My pain causes my soul to crumble, my heart to break and my entire self to be crushed beyond repair. I fall to the ground and clutch the dirt between my fingers, I want to dig to find something solid to grab on to. I am toppling over from agony. The pain has swept my feet out from under me like a swift breeze, and it is beating me down with its rocks of sadness. Those rocks continue to pound my body, each hit removing a part of me. I am dissolving to mere dust. I am sinking into this earth, as these rocks called flashbacks pelt me with all of their strength. Each time I remember I sink deeper, and slip further away from happiness. That dirt is swallowing me whole and no one is there to save me or pull me out of this rubble. I shall vanish without remembrance. But I don't vanish. I exist now in the "in-between" place. Half of my body buried in this dirt, stuck in this pain and hurt. The other half wanting to live and be free and know what it feels like to be lifted off of this ground, and soar. But each time I extend my arms and reach for the sky I am knocked back down. That pain wants to drag me back under Its dark covering of dirt and conceal my face and unhinge my smile. Its trying to win the battle that is my life. Sometimes I let the pain win. Some times I have no choice. The memories creep up on me like a lion crawls upon its prey. I am the prey. Today I had to let them in. Today I had to remember that little hurt child. She was hurt in the most horrible of ways. But she was not destroyed, she did not vanish, she is still inside of me, she pumps the blood through my veins. Her strength and power force me to continue this life day after day. She was stripped of her innocence, her trust, her faith, her mind, and her spirit. Every part of her was tainted  by his lies, his words, and his body that forced its self upon her. Making her do things that aren't meant for daddy's and little girls to do."This is how daddy's show their love" he says so I lay and I allow. I allow him to disgrace my body with the same manhood I was made from. I didn't know this was wrong then because it always happened. It was just...life. Daddy came to visit and unlatched my crib bars, had his way, then he latched it back and was on his way. He stole the most from me at four, this the day he decided touching wasn't enough. The day he decided I needed to understand my role as a woman. The day he ***** me. That was the day my world caved in, The day the earth stopped spinning. The sun stopped shining. There were no stars in the night sky. There was no green grass on the hill side. Or flowers in the spring time. My world ended and twisted and turned and contorted it's self into a new kind of world. A sick world, filled with tears, hurt, and pain. Filled with lies and covering things up to disguise from people who "don't understand our love". This new more complicated world was filled with burying secrets and not getting daddy in trouble. I hated that world. But I resided in it anyways because that was the address that I had. I lived there for far to long. But I no longer do. I broke down its walls with a sledge hammer. Shattering its every part like he did to my ****** body. I now run through that hillside with its green grass and I feel the sun shining down on my face, spreading its rays far and wide and enclosing me in its warmth like my mother used to. I feel the earth spin around me again. I took my world back from him and left him to rot in his, to remember what he did, and to die alone.That's what he deserves. And I...... I deserve life, I deserve love, I deserve kindness, warmth, and goodness. I want to shower in it. NO I want to bath in it I want the love to pour its self out on me and lavish  me with its treasures. I deserve to know what that feels like, to grasp it between my fingers and hold on to that and not the dirt that wants to swallow me whole.

Sitting on a small couch tonight, I feel as if I am sitting on the corner of some cosmic world.  Alone.  Completely alone.  And this particular world is not round; rather it it square.  Square because there is no circular justice.  Not unless you count being tortured and murdered as some sort of redemptive revenge.

And then I feel injustice pressing squarely behind my tired eyes.  What has happened is not just.  Nor is it fair because they have moved on and I am still here suffering.

Everyone is dead... that keeps ringing in my head.  I know that is not the precise case but in my own twisted world, everyone is, in fact, dead.

So now I sit week after week, even moment after moment, left to deal with their abuse, their hatred, their woundings, and their deaths.  Then there are my scars, my memories, my terrors, and all the collateral damage that comes with being a member of this family.  Theirs and Mine: two separate and fancy walk-in closets full of skeletons and ghosts tucked away in every nook and custom built drawer specifically designed for keeping the best and most wrenching secrets.  What an inheritance.

I feel that I am on the hook for the lion's share of the damage.  This hurts deeply; deeper than I ever imagined.  This surprises me.  What a dysfunctional mess...this family that is mine.

Alone. Completely Alone.

I get lost.  In my own head.  

According to my husband, I have been alarmingly quiet lately.  I don't mean to.  Really.  It just happens.

After a screaming match culminating with said husband telling me to get the **** out of my head; I told him that I am lost in the darkness of my past.

I have wounds that never heal just right. My past sneaks up on me when I least expect it too. It is forever mocking me and making me realize that I will never escape it.

Nobody really knows me.
Nobody really understands me.

