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.

Anyway, I walked into my therapist’s office and started blathering about how I’ve lost my momentum since my mom left.  After my therapist listened to me list my dissatisfaction with myself, she asked a seemingly non sequitur question.  She said, “Minna, what are you going to do after I’m gone?”  I looked blankly at her.  She said, “Not on my vacation, but after I retire.”  I stared at her, and she hastened to add, “I’m not sick or anything, but I’m a month away from 61.  I want to retire when I’m 65.  4 years is not that long.”

I admit, my first reaction was sheer panic.  I have been with her for some time, and it freaked me out to imagine not having her in my life.  But, that was her point.  I have been steadily gaining momentum in the last year and a half or so (with setbacks, of course), and I can’t afford to slide back again.

Four years ago, I was saying I would have a house by the time I was forty.  Well, I’m going to be forty in eight months, and I will not have that house.  It’s not that I couldn’t have a house by then, but it’s that I am not prepared to make that decision by then.  Am I closer to making that decision?  Definitely.  Am I there yet?  No.

Here’s the thing.  I haven’t had to be a full adult yet in my life.  I haven’t had to face the consequences of really failing.  Now, it’s time for me to put away childish things and be an adult.  And, if there is no external reason for that to happen, then I have to make it internal.

Back to my therapist’s question. After my initial panic faded a bit, I thought about it.  I said that what I got from her was clarity and a new perspective.  However, I had other people in my life who functioned in similar ways, and what’s more, I often times know ahead of time what her response will be (though it’s not as elegant in my head as it is when she says it).  We have been together so long, I know what her basic tenets are.  She is not always going to be there.  And, I tend to think, “Oh, I am going to bring this to therapy and talk about it” before making a decision.  That’s not a bad idea with big, tough, grappling issues, but it can be a way for me to avoid having to make  any decision at all on my own.

And, then I thought about that in application to the rest of my life.  I tend to say things like, “Oh, my mom is going to be here for two months.  I can’t do anything else while I deal with that.”  ”I will start looking into publishing after my mom leaves.”  What I realized in therapy is that I subconsciously had the view of putting life on hold while these episodic events happened.  Hello?!!! Life is made up of episodic events.  Duh!  And, there will always be something happening that I consider an interruption to my real life–because that’s what life is about.

Another thing we talked about was the party I attended on Saturday. I said what gracious hosts Stewart and Kendra were and that I had a good time.  However, I walked away feeling melancholy because they had a version of what I wanted.  They live in a complex of artists’ lofts, and their apartment is really neat.  They both are gainfully employed.  On the side, he is an artist and a performance artist.  She is a belly-dancer.  They have two adorable cats (I got that part), and they have each other.  Their relationship may not be traditional, but that only adds to the intrigue.   That’s what I wanted (in a general shape), and it seemed so far away.

My therapist told me she was glad I felt some melancholy because that meant that I was still in the ‘let’s get going’ phase.  Since I tend to drift toward inertia, it’s dangerous for me to let the melancholy settle in too much as I will use that as an excuse not to do anything.

Choolie and I have had several conversations about our perfectionist tendencies.  It goes something like this.  I think, “Oh, I have so much to do.  I have to do this and this and this.  I can’t do it all perfectly, so I won’t do any of it!”  Then the self-shaming and self-blaming enter the picture, and it’s a great excuse not to do anything.

I talked about this in therapy, too.  My mom and I have cobbled together a working relationship.  I have a list of jobs I am supposed to do for her, none of them editing-related, and I’ve been letting it slide because I fucking HATE that shit.  I really hate housecleaning with a passion.

On a related note, my mom has been bugging me to get my resume to her so she can disseminate it to her students who have to write papers in English–which, obviously, is not their first language.  I have been hesitant because I am not sure I want to get that much more entwined with my mother.  And yet, as I mused, it’s really actually the American way to get a job through your connections.  And, as the subject is sandplay therapy, I would at least be interested as I edited, unlike when I edit economic papers.

My therapist reframed the issue for me.  She said, “Doing editing would help you make money in a way that is not completely disagreeable, and it will help you to meet your end goal, be it renting an apartment or buying a house.”  That’s part of being an adult, in other words.  Doing things that you don’t love with an eye out for the end game.

So, here are the twin points.  On one day, I can pick an item from the list and say, “I am going to be an adult about this today.  I don’t want to do it, but I do want to earn the money that will help me pay for my utilities.”  The next day, I can pick an item and say, “This fucking sucks, man.  I hate this shit!” and do the chore anyway.  I can rebel, in other words, complete with slamming doors and listening to loud music.

I haven’t written any fiction for a few months for a variety of reasons.  One is that I feel if I don’t do the work I need to do, I shouldn’t do anything pleasurable.  The second reason is that while I love writing, I hate the process of trying to get my work published.  It’s tedious and humiliating and blah blah blah.  I would rather not sully my beautiful mind with such things, but it’s inevitable.  I have commented before that I don’t like to do the hard thing, and it’s true.  I will go out of my way to avoid the difficult parts of a task–which, of course, ends up creating more work for me in the end.

Another thing I realized–I can always quit, say, editing for my mother’s students if I decide I don’t want to do it any longer.  I can always break a lease or even walk away from a house (though I don’t necessarily advise it).  Nothing is permanent.  This is important for me to remember as I tend to get bogged down in, “I’ll be stuck here FOREVER!!!!!”

My therapist will be on vacation next week.  She informed me that she wanted me to start on this list right away and not wait for her to return because that would be two more weeks gone.

So.  Here is where you, my loyal posse, enters the picture.  Whenever you see me around, be it in person, on the nets, or wherever, I want you to say to me, “Hey, Minna, have you done one of those items on your shit list yet?” or, “Hey, Minna, how’s it going being an adult today?”  I will most likely curse you and be pissed at you, but I will take your words to heart.  As Choolie knows, my initial response to anything is, “Fuck you!”  However, I will listen to what is said and digest it later, gleaning from it what I need to know.  It’s the same with people prodding me to do what I need to do.  Initially, I resist and am resentful, but in the end, I am grateful that I have people who care enough to nudge me.

