broken pieces

i've had writers block since this summer. i've known exactly what was causing it but haven't wanted to face up to it. i've had the words. i've known what i wanted to say a thousand times over in a thousand different ways, but i just couldn't say it. and when you know there's something you need to say but you're being stubborn about saying it, well, it makes it really hard to say anything else.

i'm ready now.

i'm broken. i have a hard time in relationships so i avoid them. i thought i knew why for a long time but this summer there was a flat, bold face, plain as day answer given to all the things i've thought over the years. it's ugly and it's dark. but i know what it is now. what i don't have is a solution for it or a way to move past it yet. maybe finally saying it will help.

ok. so maybe i'm not ready to say all of it. part of the writing process you can't see: i've typed and deleted several paragraphs trying to decide what to include and what to leave out to get to the main point of this post. readers digest version that i'll get back to at some point when i'm more ready: my mom is married to a pedophile. her husband was inappropriate towards me growing up and i found out after moving away from small town USA that he had also been grooming my youngest son. i told my mom about it at one point when it was just me, and again when i found out it was happening to my son.

i'm sure you can imagine how much more is packed into that one paragraph if it was allowed to unfold itself.

when i told my mom about my experiences she looked at me and said: "well, what do you want me to do about it? it's already happened." when i told my mom about my son she told me that i was just projecting my own experiences on him and there was no way it could have happened.

perhaps now it's making a little more sense to some of you why my mom and i don't have the best relationship.

it's been really hard for me over the last few years to see her stand beside this pedophile at the expense of a relationship with my kids and i. as long as he is anywhere around, we won't be. my older brother has taken her side. he doesn't believe there's a problem and i'm just being the stubborn kid that i've always been for no reason. after losing my dad and my younger brother, it's unspeakably hard to not have any connection to what blood family i have left.

the biggest thing over the last few years: i felt like the one who was wrong. i felt like maybe i was being a little harsh or maybe it was all just in my head. maybe THAT was the reason i was so broken: i made things up and i was unreasonable.

this summer my mom asked me to go to therapy with her. she'd been trying to work out why she and i don't have a relationship and her therapist suggested that maybe i should come in to talk over some things. a mom is a mom and there's countless studies to show that no matter how bad things get, our primal instinct is to call out for our mothers. i want my mother. i do. so i decided to go. maybe we could work it out. maybe she would see my side and understand why i was protecting my kids. maybe she would say she loved me and chose me for once.

we sat in that office. i talked about what it was like growing up. i talked about why i had separated myself from her. i talked about how it felt having her chose a pedophile over me, her daughter. the therapist heard me. she pulled together my pieces with the things my mom had talked about. the therapist, a trained professional looked at the whole picture and i was honestly, truly shocked by what she told me: i wasn't crazy. my experiences were real. my decision to protect my children was the right one. knowing what she had worked on with my mom and then hearing my pieces, it made sense and fit together and i wasn't being the unreasonable terrible daughter i believed i was. the therapist flat out said if she had known the whole story from the beginning her work with my mom would have been totally different. she believed me.

i can't tell you how powerful that moment was. someone validated me. validated the things i knew to be true. feelings and experiences i'd been wanting someone to believe. the things i though made me crazy and broken weren't right. things i've hated about myself since i was a teenager weren't my fault. i didn't ask to be treated the way i was. i didn't cause things that happened to me. it wasn't right that i had been ignored. it wasn't right that i was made to feel bad for protecting my kids. the therapist told me i was reasonable and level headed and the things i was doing were on the right track and i shouldn't waiver or back down. it was so powerful to have someone on my side. there. in the same room as my mom. my mom HAD to hear it. she HAD to know. she HAD to see it and acknowledge it and it would be different.

but just as quickly, i lost that moment. just as quickly my mom looked at the therapist and said i was crazy and heard voices in my head (she literally said exactly that). that i made things up. my own mother said that none of my experiences, none of my memories are real. she was so scared of the truth that she flat denied it and just shattered me. she looked straight at me and said nothing i remember, none of my experiences will ever be right or true. ever.

THAT.

THAT MOMENT. that is the real reason i'm broken. as powerful as the moment before it had been of someone believing me and validating me had been, THAT MOMENT was a thousand times more destructive. my mother doesn't believe me. she doesn't think i'm worth protecting for fighting for. i'm not worth loving. my mother would rather protect a monster than love a daughter. in that moment she threw me away. my own family rejected me. my family thinks i'm broken and damaged and not worth fighting for. i am not loveable. i am not good. i am not worth anything.

and if my own family, my own flesh and blood feels that way, what hope is there of ever finding a partner in life to accept me?

