Choirduck's corner

We are ugly and disgusting and dirty and gross and we got a sore on our butt and some say it’s because of us having HS and getting stressed and some say it’s probably triggered by hormones and some say we just didn’t wash often enough so we deserve it and some want to cut it to cut it open and get the bad stuff out and not go to a doctor but we know we can’t do that but we wish we could. It hurts and reminds me of so many bad things. Also I am scared a lot of lots of bad thoughts and memories I just always feel scared and sad and horrible and gross and bad. From Sheila and Koafie.

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I have had a lot of meds now to try and subdue my brain and body so that it’s hard to think quickly and it’s not as overwhelming but I still feel like such worthless scum and it feels like there’s a heavy rock sitting in my chest of grief that just makes it hard to breath or get comfortable or relax or fall asleep. My brain can’t go off with all the thoughts and urges at once anymore all battling for supremacy, but the emotions remain and I’m just lying here wishing I would die before I woke up, wishing I’d died from the cancer, wishing I’d died from one of the other suicide attempts, but knowing that I don’t think it’s a good idea or worth it to try and kill myself again. It never works, it just makes things even worse, and even though I long for death I’m not going to attempt suicide yet again. Not while I still do have somewhere to live, and I still do care about my roommate even if she doesn’t believe I’m anything but trash that she wishes she could just be rid of.

I am trash, and I feared that if I talked with her tonight that I’d get kicked while I was feeling down, but she was upset that I was afraid to talk to her – so I tried to overcome that fear, and talk, and I ended up getting kicked even harder than I’d feared I might be.

And that was with her trying to restrain herself from lashing out at me.

So essentially I should take the kick to the gut and the blow to the head (emotional/mental, not literally) and thank her for her kindness towards me for not saying even more hurtful things which I apparently deserve.

That’s a real good way to make sure that my brain will just fill in the blanks for her and make sure I remember exactly why I’m worthless scum who doesn’t deserve anything good, and that every good thing I have I should feel guilty for because I’ve only got it because I’m a manipulative selfish lazy asshole who only cares about myself at the expense of other more deserving people.

I’m just lying here wishing and praying that I will die soon, that one day I’ll just not wake up. One day soon I hope. I don’t deserve to live, or be loved.

There are so many things inside that I cannot tell anymore. I’m too ashamed and scared to write and tell anymore. After I integrated I just can’t write the same. My hate for myself stops me when I see what I’m saying. I feel so embarassed and then angry with myself when I say things I know I shouldn’t say. Or when I talk badly like use words like a kid or mix up my words or when I just don’t have the right words, or when I’m afraid to use the right words.

Lots of times I know the right words but I’m too scared to say them. Or even write them.

Only sometimes I want to tell, but that is why I get so mad at myself because I don’t think I should tell. I think what’s been told already is too much, and yet not really enough. I use the same words over and over but it’s all code for the real words and thoughts behind it. For the things that I’m afraid to tell because it’s too graphic. Except, inside me it IS graphic, and I can’t tell. If I do tell I will be alone again because it will scare people. I don’t want to scare people. I want to make them smile and laugh. Just sometimes I wish it was ok to stop smiling and laughing. Sometimes I wish it was ok to say the bad things without using code words, so that maybe then I wouldn’t feel so alone. Only I don’t want to do that to anyone I care about. So I’m torn. Be selfish or be unselfish?

I don’t know how much longer I can go without self harming again. It builds inside me and won’t let me rest.

I woke up and felt scared of everything and hurting and especially scared of needles and triggered and feeling things that confuse me as to what is real. I should keep my mouth shut I think I have to keep my mouth shut and cry only inside. I woke up crying and scared inside.

Part of me wants to tell and most of me is too scared to tell how I feel and why. I know I shouldn’t. I know I’m bad to be this scared inside still. It’s just hard right now because of bad dreams making me shaking all inside and outside and all the noise in my head. I hate myself because right now all I want is a “mum hug” the kind that helps me feel safe, but I know I’m bad for wanting it and bad if I admit it or say it to anyone.

My therapist says I need to stop using the words good and bad or right and wrong but it’s the only safe code words I have for all the things I don’t know how to explain and all the words I’m too scared to say.

I am very sad inside right now.

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Trapped by silence, trapped in my head.
Words slipping out between the cracks.

Drip. Drip. Drop.