I am lost and alone.

And that makes me weird and quiet.

I have nothing audible to say.  My voice is locked inside my thoughts, my hurts, my scars.  I hurt but how does one verbalize horror?  Horror in the movies is simply expressed in screams both silent and audible, twisted faces, running, backing into a corner, all until one is consumed completely by the evil.

To say that I am scared is an insult.  I am terrified.  I am haunted.  I live in horror.  I have joked before about what kind of writer I could be and I always conclude that I would be one hell of a horror author.  I love Stephen King yet the horror of his books is sometimes pale in comparison to my past. However, when I can, I have to wonder what happened to him?  Horror does not come naturally to most human minds.

I am struggling at this moment.  My past combined with the present has sent me reeling.  It is horror in black and white.  Black and white that is vivid color in my memory because it is my life.  These silent times are when depression grows taller and wraps its dense, dark grip around my mind, my body, my eyes.  The darkness is in the corner of my eyes, just out of sight, no matter where I look.

I paint a smile on and talk to people all day long.  But in those same dark corners on my eyes I have to wonder what if they only knew.  And if they did know would they be as lost as me?

Nobody really knows me.
Nobody really understands me.

I am lost and alone.

Why do I continue to try to fight a losing battle?

DT told me that he won’t ‘abandon’ me…he said that continuing therapy is my decision …but I often think that I’m way too demanding and unfair and I should ‘abandon’ him – so he can finally have relief from the border. He really is a nice caring person – I truly believe that – and he doesn’t deserve all the horrible **** I project onto him. He doesn’t. I do believe that he ******* up with the whole email/trust thing – but we all ***** up, right? Still, even with that, I’m like a walking time bomb and I have land mines hidden all over the place and he walks carefully because he never knows when he’s going to step on one.

I’m just so tired and frustrated. I feel like I’m in quicksand. My body aches so bad…my head always hurts, I constantly vacillate between sad/lonely girl, 5 year old, PAG…CONSTANTLY! I feel like I’m walking through a haunted house…I can turn a corner and something horrible can be there that will send me reeling – and then I’m terrified, curled up in a corner, wrapped in a blanket, trying to hide. And I can’t stop it. I can’t just throw it in a box and shut the lid. IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY! I can’t ‘ignore’ my body when it hurts, I can’t ignore the voices, I can’t stop “feeling”…IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

But DT doesn’t deserve it…no one does. I am way more trouble than I’m worth. It’s taking too long. I’m so tired and such a burden to everyone. Nothing works – there’s no “self-soothing” machine anywhere hidden away behind my heart, or deep inside my ****** up brain.
This whole process ***** BIG TIME! AND I’M TIRED AND I DON’T WANT TO DO IT ANYMORE! And I am such a selfish unfair ***** to DT. He doesn’t deserve my ‘wrath’. But I still get so angry at him and I CAN’T DO IT!

I only see one way out of this. And I know that DT needs the ‘relief’ just as much as I do. The whiny 5 year old will continue to ‘demand’ DT’s help and comfort…and DT doesn’t have the time, or desire, to deal with her anymore. I don’t blame him, truly, 5 year old is unbearable. But the fact remains that there is only 1 way to get her to shut up…only 1 way to provide relief and peace to DT and to me.

Dear Tears,

How very sorry I am for what you have lived with.  You and I have not spent much time together.  I avoid you because I despise crying.  You avoid me because we are not supposed to cry.

So other than objectives, we have not known much about one another.  Sure, I've squeezed out a few tears here and there; but a sob?  Not really.  And those times that I have needed to cry, you stood by and fought a deluge at much cost to yourself.

Over the past few days I have cried.  And when I say cry, I mean real and bitter tears.  Tears stockpiled over years of pain.  Tears we both did not believe to exist.  As this happened I watched you through my blurry eyes, shaking in a corner.  You were waiting for him and he did not come.  We were both surprised.

No one hit us until we stopped crying.  No one ****** us until there were no more tears to cry.  Not once was the blood running faster than the tears.  In fact, there was no blood at all.  

Each tear, it did hurt.  Like crying razor blades.  But it was a healing kind of hurt.  To borrow a thought... it hurts a lot less to rip a band-aid off quickly than slowly.  Or not at all.  So I sit in my car and cry while I peel the neglected, crusty bandages of abuse away.  I do this while I worry about keeping you safe.  It's a role reversal of sorts.

Watching you with intent, I see that you are small.  You are a skinny  girl who is young, about five.  And now I am not seeing you through the haze of my own pain.   Without the need to dodge his fists, I see that you have glasses and black hair.  Your glasses are broken and behind the cracks you have no eyes.  No eyes that cry no tears.