However, my therapist is right.  She is not going to be around forever, and ultimately, I am the one who has to get shit down.  I would do well to remember that.

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.

After the last fairly-positive blog entry, the demons were doubling down on their attacks.  Now, their attacks are fairly short in nature (meaning less than a week, usually), but they are more intense than ever.   I knew they would attack after the last entry, and they didn’t disappoint.  Even though I expected it, it was still exhausting.  In addition, the intertoobz-free day (well, except to check sports scores and stuff like that) was both good (giving me a much-needed break) and bad (leaving me very alone with my dark thoughts).  Still, in the end, it was a worthy endeavor and one I think I will be doing on a regular basis.

I had a Taiji session today.  It was good, even though I totally fucked up the Solo Form.   Some of the postures seemed totally foreign to me, and I was struggling not to fall asleep again.  Before the actual Taiji, though, Choolie and I chatted a bit.  We were talking about another entry of mine in which I was talking about how the demons were berating me for wasting fifteen years.  She said, “Let’s say you jumped out of an airplane at 1,000 feet above the ground and your parachute didn’t open on the way down.  Somehow, you managed not to die, but you broke every bone in your body and had internal bleeding to boot.  The doctor says you’ll live, but it’s gonna take awhile for you to mend.  You are not going to be moving for a very long time.”

I added, “And healing fucking hurts.”  She said, “And people are understanding.  If you broke a leg, people would say, ‘Oh, Minna can’t climb a mountain today because she has a broken leg.’ ”

Her point was that in our country, mental health gets short shrift.  She said what happened to me in my childhood is the emotional equivalent to falling out of the airplane and having my parachute fail.  I wasn’t wasting those years, according to her, but I was recuperating from the damage done to me.  She pointed out that I was essentially in a coma at that point.

On my good days, I can see that.  And, when I am rational, I can look back at that person with real sadness and pain because she was so broken, there was no other way for her to survive.

On my bad days, well, that’s neither here nor there.

This actually fits in with the triage point I am going to make.  Choolie is the one who gave me the triage line, and she is right.  I’m committing triage with my flaws, working on the ones that absolutely have to change in order for me to live a healthier life.  Therefore, the lesser flaws (the ones I consider flaws because as Kel rightfully pointed out in the comments of the last triage post, the things other people consider flaws but that don’t bother me are facets, not flaws) are to be tolerated because they don’t noticeably impinge on my daily life.  However, there are a few that are hindering my forward movement to the point where it’s painful.

First of all, the inertia thing.  Yes, I can see that at least part of the lost years were years I needed to mend from the trauma of my childhood/Thailand.  I can accept that at least some of those years were not completely wasted.  However, my tendency to inertia is now holding me back.  Let me rephrase, my tendency to draw inward plus my tendency to over-think things combined is hindering me.  I said I had to deal with the fact that my immediate response to anything new is, “I can’t do that!”  That part isn’t going to change, but the steps after that have to be more active.  I said to my therapist that I needed to formulate a plan (writing it down is usually the best way for me to actually stick to something) and execute it to the best of my ability.  She looked at me sternly and said, “Right now, you need to make a plan and just do it.”  I paused, wanting to protest, but she was right.  My perfectionist streak gives me a great excuse not to anything.   I have to do it perfectly on the first take, you see, or I can’t do it at all.

Bullshit.

Choolie called me a romantic cynic today (first time I’ve been called a romantic anything).  She said I look for an ideal outcome, and when it doesn’t happen, my cynicism is reinforced.  She is right in that I think it takes so little to do a right thing in a given situation, why not do that?  Being mean and hateful and evil is so much more work.  Anyway, this same principle applies to my plans in general.  I envision the ideal outcome.  Then, I think, that possibly can’t happen (my cynicism at play), then I freeze.  The times that I am able to overcome this flaw of mine are few and far between.  I either have to use a tremendous amount of will or I have to pretend that what I am doing is pretend and not for real.  I tell myself that I can stop any step of the way.  Actually, my therapist said this is a good way to make a decision because it means I am engaged at every step instead of using my usual all-or-nothing approach.

Speaking of which, that is also on my triage list.  I am an extreme kind of gal.  I like my drinks to be either boiling hot or ice cold.  Now, while this is not a problem with my choice of beverages, it is a problem when it comes to my decision making in life.  For many years, I felt if I couldn’t win a Pulitzer, an Oscar, or a Tony, there was no reason to pursue a life as a performer/writer.  I took dance lessons for twelve years (tap, jazz, and ballet).  When I couldn’t master toe shoes quickly, I quit.  I played the cello for ten years.  I was quite good at it.  I was in the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphony, or GTCYS, or Git-sees for short.  I reached the second highest orchestra my junior year in high school and realized that if I wanted to make it to the best orchestra my senior year, I would have to ratchet up my cello-practicing dramatically.  I didn’t want to do that, so I completely quit playing.  Same with softball.  When I had to make the switch to fast-pitch, I was told I could play in the outfield instead of first base as I used to play, and I quit.

In addition, I don’t do things I have no immediate talent for, like badminton.  I played it a few times, and I sucked–in part because I played tennis and ping-pong.  It was humiliating to me that I couldn’t hit the damn birdie at all, so I put down the racket and refused to play again.

My therapist actually made a good point about this a few months back.  She said since I’ve been praised so much for my brains, I think I should be able to get anything immediately.  If I can’t, then I won’t try to learn it.  In contrast, someone who is praised for her efforts will continue doing something at which she doesn’t immediately excel.  I think this is true–at least, for me.

I once said to her that I wanted to have a fabulous life, not a mundane one.  She said that the two were not mutually-exclusive.  I think she also would agree that there is something between rote, numb, daily existence on the one hand, and living a life as, say, J.K. Rowling on the other.  It’s my brain that insists I have to have this grandiose life in order to justify my existence, otherwise I should have no life at all.

