Tag Archives: dysfunction

Thou shalt not suffer thy people to tend thee in thy sickness ~Garou Litany~

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Spider has been telling me that it’s time to write about The Hole.

It’s ridiculous, really. The weather has turned colder. There should really be spiders anymore. But they keep popping up…one so large, in fact, that I could see it at a stop sign on the passenger side of my car while I was driving. Not parking. Driving. SO big, SO clear…and then of course, the one in the house last night. And the dreams. She’s insistent, that one. And it’s not the kind of thing you want to mess with, because Spider dreams…well…the more impatient she gets, the higher the pressure gets in the dreams, and they only go two ways….either there’s more and more spiders, or the spiders get bigger and bigger. Not fun either way. So here goes.

There’s this thing that happens when you grow up in a house like mine. Your primary caretakers are unreliable and untrustworthy. As a child, the thought that you are NOT SAFE in your own home is so frightening, you will do anything to not think about it. And here’s this living growing human missing the primary force of stability in their lives, and lack of stability becomes one of the building blocks of their nature. As they become older it can take lots of forms…probably most often it’s a control-thing, because if you control everything then you are least likely to have things fall apart. When control is left to other people bad things happen, you see. So it’s just safest when it’s you.

I still struggle with that piece, I think. I’m much better than I was. But I’m sure I do things that I don’t see that are reflections of this. There’s a different piece I’m working with right now.

The Hole is the part of me that NEEEEEEEDS. Everyone has needs. Needs are okay, and natural and human. But NEEEEEED….that should only be a periodic thing. I live with this thing every day. Every day it screams at me for reassurance, and I can mute it, but I can’t stop it completely. I can distract myself pretty well….there’s work (lots of work) and video games. But there’s quiet times, too, and things get all squicky sometimes.

I don’t talk to many people. Part of that is geographic isolation. Part of that is not really knowing what to say when you pick up the phone if you don’t have news of some kind. Part of that is fear that if I call, people won’t really want to talk. And of course, that may not even be true, they might just have lives and the need to get back to them, because my phone call came at an unexpected time, and I know those things, but if several of those, “oh, I’d love to talk to you but I really have to go,” things happens, well, The Hole gets triggered, and I just stop calling. I can believe it’s life if it doesn’t keep happening, but if I call and it happens again, I’ll just start to believe The Hole, and it’s easier not to tempt that. Just so much easier. So I call different people, and if it happens there, too, (and why shouldn’t it? People have lives) the voice from The Hole gets louder, and I just can’t deal with it. I can’t. It’s easier, safer, to just be alone.

I guess that’s kind of a control thing, too, isn’t it?

We started working on this in therapy a couple of weeks ago. Some of my friend dynamics are shifting around (through my choices, so that part is okay) and I just have to adjust.
The other piece of that is, exactly how much are these people responsible for my well-being? The answer is, THEY AREN’T. They SHOULDN’T be, not on a regular basis. That’s not healthy.  “Thou shalt not suffer thy people to tend thee in thy sickness,” is a part of the Garou litany that always spoke to me. I’ve always just tried to kind of weed my way through this on my own. It’s not about trusting other people, all the love in the world can’t fix it. It’s about The Hole. It’s about the need that screams at me from it. It’s about how I know that needing too much can be draining to other people. It’s about knowing that I can wear out other people that way. It’s about taking care of my own junk.

It affects so many things. It affects my relationships with everyone else’s parents. It doesn’t matter that I’m no longer a child, that I’m now a peer. It doesn’t matter that they don’t understand why I keep connecting and running away, and connecting and running away. It doesn’t even matter that this inconsistency probably contributes to them thinking that my friendship isn’t reliable. It’s the only thing I’ve been capable of doing thus far.

Spider says that other people have Holes, too. She says I need to put this out there, because that’s the next step (she didn’t say why). The shaman thing is a trip….you don’t get to ignore your own junk like other folks. Spirit says, “This is what you’re working on today. I didn’t ask you if you liked it or if you wanted to. I don’t really care about that piece. It’s what you need to evolve, so this is where we’re going. And stop whining about it, or I won’t talk to you at all.”

So in therapy, we have to talk about my parents wanting me dead, my dad trying to kill me, and that hurts SO HARD. I can’t explain how much it hurts. It’s huge huge volumes of noise and pain, and we have to talk about how that’s not my fault, it’s theirs, and that doesn’t change that THE WORLD IS NOT STABLE, and THE WORLD IS NOT SAFE, and THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO LOVE YOU MIGHT REALLY WANT YOU TO GO AWAY, because I know that, I have proof of it, and it’s so hard to not continue protecting myself from a thing that doesn’t even exist anymore. Because it’s how I was created….it’s the building blocks of my life, the primary foundations.