No wonder.  

I can cry your tears now.  And it's OK if you never shed one of your own; that is not your job.   It's mine now and you know, tears are not that bad.

And neither are you.  So go and rest.

Today as I spend time in my head and I am considering the "how" of things. How I want a fresh start...a better year....better relationships.

A fresh start... a better year... putting to bed a bad year... this year will be better.

I have never had a "better" anything. Maybe that is being too harsh. I don't see things as better or fresh...at least not where or when I an concerned.

A fresh start is a foreign body to me.  To do that would be to erase the memories, the scars, the voices in my head, the shadow people in the corners of nearly every room I enter.  All are impossible.  Especially when there are many, many memories below the frozen surface of my mind.  Frozen in time; so cold that it hurts.  

A perpetual brain freeze.  I wish for just one day without this pain.

No fresh start for me.  What I can do though, is obsess over the how of my life.  I have pretty much given up on the why.  There is just no good answer there; at least not at this point.

How doesn't have to do with other people.  It has to do with me.  How the **** did I survive?

There are a lot of awful childhood verses sung; a dysfunctional family, a leering dad, secrets and more secrets, an angry mother.  Each verse different yet fraught with painful similarities and fragile coping.  

And then there is me.  And others like myself.  I am shattered and still standing yet I have no idea how I got here or how I figured out that this was a life worth surviving.  

How did I not give up?

How did I put one aching foot in front of the other, day after day?  Night after night?  

How did I barely sit down at breakfast each morning believing that our dance in the dark was a household brand?

How did he know just how far to go?  Close enough to fearful pleasure.  Far enough from impersonal death.  

It is a precarious how.

I didn't have a lot of choices growing up.
Not unless you count the way I wanted him.  

Painful or excruciating.

I didn't have much power either.  
No amount of prayers, wishing, hoping, begging would change his mind.  

Not to say that I didn't try though.

I have a difficult time conveying just how strong my memories and flashbacks are.  I appear calm and collected to the passerby.  I have to.  But peer into my soul and you will see the claw marks of my pain. Scraping their way down into a collective pool of boundless grief and torment log jammed by the planks of fear and shame.

I long to turn myself inside out and bare my rotting scars.  To have someone besides myself witness what bubbles to the surface just long enough to be squelched again.  Power and a choice.  That is what I beg to find within those murky waters.

A choice to change.  
A choice to pull the planks and let the stagnant flow.

The power to persevere.  
The power to put them in their rightful place.  
Forever.

You could call me shattered. I'm a wife, mother, misplaced daughter, confused religious person, and an abuse survivor. My life has been painful and hell, my life is still painful; probably more so now than ever before. I'm learning to feel and it is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life, next to surviving.

I'm a funny person but it's a dark, wicked kind of funny. I find humor in odd things, in my misfortunes, in my struggles, and in how others relate to me. Despite the humor I find, I deal with, at times, crippling depression. "Fine" is my response to any question of how I'm feeling. It's a lie and I have to change that. I envy the person who can answer my question of "how are you?" with honesty. They are honest because they know how they feel and they know the corresponding words. I'm weird, I assign numbers to my feelings and seek to keep a total perfect number which equals "fine". That means that I have to discount, or subtract, certain feelings to maintain the number "fine". I've learned that this is a bad habit; detrimental to my physical and emotional health. It is soul killing.

Fine is no longer an option.  Somewhere along the way, I dismantled the ability to feel and secretly I know why.

So there you have it. Much like a toddler's emotional outbursts, I'm raw and extreme. I may not outwardly express this but on the inside I'm stewing and boiling at a blistering pace. Makes keeping track of my feeling numbers very difficult these days. On the outside, I'm a perfectionist and everything has it's place. It's all or nothing; black and white with me. I'm literal and it drives my husband nuts at times. I'm scared to let what I have on the inside spill out. It's toxic and I love those around me too much to let them get burned. But the very things I'm scared of the most, those feelings both good and bad, are what keeps me from embracing those same people that I love.

At this point, you're probably saying "good grief, this girl needs a therapist". I have one. A good one. I've have had one for nearly 8 years. Thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours later, here's where I'm at. Not impressed? You should be. I was a blob of flesh when I randomly picked a therapist off my insurance list and wandered into his office for the first time. I was a complete wreck. I really am better if you use that term loosely. I encourage you to do that because "better" is different for everyone.

I find myself tangled in the lump of my throat.  
Trapped somewhere between my mind of logic and my twisted and aching heart I am dizzy with conflict.  
I am worth something.  
I am worth nothing.  
I am worth more than words can offer.