Obviously, this is a hindrance to me living a meaningful life that may not be glamorous, fabulous, or glorious.  I think this is also the remnants of my parents insisting I live a life that was both extraordinary and ordinary at the same time.  I had to excel, but I also had to have all the tenets of a real life (in their eyes)–marriage, kids, church, six-figure income.  Both my parents have very accomplished careers, and I know it eats away at them that neither of their children followed in their illustrious footsteps.  In fact, I can just imagine my mom’s face when I tell her I’m actually considering bartending as a vocation.

That is one of my…not sure I would say flaw for this one, but issues, one of my issues that I still have to work out.  Obviously, I am further along than I have been in the past, but I still automatically think, “What would my mother say if she knew?”  It’s so deeply ingrained in me that I didn’t even realize it was automatic until fairly recently.  I was a freak from day one, but by god, my mom keep trying to fit me into the mold.  I’m not even sure what mold because it was a weird mixture of Taiwanese and American.  Well, to be more accurate, it was mostly Taiwanese with a dash of American only because we lived in America.  One of the reasons I’m so contrary is because I am not exactly sure as to the core of me, so I shield myself against other people (read, my mom) imposing their wills onto my being.

That’s why it’s so strange for me to actually think about what I want rather than thinking, “Oh, my mom wants me to do that, so I won’t.”  My therapist said it’s part of growing up to do something in spite of your parents thinking it’s a good idea as well as in spite of your parents thinking it’s a bad idea.  She’s right.  At some point, pure rebellion has to stop.  When I made decisions in the past (unconscious or not) in order to hurt my parents, I didn’t see that the person I was hurting most of all was me.  Trite, but so fucking true.

Another issue/flaw I need to triage is my damn fear of everything.  I know it’s a PTSD or PSTD or whatever the damn initials are thing, but it’s not very useful any more.  It’s gotten better over the years, but it’s still quite limiting.  It overwhelms me at times, despite my best attempts at controlling it.  Then, after the fear comes the self-disgust for being so fucking fearful (really quite out of proportion with any real danger).

Aside:  My father is coming back for three or four days in early September.  I am not dealing well with this news.

OK.  Back to my fears.  I will not stop feeling so intensely (not just fear, but that’s of primary concern right now) any time soon.  It’s a part of me.   What I need to do is work on accepting that feelings are just feelings.  That’s very difficult for me because my feelings are so very strong.  However, in the end, they are just feelings.  I need to learn to feel them and then let them go.

I have left the hardest one for last.  Well, the hardest two.  They are the hardest because I am most ashamed of them.  They are my self-abuse and my ED issues (and they are connected, of course).  I am going to be brutally frank now, so if anyone has these issues, be forewarned that this might trigger something.  With that said, here goes.  And, even though I said the self-abuse and the ED issues are related, I am going to separate them for now.

There are two main ways in which I harm myself.  One is cutting and two is burning.  I haven’t done the former in many years, and it’s sort of the ‘hit rock bottom’ marker for me.  If I regress to that point, then I know I am in a really bad way.  I restarted doing the latter after the flashbacks hit me, and for awhile, I was doing it fairly regularly.  I haven’t done it in months, but I started thinking about it again in the last few weeks my mom was home and right after she left.  I told myself that I would not do it before the performance because I did not want to add any new scars–I was already self-conscious about the old ones.  I have made peace with the cut scars on my left arm, but I am more ashamed/less at ease with the burn marks on my stomach.  That was actually the main reason I kept my panties on until the actual show–I didn’t want to display the burn marks.

When I seriously started getting the urge to burn, I told myself that I couldn’t do it until the performance.  Yes, it was a completely false parameter, but I know that such limits actual work for me.  After the performance passed, I thought about it, but it didn’t seem so urgent to me.  I could tell myself daily that I didn’t really want to/need to do that, and the urge has receded greatly.

I have done various minor things like punching walls and such, but I really consider those minimal in comparison to the big two.   The problem is, the release I get from cutting/burning is at times worth the pain and the scars.  Obviously, or I wouldn’t do it or consider doing it.  My first reaction to any demon talk or self-loathing is to automatically think of a way to hurt myself.  I am not proud of it, but I can’t deny it, either.  Pain is my comfort zone.  It’s what I know, and it’s familiar to me.  That’s sad and sick and twisted, I know, but again, I have to acknowledge that I am much more at ease with pain than with pleasure or even peace.

This leads me to the big one–my ED issue.  It’s really more than one issue, but for the sake of simplicity (ha!), I’m just going to call it one issue.

As I said earlier, my mom has her own issues with eating and her body.  While she was home, she reinforced every negative feeling I had about myself, especially concerning my body.  She followed my edict about not mentioning my weight, but she would say things about my health that were pretty thinly-disguised remarks aimed at my weight.  Besides, hearing her go on and on and on about the two or three pounds she gained in the two months she was here and her focus on her weight and looks spoke volumes to me.  If she was so uncomfortable with the two or three extra pounds she had, what must she think of the hundred pounds I needed to lose?

I became more unhappy with my weight.  And, instead of doing something sensible about it like exercise moderately and making my diet healthier, I started sliding back into my disordered behavior.  I know I need to see a professional about this, but as I half-joked with Choolie, I wanted to lose the hundred pounds first.  Fucked up?  Why, yes it is.  Stupid and pathetic?  That, too.  But, this has been a problem for me since I was seven.  Weight, being fat, being anorexic, being bulimic, etc.  Right now, I feel like a huge, grotesque, obese pile of goo.  I am disgusted when I look in the mirror (which is even less than usual), and I hate my body with a passion.

I reached a low point last week, and I said to myself, “This has to stop.  I cannot continue this behavior.”  And, I stopped it.  This is a good thing, but I am aware of how fragile the thread of compliance is.  It is taking a lot of energy for me not to backslide again, and I am hating the fact that I am entrenched in this again.

This whole disordered thinking has to stop.  I cannot live with this for the rest of my life; it fills me with despair to think of myself ten years from now still struggling with food and body issues.  Yet, this is the most entrenched of my issues, so uprooting it is going to take a lot of effort and time.