I have to tell but I can’t tell. I don’t know. Right now I’m half asleep and messed up inside and outside all messed up. I keep feeling people touching me private places bad touches bad touches and part of me inside is crying “Don’t touch me!” and I keep hearing voice saying shhhh shhhh and that means don’t cry don’t tell don’t make any noise shhhh and I tried to just go back to sleep and ignore the bad touches that are real but not real but when I was drifting off it started to hurt more than just uncomfortable don’t touch me feelings and I felt scared, really scared in my tummy, when that happened because I thought I knew what was going to happen next was going to hurt a lot and I had to hold my breath so I don’t cry out when the bad pain comes, but I hyperventilated and woke back up a bit and the feelings were still there but I knew I was in my bed at home safe but I didn’t feel safe and I realized Chris is gone and no one would wake up if I talked or cried and I cried to Jesus “Jesus cover me!” Which meant Jesus protect me, make a blanket over me to stop the devil from scaring me and hurting me more and as soon as I said that then I burst into tears and cried and cried really hard and then after a while I could think again a bit more and I prayed to God to please make the pain stop and it didn’t stop so I asked please protect me from fear of the flashbacks and help me stay sane and not confused and lost inside like sometimes happens especially when I am tired and drugged like now and then I got up to go to the bathroom and I was only a very little bit scared of going to the bathroom. Usually I am very afraid of going to the bathroom when I am having a lot of flashbacks and pelvic pain because even just trying to clean myself up after often triggers panic attacks and flashbacks because it feels like that area is raw and even gentle touch is really painful but I went to the bathroom and even though it hurt it wasn’t unbearable and I could be lucid and in the present and gentle and patient with my body and emotions feeling confused. God protect my mind from demon attacks so that I know better what is past and what is present even when I am fuzzy headed like now.
I felt like I needed to write here because I needed to talk and just talk and help focus me while I’m calming down and waiting for the flashbacks to ease off so I can go to sleep again. I keep crying but it is not so hard now it is not like scared to death crying like before but now writing here and talking to God some outloud and not just in my head I remember my friend K told me recently to use my words outside, that words have power from God to send the devil away and all I have to do is tell them that God is bigger than you are so go away in the name of Jesus and don’t go into any of my pets or my friends or anyone else here I love I want you to go back to hell right now where you came from and you can’t bother me anymore because God is protecting me. Jesus is covering me under a big safe blanket and no bad people or spirits are welcome under here with me so I tell them to go away and then I talk to Jesus and let him tell me that I am safe now I am safe right now I am in his arms and he hurts for my pain. He understands how it hurts and worse. He understands all my pain but he had even more pain than I have. They may not have done the R-word to him because he was a boy and not a girl, but his private parts got hurt too and all the rest of him got hurt worse than the R-word and abuse pain in a little girl. He understands the terror and darkness of spirit when your spirit is pushed beyond the limits of pain and there’s nothing but darkness and hurt left inside of you because your mind cannot understand what is happening. Jesus knows how that feels he went through that same awful dark road until his spirit and his heart broke and he died. Only He didn’t stay dead and he didn’t stay broken. God healed and restored even his spirit and his soul and he has no darkness in him even though he went through darkness. He is all full light inside and he can cover my darkness so that I can speak to God and God will hear me and he heard me cry and he sent his son to be with me and around me so that I can hide in his shelter and listen to him speak peace and love and healing to my heart and mind and body that is so broken as I fall asleep in his sheltering arms and I know that I am safe to fall asleep there because He will continue to protect me and hold me close when I cry in my dreams so that I feel his comfort and safety even while asleep, while my subconscious continues to scramble about a bit trying to organize itself.

I’m scared and I’m angry. Not sure which is more because it keeps seesawing back and forth.
I’m losing my marbles. Practically every night, and now every day as well.
I haven’t cut lately, but I’ve wrestled with it for hours on end at times lately. Especially tonight.

This is a free write of memories of secrets and self harm behaviors and memories of what I was thinking/feeling when I did certain things. If you’re someone who struggles with self harm I don’t suggest you read this as some parts could be very triggering as I do write some of what was going on in my head when I self harmed which might trigger memories of times you felt like that/thought like that, and the urge to fall into that emotional pattern again.

Starting from when I was a baby I would sit on the side of my mattress with my feet sticking out through the bars and hold the bars and bring myself forward with my arms to repeatedly bang my head on the bars of the crib. When I was bigger I would even climb into my younger sister’s cribs, stick my legs out through the bars and then sit holding onto the bars and rock back and forward and repetitively hit my head on the bars. I remember when I was about 4 that the bars going towards and away from my eyes made the room (and the world, to my view) look very fragmented and like it was at a safer distance – behind glass, behind bars. The feeling of being able to relax and calm down because the bars were between me and the rest of the world. I was in ‘jail’ only I put myself in there. I was often punished for being caught in the crib because I ‘would break it’ because I was too big, and I can remember my mom screaming at me and threatening me if I didn’t stop hitting my head and come out of there, but I couldn’t stop. Somehow I felt that if I stopped then she would be too close to me, and too loud, and I would feel scared and cry. Sometimes she just ignored me, or I learned to listen for her footsteps coming down the hallway and I’d jump out of the crib and crawl underneath before she came into the room, and tell her I was playing ‘hide and seek’, or that I was ‘resting’. Sometimes when she caught me in there she yanked me out of the crib and hurt my legs/knees when they were caught and twisted/pulled on by the bars. If that happened I would cry and run away and hide and engage in other self harm behaviors and dissociate. As a kid my self harm wasn’t very obvious or severe. I didn’t leave marks on myself. Just things like putting clothes pins on my fingers, one pin on every finger for something I’d done bad that day. It hurt because back then my fingers were litter than the clothes pins were, but it didn’t leave marks. Or I’d look for a pointy rock to put in my shoe where it’d hurt every time I took a step to remind me to be careful and not get caught being bad. I don’t know where I got these ideas from, or why I started doing it. I just did it because it made me feel safer and more in control. Especially the clothes pin thing. I used to imagine that the longer I could tolerate those clothes pins then the stronger I was getting and the next time someone hurt me I would be able to ignore the pain better because it wouldn’t be as bad as the clothes pins. Then when in early elementary it was the jagged pincers on kids suspenders back in the 80’s and early 90’s that I’d use on different parts of my hand and see how long I could tolerate it and see how dark I could get the marks where the points dug into my skin. These ‘secrets’ and personal challenges I shared with my best friend at the time – my cousin who was just a couple months older than I. Don’t ask me why but he was just as curious to try it and we’d challenge each other to prove who could tolerate more pain. His family lived only a few blocks from mine and we went to school together in the same class every year, and his younger sister and my next younger sister were exactly a month apart so we played together constantly from the time I was born. I remember when we were about 8 or 9 we went over to visit and he pulled me aside and told me he needed my help because he did something stupid and I had to swear not to tell and then he said he had to show me his private parts and I couldn’t tell that either and he told me he’d tried putting the clip from his suspenders on the tip of his penis and it “really really hurts” and it was all red and swollen and he said “I don’t know what to do. I can’t tell my mom but it really hurts!” I think I snuck upstairs and got a washcloth and a piece of ice and wrapped the cloth around the icecube and then got the washcloth just a little bit wet and brought it to him and told him to put it on his penis. A washcloth with an ice cube in it was standard first aid at my house for everything. When we got tired of holding the ice on the bump bruise or sore we’d transfer over to sucking the ice cube through the washcloth until it was gone which actually was what made it ‘feel better’ most of the time haha. So he did that and lay in his bed under the covers and I stayed in his room and read to him so that if any grown ups came in the room to see what we were doing we could just say we were reading (which was actually one of our favourite things to do, besides play ‘soccer’ and build lego (which we would then use to “bomb” the little girls barbie games until we were screamed at by the adults and sometimes spanked, after which we’d huddle in his room and talk about how much we hated our parents and our sisters). I told him some of my secrets when we were really young – about the doctor games that weren’t really doctor games, and the touches in my private parts that made me feel confused and ashamed. As kids we didn’t know what sex was, and we swore a secret pact that we would get married when we grew up and be nothing like our parents. Boy was I crushed when I found out in grade 4 that you can’t marry your cousin! haha. He’s the only one who listened to all my crazy thoughts and ideas when I was a kid, and talked about them with me, and I was the one who never teased him and always went and sat with him when he cried and sucked his thumb in school. He was a very angry kid and every time he got tagged out in dodgeball or pushed around by the other boys or tripped in floor hockey he’d get mad and cry, and then they’d tease him and the teacher would send him to sit on the sidelines where he’d sit and suck his thumb, and no matter how much I liked the game we were playing I would go over and sit beside him and listen to him vent and say how much he hated this boy or that boy for tripping him/picking on him etc and I’d tell him I was still his friend and I still liked him and try to encourage him, even though that meant that I was also picked on for being friends with the ‘crybaby’ who still sucked his thumb. He sucked his thumb until they put in an appliance to stop him when he was 10. In grade 5 he sometimes got to play soccer with the other boys at recess or lunch time and he’d make them let me play with them because I had no one else to play with. They didn’t want me to play and mostly ignored me but my cousin would say “Ok she’s on my team” and the other boys didn’t care enough to chase me off the field they pretty much just ignored me but I was happy to be allowed to play at all. I’m not sure who was picked on more in elementary, me or him, but we both had each other to talk to secretly later on and plot all kinds of horrible things we’d like to do to the kids who picked on us. Regular little sadistic criminals we were. Thank God no one else found out.

