Really. You're fucking "mystified"? (aka: roller coaster ride : Exhibit A)

"I'm mystified," I said.

"mystified," I texted.

"Mystified as to why you would... (insert specific complaint details here)," I wrote.

To you -my housemate, my sister, my chosen family - regarding a mundane parenting decision you made while I was at the zoo with my niece (your daughter) one day."
The snarky, condescending implication very much being "how dare you use your time in that manner (my time in that manner)."

I was irritated. I called Handsome first, to complain about your subpar parenting decisions (basically).

He was non-comital.

So I decided if I was this irritated I should just tell you.

I debated calling you.

But I was tired.

I debated finding more diplomatic or thoughtful wording.

But I was tired.

And Hungry.

I debated letting it go.

But I was tired.

And hungry.

And anxious.

Too irritated and anxious to even fall asleep with the little one's who were passed out from all our fun at the zoo.

You called me immediately.

I declined it.

You followed with a text defensively spelling out your rationale... like I was being an asshole.
(It's weird that you would have taken it that way).

Then I called Handsome, again, for vindication.

It was less than forthcoming.

I wanted him to tell me I was right and you were wrong.

He did not oblige. Never a good sign.

"I guess, if I'm bothered by what Roomie does with her time while I have Rascal then, I'm probably too stressed to be making offer's of watching her."

"That seems reasonable," said Handsome.

"You have to go, don't you?" I asked.

"Kind of," He replied.

When I knew you'd be there to pick Rascal up soon, I hid in the back room...

Paying bills.

...in the bizarre hopes of avoiding you, who I love.

"Go give titi (auntie) a hug," I heard you tell Rascal.

So much for that.

"Bye baby," I said with a kiss.

But you didn't leave.

"Hey," you ventured...
                                        ...I take exception to your tone and wording...

                                                                              ...I'm offended that you would assume...

      ...I don't mind giving you this explanation, even though I don't owe it to you, because of the relationship that we have...

                         ...but...                                          
                                                                           ...I'm hurt...            

              ...You make questionable decisions all the time and I don't judge you for them...

                      ... I value our relationship...                                                
                                                                                       ...I care about your opinion..."


you said. (Among other things).

"I know..." I said.

"I'm sorry." I said.

"I guess, it's really about this other (completely unrelated and in no way relevant) thing." I realized.

"That's fair." you said. "I guess I just...                              ... so call me on that..."

"I know..." I said.

"I'm sorry." I said.

"I love you.

                  ...I'm grateful for you...
 
                                                    ...thank you for talking to me...
                           
                                                                                                           ...I think the real problem is...

...My childhood. And that no one ever took care of me. And now I feel like I need to rescue everyone around me, even when they don't need rescuing. And all this remembering is making me feel lost and I'm probably trying to make people need me so they will love me and they won't leave and I don't know what I"m doing with my life and I feel like I'm a failure and I don't know when it's going to end, and every time things start to get better I go and re-complicate them because I can't handle calm and smooth and working, and then I get frustrated because things are chaotic and I assume it's all everyone else's fault and when i realize it's really just me i stress out because I don't know how to back out of my commitments and embarrassed because I feel flakey and... everything hurts! And I really do love you and i'm sorry and I'm grateful, please keep loving me, Im sorry that I am awful sometimes I really do care about you and the girls and our relationship and the boys relationships with their cousins and sniffle, tear, I want a hug. I'm sorry. have I said that yet? I love you. Also, I'm  tired and hungry and... they were so bad to me...

   ...and WWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Solution. Solution. Solution. Working things out. Brainstorming. Problem solving. Hug. Hug. Hug.

Welcome to loving and living with someone with Trauma.

The End.

Please comment, if you know who deserves credit for this long viral meme. Because, yes, yes, yes! First row all the way!

wisdom, do you remember when you were young?

wisdom, do you remember when you were young? 

The following was originally posted to one of my journal blogs in September, 2010.

I am resistant. not hesitant. not timid. not shy. a little angry. and a lot more. i am not a follower.I believe that I can make waves, though I rarely do.when I was a small child i dropped a glass jar of peanut butter and the glass, though shattered, kept it’s form - held together by the glue like substance within. terrified I picked it up and put in the refrigerator like I had been told to do. that is the end of my story and the beginning of another. well, it is not the end. It was later discovered by my someone. and my father, who had instructed me to carry it in and put it away, locked me in a dark room until i promised to tell him the "truth" about why I had carried it in. I was terrified of the dark. I snuck out and hid under the bed in my brother's room, which was lighted, until I was discovered and dragged back into the dark, sat on the bed and asked why I was doing this. eventually the softer side of my father resurfaced and he told me not to do it again and let me back into the light with everyone else. I had been forgiven. or he had remembered. i do not know. I was relieved that the monsters were gone, for the moment. but that is the end. except there never really is an end, is there?no story ever ends. no human story anyway. but my other story is that I am that jar. a cohesively shattered jar. held together by the glue like substance within. left in a refrigerator because what is there else to do. because when the world is not a trusting place (and those of you who think it is, i have to tell you that you are wrong. if you believe it is, you have been very lucky, or you have been lied to, or you are lying to yourself, but it is not. the simple truth is that the world is an ugly and horrible place with a lot of love and potential for joy and peace.) little girls are pulled out of themselves by there vaginas and become frozen women, long before they are women at all and have even half a chance to find their voice, or not.and many do not, because it is a much harder, much rougher, much more trying journey than you might think. and it involves dragging beautiful people into the mud with you. and finding beautiful people who want to do this is quite the challenge. there are not enough of them.wisdom. do you remember when you were young?you think i am angry, and I am. but that is not it.you think i am wounded, and I am. but that is not it.you think i need help, and I do. but that is not it.you think i need healing, and I am. but that is not it.you wonder if I am sad, and I am, but you are wrong.If I were more of an artist with brushes than words, I would paint my life a large and beautiful mural full of colors; birds and flowers; waterfalls and lakes; bright tropical fish and snowcapped mountains; laughing faces and weddings, births, friends holding hand; and somewhere in a canyon, almost lost in the shadow between the orange and brown layers under a luminous setting sun a child by herself, surrounded by wolves, a human hand, angry teeth or blood... i do now know. I rarely flush it out. just a small fearful sorrow in the shadow. that you could miss, but must include.