Eh.  That’s all I feel like writing about this.  As you can tell, this is not the upper entry like the last one was.

Ed. Note, Part II: This entry will be about my last therapy session, not about committing triage on my flaws.  I will return to that topic on a later date–or not.

When I was depressed, I didn’t think about my future because I didn’t think I had one.  As most of my regular readers know, I thought about killing myself on a daily basis back then–there was no room in my head for hope.

When I slowly and painfully started clawing my way out of depression about two years ago, I started thinking of the future.  I still wasn’t sure I had one, but I thought, “Hey.  Just maybe.”  I still had it in my head that I wouldn’t live a long life (55), but that would still give me about eighteen years of life left to live.  Plenty of time to do something.

I started thinking about getting my own place.  I wanted my own house, I thought.  The problem was, I couldn’t picture what that entailed at the time.  I knew I wanted something with enough space to keep my cats happy, that I wanted two bedrooms (one as a den), and that I wanted one full bathroom.  I love Spanish Missions, but we don’t have many of those here in MN (lots of Tudors and Ramblers (Ranches)).

In addition, my desire to move was more about just getting out of THIS house.  In other words, it was a reaction.  I wanted to get away from my parents physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Non sequitur:  My father’s sister died.  My mom emailed me to let me know.  She had cancer, and her decline was very rapid.  I didn’t know quite what to say to my mom.  I mean, I have met this woman a few times, and she loathed me.   She didn’t have one nice thing to say to me, and she always looked like she was sucking a lemon when she looked at me.  So, I don’t have warm feelings for her, and I don’t really know her.  She is my father’s favorite sister, so he’s devastated.   There are five siblings on that side, and only my father and his second oldest brother remain (my father is the youngest).  My father’s family is terrified of death, so they don’t talk about it.  Anyway, my mom told me to pray for the family (I have told her I don’t pray, but I let it go).  I didn’t know what to write, so I finally just said I was so sorry and to share my condolences with the entire family or something like that.

I felt like I should say something specifically to my father, but I didn’t know what to say.  And, to be perfectly honest, I still don’t want to talk to him.  I briefly talked to him when my mom called him from the airport as we (she, my brother, and I) were waiting for her plane.  He cajoled me to admit that I was looking forward to having my privacy and not having someone watching over my shoulder and telling me to pick up my room.  When I cautiously said, “I will enjoy the freedom”, he laughed and said, “I knew it.  I know you.”  It was strange because he got that right about me, but he was also trying to drag me into the middle of a longstanding argument between him and my mother.  I have no doubt that she nags him the same way she does me.  I did not want to get caught up in that.

But, as usual, I digress.  I felt guilty for not saying anything specifically to my father.  Honestly, though, I didn’t have anything to say to him.  And, I felt guilty for that, too.  The idea of what I should do keeps colliding with what I actually do (or don’t) want to do, and I keep thinking how horrible I am because I’m not doing anything to alleviate his grief at this time.  Yeah, I know, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling guilty.

Anyway, back to my session.  So, even when I started thinking about my future, it was in a very general way.  ”I want to have a house, to perform, and to be published.”   There were a few specific goals like start my blog, but the bigger goals were very generic.  This got me through the next year or so.

It’s only been in the last year (roughly) that I have actually started asking myself what do I really want as opposed to what I think I want or have been told I want or think I should want.  As I said in my last entry, I thought about home ownership.  I clarified in my therapy session that I don’t mind mowing and shoveling; I just have no desire to garden, weed, mulch, etc.  She said I could have a very simple lawn and not plant a garden.  I said, “What if there is all that shit there already?”   She said, “Tell the owners to take it with them.”  I said, “Or, I could give the shrubbery and plants to my friends.  They would like that.”

My brother is my real estate agent, and we’ve argued before about location and other issues such as the kitchen.  I don’t cook.  All I need is a microwave, a fridge, and a toaster oven.  My brother goes on and on about how an updated kitchen with granite countertops will cause the value of the house to go up, blah blah blah.  I told him I have no intention of moving once I buy a house, and I don’t want to spend more money on granite countertops as I will never use them.

The funniest example of this, though, is that when Kiki and I were talking about me buying a house in her neighborhood, I said I didn’t need much furniture.  I listed what I needed, and she added, “And a dining room table.”  I said, “What for?”  Kiki:   “In case you want to entertain.”  Me:  ”I don’t entertain.”  Kiki:  ”Well, in case you date someone and you want to have a nice dinner.”  Me:  ”We can eat in the living room on a coffee table.”  Kiki:  ”You can have sex on the dining room table!” (She knows me too well).  Me:  ”I can have sex on the dining room floor.”  Kiki:  ”Well, I am not eating with a plate on my lap when I come over.”  Me:  ”I’ll bring out a card table.”  Kiki:  ”I’m buying you a dining room table as a housewarming gift!”

I was flummoxed as to why a dining room table was so important, but my mom agrees with Kiki that one has to have a dining room table.  When I brought it up with my therapist, she said maybe it was Kiki’s way of saying she wanted to spend time with me in my house.  I thought about it, and it made sense.  Kiki has urged me to move into her neighborhood so we could be like Mary and Rhoda.  I rarely have people in this house for many reasons, but I would feel more comfortable having someone in my own place.  It felt kinda nice to know that Kiki wanted to spend time with me in my house.

Then, my therapist and I talked about the bartending thing.  I looked it up, and there is a school in Minneapolis.  It only requires around 20 hours, which really isn’t much of anything.  I told my therapist that it was strange because instead of talking about generalities in terms of what I want for my future, I am thinking specifically of what that future is going to look like.  As my therapist said, I am putting myself in that future and being an active participant instead of reacting or just letting things come to me.

Back to bartending.  I actually thought about the pros and cons of being a bartender.  Pros:  Flex hours, night hours, can leave whenever, casual interaction with people, getting to meet the freaks.  Cons:  Loud noise (earplugs), crowds, getting hit on by drunken guys.  I took into account my own personality (I HATE loud noises and I have a hard time standing for that long of a time.  I am good with people and draw them out.  I am a good listener.  This would give me good grist for my fiction mill) as I thought about how practical it was for me to be a bartender.