Then I moved schools in Grade 6 to attend a special education program for gifted children, and the year after that we moved out of the city, so then we only saw each other in the summers when he came to live with us and work at the camp. We were still close at heart but things change and we changed and grew apart. I remember when I was about 13 he wrote me a letter for the first time and said how sad he was to know that I was hurting so much and he hadn’t been there for me and stayed close like we’d been, and he begged me not to kill myself because he’d be really really sad. I cried then because I’d felt so alone that year after switching schools twice and running away from the abuse at home a lot.
I didn’t know how to write back, though. We’d grown apart and I wasn’t sure he’d still keep my secrets if I told him. He cried when he gave me the letter and I just remember hugging him and crying and crying and not able to say a word. After that he never mentioned my cuts or burns again and I understood that he cared but he didn’t know what to say any more than I did. We were both still miserable hurting kids who were growing into miserable hurting teenagers and we didn’t know how to interact as teenagers, we only knew how to play together as kids, so that’s what we did. What we still do when we see each other. He’s married now and as far as I can tell doesn’t remember anything I told him about the sexual abuse from when we were 3-7 years old. I don’t remember ever talking about it after about age 5 or 6, because it stopped and we had more immediate problems to talk about like kids at school and my ‘brother’ at home (he’s not actually my brother, our moms are cousins, but he was raised with us kids from ages 5-11 and being 10 months older, considerably bigger, and used to being an only child, he was a bully to us at home and at school).

When I was a kid I would climb the giant garbage bin at school and try to see if there was anything edible that had been thrown away by other kids, especially half eaten bags of chips or cookies that weren’t buried but were still wrapped. I’d hide them in my jacket and then run and hide and eat them. I also like to just stand up on it because it put me up high enough that I could watch what was going on around me without feeling like I was in danger from it. People teased me and said I belonged in the garbage can, but if I ignored them they went away eventually after making remarks about how I must be deaf and stupid like the ‘deaf kids’ that I was ‘friends’ with.

