.

When I saw him in Taiwan, I instantly reverted into old patterns, thoughts, and behaviors.  Regular readers of my blog know that I was deeply suicidal at that point.  And, with my mom here, my thoughts of suicide have increased in the last month, I must admit.  It’s not because of her, though.  We are actually forging a much better professional relationship (more on that in a separate entry).  It’s because of her obsequious nature towards my father and how much he still dominates her, even though he is halfway around the world.

And, he still dominates me when she is here.  I can feel his presence when she talks of him so glowingly.  When she rewrites history to fit her own narrative, I can feel the pressure closing in around my throat, my heart, and my gut.  As much as I have freed myself from him over the past few years, he still has an unhealthy amount of sway over me–much of it through my mother.

I am struggling to emerge from my fifteen-year depression, and I feel so damn fragile right now.  I am tearing up as I am typing this post because it hurts so fucking much.   There are forces inside of me propelling me down the road less taken in a take-no-prisoners kind of way.  The demons, as is their wont, are screaming twice as loudly as they sense they are losing control.  Everything is up in the air, and I am feeling much turmoil lately.  Today has just been another reminder of how much I’ve lost and what I will never have.