It’s a bit weird to be thinking about the future in concrete terms.  As I said, I just assumed I’d be dead by this time, so any thought as to a future seemed futile to me.  Now, when I start filtering out all the shoulds, I’m left with the wants.  What do I want/need to make my life a full one?

My whole life, I’ve struggled with the expectations of what I am supposed to do with my life.  As I have written before, I caved in when my parents talked about what a shame it would be for me to waste my education and my skills by being a server or a barista.  The only time I considered having children was during a particularly intense period of my mother hectoring me/guilting me about them.  And, I realized through an incident with my cats that had I had children ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been strong enough to stand up to my mother, and I would have let her steamroll over me in how she treated my hypothetical children.  For the most part, I respect my brother’s unspoken edict that I don’t talk about my non-religion with my niece and nephews.  However, I know that if I had kids, my family would not have afforded me the same courtesy.  They would have preached at Minna Jr., telling her that Jesus died for her sin and she would go to Hell if she didn’t believe.  I would have seethed about it, but I wouldn’t have said anything to my family, or I would have exploded and screamed–which doesn’t do anything to help the situation.

I couldn’t be who my mother wanted me to be, but I wasn’t strong enough to be my own person, either, so I ended up being nobody.

I’ve been having a really tough time since my mom left.  I’ve slid back into some bad behaviors, and I’ve had suicidal thoughts.  I whined to myself about how haaaaaard living was and how lost I felt right now.  However, after my last therapy session and in writing this blog entry, I see that I am light years ahead of where I was in my deep depression.  No matter how much the demons whisper that I’m in the same place and that I’m the same person, and no matter how convincing they sound, they are simply wrong.  Oh, they are very seductive and know my weak points so when I am in a low, low mood, they almost make perfect sense.  However, when I can pull back from their siren song, I can start deconstructing their cobweb of lies.

Five years ago, I would never have used the web to make really good friends.  Five years ago, I would never have flown out to NC to meet Kel and her family–not to mention letting her take nude photos of me.  Five years ago, I was too scared to start this blog.  Five years ago, I thought my friends only put up with me because–just because.  Five years ago, I was one of the walking dead, simply playing the part of a living person.  Five years ago, I felt–nothing.  My body was shut down, and my mind was all too active but in all the wrong ways.  Five years ago, I was frozen (not in the good way) and numb.  Five years ago, I was shrinking my world to make it as small as possible because everything terrified me.  Five years ago, I never would have said yes to Lei’s invitation of performing with her.  Hell, five years ago, I never would have been on Facebook (if it existed.  I’m not sure how long it’s been around).  Five years ago, I was doing nothing for myself spiritually.  Five years ago, I never would have went to Julie’s party and met a bunch of really awesome people.  Five years ago, I never would have commented on any blogs because I didn’t think I had anything worth saying.  Five years ago, I never would have admitted how important certain things were to me (performing, for example).  Hell, I never would have admitted how important certain people were to me.  Five years ago, I couldn’t fathom getting any cats.   Five years ago, I never would have been able to have raw conversations with my mom about my childhood.  Five years ago, I never could have told her how angry I am for what she did and didn’t do when I was younger.  Five years ago, I was ready to die without a fight.

Now, I am writing regularly, for the most part, in this blog.  I am commenting daily on various political blogs and seeing that people want to read what I write.  I have a cadre of friends who are fierce in their love–and what’s more, I can feel their love.  What’s even more, I can even sometimes see why they love me.  I can have conversations with my mom that are uncomfortable and painful, but that ultimately help forge a new path for us.  I have cats without whom I cannot imagine my life.  What’s more, I can actually see a specific future that has me in it.

Now, I’m not going to blow smoke up my ass.  One, I’m not that flexible, and two, I’m not that optimistic.  I know that I have a ton of work to do and a really long road to go.  I’m not fooling myself into thinking that all the hard shit is behind me.  However, I am trying not to let the demons insist that I haven’t done anything differently lately and that I am still the same person I was five years ago.  This clearly isn’t true; I just need to keep it in mind when they start hammering at me again–and they will.

On that note, I’m winding this up.  Night.

*Of course, this is assuming that I can actually go the whole day internet-free We shall see.

We all have flaws.  Some of us have more than others, but no one is completely free from them.  If someone claims s/he has no flaws, s/he is in denial–or utterly boring, or both.  I am one of those people with many, many, many flaws.  I am very aware of them, and I have railed against them over the years.  As I noted earlier, the fact that I’m aware of my flaws actually adds insult to injury because I can’t change them at the snap of my fingers, so what good does it do to know I have them?  It just makes me more frustrated and self-critical.  I can list roughly 125 flaws off the top of my head, and because it seems so daunting to work on all of them, I don’t work on any.  Which, is one of my flaws, come to think of it (all or nothing thinking).  However, in the last half year or so, I started to realize that all flaws are not created equal.

WTF does that mean, Minna?, I hear you asking.  And, even if I don’t, I’m going to pretend I do so I can go on with this entry.

Back in the day, I would list all my faults and get overwhelmed by how flawed I was.  I would plan how to change all these bad habits/traits/etc., and then get exactly nowhere.  The problem is, well, many-fold, as usual.  One, some of the things I thought were flaws were things in actuality that I only wanted to change because I thought I should want to change them.  For example:

I prefer my own company to the company of others.  I like my own space, and I never had the urge to live with someone.  In fact, when I’ve had roommates/housemates, I’ve chafed.  So, the idea of cohabitating with a romantic interest made my blood run cold.  Our society pushes the living-together thing to the point of mania.  For years, I thought there was something wrong with me because I had no desire to live with someone–especially since I was a woman.  It’s only recently that I have started to see that hey, there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to live with someone or wanting duplexes.  I can theoretically be in a loving relationship with someone and not have to put up with listening to his/her music on a daily basis or work on his/her schedule.  Relationships are about compromise, yes, but not wanting to be part of a unit is not necessarily an indication of dysfunction, either.