In about grade 6 when I was at my new school was the first time I was ever in a ‘sex ed’ class. Prior to that my parents didn’t sign the permission form required for me to participate, so instead I was sent out in the hallway to work on my work, or to the library to read, or to the ‘deaf class’ to help out. I loved getting to help in the ‘deaf class’ most of the kids there looked up to me and would do just about anything to try and make me want to be friends with them, which means that when Mrs. Merry asked me to work with them to help them finish an assignment/learn colours/reading or whatever it was they were working on they were only too happy to actually sit down and work with me, even though half of them were older than I was. I learned to sign from an optional signing club offered at my school and I just kept learning because these kids were ones who never teased me, but who I saw being teased and left out by everyone else, and I wanted them to know that I liked them even if they were different. There was this one girl named Crystal who was deaf and also legally blind. She was I think 13 but functioning at such a low level that she was still in the elementary school because there was no other specialized program available for her to go to nearby. The teachers always warned me to be careful around her because she got mad and would push or hit whoever she was with and she could have really clobbered me, but for some reason I just thought I wanted to be her friend because she had no other friends. Probably because she pushed and hit so much! The teachers explained about how she could only see bright colours, and how to sign into her hand so she could feel you, and I thought that was brilliant (this was just before I found a book about Hellen Keller). Only in order to ‘talk’ to her you had to get her to be willing to be touched by you, or she wouldn’t try to follow your hands, and the teachers and aides were always afraid that if I was that close to her she could knock me down. I just kept telling them that I didn’t mind if she did hit me because I was used to it and I would be careful. So I learned how to read her moods and body language and I persistently wore bright coloured clothes so that she could see me, and I wouldn’t grab at her hand or arm or anything when I got right up to her. I sort of somehow understood that she was a bit like an animal or a baby, and they don’t like to be grabbed and pushed and they can’t tell you how they feel or what they want either and if you force them they won’t like you. She never did knock me down, although I had to duck a couple times when she swung wildly. I learned to come around her out of arms reach and stand in front of her and wave my arms and go slowly up to her so she could see me coming and that I was there, and I might touch her arm gently and if she didn’t pull away then I would touch her hand and then wait and if she reached to me then I would hold her hand and sign into it or take her for a ‘walk’ around the school yard and steer her clear of running into trees or falling into holes, and I remember I was so darn proud of myself that I got her to ‘like’ me even though I was more than a head shorter than she was and she was notoriously uncooperative with everyone who worked with her. I think probably because I never tried to force her, and she realized I wasn’t a threat, and if she wanted to stop walking and stop holding my hand I would let her stop and feel the wind and sun and wave her arms around. When the bell rang I would touch her and take her hand and spell “Come” and sometimes I had to give her jacket a bit of a tug but she would actually follow me back to the school and I’d stop her and put her hand out on the railing so she could feel where to climb the stairs so she didn’t fall on them. At first she wouldn’t follow me or obey my pulling on her to stop her from running into something and she’d fall on the stairs and the aide would have to catch her, but I decided that I would teach her that I meant stop and that I would take her back to the stairs and put her hand on it when we got there. She always stood on the stairs with her aide nearby and I would go over and let her get used to me and then when she was ok with touching me I’d pull on her hand to see if she wanted to go for a walk, and if she followed me then I’d take her just a couple steps away (being told the whole time to be careful by the aide) and then bring her back to the stairs and stop her and guide her hand out to the railing. After doing this over and over I told the aide “Now she knows when I tell her to stop that I’m helping her not get hurt”. I have no idea if I’d actually shown her anything, but I believed from then on that I had proved to her that she could trust me to help her and not push her around like an adult. By the end of the year the teachers/aides would let me ‘take Crystal for a walk’ over to the swing set and push her on the swings and actually convince her to stop and get off (she adored the swings) when it was time to go back without her having a meltdown. I was so happy and proud that she would ‘listen’ to me when she usually didn’t even listen to the teachers! If they tried to get her off the swings she would usually have an almighty fit. I saw them holding the swing so she couldn’t swing anymore while she pushed with her feet on the gravel, and them pulling on her arm to get her off the swing while at the same time trying to not get clobbered by her. Usually they wouldn’t take her over to the swings at all, but if I was off playing and I saw she was on the swings having a fit I’d come running over to ‘help’ and eventually got a reputation for being able to get her to come with me calmly if the aide left me to ‘watch’ her and make sure she didn’t leave while they went inside to get the teacher to come help get her off the swings. Well, she’d go back to swinging and I (happy for any excuse to miss class) would stay and ‘push’ her a bit and then stop and ‘talk’ into her hand and sign ‘come slide’ and she’d usually push my hand away and then when I didn’t push her on the swing again I’d reach out and sign “come slide” again and pull on her jacket and she’d get up and follow me and I’d take her over to the the playground equipment and put her hand on it so she could climb up the ramps and stairs to go down the slide (now that all the other kids were off of it and there was no one to push or bump into her and she could go at her own pace), and then at the bottom of the slide she’d just keep following me and we’d go over to the stairs back into the building and she’d climb up that and then usually balked when she reached the school door and tried to go back down the stairs but by then her teacher or someone else was able to take over and coax her inside for snacktime. I always took her to the slide from the swings because I thought the reason she fought so much about getting off the swings was she didn’t like being bossed and she didn’t want to stop playing outside, so I didn’t tell her we were going into the school, I told her come play on the slide with me and THEN I took her into the school so she wouldn’t think I was making her go back inside. This happened so many times that eventually her aide just let me get her to come with me because she didn’t have an almighty raging fit, and when there were new aides Mrs. Merry told them that I could help with Crystal because she liked me, and I thought Mrs. Merry was the nicest person ever. And one time Mrs. Merry was sick for a couple of days and they had a substitute and the teacher aides told the substitute that she could trust me to help with any of the kids, even Crystal. I remember that so well because I felt like I could do something special, and I was important.
I didn’t always play with Crystal or walk with her though. Many days she didn’t want to walk she just wanted to stay on the steps and be left alone and then I’d just sit there and talk to the aides and teachers on supervision, or go play with the other deaf children and help them get a turn on the swings from the hearing kids who always ignored them and hogged the swings all to themselves. 

Anyways this isn’t about me being some kind of child saint. I totally was not. I’m just writing out the memories that are coming to me of things that mattered to me when I was a kid that I remember so clearly still.
I didn’t try and be the nicest or best person out there. I beat on my sisters as much as or more than any other kid, and I was extremely willful and disobedient towards my parents. I just happened to be someone who was born with a whole lot of love in my heart, and if someone didn’t metaphorically (or literally) kick me to subdue me and keep me quiet, they’d find out really fast that I couldn’t stop myself from pouring out love. Since my teachers at school were never abusive towards me I loved them all. When coming in from outside in the morning, recess time, or lunchtime I would hug any teacher I saw monitoring the halls. My favourite person to hug was my grade one teacher. She always gave me a big hug back and told me how much she liked my hugs. I believed that she loved me, along with my other teachers. I didn’t believe that my mom loved me, and I didn’t feel like I was special or important at home, so my favourite part of the day was when I was hugged or praised at school and I would do just about anything to try and help out and I loved it when I was picked to help because I felt important and special. It’s the only times I can remember feeling proud of myself in my elementary years, and I was careful not to tell anyone that it made me feel proud or special for fear that they’d mock me for being silly, or tell me that I was wrong or just imagining things. I held on to those special feelings and kept them a secret inside of me (although I told my cousin everything back then). He and I were the smartest kids in our grade, and we loved to celebrate and congratulate each other when one or the other of us got the highest marks on something or another. I won the reading competition, he won the writing competition (like EVERY YEAR from grade 1 on), I loved to read what he’d written. We were both superstars at math and when one of us figured out a concept before the other one did we’d excitedly share it and teach the other one so that they could beat everyone else, too. I taught him multiplication in grade 2 and when I found out we had to have a bunch of ‘times tables’ memorized in grade 3 I secretly told him and we drilled each other and competed to see who could memorize more of them before the beginning of grade 3 so that we could show off by knowing all the answers when the teacher was teaching it and asking if anyone could answer the questions on the board. We drilled each other all summer just to prove that we hadn’t forgotten any of them, and then he went on and decided to memorize the 13 times tables and 14 and 15, just to show me he could do more of them than me haha. I could do 13 14 and 15 times tables at one point, but since we never used them in school (only needing to know up to 12×12) but I eventually forgot them because my cousin and I had moved on to competing with each other in something else. He helped me understand long division with more than 2 digits – and then pushed me to prove to him that I grasped the concept by making me answer 4, 5, and 6 digit questions. For some reason this teacher student challenge was fun to us. We actually made up questions for each other to answer and then answered them. When one of us beat the other, we didn’t get mad, we congratulated the other person for being so smart and doing so well. When he was unhappy and angry at school I would remind him of the things he could do really well and how he was so much smarter than the other kids who picked on him and that he wasn’t the baby they were because they didn’t even know how to do the things we could do, and if he was upset over losing at something I’d remind him of the last thing he’d beaten me at, and remind him that I was the next smartest person in the class after him so if he could beat me then he was the smartest. It usually worked. He’d fall to bragging about all the stuff he could do best instead of saying how much he hated the other kids, and he’d be happy again and stop crying and sucking his thumb and it’d be all good.