Gods help me. The trees are about to show me how beautiful it is to let dead things go. The first guy I loved was born on November 2nd. I was raped October 31st. I was married on October 27th. My mom died on November 2nd. It’s the season for extremes in emotion for me. It’s time to let dead things go.

These are not harvests. These are dead animals. The rotting smell covers up the scent of roses. I need to let them go. Bear with me. This Mowg is under reconstruction. It’s time to bulldoze the shit out of all this and build a new foundation. Enough is enough.

Thou shalt not suffer thy people to tend thee in thy sickness. Show me how beautiful it is to let dead things go.

Silence. (TW: rape)

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It’s an amazing thing to be able to put a burden down. When you carry something for so many years, it’s like white noise in the background. You don’t even realize it affects you, or that you’re carrying it around. Then all of a sudden, the noise stops…you hear the refrigerator NOT running. You hear empty space.

I have a thing I’ve been carrying around for over 30 years. I’ve been in therapy about it (and several other things. Have you met me?) for more than a dozen. It’s the rape.

Rape has this weird set of consequences to it. First, there’s the event itself, which has various forms of trauma attached that are varied and unique. Was it violent? Was it a stranger? Was it a family member? A boyfriend? Did you love them? Hate them? Did anyone see? What did you do? What if there was, Gods forbid, a pleasurable moment? (it happens. an orgasm is like a sneeze…if you apply the proper stimuli, it’s pretty hard to stifle, even if you hate, even if you are frightened, even if you are nauseous.) How did you handle it in that moment? Did you scream, fight, cry? Did you pretend if was enjoyable to make it over faster? What part of your psyche did you chop off so the rest of you could survive the event? Each of those things has different consequences, different levels of betrayal; betrayal by someone you trusted or didn’t know, betrayal by your own body, betrayal by society, betrayal by what you were always told growing up, that surely, you are a good and kind person and this does not happen to good and kind people, that your goodness should be a shield against the world because SOMEONE will protect you.

Each of those things does damage. It’s like fractures in a hundred, a THOUSAND, places.

Then there’s what comes after. Did you speak? Did you ask for help? Did you press charges? Did you tell anyone? Anyone at all? Did you break up with them? How did it affect you socially? Did the perpetrator tell anyone you know? Did it have social repercussions?

…Other than the fear, of course. The fear of walking down the street, or being alone, or that someone else you love will betray you, or that you no longer see the true face of anyone you know because you’ve seen someone transform into something terrible that hurt you. The fear of your own judgment, that you trust other people who do not deserve to be trusted…

Forgetting all the fear, there’s still actions being taken. You’re absorbing what has happened to you. You’re watching the reflection of it in the face of other people as you tell them. Some of them are sympathetic. Some of them blame you. Some of them want you to just be quiet so they don’t have to confront the perpetrator. Some of them feel they weren’t there, so they don’t want to get involved. And in all of this are ripples of damage, more betrayals, things that generate more fear of who you can trust and who you cannot.

There’s also sex, of course, depending on where you were before the event. Were you a casual sex kind of person? A one-person deep-commitment kind of person? What choices did you make afterward? Some of us rush into sex, figuring if we could have it, then we could rush healing in some way. Some of us avoid it because it causes flashbacks. Some of us are lucky enough to have someone patient in their lives to work through it. Some of us are UNlucky enough to have someone who tries but can’t understand, can’t understand how they can cause fear when they have never done anything, how they can suddenly NOT be a source of comfort, or worse, unable to understand how their desires need to be put on hold until this damage is dealt with, which can lead to more pressure, more rape, or abandonment.

There’s physical reminders too, sometimes, bruises and scars. Or emotional scars…there’s many of those. Each shower is spent trying to parse it all out, trying to wash away physically what has happened to you mentally. The immediate trauma is over, but it’s not over. In your mind it’s still happening. It’s always happening. Sometimes for years.

It has been many years.

It’s white noise in my life. I feel like it affects me rarely nowadays, but that’s not true. It demonstrates itself every time I set a boundary and someone crosses it, like I become a vicious animal defending my territory. I’ve told myself it’s because it’s my right to protect myself, because I was clear and they deserve what they get. To a certain degree that’s true. But the level of anger is huge, the fury is…..it swallows me. I can destroy friendships, destroy PEOPLE, in the blink of an eye.

So years later, it still affects you. It affects how you choose where you’re going when. How you react to being pressured to do anything. How you evaluate other people. Who you choose to call friend.

Imagine that, imagine all of that. And then imagine that you could put that down. That it was done. That suddenly, there was no white noise, and there was silence.

Right now, I’m just waiting in silence. I’m waiting to be sure that it’s really done, really and truly. I don’t know how long I will take to be sure there isn’t another shoe to drop. I don’t think it will be much longer. A couple of months maybe. Then done, for realz.

I have so much dancing to do in this silence. So much to do. I’m just waiting to be sure.

But I’m waiting in silence now. And that’s so much different than before.