Looking these 5 years back and re-reading these words I accept that I am remembering. I accept that it is all real. This doesn't happen to me anymore. I don't feel lost and invisible anymore. Because, for everything else, I have been seen. I have been seen. Wisdom not only remembers when she was young. But more importantly, because she does, she can see me. And she does. See me. Which was the question I did not know how to ask. For I could not yet see myself. Or know that I was not seeing myself. I just felt (inexplicably, it seemed to me then) invisible. Sometimes, it takes being seen, to see.

my latest revelation

Yeah... it' still "to come". Sorry!

(probably) bisexual me.

There was a time when I thought I was gay. In college I began to realize that I was attracted to women. Some women stirred something deep within me. Something as elusive as it was intense. I had crushes on men too, a professor at one time, a fellow student here and there, a flame from the past... they felt different. How different... I'm not sure. Perhaps less sexual, perhaps not. When you have been as sexually traumatized as I have, when you have been brainwashed, when your early attachments were as skewed as mine... knowing yourself (which is never an easy task) becomes rather monumental. And, as it happened, I was attending a religious college. There were of course pockets of acceptance and openness. As far as religious institutions go it was... tolerable in it's relating to the LGBTIQ community. As disinclined as I was to care how the institution as a whole viewed my morality this experience of myself as I related to some women could have been more fully explored in relational safety -- given the folks with whom I associated. But it never rose to a priorty. Surviving debilitating panic attacks (not that I knew them to be such), learning not only to survive day to day but to succeed, fuck - learning period (given how little of my primary and secondary educations had been absorbed). Dipping my toe in this particular water just never really happened.

The furthest it went was furtive glances at attractive women who somehow stirred this aura of homosexual desire in me. I never knew quite what to make of it and, unfortunately, never pursued it. I didn't know how to and men presented themselves to me, some of which I felt something for. I dated one young man my junior year of college and though we made out I, as often as not, didn't want him touching me. Sometimes it aroused me. Sometimes that was wanted (I think); often not. I broke up with hime for other reasons. He was a bit hypocritical and we differed widely in our religious and social-political ideologies. I was over him instantly, though he transferred schools in the hopes I would take him back. I was convinced that I was in love with a young man I had deeply resonated with as a junior high and later high school student when we eventually reconnected my senior year of college. Alas, the feeling was not mutual. I suppose it is the sum of those two experiences which caused me to resume an assumption of heterosexuality, to whatever degree that I did, when setting up the online dating profile which ultimately led to... well, marriage and kids. Had it given me the option of being bi-sexual I likely would have chosen that option, but it excluded same sex relationships for some reason...

Handsome has known from the beginning that I believed myself to be bisexual. He has known when my attraction to women flares up, even about the lesbian dating "it's complicated" profile I once created for about a week, a couple of years ago. One of his then favorite passtimes was catching up on the harmless crush I had on a female biologist from one of my kids nature shows "Big Cat Diary". She's cute, smart, and they showed her driving around the Masai Mara barefoot, which I apparently found irresistible.

So it was not entirely without precedent when I stumbled upon a showing of all the 1950's playboy centerfolds last night only to found myself extremely aroused. I couldn't get enough of these women's semi-naked bodies. The way the light played off their nipples, the curves of their buttocks. So much so that, as any good millennial would, I turned to google in a panic. Shit, shit, shit! Is this how I'm 'supposed' to feel about men's bodies? Because I don't. But why? Because men are abjectly terrifying? (well, on a subconscious and sometimes conscious level, they are to me...) or because I'm really just gay? Or because with my latest revelation (more to come on that later), I'm finally finding myself in a good spot again and my trauma formed brain simply can not compute this calm.

I love Handsome more deeply than I have ever loved anyone. I want nothing more than to want an ever deepening, ever gratifying relationship with this beautiful soul. And I think that I do. But, what if that's just not in my nature? What if that is not who I am or who I can be?  What if? What if I'm bisexual, which should be no surprise. and me figuring that out means dragging my family and beautiful, wonderful, steady, compassionate, hazel-eyed Handsome through yet another land mine in search of a peace I am incapable of experiencing. I want to close the book. The only, tiny, minuscule problem with closing the book and leaving the ending unknown to me, is that it will only work if I've been right about my bisexuality all along. But... what if I haven't?

As my tears begin to subside, I just want Handsome to hold me in his arms, to feel his heartbeat and I have no idea if that is fair. He reaches for my nipple and I push his hand away. "ooooohhh (dramatically disappointed) ladies are gonna want to touch your nipples too, dear..." Said with a smile and followed up with a kiss to the top of my head.

I adore him.

Is my sexuality just another casualty of a series of despicable men (and women?)  Am I doomed to a series of derailments in this only slightly mitigated train wreck I call "making it?" Growth seems to demand growing, but for my part, I want off. At least for today, for this lifetime. Is happy enough the same as happy? Just like "good enough" is supposedly "good enough?" Fuuuuuuuuck!!! fuck! FUCK! fuck!!!!!!

fuck!