There is this great and terrible sadness within me that fills so much of my heart and mind and soul with its lake of ice cold tears that it leaves very little room for anything else at all.
It is this sadness which that sad little boy with his faced turned to the wall in my mind is expressing when he refuses to face reality and says, without anger or hope, “No. ”
This sadness is, I suspect, in turn an expression of that great wound deep inside me left by being raped at the tender age of 4.
In a sense my mind has been trying to express that pain for the last 45 years of my life. But the memories have been sealed away far too tightly for it to express itself in anything but the most vague terms.
We are ultimately doomed by the things we do to cope and keep going on. No matter what horrors befall me, somehow I pull myself back together and keep functioning at my low but sustainable level.
Because that’s what I have always done. After all, what’s the point of letting myself fall apart when there’d be nobody there to put me back together? I had no choice but to just keep going no matter what.
That’s what happens when you grow up with absolutely no sense of authority. Never in my life have I felt like there were older, wiser, stronger people looking out for me who had my best interests at heart and who would guide and protect me so that it was safe for me to explore.
Fuck, I was way smarter than most adults anyhow.
I was thrown to the wolves on the first day of school. How happy they must have been to finally be rid of me, or rather, the expense of paying for a babysitter for me.
One less reminder that I existed. Wonderful. Bliss, even.
No wonder its so very cold inside my soul. I grew up without getting any of the emotional nutrients a child needs to develop properly.
No love, or comfort, or support, or encouragement, or guidance, or even attention.
I was a robot that went to school. When not in school I entertained myself.
And that’s still all I know how to do. I certainly don’t know how to be alive. How could I when I was so emotionally starved?
They can rightfully claim they didn’t know. But I can also claim that they didn’t care to know. They liked just imagining that I must be okay because I never seemed sad.
Of course. I wasn’t allowed to be anything but OK., Saying anything else would have led to them stumbling over their words in shock as they were suddenly reminded they have a real live fourth kid with needs and desires and everything, and that could only lead to them realizing just how little attention they paid to me most of the time.
So they would sputter and stammer and exit the conversation as quickly as possible.
There was absolutely no chance that they would interrupt their busy and important lives to actually help me, or show some concern.
After all, I didn’t exist. They treated anything but the expected answers like I had just burst into the room and held them at gunpoint.
They would only do what it took to go back to pretending I wasn’t there as smoothly and rapidly as possible.
It was not okay to not be okay. At all.
More after the break.
Wall of rage
I think my vast reservoir of unexpressed rage is really getting in the way of my recovery and it’s high time I did something about that.
Which means I have to find a way to stop being so scared of it.
That’s what holds me back. It feels so much like if I try to tap into my anger, it will explode like a hydrogen bomb, taking my sanity and possibly some innocent bystanders with it as I go on some kind of Mister Hyde rampage.
But that’s probably just more bullshit from my depression. Yet another guardian demon tasked with scaring me away from things that threaten my depression’s regime.
Because expressing all that anger would undoubtedly lead to a saner and stronger me. When the dust cleared, I would be a whole heck of a lot calmer and more clear-headed.
My untapped rage is a major source of the deep tension that underwrites all my mental illness problems. It takes up a huge portion of my mental and spiritual resources to keep it all suppressed and those are resources that should be going to lifting my mood.
I still haven’t done that “beating up pillows while yelling about my shitty childhood” exercise Doc Costin wants me to do. Had the perfect opportunity last Saturday night when Joe and Julian were out of the apartment and I had the place to myself.
But I was too damned scared. Still am.
It’s coming, though. I can feel it. The rage is rising to the surface of my consciousness and pretty soon I am going to have to release it before it chokes me to death.
Yeah, a nausea metaphor is highly appropriate here. After all, I have been swallowing something toxic for a really long time.
Quite possibly my next blog entry will be me venting all my rage about my shitty childhood and how I grew up feeling unwelcome in my own home.
So, consider yourself warned. If the next entry stars “Dear Mom and Dad” or “Dear Family”, you might want to put on some protective gear before reading it.
I am going to have to face just how bad things were for me and for how long. Year after year of near total isolation. No friends, no connection with family, my teachers didn’t like me either. I was all alone in my life.
And the whole time, I was too timid and weak to even understand that I was being mistreated, let alone assert my rights.
They fucked me up good, and with remarkable efficiency. They barely had to do a thing.
Leaving me out in the cold like an old dog tied up in a yard came naturally to them.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.