januarycanary

I know I need to find something today. I have been spread out, dispersed, and alone. I don't like that my abuser, W., is continuing to get to me. I have gone to great lengths to keep him out, but he finds ways to filter in. If a protection order's not going to do it, what will? What am I feeling today? The kids are with W, CPS comes tomorrow, I work the weekend and I still have to get documents in order for court stuff. I need to calendar and plan my week but that's always been something that I have trouble bringing myself to do. I don't know if anyone who hasn't grown up with

Somewhere in all this, I need a moment to write something. I've been to court too many times this month. I've remembered some things that I had kept... not so much hidden from myself, but I had worked actively to avoid encoding. I was raped by my abuser and this truth has only surfaced in the last two months, when another of his former partner's described incidents that very much resemble the night that I met him. The use of substances to cloud judgment, to dull the senses, to overwrite biological imperatives. Now I know why I couldn't sleep, why I stayed up crying by the window unable to gras

I know. It’s scary and what you have now is familiar. When I was with my abuser I didn’t realize that I accepted so much of it because I was used to being treated badly growing up. I didn’t want to face the fact that I was in so much pain as a child, and I felt like I never mattered enough for someone to help me, or care about what I felt. You can leave, but maybe just not today. Take your time and try to find the part of yourself that no one can extinguish, and feed that piece of you and make more room for her. Draw boundaries around when you feel that way, if it’s a hobby, hanging out

I wonder if we do it to ourselves. "To death do us part", we say, as if that's supposed to be comforting. Is it a curse or a prayer? I think back to the years of Bible-Presbyterian instruction - maybe a decade of it. If I had gotten a head start on all those ancient philosophers maybe I could have filled the rustle of the sanctuary with something other than a longing to fit in, at desperate odds with the building hum of something that came from within that wasn't Christ Our Lord and Savior, living in my heart. It makes me sad to think of how earnest I was, trying to focus on divine,

The mind does not have to be a prison. Feelings, change, observations, ideas - they don't have to be dangerous to you. I have kept myself so barely held together over the past decade and change that I would reject it out of hand. It was frightening, and foreign, and threatened to expose the truth that I knew was there - I was depressed because I was under someone else's control. I think someone who hasn't been in that position can't understand it. I think that's why it takes so long to come around to - it feels ridiculous to say, from the get go. As a child, and as you grow into an adult

I am reaching into myself and it feels... as it should be. The one thing that I am learning is that life is imperfect, and when something bothers me, that collapsing pit in my stomach, all that means is I haven't accepted what it means yet. It is OK to feel anxious, frightened, stressed, uncertain, disappointed, offended, hurt, embarrassed, rejected. It is OK to feel like you fucked up. Everyone fucks up, and other people sit with their disappointment and recalibrate their expectations as you sit with guilt and shame and discomfort, and then, in our own time, we all move on. I can feel un

At Grief Group today, the therapist said that sometimes I am very quiet, but when I talk I have very insightful thoughts. I thanked him for that observation - it felt good to get that sort of compliment, and it seems like many members of the group appreciate my perspective. Today I am taking note of feeling seen. It is quite wonderful. There was a new person at group today, an older lady who had just lost her husband some months ago. She talked about the depression phase, and if it ever gets easier. I said two things. One, when you have that night when you are alone, and you can't i

My therapist made an observation, when I complained of how I am unable to feel and express anger. Reading the emotion wheel, how many primary and secondary emotions that flowed from anger sound familiar, in the context of my mother? Let down, humiliated, bitter, mad, aggressive, frustrated, distant, critical. A different wheel adds irritated, insecure and hateful. Betrayed, resentful, disrespected, ridiculed, indignant, violated, furious, jealous, provoked, hostile, infuriated, annoyed, withdrawn, numb, skeptical and dismissive. It isn't shocking that I try to avoid these emotions. Or tha

I am struggling to come up with anything to express today. And then I remembered that part of all this is the act - of sitting with myself, thoughts and words blinking in and out of existence. Sometimes I hope they form a connection, meet in the night and build rich and full lives. Sometimes I am glad they disappear forever. I'm thinking of giving up on the idea of a life with someone entirely. I'm thinking of entirely giving up on the idea of a life with someone entirely. Wait, that's not quite right, is it? I'm feeling like giving up on the belief that an idea of a life with someone ent

There are days when years happen. (I wonder if at some point in my life it will all be too much to explain, too many details. Potential problems and anxieties, and glimmers of fantasies of the future. Maybe that's why geriatrics have to be especially good story tellers - otherwise their listeners wait for them to end their sentences or pass on prior to completion with indifference as to how your story ends.) I wanted to say that I learned something, from meeting up with my abuser's current girlfriend, who has a son the same age range as my boys. She tells me that she has been single for s

There isn't much space for grief. It's almost a month into grief group and I haven't quite gotten a handle on the impulse to feel ??? about mentioning non-death-related grief. Of all the things that are never talked about, maybe that one is the real kicker - we spend so much time trying to convince ourselves and the people around us that we are in fact OK. Maybe I should consider myself lucky. I am disabused of this obsession to present a face - when you've broken down in front of strangers and relied on the kindness of other women, or seen the abject indifference, contempt and annoyance by pe

A friend, B, that I hadn't talked to in a while called me today. I am lucky to have her in my life - she was one of two people who engaged with my abusive partner, W, and told me that how he treated me was wrong. She insisted I had to get out. It took several months for me to come around to it, which was helped along by the fact that W hated social situations and outings with the kids, so I had a lot of time without him to consider my experience of the kids, community, connections, without him. Is your house still a mess, she asked? Yes, I replied. She asked why, and I said, I don't know.

I react so badly to being scolded. It is interesting how much white men in professional positions of power are accustomed to be curt and charmless. Tone is everything, I suppose, and I am growing increasingly impatient with impolite, largely impotent men. What is it about that? That slinking, sinking feeling? It's a place that is all too familiar, it's where I have lived all my life. I do not want it. It makes me feel ill, and it sets me off. I wonder how far this is something I must self-regulate, and how far I just need to draw better boundaries. Probably any and all of the above.

It is important to me to write. There is such an urgency within, without the musculature to follow through. (Question: Have you considered that your depression stems from insufficient reflection? Something shifts in the world when you read back paragraphs you have considered, and found yourself self-assured enough not to annihilate each word immediately, for fear of judgment --whose?-- When you make yourself do the thing you feel successful. It is very important to feel successful.) Often I don't know where to begin. There are so many moving parts, and such turbulent and fleeting des

There is a place I used to go to, when I was fourteen. In the 2000s I would write journal entries, read about my friends' lives. In high school I found out that I had somewhat of a following. I guess that made me a writer at a time that I wanted so badly to call myself one, but never dared to because I always felt "less than". Back then I was moderately depressed. I wonder if there has ever been a time in my life that I wasn't. I grew up in Singapore, where in some families, a child's worth is tied to their grades. Doing well isn't sufficient, being the best forever and always is - it hel