I'm in the dark place again.
I'd just like to point out that I became ill when I was thirteen or fourteen because I'd maxed out on pain - because I had no way to handle everything that was wrong. And I'd like to give you a minute to think of every shitty, impossibly hard thing that has happened *since* that time... say, *since* I went to Rogers. I really, really didn't need another one. I didn't need to know that my family is indeed more fucked up than I was ever told. I didn't need to know that there's a damn good reason I told the doctor (as he tried to coax me into saying I'd like a girlfriend - or hell, a boyfriend - and I'd like to have sex) that there's no difference in my head between sex and rape. predictably, he asked who raped me. I told him my life isn't allowed to make that much sense. and I told him I stayed way too far away from anything remotely close to that sort of 'relation' for something to happen. he started talking about family. I told him that lot wasn't mine to bear; it was my sister's. he said three hundred times that when there are five kids and one of them is abused, it isn't only one. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I didn't know whether he meant we were all effected ("you live so much of your life through Sarah") or that we all felt it ("you're so intuitive") ... or that something else literally happened. I thought he was giving me psychiatric bullshit; "in most cases this is impossible, so I refused to believe yours in an exception." he kept pushing at me because, he told me later, he thought I knew. I kept pushing at him to give me a direct answer because, as he understood later, I didn't.
but my brother Joe was also abused. my whole chest went hollow; my entire upper body caved in... "he hurt Joe, too?" ...I started thinking, this isn't happening, I don't have to worry because this isn't real - the same way I do in dreams. except in my dreams, I know that's right. talking with him today, I knew it wasn't. it did happen. and I *felt it* - my whole damn life, I felt it, and no one would tell me the truth about what was so wrong in our family. and then the hostility between my parents and... damn. to think I needed other reasons to go crazy. to think I had to have primary traumatic experiences before it exploded in my face. to think that even when they made a show of confiding in me (my mom: "Mary, you need to know this") ... they didn't tell the whole story. they let themselves think it wouldn't affect me. they let themselves off the hook. (my parents. not Sarah, not Joe - my parents.) they let me think it was me, all along, not understanding, feeling things that weren't there, scared of things for no reason. scared like something had happened even though nothing ever had. scared and on top of it, crazy.
mostly after he told me, I just cried. for one moment, though, I did feel better. I felt, instead of "here's one more awful thing to survive" ... "here's why." and I turned to the doctor with tears in my eyes and said, "you mean there was actually a reason?"
and he said, "there's always a reason. it wasn't you."
a long time later, after this crazy session with all the talk about sexuality and why I can't accept my own, and why I don't want this part of me, and why it's different than the other parts of me I didn't want, and why relationality shouldn't require sexuality on and on and on... I finally turned to him and said, "if none of it...had happened... do you think... do you think-"
and I really wanted to finish it; I really wanted to get out the I'd still like girls better on my own. I wanted to have said it so I can stop talking about how he acts like I have. but time was running by; we'd already gone well over an hour...so he guessed, "do I think that your sexual orientation would be different?"
"Yeah."
he told me he couldn't know, but he could tell me what he *thought* - and that's all I'd asked for anyway. and he said that he believed I would have a vailance toward women no matter what, but it would be less painful and perhaps less extreme. I cut him off when he started talking about what psychiatry does and does not know sexual orientation. he'd said what I needed to hear, which I know he doesn't do just for the sake of my desire. he told me it was good.
good tied to bad by lies of omission. by keeping a girl in the dark and pretending nothing was wrong. telling her over and over again that what she felt didn't agree with what was accurate. telling her over and over again that what she perceived wasn't true. until she managed to do such telling herself.
now I wonder if I'm supposed to let on that I know. I know one of the big secrets, one of the ones that was never supposed to leak. who else knows? what happens to me if I say it?
and did I mention Joe's coming into town tonight?
comment softly. *nothing* could knock me over right now. in fact, I may lie down just as a precaution. shit to fan again. again and again and again. shhhhhhhhhhit->fan.
:begins building a cocoon:
~me