Then, of course the fact that I didn’t want children caused much concern in my youth.  And some people (yes, Mom, I’m looking at you) continued harping on it until just recently.  Now, when I made the decision, I didn’t think it was such a big deal.  I mean, it didn’t hurt, anyone, so what did it matter, right?  I quickly learned that my private decision not to have kids was fodder for debate, derision, anger, and condescension.  I had one friend inform me with certainty that of the three of us (three friends), I would be the first to have children.  She wouldn’t hear any dissent to the contrary until I brought up the race issue (she’s black and hates people telling her she should do something or like something because she’s black) and got pissed off, but I’m sure she was still convinced I would have kids.  Funny note, both she and the other friend (Kiki) have children, but I do not.

The only time I even considered having kids was once during a particularly intense period of mother-guilt over my childless state.  I thought, “I should have them to make my mom happy.”  Fortunately, I overcame that bit of insanity and never thought about it again.  I have never wanted children, and I have never doubted my decision not to have them.  But, because of what other people said, I started to think there was something wrong with me because I didn’t want them.  I read several books on childfree women back in the nineties, and most of them were focused on women who couldn’t have kids or who chose not to have kids for painful reasons rather than because they didn’t actually want them.  I didn’t know many people who didn’t want children, especially not women, so I stopped talking about it for the most part.  Now, I know several women who don’t have them, don’t want them, and are happy about it.

Then there are the flaws I have that I think I should want to change–like being a slob.  I am a complete slob.  There is a point when even I have to clean, but it takes a lot to get me to that point.  And, I know it says bad things about my character that I am a slob, so I should really change that.  But, honestly?  Just between you and me, I don’t care.  I really don’t.  I would like to, but I don’t, so it gets moved to the back of my faults to change list.

Then, there are flaws such as waiting until the last minute to finish something.  Part of the problem is that I’m smart enough to be able to pull off this shit, and I rarely get punished for it.  In the old days, I used to freak out about procrastinating (which kinda ruins the procrastination), but over the years, I’ve realized that I will get shit done, so why get too worked up over it?  I recognize that it would be better if I got things done earlier, but let’s face it, that’s not gonna happen.  And, my way of doing things actually works.  As I told my mom, give me a true deadline (when you really want it done by not the last possible moment deadline), and I’ll meet it.  I will work to the end of the deadline, but I will meet it.  So, while I recognize that my procrastinating tendencies is a flaw, I am not particularly motivated to do anything about it.

Here’s a quick list of other flaws I would like to change, but am not particularly motivated to do so.  My sarcastic nature.  Now, I don’t want to completely change it, but softening it a bit seem like it would be a good thing.  I know I can make people uncomfortable with the way I crack wise (indeed, my ex, M, used to admonish me to be nice), and I know that some of my sarcasm is a defense.  But, you know what?  For the most part, I can’t be bothered to change it.

One related to the above is the constant stream of sarcastic quips that run through my mind throughout the day.  Again, nothing really that big, but still something that could be toned down a bit.

My obsessive nature in relation to music.  If I like a song, I can listen to it several times in a row.  I don’t mean three or four–I mean twenty or more.  I know this is not a good thing, but again, its not really imperative that I change it, nor would it really affect me in any concrete way.  Of course, if I ever DID live with someone, that person might wind up killing me for this little habit of mine, but I can cross that bridge when I get to it.

My disdain for most things mainstream.  It’s isolating not to like things that most people love.   I haven’t gotten into any of the popular TV series in the last, um, ever.  I used to say it’s because of cable, but really, these days, that’s a hollow excuse at best.  Actually, it was back in the day as well.  Truth is, I don’t like most TV or movies.  While it doesn’t overly grieve me, it does contribute to the sense of alienation I feel.  A bunch of really cool people were talking about their love for Tarantino movies at Julie’s last party.  They were arguing whether Inglorious Basterds was brilliant or merely solid for Tarantino.  I hadn’t seen it; I had no desire to see it; I felt like an idiot for even thinking about how much I hated Pulp Fiction.  I really wish I could be excited about seeing a movie like Inception, but I am not.  I will probably see it at some point because I feel I should, but I have no desire to see it at all.

My contrarian nature.  If someone said the sky was blue, I would immediately ask if she were sure it wasn’t green.  And, as Choolie can attest to, in Taiji, my response more often than not is, “Fuck Taiji.”  My friends know that if they tell me something I don’t want to hear, I’m going to immediately reject it.  However, as Kiki once pointed out, I will mull it over later and then revise my opinion as necessary.  And, in general, I think questioning conventional wisdom is not a bad thing over all.  But still.  Do I have to question everything?

When I go through a list of my flaws, I realize that many fall under this category–flaws I would like to change, but won’t.  They are, for the most part, flaws that aren’t overtly harmful to me or other people.  I’ve been giving it some thought.  This category is better named, “Things I dislike about myself, but not intensely”.

The next category is, I would like to change this flaw, but it isn’t gonna happen any time soon, so I have to learn to live with it for now.  For example, it takes an extraordinary amount of effort for me to do anything, even something positive like going out with a friend.  Even if I want to do said event, I essentially have to talk myself into the event.  If I am not sure whether I will like a situation or not, I analyze the pros and cons endlessly.  Then, I analyze them some more.  Then, I agonize over what to do.  Then, I think about actually doing something.  Then, I do it.

Every single fucking time.  I hate this about me.  I would dearly love to short-circuit this procedure, but as I said in the comments of the last entry, trying to do that leads to me castigating myself for not being able to cut out any of the steps, which makes me feel even worse about myself than ever.  I was crying about this in a therapy session once because it’s very painful to me.  My therapist agreed it was sad.  Then, she said with lots of compassion, “Minna, this is the way you function for now.  It’s sad, but true.  You will just have to accept that it will take you that long to do something.”