Grade 6 was the best year of my life. If I’d been in that school program from the beginning I think I would have thrived much better and ended up graduating and have a degree and a career by now. Up until Grade 6 I was persistently at the top of my class (there was apparently the decision made when I was in Grade 1 of if I should be moved immidiately from the grade 1 classroom to the grade 3 class because that’s where I was functioning at academically, but it was decided that since I wasn’t uniformly ahead (My printing and spelling was still that of a 6 year old) they didn’t want to move me right away, they thought it’d be better if I stayed with my age group and be given a learning assessment by a psychologist (which didn’t happen until the next year because of a mistake in paperwork not being filed, I remember hearing the fight about that one in grade 2 and I wondered what on earth I’d done wrong to have to go see this person my mom was so angry about). So grade 1 instead of learning how to learn I was allowed to academically do whatever I wanted to in the grade 1/2 split class as long as I finished my work (which took me about 1/4 of the time of the other students). I didn’t have to sit and listen to the teacher teaching the other kids how to add and subtract, or work on the grade 1 reader, because I’d already proved to the teacher than I could do more than the grade 2 students. So as long as I was doing something academic (like reading, which was my favourite thing to do) I was left to my own devices. I didn’t cause problems or act out at school and I was always happy to be picked to run errands or help sit and listen to and help some of the other kids who couldn’t read much. With 3 younger sisters and a dozen younger cousins I was instinctively a patient teacher towards those who didn’t know as much as I did. We played school for fun at home so much that my youngest sister could read, write, add, and knew her 1 and 2 times tables BEFORE she even entered kindergarten! She didn’t know the concept behind multiplying but she could correctly answer from memory any times table asked of her. We loved showing off what we’d taught her and she loved showing off that she could do it (to the astonishment of most adults who were only too quick to praise her for being so smart). There’s an old family video that’s dated and shows by the date that she’s 18 months old where she’s toddling around and then dad calls her over (to get her out from under mom’s feet) and he asks her to count and she counts to 18 ‘on his fingers’ (sort of just touching his fingers and grabbing his hand without actually moving sequentially from one finger to the next). I think she skipped one number in the video (17, which is awfully hard for a 1 year old to say). My dad says we were all speaking in full sentences before we were 2 years old, but my youngest sister, having 3 older siblings within a 4 year range of her age, had plenty of older kids to copy off of and was the quickest to learn to speak, potty train, count, read, and write. Apparently I was daytime potty trained before my next youngest sister was born (which is when I was 16 months old), but that I relapsed and had to wear diapers again for a few months after she was born because I was upset by the new baby in the house, the changes in routine, and the fact I didn’t have mom’s full attention anymore. My dad said every single one of us was daytime potty trained before the next sister was born, and every one of us relapsed back to wetting ourselves for a few months afterwards (just the youngest kid relapsed, not ALL of us at the same time!). I only have 2 memories where I’m wearing a diaper, and I have quite a few pretty early memories. So at school I didn’t learn any study skills, I didn’t learn the consequences of not doing homework or not completing assignments, because I was so often excused because it was obvious to my teachers that I already knew and understood the material. When I switched to the new gifted program I was in shock, and the teachers realized where I had missed out and I was given resource help to help overcome my learning difficulties (in particular it was at this age that I was diagnosed with ADHD and I started medication as well as I was provided extra help in the form of isolated areas in which to work when I wasn’t able to stay focused in the classroom, isolated areas in which to take tests, teachers who understood ADHD and other learning disorders (particularly in gifted children). I was most definitely not the only child coming into the program who had been left to their own devices in their old classrooms and had not learned self discipline so thankfully they were well prepared for my quirks and quickly moved to address them. My grades went down but academically I soared and by grade 7 I was doing so much better in the classroom setting, better at recognizing when I needed help and asking for the help I needed. I’d learned that I had options to help myself get in less trouble. Especially when it came to needing a separate space to sit and work, or sometimes a space away from the classroom where I could run around, do jumping jacks, flap my arms and rock, without disturbing the class. After I’d had a safe place to get my wiggles out I was better able to return to the classroom and sit down and actually work on my work without just sitting fidgeting in my chair and being a nuisance and distraction to everyone around me. At my old school when I’d gotten bored and lost concentration I’d been sent to the Grade 1 class to help with reading, or sent to the office to help run errands, or sent to the deaf classroom, or I’d been allowed to wander freely in the ‘carpet’ area of the classroom (the reading area). I’d learned no self discipline at home either, other than the ‘rules’ I had created in my head which I thought would help protect me from being abused again. Since the abuse wasn’t as predictable as I wanted it to be those ‘rules’ were constantly changing, and that frustrated me to bits. I thought that I had failed to ‘learn my lesson’ properly the last time, and I would self harm myself when unpredictable things hurt or frightened me to ‘teach myself a lesson better’, because I couldn’t relax unless I believed that I was able to control the abuse occurring. I punished myself when I caught myself breaking my own rules so that I’d learn my lesson and not do it again, because if it happened and I was caught then I would get a ‘spanking’ (which in my house amounted to a beating half the time including a public shame factor of being told to take off your pants and underwear in front of whoever was there so that the spanking hurt twice as much and was humiliating (because it showed your ‘private parts’ which was humiliating). Thankfully there was no fondling or sexual behavior involved in the spankings, just the embarrassment of being spanked naked. There were many times when spanking didn’t happen because one or the other parent lost control and just beat you with whatever they were holding, or slap you wherever they could reach on you. About age 7 I discovered how to light fires, and found out that ‘cigarettes are bad’ from my older ‘brother’ who pointed out to me what they looked like and told me how they were used. Well, I was super curious about this terrible bad thing I wasn’t supposed to know about, and I got into collecting and hiding cigarette buts, and burning them when I’d run off alone to hide somewhere after school (often under the playground at the school). Doing something “bad” was a way I let out some of my hidden anger in a place where I wouldn’t be punished for it. I accidentally burned myself a couple times when burning stuff (usually cigarettes) in an angry rage and found that the pain introduced to me a new level of the ‘how much pain can I learn to tolerate’ game. I also discovered over time that when I played this game I stopped feeling scared and angry after a while and I could go home again and act normally. I got this sort of distant feeling that I couldn’t identify at the time, but it was like there was a glass box around me and it sort of made me not react as much to the noise around me at home and to the words others said. My dad has admitted that they gave up trying to parent me by the time I was 7 years old. They set bedtimes, but I didn’t usually follow them and most of the time they didn’t care as long as I stayed in my room. They told me I needed to wear something nicer to church (like a dress) but when I ignored them and kept on going around the house getting ready, helping my younger sisters button buttons and tie laces, they gave up after a few arguments. They threatened to leave me at home alone to which my response was “Ok!”. I don’t know how old I was at that point but I remember my mom looking at my dad as they were trying to head out the door and saying “Frank, we can’t leave her home alone, she’s too young, it’s not allowed, it’s dangerous”. I remember thinking that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself and I took care of myself all the rest of the time so what did it matter if I was home alone? but in the end they made me go to church with them after all and other than getting a few spankings (to which I didn’t react) they didn’t try and force the issue. My dad says I was the most passive-aggressive person he has ever known in his life. I had passive-aggressiveness perfected by age 6. I’d had a lot of practice already by then in shutting down. So they gave up trying to argue or force me to do anything. There were lots of other kids who needed their attention and it was just too difficult to fight with one. I was perfectly compliant with the being in my room by 7:30 rule. No one needed to tell me that it was bedtime, I got my pjs on and brushed my teeth and put myself in my room. If my parents were busy fighting in their room with the door closed and it was bedtime I rounded up my sisters and put them to bed when it was time, then put myself in my room and stayed there. No problems there. I was just afraid to go to sleep. I had so many nightmares that I hated sleep more than anything. I never felt safe, always terrified that a robber would come in my house, or a ‘bad man’, or that a fire would start. I was terrified of a fire starting in the night and killing the cat or my little sisters before I could save them. I would imagine and rehearse in my head how I could get them all out in different scenarios and make sure that I was really prepared. For some reason my parents saving my sisters never occurred to me. Maybe I didn’t think they were competent enough. Also, their room was on the other side of the house and mine was right next to and across from my sister’s. I always was afraid the fire would come from the kitchen and trap us in the bedrooms, and I knew I was the only one of us kids who knew how to lift the windows out so that the screen could be pulled out so we could jump out the window. I knew in my head that if I didn’t get them all in one room and then get the windows out and lift the littlest one up then they would burn to death before the firemen got to them. As much as I fought with them and said I hated them at times during the day I did not actually want them to die.
I would stay up and read until I was falling asleep, then pray and ask for angels to come stay with me and watch over me. I usually lay in bed and quietly talked to the angels that I believed were real but invisible – telling them where to stand around my bed, making up names for them because I didn’t know their names. Telling them who I wanted to sleep with me tonight and who could share my pillow etc. until I fell asleep. When I was younger and shared a room with my younger sister I would crawl in bed with her a lot at night, and when we shared a room again when we were a little bit older (I didn’t have a room to myself very long, I found I couldn’t sleep on my own and I hated the ‘privacy’ that I’d once dreamed of having) I would reach my arm down between the bed and the wall (we had bunk beds) and she would reach up and we would sign to each other using the touch and feel sign language I’d learned working with Crystal until we fell asleep. We got pretty fast at it. It’s amazing how quickly you can understand sign language spelled into your hand just by feel when that’s the only way you have to communicate and you practice it every night. My arm usually fell asleep hung down between the bed and wall and I would wake up when it hurt too much and roll over so that it would stop tingling and fall right back asleep. 

