2 posts in one day...

need a place to vent. recovery friend is standing on my last nerve today and i need to organize my thoughts so that i don't have future amends to make...

it has also triggered mom memories and for that i am grateful, but i have been re-living some of my most painful memories with my mother this morning.

my daughter's best friend is this woman's daughter. and yesterday she called needing help getting ready for her graduation. my friend had taken a shift on the day her 8th grade daughter graduated from middle school. this young girl had no one to help her get ready for her grad and her grad dance and she asked my daughter to help. i knew my daughter might be stepping into a land mine, so i suggested she come here, instead of getting ready by herself alone at home.

i have sensed that this woman, who has lived in our community just under a year now, leans toward narcissism. last night it was confirmed and i watched as she humiliated her daughter in my home, blamed me for it and made it all about her. i relived moments of my own teen years as i saw the daughter fold herself into tight places, her joy of the event stolen and her mother shame, blame and excuse herself for taking an extra shift on her daughter's big day.

i had volunteered the night before to help her. it was brushed aside and was told she wouldn't need any help. i took the little time i had with my family before my meeting last night and cared for this girl. i fed her, flat ironed her hair, gave her little hippy braids to tie back her hair, painted her toes and finger nails - the whole spa treatment. mom came just as i was finishing her nails and crushed us both and had a temper tantrum in my home in front of my children.

i awoke this morning to a "i'm sorry you" email from her and it just iced the cake. i want to blast this woman a new one, but know that will only succeed in driving her further into her martyrdom and blaming. so i'm processing here so that i am calm enough when the next interaction happens...

this has re-framed so much of my childhood - helped me see why i feel responsible for everything around me. so much blame. so much shame. so much martyrdom. because mom was so sick it masked a lot of her worst behavior. her life sucked and we all knew it. but the blame for that suckiness was never her own. she never took responsibility for it. she always put it on me. always.

looking back i am amazed at how clear certain events are now. any large event that cast any light on me (or off of her) was regularly highjacked to be all about her and how difficult her life was because she had to help me with mine. she then used every excuse in the book to make her behaviour okay and mine intolerable.

this daughter is a joy. she is so helpful and sweet. she is being remade into the mother in this relationship and it's so obvious to me in watching this that is what happened to me too. while this was a total pain in the ass, i am so grateful for the living color illustration it has brought...

now where do we go from here?

capturing the memory

i'm at that point in parenting where i'm not "allowed" to talk about my kids anymore. i hate it. so i'm blogging this here so that i remember it.

we took a drive yesterday after a picnic just because we all so wanted to be out and not heading home yet.

we drove through a part of town we don't frequent often and there was a couple playing tennis.

buck says "OH, i didn't know they had tennis courts here"

mom - "i didn't know you liked tennis buck, did you want to learn how to play"

buck "oh yeah mom, it's like ping pong, only you get to stand on the table!"

:D

the flicker of the flame

i still can't seem to get the video i took of the candle loaded, but that image is back in my head today. i am that spastic flame, in the middle of the burning off the junk stage again. i posted after christmas how things were so beautiful and harmonious and it was a special time. it seems to have evaporated in my mind though. i'm so glad i blogged and journaled about it because i don't even know if i'd remember it otherwise. it might feel like a dream somehow.

i'm on my second period this month and the january blahs are here. weepy, tired and wanting to hibernate. i am triggering a lot of memories lately. once during sex with liam a couple of days ago that has left me feeling like bits of myself are floating around me and i want to gather them back somehow, but they are like feathers, airy and ethereal and i just can't seem to bring them back.

i am not afraid of the memory that is trying to surface. i know that when the oral rape memory came back everything made sense again. i know that this will be like it. i have too many questions, too many triggers and too much unexplained rage and emotion that is tying me in knots.

covers tangled, doors or drawers that won't open or close, and some major control issues are bringing up feelings of panic and anxiety. none of these things fit the memories i can hold on to. trapped makes sense, but the doors and covers don't.

i always had an obsession with locking doors as a young girl. i can't count how many times i sat in tears on one side of the bathroom door at a relatives house or a restaurant with my father calmly trying to talk me through the unlocking process as i described to the best of my abilities what the lock looked like. being sent down the laundry shoot at my aunt's, or my cousin crawling in the bathroom window - that makes sense. i was orally raped in a bathroom in my own home when i was 6. but the panic that overwhelms me when a door or drawer won't open properly doesn't fit. i swear i can see my skin turning green and the incredible hulk's arms busting out of my sleeves as i tear the door from it's hinges in my mind.

angry is way better than scared at those moments and i know it is masking some really deep seeded (seated?) fear.

and so i am today that herky, jerky flame longing for the calm of the steady burn, but knowing that there is much junk to burn through until i am able to make sense of it all.

i know i am strong enough to remember. i have run through those who had access to me, i see their faces in my mind's eye and wonder what happened that made me so very afraid. yet still they float just out of my reach, teasing me with their substance, are they real? or just my imagination? why can't i hold on to them and tell them that i am a grown, vibrant women who refuses to be victimized again and wants her childhood back so she can move on to what is next?

just for today i sit with the rage that explodes deep within, rarely shows itself outside of my mind, but seethes underneath hiding the fear of that young red-haired girl wanting to be safe and loved and cared for like she deserved to be. i hold you in my mind today and you are safe. it's okay to remember.