Friday, October 31, 2008
[edit]
As it turns out, my insurance covers the lab tests, just not the exam. Perfect, now if I can just figure out how to get my pap cells to hop off my cervix and over to the lab! Jerks.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Thankfulness:
I have health insurance. My health insurance provides for one preventative health visit/pap per year, and my deductible is not outrageous. The physician recommended to me by a friend is easily accessible by train, open to integrative (i.e., alternative as opposed to solely western/pharmaceutical) care, and turns out to be in-network (!). Physical is scheduled, which will hopefully tell me something about why I have been on my period for the past fourteen days. While it doesn't feel great to be exhausted, lightheaded, or barely functional for days at a time, it feels good to take care of myself and to be able to make my health a priority.
I have health insurance. My health insurance provides for one preventative health visit/pap per year, and my deductible is not outrageous. The physician recommended to me by a friend is easily accessible by train, open to integrative (i.e., alternative as opposed to solely western/pharmaceutical) care, and turns out to be in-network (!). Physical is scheduled, which will hopefully tell me something about why I have been on my period for the past fourteen days. While it doesn't feel great to be exhausted, lightheaded, or barely functional for days at a time, it feels good to take care of myself and to be able to make my health a priority.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
love is all over the place
fuck. shit.
joy. joyjoyjoy. and by that I mean urgently, joy, I need to feel that. I'm trying to be patient with my need to grieve the past and recover at the same time I feel urgently the need to shove through these things that I have already lost so much time and joy over, to stop living under the conditions of the past and start shaping/recognizing the shape of my present.
present/infant
lately i've been glaring into mirrors
picking myself apart
you'd think at my age i'd of thought
of something better to do
than making insecurity into a full-time job
making insecurity into art
and i fear my life will be over
and i will have never lived unfettered
always glaring into mirrors
mad i don't look better
but now here is this tiny baby
and they say she looks just like me
and she is smiling at me
with that present infant glee
and yes i will defend
to the ends of the earth
her perfect right to be
don't let the sellers of stuff power enough
to rob you of your grace
love is all over the place
joy. joyjoyjoy. and by that I mean urgently, joy, I need to feel that. I'm trying to be patient with my need to grieve the past and recover at the same time I feel urgently the need to shove through these things that I have already lost so much time and joy over, to stop living under the conditions of the past and start shaping/recognizing the shape of my present.
present/infant
lately i've been glaring into mirrors
picking myself apart
you'd think at my age i'd of thought
of something better to do
than making insecurity into a full-time job
making insecurity into art
and i fear my life will be over
and i will have never lived unfettered
always glaring into mirrors
mad i don't look better
but now here is this tiny baby
and they say she looks just like me
and she is smiling at me
with that present infant glee
and yes i will defend
to the ends of the earth
her perfect right to be
don't let the sellers of stuff power enough
to rob you of your grace
love is all over the place
there's nothing wrong with your face
love is all over the place
there's nothing wrong with your face
Sunday, October 19, 2008
survival
Fuck.
It's hard to function sometimes when it seems like there is no justice or accountability for all the forms of violence that are perpetuated through communities of both hate and love, nowhere that is safe, no one that can be trusted fully or unfalteringly. Which is not entirely true, it is not true that there is no justice or accountability, that nowhere is safe, or that no one can be trusted.
Piecing together/through the stories, the trauma and grief and fear that I continue to carry around with me, the stories held, in my body, in my movement, surfacing in my sleep, and unexpectedly around corners, peripherally, subconsciously, in superstition, in the tensing of the muscles in my shoulders and back, in my loss of appetite, in my responding to stimuli with fatigue and exhaustion, shutting down, my brain, body, psyche, soul is processing, processing the grief and fear and memories and stories, and shutting down to process and process and remember.