When I was 12 we moved and I had my own room again, and once again I could not seem to sleep on my own. I tried everything I could think of to calm myself – nice music, a nightlight, praying, but I would still be so agitated that I couldn’t sleep, so after mom and dad had gone to bed I’d sneak into my next younger sister’s room and crawl into bed with her. Luckily by then she had a double mattress on a box spring on the floor so we fit pretty good. Except we both stole the blankets so I started bringing in my own blanket to wrap up in and presto problem solved. Eventually my family just gave up and I permanently moved into the room with her, but then my youngest sister started crawling in bed with the two of us and there just wasn’t room, so I moved to sleeping with the youngest in her bed because she started having severe panic attacks and was afraid to sleep alone (my room was really just the place I stored stuff and hid in the daytime). Eventually she grew out of it and I went back to sleeping in my own bed for a while (about age 14) but by then my crazy was really starting to show and my inability to sleep was a rather small problem compared to the rest. I went back to sleeping in my next youngest sister’s bed at about age 15 and with our family growing again (I had two more sisters, one at age 13 and one at age 16) I was eventually moved permanently into her room where I stayed until we both moved out the same year shortly before I turned 18 and she was 16. I went to a room and board place while she went to live with our aunt and uncle, and I was sexually abused and assaulted in the few months I lived there, and when I expressed my distress through constant severe panic attacks (which led to some pretty erratic behavior) and cutting myself I was kicked out by the lady who owned the place (she was a closet alcoholic and knew her adult son who lived at home was abusing me) and when I told the counsellor at school that I had nowhere to live they suggested I talk to the librarian because she might be willing to rent her other room to me, so I moved in with her but within a few months I was expelled for cutting myself (despite the fact that I was getting better grades than I had in 5 years) and placed in short term psychiatric hospitalization several times in a few weeks. After that the librarian said she wouldn’t have me there anymore because she was afraid of what I might do, so I was moved back home but my parents didn’t know what to do with me either and when I heard them making plans to place me in a long term mental health facility permanently I ran away and lived on the streets for a week, got a job, and was eventually convinced to accept help from a social worker type person who offered me a place in a women’s shelter. I lived there for 3 weeks and then found a place to rent with my friend’s boyfriend who was escaping an abusive drug house where he’d been raised by his aunt and uncle after being abandoned at age 9 by his father. We moved in with a whole lot of junk, one old broken bedframe, and a 5th or 6th hand double mattress, along with a bunch of mismatched old kitchen items and an old stained patio table and chairs and we had only met like 4 times in our lives up until then. We were both just glad to have a place to sleep that was indoors. He slept on the floor in his room wrapped in a blanket and I, well, I didn’t sleep much. I shortly offered him to share my bed if he used his own blankets. I figured he wouldn’t sexually assault me because he showed no interest, and I knew if he ever did anything I’d tell his girlfriend and she’d kick his ass, and also I figured if he wanted to do that kind of thing he’d probably just go do stuff with her. I figured he hadn’t done anything to me the first few nights and he could have, and he had no bed, we had no couch or furniture, and I wanted to share. I stayed sleeping in his bed long after we saved up and got a second hand couch and a bed for him. Even after we moved cities I continued to have my own room but I slept in his bed with him. It wasn’t until he moved to the North West Territories to pursue a high paying job and a chance to get to know his brother and father again (they lived there) that I started sleeping on my own again but I never adjusted to it really. I was alone for many many years after that and thankfully I don’t remember much from those years except that they were miserable and I was in and out of psychiatric wards and moving constantly. It wasn’t until I moved in with Chris that I stopped moving all the time and only once while living with him have I been in a psychiatric ward and that time I chose to go there myself to ask for help before I lost it and did something I didn’t really want to do. Being there that time still only made things worse, despite the fact that I was being cooperative and trying to be open to talking to the doctors, but at least it wasn’t a horribly traumatic experience, and it wasn’t against my will for the first time ever.
I still have severe anxiety problems at bedtime, but I have help to cope with them and to address some of the underlying issues, and it’s not interfering with my life quite so much anymore. 