That is so not what I wanted to hear.  I wanted her to say, “Oh, you can change it if you do this, this, and this.”  Worse, I wanted her to fix it for me.  I would say to her, half-jestingly, “Fix it!  It’s your job to fix it, to fix me!”  Of course, I know this isn’t true, but I still wanted her to wave her magic wand and make everything right.  Still, her point was valid.  It is not going to change any time soon, so I am going to have to accept that I am have to jump through all these mental hoops before actually doing something.  I have to factor in that amount of time and just deal with it.  And really, the amount of time I spend bitching at myself for having to jump through the hoops is equally aggravating.  If I can cut out the second part, then it wouldn’t be nearly as time-consuming.  A big if, but I can at least try to excise the castigation from the whole routine.

In a related item, I hate that I can find the negative of any situation, and if I can’t, I will make some up.  Like I’ve said, it’s amusing when my mom does it because I can recognize it for the absurdity it is.  When I do it, though, it makes perfect sense, of course.  Even when someone demolishes my arguments, I still cling to them bitterly as if they were beloved guns.  Oh, wait.  I’m mixing in politics–sorry.  By the way, DFL primary in MN tomorrow.  Go vote, local Dems.

I don’t like this about myself (finding all the negatives, real or perceived), but I come by it honesty.  I have said that in Kiki’s family, there is no wrong decision.  In my family, there is no right one.  No matter what you do, you’re wrong.  It’s embedded into my DNA, and it would take way too long for me to unravel it.  Therefore, I have to find a way to adapt to it.  Listening to my mom blather on and on about why this, that, or the other thing would go wrong if she did A, B, or C gave me some insight.  After all her bitching and all her shooting down of my suggestions, she still had to make a decision and follow through with it.

Really.  I know that sounds self-evident, but it’s a mini-revelation to me.  I can bitch all I want about a decision and how it’s gonna suck no matter what, but in the end, I have to make a decision.  This hearkens back to something my therapist told me when I was telling her all the things that could go wrong if I moved to SF to get my MA.  She said, “Minna, half of the things you imagine will never happen, and things will happen that you never imagine.   You gotta have faith.”  And, by faith, she meant that I had to make the decision and just deal with it.  Again, simplistic, but again, she was right.  So, I can dither all I want, then make the goddamn decision and deal with it.  So, in this category, it’s about how to minimize the effects of the flaw, not eliminate the flaw itself.

Damn it.  I am running long (surprise surprise), and I’m tired (shocker), and I haven’t even mentioned triage yet (per usual).  I’m gonna wrap this up and post, take a nap, and then see about part two.  I promise the word triage will actually appear in that post.  Though, now it does in this one, too.

Another thing that came up in my last therapy session was how the hell am I going to be self-supporting?  I talked about doing editing, which is fine.  However, I’m not sure it’s the only thing I want to be doing.  She mentioned…first, a little background.  I have a thing for bartender.  I have no idea why this is, but it’s become an inside joke with my friends.  If I mention I find someone cute in a bar, my friend will inevitably say, “The bartender!”  Anyway, my therapist and I were talking about my thought of being a barista/server ten years ago.  She said, “You should bartend.”  I thought she was half-joking, but she really wasn’t.  She said my affinity for bartenders is what made her think of it, but then it actually made sense.

My immediate thought was, “I can’t fucking do that.”  It was immediately followed by the thought, “Why not?”  I confess that my immediate reaction had to do with the reaction I imagined from my parents if I told them my decision.  However, this is something really common in families where someone wants to do something artistic for a living.  Parents are rarely supportive of these endeavors for various reasons.   My therapist pointed out that I had to reframe the issue from, “This work is beneath me (legacy from my family’s class issues)” to “This is what people in my community do to make a living.”  It’s true.  Performers, artists, musicians, and writers alike have done mundane jobs in order to have a bit more freedom to pursue their creative projects.

I couldn’t have been a server/barista ten years ago.  I could be a bartender today.  Plus, I hear the sexual shenanigans are pretty outrageous in certain bars.  I would get hit on, and I would have to deal with that.  I would get to hear people’s lives stories (I tend to elicit that from people, anyway), which I could then harvest for my fiction.  I could work nights and sleep days, which is my preferred sleep schedule, anyway.  I don’t drink much, so it wouldn’t be a temptation in that way.  I would have to deal with the noise factor, but that’s what earplugs are for.

To my amazement, by the end of the session, I was actually seriously thinking about it.  My best friend, Kiki, had mentioned the idea awhile back, semi-joking, but not really joking, either.  It has a lot of merit.

Then, today, in Taiji, Choolie showed me a variety of ways to disable an opponent.  Some were designed to maximize pain while minimizing actual damage, whereas others were designed to break a joint or kill.  There is one set of techniques, called Chin Na, that I especially like because they involve very little effort to execute (though they take practice to learn correctly) and they exert an excruciating amount of pain.  I know because Choolie did them on me (holding back, of course), and while I have a very high tolerance for pain until I actually feel it and then I’m a wimp, these were pretty effective in reaching past my pain threshold.  The thing, though, that I realized about ten minutes into Choolie demonstrating the techniques on me is that while I could have withstood more pain before tapping out, there was no reason to do so.  I mean, Choolie wasn’t giving me gold stars for the amount of pain I could bear, so why try to be so macho?  Because it’s my way of operating.  I had learned at an early age to turn off my pain receptors (or ignore them), which was good at the time, but ultimately detrimental to my health.  Now, my ability and/or willingness to ignore pain has diminished, and not with much effort on my part.  Plus, as I said, the Chin na techniques are designed to inflict a great deal of pain–so much that the only thing you can think is, “How the fuck can I stop this pain?”  And, it’s instantaneous.  To paraphrase Choolie, Chin na is about dislocating someone’s joint and then putting it back wrong.

She mixed in some Taiji, too.  She taught me a drill that is designated to break someone’s arm.  We did it really slowly because the space between PAIN but essentially OK and broken arm is very small.  If done correctly, it takes minimal effort to execute.  And, yes, I giggled when she told me the application for the posture.  For some reason, the nastier the application, the more I giggle.  She says that’s common, though, so I’m not too worried about it.  In part, it’s because I’m marveling at how easy it is to totally break a body.  It’s amazing, really.