I can explain, by way of saying that the home, my first home, was split between the world that one could make sense in, in which one knew what to expect, what was expected, the world where there were norms that held, where if you were made to do something you didn't want to you had at least the sense that it was normal and right to do it, like put your toys away. This was the world between my mom and brother and me, and the other world, happened, would happen, when my dad came in, to our world, upsetting norms and telling us to do things that were uncomfortable not only because we did not want to do them but because I had the sense that they were not the normal things, even and especially in very small things like his refusing to put my socks on for me, insisting that I do it myself when I did not know how and getting angry when I went to my mom to put them on for me; insisting that I go up to strangers on playgrounds reciting the magic friend-making formula hi-my-name-is-m-what's-yours even when I sensed it would be much more normal/natural to just go and start playing with them; insisting (speciously) when I had chronic coughing fits that our doctor had told him that it was bad to cough and that I should try to hold it in; insisting the probably one time that he was supposed to take me to school, in kindergarten, on the rare occasion that my mom was able to take a trip to Vegas with the company she worked for part-time, insisting that my teachers did not know how smart I was, were wasting my time, insisting that I stay home and write my numbers from one to a thousand on some graph paper he made. The world with my dad in it was unpredictable.
These are pieces of why my mom left with us, took us out of that home. She doesn't want us to grow up in a house where parents fight all the time, where we think that is the normal state of things. She says, when I'm in sixth grade, finally, puts language around it, that he hit her, and that he would never hurt my brother or me but that my brother threw some marbles at the tv and told her it was okay because dad does it and she didn't want us to grow up thinking that was the normal state of things. She says, finally, two days ago, that she left because my dad had not hurt my brother or me _yet_ but that it was only a matter of time, that when we got older, and started to have our own ideas, he just would not have that.
The idea that I was not meant to survive in that home, that I could not have come out whole, that my dad could not have allowed me to come out whole, even while always telling me I was so smart and brilliant and beautiful and talented, even while teaching me to read and add and divide and think and question, even while my telling him that I was applying to graduate school to study philosophy and become a professor, while my telling him that was the first thing to finally make him smile when I visited him in the hosptial a few years ago, that in spite of this somehow my dad could not foster my survival, that my dad could love me, us, in such a flawed way, it scares me, it also helps me to see some of the ways in which that home did not equip me to be a whole, assertive, comfortable, secure person. It also helps me to see the ways in which it equipped me to be anxious at the minutest signs of danger, to be attentive to others' needs to the detriment of my own, to freeze up when I'm afraid, to pass through spaces unnoticed, to take up as little space as possible, to dissociate, shutdown, panic. It also helps me to see the tremendousness not only of my mom getting us out of that house_hold_ but the tremendousness, creativity, and sheer strength it has taken me to survive as whole as I have, even when it feels like I am not whole at all.
Naming the kinds of violence that happened in that home, physical, psychic, emotional, naming what is wrong with my dad, not hating his face in my face is such a process, finding all the language around these stories. My mom never wanted us to think that our dad did not love us, always wanted my dad to be a part of our lives, never wanted us to think badly of him, or be afraid of him. My history with him is one of being torn between different places, places of unplaceable fear, shame, sadness, anger, and trying to have a relationship with him, missing him when the days or weeks between his calls and visits stretched into months, when it was clearly too difficult and painful for him to carry on with us, when he did not know how to love or care for us and yet he still cried when it was time to take my brother and me home because he wanted to love us, he wanted the home he did not deserve, when I can/could only feel sadness and grief with him for all that he/we had lost, even while I can know that he is not without blame for his being alone, not without blame for the tenuousness of our relationships with him.
It's really no wonder that I am so exhausted. What is a wonder is that I have managed to survive at all, what is really a wonder is that my mom was somehow able to take my brother and me out of that home, to put herself through school, to build a solid relationship with my stepdad and create a new home, though not without its own flaws and disfunctions, but at least a home where our movement was less restricted, where we had a little more room to breathe and survive, all the while trying trying trying for us to have some kind of healthy relationship with our dad, never allowing us to believe that we were not loved.