Homework questions:
What do you know is true?
What do you desire most?
Why are you scared to pursue it? Will it be worthwhile to pursue it?
Who do you know God to be? Can you trust him?

I am very tired right now. That is true. However if I leave this until tomorrow there’s a good chance I won’t remember what I was talking with my friend about tonight, and she said to go blog the answers to these questions right now. So I am going to try, but I apologize if I make no sense or ramble on a lot.

I know that my love for other people is true. I know that I sometimes have selfish reasons for the unselfish love that I show, but more often the reasons are truly unselfish.

I know that I’m smart. So much of what I do and who I am seen as to others is a defensive act. A very very good defensive act. In order to feel safe, I automatically, and most of the time subconsciously, try to manipulate people around me.
This is my reason for why I’m so afraid to actually admit that I want something from someone else. I’m afraid to ask for help, because I’m afraid that I’ll end up manipulating people around me and they’ll feel used. I don’t trust myself. I don’t believe I am a good person overall. I do believe that I have good intentions and a good heart, but it’s better for others if I don’t ask for what I truly want, because most of it is childish and unrealistic at my age, and it’s entirely selfish. I can’t trust any of my decisions to be actually in keeping with being a good person on the inside and not just the outside.

I’m afraid to trust my own feelings and decisions. I have to trust them, but I don’t. So I’m stuck. Always stuck tearing myself apart inside.

I want to be held. Rocked. Safe. Protected. When I’m scared and I barely even know who I am, and I hurt so badly I can’t even cry or scream anymore, when I just break inside and I curl up and stop caring because I can’t think or feel any more, I wish there was someone who cared enough to come and take me away from that horrible place.
Only I know truly that this will never happen. No one on this earth would love me enough to be there with me in my deepest hell without it breaking them, too. Unless maybe just maybe if they had God’s strength to lean on. I’ve seen glimpses that make me think it might be possible, but nothing that tells me that it’s ok to actually want this so badly that I’ll do just about anything to get it.
If I care about my friends this much, I shouldn’t desire this huge impossible gift of love/compassion from them, which means I need to convince myself that I’m not worth it, because when I start to believe that I’m worth being loved then the pain I’m trying to repress comes back at me so hard, and it just breaks me inside and won’t let go.

If I cry or scream, no one is going to come and make it better. I’ve known that truth for as long as I can remember. If I want comforting or reassurance I have to beat that desire out of myself before it shows on the outside.

I used to never ever go get a needle without needing to be held down or held firmly. I couldn’t unravel my erratic and dangerous behavior that surrounded having to get a needle for a long time, because I realized that as much as I feared being held down, I needed the physical touch and to feel the physical pressure and restriction because it was often the only way I could stay in contact with reality. When I did things that lessened my panic, and I stopped needing to be pinned down, the actual experience of getting a needle was emotionally devastating. There were times I attempted suicide before or after. Now I have cancer I have to get needles all the time, and I can’t have someone with me all the time because I’m an adult and I don’t have a mom, and even if she was still alive she wouldn’t have reassured/protected me or cared.