Anyway, as we were practicing the drills, she told me that much of what she was teaching me wouldn’t be allowed in tournaments.  I asked why, and she said because she was teaching me street fighting–how to maim and/or kill.  Tournaments were strictly for style points.  Understandable, really, as it would be a major nightmare if someone got killed in a competition tournament.  But, I had no interest in doing tournaments.  When I walked into Choolie’s class a little over two years ago, I had one goal:  Learning to defend myself.  The reason I chose Taiji is because it emphasized health as well as defense; I liked the integration of the two.  Never once did I think that I would like to compete in a tournament.

Choolie also told me of a story with a black belt in karate who killed a guy in a bar fight.  The judge gave him a stiffer sentence because a black belt in karate is taught how to control himself and to hold back when necessary.  At first, I was a bit dismayed by the judge’s ruling until Julie gave me a few more details of the case.  In essence, the black belt killed someone in a situation where his life clearly wasn’t in danger.  He could have just as easily shut down the guy in other ways.  This was an anathema to me because I would never think about using Taiji just to show off or be macho or anything like that.  I wouldn’t go looking for a fight, and I certainly wouldn’t use it at any flimsy opportunity.  For me, there would be only one reason I would ever use Taiji:  Because my physical well-being was threatened, and I had no other recourse.  In other words, it would be a last resort, and it would be me or him.

I still have trouble with that realization.  I am a pacifist.  An incredibly angry pacifist, but a pacifist, nonetheless.  I am staunchly against war, and I don’t enjoy any kind of physical altercation.  OK.  I have to amend that.  Sports.  That’s my one hypocrisy, and I don’t like the ultimate fighting sports.  At any rate, I don’t like violence.  I don’t like watching it, and I certainly do not want to participate in it.  If someone was mugging me, I would give him my purse and be done with it.   In the past, I thought I was one of those, “I would let someone kill me before I harmed him” kind of people.  Two plus years of Taiji have made me realize that nothing could be further from the truth.

I have been the victim of sexual abuse twice–once as a child, and once as an adult.  Neither was a one-time incident, and both have had devastating consequences on my psyche and my being.  I am damaged in ways that may never be healed.  I will never let that happen to me again.  This is what Taiji has helped me realize.  I will kill or be killed before allowing any man to do that to me again.  And, I don’t feel guilty about it (though, true to my nature, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty).  I don’t think I could survive another attack like that again, so frankly, I would rather die in an attempt to fight it then experience that particular horror yet again.

Do you know how hard it is for me to say that I would kill someone, no matter how extreme or theoretical?  It completely changes my view of myself and the idea of who I am.  This has happened a few times in the past year or so, and it’s jolting to me each time.  Something I thought was at the core of me–isn’t.  It’s not true now, and it may never have been.  And, per my mind, I am obsessing over what it says about me that I would have no qualms about killing someone who was attacking me.

So.  This brings me back to my mojo as mentioned in the last entry.  You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?  I don’t blame you, but I didn’t forget.  I have two things to say about why I might not want to get my mojo back, one I just thought of as I was typing the last paragraph.  I’ll tell you the one I figured out earlier first.

I have absolutely no road map for my life now.  Depression made everything comfortable, predictable, and ostensibly safe (though as I noted before, being safe without the possibility of joy is just another form of hell).  I didn’t like being depressed, but I knew who I was in the frame of that context.  I have no fucking idea who I am now.  And, the things I crave, a place of my own, self-sufficiency, a performing/writing career all seem like impossible goals to meet.  It’s gonna take a lot of fucking work, and as I have stated before, I am a lazy person at heart.

I feel lost right now, and I don’t have the faith that I can do what needs to be done.  That scares the fuck out of me.  I hate trying and failing.  I know nobody likes it, but I hate it to a pathological extent.  I’m also feeling incredibly sad for the life I’ve wasted.  I’m also physically incredibly drained.

This brings me to the second reason I’m not rushing to reclaim my mojo, the one I just thought of.  My demons are back with a vengeance.  They are pulling me into the abyss again.  I am not far enough removed from the pit to be confident that I won’t get permanently thrown down there again.  I feel myself inexorably sliding in that direction, and I don’t know how to stop it.  And, this links to what I said earlier about kill or be killed.  I don’t know how to kill my demons–and I would rather die than go back to the abyss again.  I remember all-too-well what it felt like being in there.  I remember how worthless, ugly toxic, disgusting, shameful, grotesque, hideous, elephantine, stupid, and utterly pointless I felt I was.  I can still feel with complete clarity the hopelessness I experienced while in the abyss.

As an aside, my mother has similar OCD tendencies as do I.  I would watch her pretty much talk herself out of any right answer to a problem, and while I realized just how insane it is as I watched her do it, I can’t recognize the same insanity when I do it myself.  When I am in the pit, I shoot down any possible way of getting out of it.  Therefore, even if it’s only a foot or two deep, I will not pull myself out.

Right now, I am in the space where I can go either way.  The demons are dragging me to the abyss.  My loved ones are dragging me away from it.  Unfortunately, the demons have the advantage because they live inside me and were spawned by me.  They know me so intimately, and they are bringing out the heavy artillery.  My friends have told me the demons are redoubling their efforts because they know they are losing me.  While that may be true, the constant assault is having its effect on me.

I’m starting to listen to them again.  I am starting to believe them when they tell me that I am fat and ugly and worthless and better off dead.  The colors are leaching from my world again, little by little, and I hate it.  With every step forward I take, they drag me back three.  I’m finding living to be an effort again, just as it was in the lost years.  I don’t want to get out of bed even though my sleep is shittier than ever, and honestly, if I didn’t have to take care of the cats, I would have given into the impulse by now.  I am falling asleep as I drive, and I am having to put a huge effort into doing the little things.  I find that I am still retreating into my shell even after my mom left to go back to Taiwan.

My mojo is gone; I have no idea how to get it back or if I even have the will to do so.