NOW: I KNOW. i know i have friends that love me and accept me. i hope there will eventually be someone on the life partner level that will feel the same way. but there is a whole fucking canyon between hope and belief. and before i can even begin to cross that canyon i have to have even the smallest confidence that it's even possible. and i don't have that. i don't have even a small piece of that confidence. not even a sliver. the feeling of rejection is so ingrained in me that anyone who tells me they love me must lying. it's an instant deal breaker for me. they want something. they're using me. it CAN'T be true. it's not physically possible for it to be true. i wholly believe that. i know. fucked up.

so there it is. my broken pieces: what's left of my family has rejected me. i truly don't believe i'm loveable. i don't believe i will ever find someone that wont go away or let me push them away. i don't believe there will ever be someone to fight for me and with me.

there are my pieces. now. how do i fix them? how do i teach myself that those pieces aren't right? how do i teach myself that i am loveable and that someone will want me? how do i believe what that therapist saw? how do i teach myself not to destroy chances at good things because they're foreign? how do i make pieces that are right and put them all together?

i recently tried my hand at a true, talked about it, put a name on it, give it a shot, relationship. it didn't make it very far. among several of the red flags that i filtered through, the biggest one was that he dropped the love bomb on me. after only a few weeks. and i INSTANTLY shut down. instantly. something must be wrong. it couldn't be true. now, there was more to it. there always is. but i don't know if it was real. i don't know if he really did love me or if it was because we had a small argument and he thought it would make things better. i don't know because i didn't give it a chance. like i said, there was more to it, but i couldn't even look at any of the more because i was DONE. that moment i fully shut down, completely shut off because there was no way it could be true. he must have been lying because no one can love me. people who have know me my whole life can't love me. how could some one that's only known me for a few weeks say that? and so i destroyed it. it's done.

how do i NOT do that? how do i not shut down? how do i not instantly want to call someone a liar? how do i start to unbelieve that bad and really believe the good? i have to start to believe that i'm loveable. i have to. the hard part of that is i don't know where to start. and i don't know if i ever will believe it. i don't like that. i don't like that i'm questioning it before i've even started the process. it's going to be a helluva journey. there's a lot of damage to undo.

cleaning out the post its:

i try to keep track of all the things i want to brain vomit about. this usually ends up being either notes scribbled on my wrist while driving or a plethora of post it notes covering everything with an area even partially big enough/capable of holding the smallest section of the sticky backing. more than once i've had to clean out the sea of post its that have fallen off my phone to be abandoned on the bottom of my purse. that being said: i've stacked up a few again. and since i seem to be on a roll tonight (this morning) let's clean house shall we!

my movie premier: I WENT TO A MOVIE PREMIER. and i saw my friends (and yes, even myself) up on the big screen. in a REAL, FULL LENGTH MOVIE (which will be debuting at a LARGE international film festival within a few months). can't even say how epic that was. got all dressed up, went out to the premier and then out with the writer/director/actors afterwords. E.P.I.C. can i say that again? EPIC. a real freaking movie. written. filmed. produced. ON THE BIG FUCKING SCREEN. and i was in it! see the picture in the wallet of the guy and his dead wife? I'M THE DEAD WIFE IN THE PICTURE. dont' worry. i won't charge too much for autographs.

new couples: you know how you go out to breakfast and you see a couple come in and you KNOW it's one of their first awkward morning after breakfasts? yeah...i got to sit next to one of those the other day. HI-LARIOUS. first off you know it's new because she's DRAGGING him in to the place by his hand. almost literally dragging him. as in arms fully extended in each direction (him: forward, her: backwards). she's "casual" in a ball cap, retard suit...i mean track suit, sneakers...but her ponytail out the back of the hat is very polished, she is in FULL war paint, and she keeps checking and adjusting herself. you KNOW girls stop putting in that effort once a guy is good and suckered in. second clue that it's new: every story requires a FULL back story before it can be completed. example: so. i ran into my buddy mick yesterday...you know mick...he's the guy that goes to mexico with his school teacher wife...the brunette...every year and brings me back a case of mexican beer. i think you met him once at that football party. and mick reminded me that we have a poker game this weekend. it's a poker game all the guys and i have been doing since college. we had to stop for a few years when everyone got married and started having kids but we started it up a few months ago. we get together at a different guys house every week and play poker til we run out of beer or money or both. so mick reminded me of this poker game, but i told him i won't be able to make it this week...
SERIOUSLY? a give minute diatribe to say there's a poker game this week you won't be going to? HI-LARIOUS. it was even better watching her nod along the whole time KNOWING she was taking crazy mental notes about ALL of it for future reference. epic. morning after breakfasts. awesome to watch. not so great to be stuck at.

return policy: i figured out which dating category i fit into finally. i'm not allowed to be "single" since i have a divorce on my wrap sheet. i HATE saying that i'm divorced since i've been single three times longer than i was married since the divorce (i firmly believe that once youve been single longer than you were married you should be allowed to be JUST SINGLE again). anywho. i'm not single. i hate being divorce. so i created a new category just for me: returned. yeah. that's me. RETURNED. which really isn't better than single or divorced. it's like the tv on the clearance rack at sears that's been returned: there's no box, you take it as is. it's not marked down much because there's nothing wrong with it. there's no defects, it has the remote. it works perfectly fine. but it's still clearance. does anyone really want the clearance marked down item? once in a while a creepy bargain shopper will threaten to take you home. but that's about it. you just sit there on the return shelf watching all the brand new tv's find a home. or people scavenging the heavily damaged, REALLY marked down ones (really, i can fix it...). doesn't matter why it was returned- if it was way better quality than the original purchaser knew how to handle. or whether the guy couldn't afford the payments. or if he decided that he really couldn't handle the little extras that came with it. or if he decided to pick up a twice rejected whore of a tv tossed off to the side of the road offering blow jobs for $20 in the back of a gas station with big hips and bad rodeo hair (you know how some tv's can be...)
hmm...where was i? oh yes. i'm the like-new returned tv sitting on the shelf. getting dusty. and older/less flashy than the new models every day. and the most action i get is when the cleaning crew runs a feather duster over me. that reminds me...time to schedule my annual girl appointment...