That familiar lump squeezes and twists my weary emotions as I grasp for a momentary breath of logic.
A thought that reassures what kindness says; an understanding that I am so much more than what he said.  
But in that moment his words, his actions; they come crashing down on me as the lump threatens to engulf me.

Pain and bitter bile wash over me
The choices seem so non-existent.  
Why else would his hatred spiral?  
Why else would a child so young bear such deep and burdened scars?

It must be because I am worth so little.

The secrets that we shared.  
The secrets that I keep.  
These are the fuel to ignite a burning lump of torture.  
I struggle to move on
I struggle to let go while the lump clutches its tiny treasure.  
How do I feel my worth when all I feel is the pain wiping away even the smallest doubt that he might have been wrong?

I want to breathe.  
I want to feel the full capacity of worth expand until that lump of disbelief is pushed aside for good.  

I want to exhale until I know that he was wrong.

Hope is an oddity to me.  It is a double-edged sword.  Just enough keeps one going.  Too much can leave one in despair.

Throughout my life I have struggled to sustain a suitable balance between hope and despair.  The two seem to be interrelated for me.

There were days, even moments, where I had hope that my life would improve.  I saw a way out, I found someone who seemed to care for me, I made it through an entire night unharmed...  These things gave me hope.  I was hopeful.

Then there were other days, even moments, where I was filled with despair. My hope was lost.  My heart was sick.  There was no way out, everywhere I turned I was met with hatred or disbelief, I was torn apart at night only to be met with "nothing happened" in the morning...  These things destroyed my hope.  I was hopeless.

My inner struggle between hope and despair kept me alive.  I firmly believe this.  This same struggle keeps me alive, even today.  Too many times I have thought that there was no way out so I surrendered myself to dying.  But over and over hope has surfaced.  

So I fought.  Sometimes I fought against hope.  Sometimes I fought for it.  It was a sickening cycle.  Some days, even now, it is with a sick heart that I press forward.

Today it is with a sick heart that I write.  The enormity of my past is weighing down upon me.  Normalcy seems to be nothing more than a fleeting hope. One step forward, two steps back.  Hope and then despair.  My head is screaming once again.  It seems that everyone want their say.  Everyone wants to be heard.  I am one and they are many.  Today is a day where I am screaming at them to shut the **** up yet no one hears me.  They drown me out and I feel powerless.

Today he is in every corner, no matter where I turn.  He is smiling, licking his lips, and he is laughing at me.  I tell myself that things are different now; things are better.  He laughs harder.  Despair is setting in and I am feeling myself surrender while keeping one eye slightly open on the off chance that hope is in another corner that I just can't see yet.

Today is despair with a sick heart.  Perhaps tomorrow is hope paired with desire.  One can always hope...

I hate myself. That's the short of it. I have struggled with this as long as I can remember. In talking with DT this week, he reminded me of some of the reasons that I am a good person. I hear it, my brain processes the words, my heart wants to believe it, but then the familiar words of "if he only knew" creep in and consume any hopes of believing it is true. Sad thing is, he does know. He knows more about me than any other person... he knows the nitty gritty details, the good, the bad and the dark & ugly. So if someone who does "know" can still find the good in me, then why the hell can't I believe it?

It's frustrating. I don't enjoy walking around feeling like this. Shame is my cloak and hatred follows me wherever I go. I envy the people who have good self-esteem because I am not one of those people. My husband is one of those who just looks comfortable in his own skin. My skin is too tight. So I cut.

I was taught to cut. By someone close to me who was hurting me. It is almost as if it was their calculated attempt to hide my feelings from the world and show me how to turn them inward. The sad thing is, cutting as I was taught did ease my feelings of guilt, shame, anger, etc. It was my release and my best means of controlling my feelings. A simple cut was a distraction to the larger pain. I believe this is where my self-destructive behavior took root.

Over the years my self-destruction has taken many forms. Alcohol, drugs, more cutting, binge eating, not eating, and pushing everyone away who even attempted to love or care for me. "I will make them leave before they can decide on their own to leave me", that was my constant thought. I've always thought it to be better anyways because anyone who got to know me surely would be repulsed by my secrets. I work hard to ruin my own success because I'm terrified of the good happening in my life. Good means that it can turn to bad. However, it sure is a lot of work to live my life like this and from the outside looking in, it must look strange to watch me ruin the good things going for me. I know my husband sees it as strange; a frequent argument between us is my resistance to let him love me. He knows me, maybe not all the dark and sordid details but he still knows me. And even then, I still resist the good that is him in my life.