Still I have been carrying all these stories with me, in my body. I don't think it's an accident that I developed severe allergies and asthma, that I started becoming crippingly nearsighted around the time that we left, around the time I started to find out that the state of things in our home was not normal, or at least not healthy, that it was not normal to be kept awake at night by screaming, to cry as quietly as possible at night so that your dad would not hear you and come in and ask what was wrong, to wake up in the morning to your mom sweeping up broken dishes in the kitchen. I don't think it's an accident that my brother has not been sober for almost as long as I can remember. I don't think it's an accident that I spent most of my life not eating, which I have never really acknowledged before. That I can remember thinking, as young as probably six or seven, that maybe I should try to just stop breathing or smother myself with a pillow. I don't think it's an accident that I have tended to keep my sexual and emotional relationships separate, that sustaining both with the same person at the same time is something I am still learning how to do. I don't think it's an accident that I've ended up in situations where I cannot say with certainty whether I consented to sex or not. I don't think it's an accident that it's so so hard for me to feel safe, or that I have not liked myself a lot of the time.
It's been easy to think that the violence my dad inflicted on my mom was only marginally real. It has been easy, sometimes, not to think of myself as a trauma survivor because I don't remember most of the violence, because I have no memory or knowledge of ever having been hit, and because what little evidence I have that I might have been molested is small enough to dismiss.
The most my dad has admitted to, after saying that he never hit my mom, is that he socked her in the stomach, his words, when she was pregnant with my brother butonlybecausehehadaheadacheandshewasnagginghim. He kicked her, my mom says, when she was on the ground. She says he used to throw things, which was probably scary for my brother and me, I ask if he did this in front of us and she's not sure but she says he threw a plate once at Thanksgiving dinner, so we must have been there. I can imagine this happening though I can't see it, where he's standing, what it all looks like. I can remember this person, my dad, being volatile, emotional, angry, terrifying, but it's hard to see him, visually, the visual picture of it all. I don't remember him being violent or even very angry, at least not in a loud way, since we left, when I was in second grade. His anger has been quieter, he has been overall more sad. There are happy memories throughout, before his mom died, he laughed more and stressed constantly the importance of laughter and having fun. He played all kinds of sports with us, took us to movies, made french fries with us, took us fishing, bought me a paintset, encouraged me to write and told me I could do anything. My anger over his violence against us is renewed this weekend though when my mom names specific acts of his violence, pushing her down and pulling her hair.
I'm thinking about the time I saw my dad in the hospital three years ago. This was the first time I had seen him in the few years since it had seemed important for me to distance myself from him, since it had seemed it was just not safe to be around someone who could not admit all the things he had done to us, could not remember things the way the rest of us did. In the hospital, my dad was remembering when he bought me a copy of Atlas Shrugged for one of my birthdays in high school and he was telling me that he thought for a really long time about what to write in it, and he had all these things that he wanted to say but nothing came out right, but he thought that maybe some things were just so true they could not be written down. It says: "This is a long book--I hope you find time to read it--not for my sake but because you might find it helpful. Love always, Dad."
Both of these stories are true.
I've had to carry around lots of truths that are impossible it seems. It's no wonder really that I don't feel safe, when I grew up thinking an abusive, chaotic home and fearfearfear were the natural state of things, when I've had to bear witness to all these confusing truths.
I am barely breathing, while finding these words, but fuck, I never stopped breathing, something can be said for that.
It's hard to function sometimes when it seems like there is no justice or accountability for all the forms of violence that are perpetuated through communities of both hate and love, nowhere that is safe, no one that can be trusted fully or unfalteringly. Which is not entirely true, it is not true that there is no justice or accountability, that nowhere is safe, or that no one can be trusted.
Piecing together/through the stories, the trauma and grief and fear that I continue to carry around with me, the stories held, in my body, in my movement, surfacing in my sleep, and unexpectedly around corners, peripherally, subconsciously, in superstition, in the tensing of the muscles in my shoulders and back, in my loss of appetite, in my responding to stimuli with fatigue and exhaustion, shutting down, my brain, body, psyche, soul is processing, processing the grief and fear and memories and stories, and shutting down to process and process and remember.