I have learned how to control my behavior (mostly through using sedative medications before I get a needle), and I’ve learned that if I wrap myself tightly in a sheet, it creates the pressure sensation that I rely on to help me stay grounded in reality, but it never stops me from feeling absolutely dead and black inside. I wish every day that I could die because I have no idea how to cope with or even appropriately express the amount of pain I’m in – emotionally, and physically. Only I know I can’t just give up. I promised. I promised I wouldn’t kill myself. I promised myself I would never leave my friends behind to carry the pain of my suicide like I was left. It killed me inside when Tina died. She was the closest thing to a mom I ever had, and because of her I lived, and when she died it broke my heart. My safety net was gone. I realized it was all just an illusion of being safe, but that illusion had sustained me for 4 years.
When Heather died, I partly blamed myself, my own selfishness lead to her suicide. I could have made the difference that stopped her, and I wasn’t there because I was off focusing on myself. Every birthday I am reminded of the consequences for my selfishness.
I promised myself I would carry all the brokenness inside me until I died a natural death, and no one would have to know that every minute hurt.

Now I’m dying of natural causes, and I’m so relieved, and at the same time I’m so torn because my spiritual values are coming into conflict with the promises that I made to myself, and I don’t know how to break those promises to myself without causing a whole lot of pain and suffering to others.
My spiritual journey has given me a new desire for life, a great yearning to stay here on this earth despite the pain, in order to be able to really actually bring some comfort to those who are hurting around me.
So I want to live, and I want to die. Sometimes the rapid swings between the two just about kill me. I’ve done things already that were indirectly suicidal, regretted it, and yet at the same time I want to do it again. With my immune system the way it is, cutting is no longer just ‘harmless’ self harm, it’s life threatening.
I’ve been cutting more than anyone knows, and I scare myself when it happens, but I don’t dare tell. I don’t dare ask for help, because what I need is to be held by God, and what will happen if I tell is that I’ll just cause more pain and grief to the people who love me the most.

I am 30 years old. I should not so acutely want to be held and rocked like a baby this much still. I’m not a baby. It’s unreasonable. I have to keep praying, because only God would love me like that now. Like I was a precious child. Like I was worth loving that deeply, even with all my faults. I believe truly that God does love me like that, and I have felt that in my heart not only believed it in my head, and yet I still constantly sin and desire imperfect human love when His love is perfect and freely given. I hate how selfishly I desire to be held. I hate myself when I acknowledge that it’s still there and very much a problem in my relationships. I try so hard to keep myself held in, but at the same time it’s not healthy to do that and I know it. I just keep thinking that if I just trust God enough and talk to God enough and tell him the things that I wish I could tell, then he’ll heal me inside, and I won’t need to be any bother to anyone else or a drain on their lives, but things slip out, and sometimes when one thing comes out then a lot of things come out and that is a sin against God that I haven’t trusted Him enough with my mess, and I’m still turning to other people when I shouldn’t be.

Only I am a bit confused/conflicted about this because I’ve also heard that God created us to be in community with each other and to need other people and depend on them, but I’ve been taught that God is the rock that we should lean on, because people are imperfect and faulty.

I want to believe that it’s true that we are created to need each other and that it’s not wrong of me to want physical and emotional reassurance/support from other humans, but I also don’t trust myself to make that decision about which one is right, because I could talk myself into believing that just because I want it so badly that it eclipses everything else.

I’m supposed to go to the lab again this week, more needles, more tests. I am terrified inside. I know I shouldn’t be, but I am. If I think about it, I get suicidal. Problem is that I need to think about it in order to book the appointment.
If I cut myself again when I book my appointment, I’m going to be in big shit again when I actually go in to the appointment. So I haven’t made the appointment. I just keep thinking about choir and I don’t think about medical things. There’s lots of choir this week. Only I know every time that it crosses my mind that I’m really pushing it and if I don’t go and get this test done then I’m putting my health at risk and I might as well just kill myself outright if I’m going to make decisions that I know will lead to my death.
I hate these tests at the regular labs. The hospital ones I’ve learned to tolerate a bit better, because they know me now, and we have a system, and that helps. Having a routine helps me cope on the outside at least, and it does help on the inside, too.

I’m having a major panic attack even just thinking about it. So I stopped writing and took my meds and breathed and then now I’m looking back at the questions I was supposed to answer here. I kind of got side tracked. It is really late and I am really tired and when I started writing this I thought “I am too tired to write this tonight” but then I thought if I didn’t write it down right away then I might forget it. Well I kind of am forgetting what I’m saying anyways, I’m just rambling. My memory is scrambled. Good thing I wrote the questions down at least.

I know God loves me. I know that is true. I know I am loved here on earth by people, too.
What I desire most is to be comforted, and also to be able to give comfort and show God’s love to others. I have a huge heart for others and I believe that God created me with that capacity to love, and it’s up to me to choose how and when to use it or show it. Selfishly, though, I desire most in the whole world is to feel safe in someone’s arms, to have someone I could tell all my owies to and that they would soothe the pain as best as possible and pray over me and take me back from the monsters that got me. I’m scared to pursue that desire because I believe that I am unloveable in that way. Because I’ve been rejected over and over, and told that it is unhealthy to still want what I wanted when I was a little kid. I am adult, I know better now, there is no such thing as safe and no one wants a grown up who acts like a child.
I guess I’m just trying to explain in grown up words the same words I hear a little voice inside of me say “No one wants me” over and over. I’m trying to explain what it means when that little voice says that, but in the end they just keep summing it up as “No one wants me”.

I told them to shut up. I’m not allowed to be multiple anymore. It’s not ok, because I know how to control all the parts now, and because I know better then I need to do better, and breaking down and letting them communicate in their own way for me is no longer acceptable.
but since I’ve integrated, no one’s cared for those parts of me anymore. I have to care for them myself. Only I don’t. Those parts of me hurt too much, and I’m angry with myself for it. I’m angry with myself when that hurt spills over into the lives of the people I love.

I feel like this has been a very raw blog. I feel very raw and worn down. Also I can’t think straight any more and I need to just take my meds and stop crying and go to sleep. Maybe another day I’ll try answering these questions again when I’m more coherent.