All this leads me back to the silent treatment. I ignore my own feelings, thoughts, emotions, and dreams. In a sense, I give myself the silent treatment. And in return, that pain created by the silence, leaks out as self-destruction and hatred. When the good comes in my life I embrace it for a time and actually attempt to feel. But then, like clockwork, I shut down and the silence begins. An internal temper-tantrum eventually ensues, screaming to get my attention only to be met with more silence until I can no longer ignore it. By then I am so out of control that I resort to self-destruction which temporarily cures the larger pain in my life.

In writing this, I can see that I'm actually quite predictable. No wonder people close to me are maddened to watch this process happen time and time again. So here goes, I'm going to start listening to myself and hearing them out instead of screaming back to shut up. Hearing myself has to be easier in the long term than continuing to make a mess out of my life through self-destruction because now, for the first time, my own destruction is hurting those around me who love me and that is something I cannot continue to do.

I have been doing a lot of work with my feelings lately.  I have avoided them for most of my life because, well the bad ones outweigh the good ones.  

The rest of them were f@#ked or beaten out of me.

I have always believed that my feelings only led to trouble and pain.  A simple feeling stated as a child sent me tumbling down a rabbit hole of horrific pain.  An innocent smile was interpreted to be nothing but filthy desire.  A frown was nothing but blatant rebellion that had to be dealt with.

My thinking is extremely black and white.  Good or bad.  Right or wrong.  But what I'm learning is that feelings don't fall easily into any of those categories.  The classifications that I have used to reason my life into some semblance of order do not work for feelings.

So walking in this grey area is very difficult for me.  I cannot make much sense of what I allow myself to feel and if I do, I get stuck.  The detachment I have felt to my memories is slowly being bridged by the missing feelings.  And that is terrifying.

I have always been able to share, matter of factly, the details I have chosen to disclose.  And I'm very afraid that those details were the easy ones; the ones I could disconnect from and push the feelings onto someone else.

Remember those rabbit holes?  When I find the feelings associated with that pain it's like falling down that hole bound, gagged, and blindfolded.  My logic was my only means of control and I've lost it amongst the feelings.  The only way to climb out of that hole?  

Literally feel my way out.

I am tired.  I live in a perpetual state of sleep deprivation.

get more sleep... that's the recommendation.  

Sure.  No problem.  As if I enjoy defying sleep patterns.  I don't stay up all night having a party by myself.  I stay awake because it's terrifying to sleep.

I close my eyes.  I feel my head on the pillow; my hands touch the sheets.  It's dark and my heart starts to pound.  The bed begins to spin.  My head screams and my chest aches as I wait.  Wait for nothing.  I am waiting for a man who lives on so vividly in my mind.  Wait for the night where he does not appear.

I know that a few hours a night isn't good.  It's also not good to sleep in the corner on the floor.  I do both with freakish mastery.  

I go through periods of time where I can tolerate sleeping in a bed.  But I can't stomach it right now.  My anxiety is racing. Corners are safe.  And the floor isn't a bed.

Bad things happen on beds.

After a few hours of hard fought sleep... I am awake as he approaches in the dark.  I stand and slip out of the room. I turn on the lights as the man begins to fade.  He wishes me good night and with a wink he tells me he will see me soon.

I clean.  I read.  I write.  I draw.  I make coffee and pretend that I haven't been up all night.  The early light melts the terror as dreadful relief lets me know another night has passed with a new day on the brink.

My eyes are clouding with that familiar ache.  A dark periphery is depression's single warning.  I fight to keep my eyes open; to keep my vision clear.  But heavy eyelids pull the sadness in as I contemplate... **Sleep.

Break. Brake. Stop. I need a break; need to apply the emergency brake. I need to stop. I would not say that I am a person easily overwhelmed because I can truly say that I juggle many items/issues/people/jobs everyday. But sometimes I do get overwhelmed and it is ugly when that happens. It is something of a breakdown; or brakedown. Either way, life comes to a screeching halt.

I always resurface but I cannot really say that I am refreshed. I ran hard in the other direction but here I am, in the same place, still being forced to face all the voices that tell me that I am not good enough, undeserving, ill-fitting...

I struggle with wanting to fix what is broken and cleaning up messes that I have no business even touching. In this process, I lose myself. I do not take care of myself and then, before I know it, the brake is being pulled and I am caught in some sort of mental purgatory. It is a tough place to be but it does motivate me to press forward because I sure as hell know that stopped is not where I want to be.

So, I am back. I cannot say that I am new and improved but I am more determined to heal and become a version of myself that I can be proud of.

There is so much to say – emotions flow through me, coursing through my veins, reminding me of past hurt, of someone I do not want to be. Pain, hurt, anger, sadness…cycle through me...each coming around again and again.
I allowed myself to try on all of these emotions and feelings and I did it without self-destructing. I don’t want to find myself at the end unable to communicate, leaving so much unsaid. I don’t want to feel hideously ugly inside and out. I can’t do everything right now, but I can do something.