I can explain, by way of saying that the home, my first home, was split between the world that one could make sense in, in which one knew what to expect, what was expected, the world where there were norms that held, where if you were made to do something you didn't want to you had at least the sense that it was normal and right to do it, like put your toys away. This was the world between my mom and brother and me, and the other world, happened, would happen, when my dad came in, to our world, upsetting norms and telling us to do things that were uncomfortable not only because we did not want to do them but because I had the sense that they were not the normal things, even and especially in very small things like his refusing to put my socks on for me, insisting that I do it myself when I did not know how and getting angry when I went to my mom to put them on for me; insisting that I go up to strangers on playgrounds reciting the magic friend-making formula hi-my-name-is-m-what's-yours even when I sensed it would be much more normal/natural to just go and start playing with them; insisting (speciously) when I had chronic coughing fits that our doctor had told him that it was bad to cough and that I should try to hold it in; insisting the probably one time that he was supposed to take me to school, in kindergarten, on the rare occasion that my mom was able to take a trip to Vegas with the company she worked for part-time, insisting that my teachers did not know how smart I was, were wasting my time, insisting that I stay home and write my numbers from one to a thousand on some graph paper he made. The world with my dad in it was unpredictable.
These are pieces of why my mom left with us, took us out of that home. She doesn't want us to grow up in a house where parents fight all the time, where we think that is the normal state of things. She says, when I'm in sixth grade, finally, puts language around it, that he hit her, and that he would never hurt my brother or me but that my brother threw some marbles at the tv and told her it was okay because dad does it and she didn't want us to grow up thinking that was the normal state of things. She says, finally, two days ago, that she left because my dad had not hurt my brother or me _yet_ but that it was only a matter of time, that when we got older, and started to have our own ideas, he just would not have that.
The idea that I was not meant to survive in that home, that I could not have come out whole, that my dad could not have allowed me to come out whole, even while always telling me I was so smart and brilliant and beautiful and talented, even while teaching me to read and add and divide and think and question, even while my telling him that I was applying to graduate school to study philosophy and become a professor, while my telling him that was the first thing to finally make him smile when I visited him in the hosptial a few years ago, that in spite of this somehow my dad could not foster my survival, that my dad could love me, us, in such a flawed way, it scares me, it also helps me to see some of the ways in which that home did not equip me to be a whole, assertive, comfortable, secure person. It also helps me to see the ways in which it equipped me to be anxious at the minutest signs of danger, to be attentive to others' needs to the detriment of my own, to freeze up when I'm afraid, to pass through spaces unnoticed, to take up as little space as possible, to dissociate, shutdown, panic. It also helps me to see the tremendousness not only of my mom getting us out of that house_hold_ but the tremendousness, creativity, and sheer strength it has taken me to survive as whole as I have, even when it feels like I am not whole at all.
Naming the kinds of violence that happened in that home, physical, psychic, emotional, naming what is wrong with my dad, not hating his face in my face is such a process, finding all the language around these stories. My mom never wanted us to think that our dad did not love us, always wanted my dad to be a part of our lives, never wanted us to think badly of him, or be afraid of him. My history with him is one of being torn between different places, places of unplaceable fear, shame, sadness, anger, and trying to have a relationship with him, missing him when the days or weeks between his calls and visits stretched into months, when it was clearly too difficult and painful for him to carry on with us, when he did not know how to love or care for us and yet he still cried when it was time to take my brother and me home because he wanted to love us, he wanted the home he did not deserve, when I can/could only feel sadness and grief with him for all that he/we had lost, even while I can know that he is not without blame for his being alone, not without blame for the tenuousness of our relationships with him.
It's really no wonder that I am so exhausted. What is a wonder is that I have managed to survive at all, what is really a wonder is that my mom was somehow able to take my brother and me out of that home, to put herself through school, to build a solid relationship with my stepdad and create a new home, though not without its own flaws and disfunctions, but at least a home where our movement was less restricted, where we had a little more room to breathe and survive, all the while trying trying trying for us to have some kind of healthy relationship with our dad, never allowing us to believe that we were not loved.
Still I have been carrying all these stories with me, in my body. I don't think it's an accident that I developed severe allergies and asthma, that I started becoming crippingly nearsighted around the time that we left, around the time I started to find out that the state of things in our home was not normal, or at least not healthy, that it was not normal to be kept awake at night by screaming, to cry as quietly as possible at night so that your dad would not hear you and come in and ask what was wrong, to wake up in the morning to your mom sweeping up broken dishes in the kitchen. I don't think it's an accident that my brother has not been sober for almost as long as I can remember. I don't think it's an accident that I spent most of my life not eating, which I have never really acknowledged before. That I can remember thinking, as young as probably six or seven, that maybe I should try to just stop breathing or smother myself with a pillow. I don't think it's an accident that I have tended to keep my sexual and emotional relationships separate, that sustaining both with the same person at the same time is something I am still learning how to do. I don't think it's an accident that I've ended up in situations where I cannot say with certainty whether I consented to sex or not. I don't think it's an accident that it's so so hard for me to feel safe, or that I have not liked myself a lot of the time.
