childhood history and the loss of the happy

I am a woman of few spoken words and many, many written ones.

And I am changing my life. Or, rather, my life is changing me.

Here's a brief history of my time (which doesn't follow an exact timeline, bear with me):

My beginnings on this planet were harsh. Unwanted, unwelcome. I was not the cherished gift that my brothers were, but a burden and a scourge on my mother. My brain does not let me remember what is too hard to see… but lately things are seeping through…

In May, I met someone that I didn’t want to meet. I knew he would change my life and I’ve been so angry at him for being a catalyst to my changes that I haven’t given him a moments peace. Poor guy. The details are less important than the fact that he defines himself as a Christian man. And then I come along, Buddhist-pagan-weirdo-arty me challenging his beliefs (not very nicely I might add). We still connected somehow. Got along well when the topic wasn’t religion.

I find myself loving him. FUCK! This is not fitting into my life plan. Turns out that he does not wish to pursue me as a wife.. I am unworthy. He tells me this after we spend the night sleeping naked together. I want to die. I was not being cherished. I thought, foolishly, that I was being loved. But no, I am the throwaway girl (and a fool).

Then 10 years of suppressed memories start leaking through…. Giving me the reasons behind my fear and anxiety relating to churches. Why I've always hated going to church with my parents, my mother especially. They just keep rolling on through my head and rather than shrinking from them, I’m feeling them… experiencing them and letting it happen.

The more I pray in church, the more I remember.

I remember the pastor hiking up my dress to put his hands in my tights. I remember him hiding me under his desk when the secretary came. I remember him forcing my face into his crotch and the awful sick old man smell and trying to choke down the vomit while I cried.

I also remember my mother catching him with his hand up my dress and calling me a whore. I was maybe 7? 8?

She blamed me. Blamed me for trying to be sexual. Said I was trying too hard to be pretty so that all the boys would look at me. Made it be my fault because I was wearing a dress. Dresses were for the pretty girls and who do you think you are trying to be one of them?.

The only constant truth of my childhood was that I was never going to be pretty, I should stop trying and everyone could see how ugly I was. I wasn‘t fooling anyone by putting on a dress! What a fraud! My mother fancied herself as some sort of a beauty because she was the ‘spring princess’ or something in college. There could only be one pretty female in my house and it wasn’t going to be me, that’s for sure. It made my mom crazy to have me get more attention than her. Even crazier if that attention was from my dad (but that is a whole different blog topic).

I was a little kid. A KID.. How profoundly mentally ill is my mother? So ill that her little girl had to carve out a space in her brain to hide her memories from herself to survive. Very, very ill.

So now I see why it is that I am nauseous if I have to go to church with them. Why I love dresses, LOVE dresses (I have 30 or 40) but have a hard time just getting out the door with one on. I have huge anxiety attacks and can’t look in the mirror. It’s easier if I’m going out with girlfriends or with men who I’ve known for a long time. Or if it’s a costume (then I can pretend I’m someone else). I feel the most vulnerable of all when I’m in a dress and that everyone can see that I’m just pretending to be pretty.

It’s much easier just to tell people I hate wearing dresses. Which isn’t really true. I hate that when I wear them I hear my mothers voice in my head saying “a pig in a dress is still a pig”. I hate that I am afraid to feel attractive. One of my beefs with the guy was that he always wanted me to wear dresses… it was a thing for him and I was constantly angry about it. My little kid brain was interpreting that as “I want you to look like a whore-pig-fraud-ugly person”.. yeah... not so fun.

I feel much more free that now I know where some of this comes from. I just have to take the memories as they come and process. The memories that I’m letting go of are being replaced by the divine. I am back at church, on my terms and in a place I love. The last two weeks have been so very hard - between dealing with these memories and having probably the most painful rejection of my life (not worthy of being pursued as a wife because I don‘t have enough Jesus) - I’ve been at the cathedral every day and I go to two services on Sunday. I just want to be there all the time and I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never wanted to go to church, ever.. now that I know the cause of that, it‘s all I want to do. Hang out with my invisible giant.

It’s time for me to do the work. Will the “guy” believe the change and now consider me wife material? No. men don't change their minds. On the off chance that he does believe me he’ll most likely think I’m doing it to win him back. I'm not.

I will still love him but will probably have to do it from far away. I made such huge mistakes because I SOOOOO did not want to change and was an obstinate mean bitch. Tried to ask for forgiveness in my way (I felt like God told me to wash his feet, so I did) but the words just didn't come out in any kind of way that made sense. I had hoped he would understand but I don't know. It's just so frustrating when you can't get the words out OF YOUR OWN HEAD. argh. makes me cry.

Not that he is blameless in this (though he has said he was sorry and I think he meant it) far from it. It’s just all so unfortunate and sad. My heart is broken.

My cup runneth over and My tank of suffering is indeed full.