I feel like my insides have been completely ravaged and wasted of any good feelings and the desire to just give up and never come out of hiding again is strong. I am not in a good place right now. I am too tired to battle the demons in my head. I am broken! Broken! And broken NitaAnn cannot deal with the constant headaches and nausea. She cannot handle the chronic pain with no relief.

                                                     **She is broken.
                                                       Shattered.

You know how you have one of those days at work where time is crawling by and you want nothing more than for the day to be over and it feels excruciating? But then you put your nose to the grindstone and just slug it out. And you do not stop until the end of the day.

That is how I feel today, only I have different work to do. And the work I have to do is like that project you put off because you just do not want to do it. It is that file you put on the bottom of everything and just hope it will resolve itself. But you know it will not. Every day you pick up that file thinking today may be the day you will get started. But you do not. You have questions about some of the material in the file, you are not sure what to do, and you are unable to complete the project because there is nobody around to answer your questions. You have left several messages for her, the woman who was supposed to answer your questions, but she has not called you back. And now you are angry because you need guidance! You need her help you, you cannot do it on your own! But it has been too long now. She is not going to call you back...she is not going to give you the directions you need to complete this project. You know that you are on your own now.

That is how I feel right now. The file before me is filled with my life, my past, and my painful memories. It contains my feelings of shame, sadness, anger…hopelessness and worthlessness. The project is to take each page and fit it together like a puzzle…and once the puzzle is together, the project will be complete and I will be whole.

                                      But I do not know where to start.
                                                           I am lost.
                                     I feel like a ship without a rudder.
                                       A sailboat without a spinnaker.
                                       I am a tourist without a guide.
                  I am a lost child without her mother... alone and frightened.
                            I am crying…but she can no longer hear me.

Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is ask for help. I need help…gawd…I need help. And I desperately want to throw up my arms and have someone to make all of the decisions for me. I feel like I have lost so much already. I want someone to save me because I cannot save myself. Which sounds ridiculous and obviously is not possible since I am an adult and have to save myself.

The past few weeks, heck be honest this whole year has been dreadful. I am so depressed and dissociative that I barely know what to do with myself, on the rare occasions when I am myself. I am just drifting...

There is not much anyone can do for me. This morning when I become conscious of just how bad it had been last night I realized I should probably make a safety plan. And so I did. I reached out to a friend of mine and asked her to check on me at night. And that if I did not respond to wait 15 minutes and try again – and then if no response…well, that is where I get lost. Then what? Call DT? Call 911? Then what? I do not want to go to the hospital.

And I did not even call DT to tell him just how bad it is right now. Cause right now, at least in my crazy brain….he does not care, or will tell me to call someone else, or “grow up”…or anything of the sort – it will surely make things worse now….so I did not call him. Bad decision? Maybe – but I am famous for those lately.

I want to write….however I do not want to worry people who care about me. I know I have people who love me, who care about me greatly…and I love them in return. I do not know what is wrong with me – why cannot I FEEL it? Why is it not enough?  I surely do not know.  All I do know is that I am filled with depression and thoughts of death are being knocked around my head like a game of pool.  I am just waiting for the 8-ball to hit the corner pocket...and that will be it.

Where is the anchor that is supposed to tie me to this world?

I have been unable to cope at night the past couple of weeks. Unable to do anything that resembles healthy.  I am angry and lashing out at everyone I love. The little girl whines and cries; then ****** angry girl lashes out because she cannot take the crying. Then the unfeeling/super independent one screams that she needs NO ONE, and we would all be better off if everyone would just go away! For good!

The torture at night is often unbearable. The little girl cries because it hurts so bad, physically hurts, and it is agonizing and beyond painful. And the terror is real to her and is happening all over again. The apprehension of waiting in the dark, alone and scared...part of her praying he will not come and another part of her wishing he would just hurry up and get it over with so she can go to sleep and escape. Why prolong the inevitable. It is going to happen, so just get it over with! Just do it already!

                                       What does that mean?
  Does that mean she is bad because she was wishing he would do it?
                        Does that mean she wanted him to do it?

And now she is crying. We all hear her. She is scared. Get it over with already! Just do it! It is going to happen so just do it now! She will not stop until someone hurts her. Because that is how it has always been. She cannot fall asleep until it is 'over with'.

So ****** angry girl hates everyone because for awhile she felt safe, and the little girl was safe and promises were made that nobody would hurt her anymore. So why is she hurting now? Nobody can keep her safe anymore. And she does let him hurt her. After promises were made and the little girl believed. Nobody keeps their promises.

I try to tell myself it will be okay. I try to rationalize all the different feelings. I try to get all of these girls to work together as a team, rather than the constant fighting and struggling. But I am not currently strong enough.

                 I am as far from okay as the Earth is from the Sun.

Today I feel defeated. I feel like a small fish in the big ocean. Everything I do fails and at the moment my head is going full speed with "pictures" from my past. I call them pictures because that is what it looks like in my head. Like a slideshow. I think these pictures are eating me alive. It feels like there's a hole where my heart is supposed to be.

When I close my eyes I see darkness. A dark room. In this room is a crib, and in that crib there I lay. The crib bars surround me. I am crying. I cry because I am hungry or because I'm wet or lonely or maybe because I want my mother. I cry for all of the millions of reasons that babies cry. Until my door opens and the sound of his boots walking closer and closer to my crib gives me something else to cry about.

When I was born darkness cast its shadows over me. The devil himself kissed me on the cheek. That devil was my father.

I do not know how old I was the night that my father left my room but I know I was younger then two. This is the first memory I have of my life. I also remember his smell and his hands and that when he left I felt broken, hurt,shattered, exposed and confused. I do not know what he did to me exactly. This I cannot see. Maybe I am not ready to see it. But I know this incident changed who I was supposed to become.

This makes me angry! That my father the one who was supposed to love and guide me through life is the one who could hurt me in this way. When I see other girls with their dads, girls who complain about how "daddy won't give me money" or "my dad is so annoying" It literally makes me sick to my stomach. They have no idea what they have. I grew up with a dad who had two faces. He was charming and handsome and loving and made me want to be his daughter. Then night came and he was evil. Thinking of nighttime daddy makes my skin crawl. He played his game well and everyone was fooled. I was just a tiny bug caught in his web of lies. Only now 40 years old can I start to realize that what he did was wrong and was not my fault.

How could he look at me a small child and see anything ******? Babies are warmness, smiles, laughs, and play. What kind of person would want to destroy that? I guess no one can ever answer these questions for me. I have to accept this. Anyways explanations will not solve or fix what has already been done. Nothing will. I am a victim of ******. THERE I SAID IT. Acknowledging it makes it real. But that does not heal me. I am a broken bird with tattered wings.

How do I fix my heart with these huge gaping holes in it? Do I pretend I am okay and patch them up with fake smiles and laughter? What if the patches fall off and I am left feeling defeated again? Do I spend thousands of dollars talking to therapists about all of my many problems hoping that 10 years later I will somehow be "normal" whatever that is? I will go with the first option for now. Pretending I'm fine and putting a smile on my face. If I smile I seem happy and then no one will know the pain inside me. Some know what happened but think I am "healed" so they do not ask questions and smiles do not lie right?

Sometimes I wish that someone would see past it and try to save me. Take me into their arms and let me cry and give me what I crave so much. Human contact. The right kind of contact that reassures and tells you your safe and loved. I feel alone and without purpose. What I know is today I feel defeated. Today I feel alone. Today I remember things that I did not remember yesterday. Today I have flashbacks where I feel like a little girl again. Where I feel like his hands are rolling over my body now. His eyes creeping up on me now. But it is not happening now. It is not real. This is what happens today. Tomorrow will be different. Tomorrow will be better.

I am trying to heal. I am trying to move on. This is a slow moving hard process.

I do not know what is happening to me right now… I have been having perverse and warped physical reactions to the flashbacks that are spilling out of me.  I feel like I am suffocating…I cannot swallow… I cannot breathe - I am too drained to fight it.

Still convinced I have to do it on my own I stumbled around the house. I walked around the kitchen, talking myself through each step, picking things up and telling myself what I was holding and seeing…this is my house, this is my kitchen, this is my desk, this is an envelope with my name on it…my phone bill – I am an adult, I am a wife, a mother, a friend…How crazy does that sound? I had to talk out loud to keep him away from hurting me again.

I do not remember what happened after that – a couple of hours later I woke up on my bedroom floor. A complete mess.  
What am I so scared of? Why can I not snap out of it???

It is all so warped and cruel. Experiences like ****** abuse and **** do more than just bump into us in the night…they critically wound us, sometimes fatally. Every single ounce of our being is ripped to shreds, our souls shattered. And we are left to pick up the pieces of what never should have been ~ angry…hurt…sad…hopeless…traumatized…full of shame and unable to trust anyone enough to talk about it.

Does anyone who has not been there really understand how traumatic and painful it is to hold all of this inside because of the fear of being told to ‘get over it’, or ‘shut up and behave’ or ‘It wouldn’t be so traumatic if you stayed in the present moment and out of the past’….so many secrets…so many years…so much energy it takes to keep it all in and ‘act normal’.  Does anyone understand how much it hurts to be told 'oops - sorry, it's after 10 now - you will be abandoned so make a different choice.'  It’s exhausting…But exhaustion feels like the better choice...rather than being abandoned.  And that's why I no longer reach out for help.  That's why she once again hides.  Because she was hurt time and time again...and now she's too scared.  Now, like then, 'in the face of expected abandonment...she makes a different choice.'

Maybe I am just too traumatized to ever fully trust anyone.  What if that is really my 'truth'?  Please do not let it continue tonight.  I am too tired...I am so scared and tired.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for all that you represented in my life over the last year. The first day I met you on campus I knew that you were a woman of stature and confidence. You were to be admired! You carried yourself with such grace and you radiated buoyancy that I admired. You have been there, cheering me on, encouraging me to get help and reminding me of my value to others. Thank you for your encouragement, I will not forget it.

You were always there for me with a kind word and an available ear. So many times your words made me smile, and I felt cared for by your friendship. And although you were encouraging and kind, you were also sincere. I appreciate that so much, your honesty, and my feelings were never upset by your words because you were always gentle in your communication. I was never angry or hurt by anything you said…I took it in the spirit you intended, and although sometimes it was not easy to hear, it was always an opportunity to look within myself for an opportunity to grow. Thank you for your sincerity.

When I had lost not only my way, but also my compass, in this world, you have encouraged me to find answers and deal with issues.  And you also knew that for most of my life, love, acceptance and self- worth were all based on my ‘performance’. “If I do this…my mother will love me, my friends will love me”…and on and on and on. And it was a daunting task, keeping everything together for everyone, trying so hard to keep that mask on so no one would know what I came from, how tainted my past was…and the facade of who I pretended to be consumed me by the time I hit the age of 30. Any negative swerves in the road, anything that happened that I could not control, was quickly swept under the rug so the outward appearance of super-Nita remained perfect. Not many people could see beneath that mask, not many were allowed to see. I did, however, trust you to see beneath the shroud I presented to most people. I allowed you to see the ‘real’ Nita because you were compassionate and honorable.

But I keep trudging through the mud and the muck, even though many days I feel as though I am stuck in quick-sand. It is not easy, and I still revert back to my most treasured tools of self-destruction….old habits are hard to break. Once I ‘fall off the wagon’ it is difficult to climb back on again. The key for me is to proactively identify the triggers that precede the behavior so I can head them off at the pass. Meaning – have a plan in place and implement that plan BEFORE I find myself on the bathroom floor with blood pooling on the tile from the wounds I inflict on myself in an effort to feel the internal pain in a physical way. Some days are better than others…as you know, it is “one day at a time”.

There are days when I am okay, and on those days, I feel a renewed sense of hope, but there are days when I am not okay, and I struggle to find the will and the strength to continue. Although the internal wounds are still raw and bleeding, the external ones, the wounds I have inflicted upon myself, are fading.

We all have different strengths and I am thankful to have you in my life.

I am thankful for the friends who have stuck by me during this tumultuous time, those who are here to help hold my head above water when I lack the strength, and those who encourage me to keep running to a better life, to a life worth living, to a place of peace. It takes endurance and an unwavering faith, and I am lucky to have them. I know that someday I will be okay.

"I wonder if guardian angels cry when they see it all play out; and as they stand with their hands tied, do they cry out loud?"*

I often find myself lamenting, *"Why? Why did this have to happen? Why did nobody notice? Why didn't anybody save me? How could You (God) give this to me?" I have been told that those are words of a victim and not a survivor, but I can't help but feel and think them. I especially direct them toward a higher power... I was always told that I must have been dreaming, how dare I say such things, I deserved it, I did something wrong, I was stupid enough to.... Some messages hanging around my house growing up said "Men don't buy appliances, they marry them." Women (and children) shouldn't speak unless spoken to, I should RESPECT my elders (aka abusers), better to be silent and appear a fool than to speak and remove all doubt, and here's the best one...it was placed on my mirror "You're looking at the problem". And people wonder why I act the way I do. The people who I grew up with, my "family",  those who are supposed to nurture, protect, and teach all of the lessons of life were the ones hurting me-and (inadvertently) teaching me that it's okay for other people to do the same... And I'm the one lying, I'm the one making up stories and dreaming. Only I have learned that those things are not normal...that most children do not grow up like I did. But these things fuel my secrecy. Apparently nobody knew. It makes me sick. why.... ugh...I feel sick just thinking about it. It's paralyzing. It's exhausting.