It's been easy to think that the violence my dad inflicted on my mom was only marginally real. It has been easy, sometimes, not to think of myself as a trauma survivor because I don't remember most of the violence, because I have no memory or knowledge of ever having been hit, and because what little evidence I have that I might have been molested is small enough to dismiss.
The most my dad has admitted to, after saying that he never hit my mom, is that he socked her in the stomach, his words, when she was pregnant with my brother butonlybecausehehadaheadacheandshewasnagginghim. He kicked her, my mom says, when she was on the ground. She says he used to throw things, which was probably scary for my brother and me, I ask if he did this in front of us and she's not sure but she says he threw a plate once at Thanksgiving dinner, so we must have been there. I can imagine this happening though I can't see it, where he's standing, what it all looks like. I can remember this person, my dad, being volatile, emotional, angry, terrifying, but it's hard to see him, visually, the visual picture of it all. I don't remember him being violent or even very angry, at least not in a loud way, since we left, when I was in second grade. His anger has been quieter, he has been overall more sad. There are happy memories throughout, before his mom died, he laughed more and stressed constantly the importance of laughter and having fun. He played all kinds of sports with us, took us to movies, made french fries with us, took us fishing, bought me a paintset, encouraged me to write and told me I could do anything. My anger over his violence against us is renewed this weekend though when my mom names specific acts of his violence, pushing her down and pulling her hair.
I'm thinking about the time I saw my dad in the hospital three years ago. This was the first time I had seen him in the few years since it had seemed important for me to distance myself from him, since it had seemed it was just not safe to be around someone who could not admit all the things he had done to us, could not remember things the way the rest of us did. In the hospital, my dad was remembering when he bought me a copy of Atlas Shrugged for one of my birthdays in high school and he was telling me that he thought for a really long time about what to write in it, and he had all these things that he wanted to say but nothing came out right, but he thought that maybe some things were just so true they could not be written down. It says: "This is a long book--I hope you find time to read it--not for my sake but because you might find it helpful. Love always, Dad."
Both of these stories are true.
I've had to carry around lots of truths that are impossible it seems. It's no wonder really that I don't feel safe, when I grew up thinking an abusive, chaotic home and fearfearfear were the natural state of things, when I've had to bear witness to all these confusing truths.
I am barely breathing, while finding these words, but fuck, I never stopped breathing, something can be said for that.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
blah. that's all, just blah.
ok, maybe not all. healing is a fucking exhausting job. especially when I cannot be sure what all it is that I am trying to heal. I need more outfromunderthings days. less weepy days, less non-functioning, inside days, less numb, non-embodied days.
I was able to answer my phone today and leave the coffee shop where I was not reading the essay I was supposed to be reading and reschedule my hair appointment and take the train to my friend's place so I could be there for her while she was having a 'meltdown.' and it felt really good to be able to answer my phone and leave and reschedule and take the train and be there for her and not have to focus on myself for awhile and not think about how to 'fix' 'this.'
survival is exhausting. i could hardly be more tired of dealingwithitthinkingaboutitlivingwithit. i'm exhausted.
fuck.
ok, maybe not all. healing is a fucking exhausting job. especially when I cannot be sure what all it is that I am trying to heal. I need more outfromunderthings days. less weepy days, less non-functioning, inside days, less numb, non-embodied days.
I was able to answer my phone today and leave the coffee shop where I was not reading the essay I was supposed to be reading and reschedule my hair appointment and take the train to my friend's place so I could be there for her while she was having a 'meltdown.' and it felt really good to be able to answer my phone and leave and reschedule and take the train and be there for her and not have to focus on myself for awhile and not think about how to 'fix' 'this.'
survival is exhausting. i could hardly be more tired of dealingwithitthinkingaboutitlivingwithit. i'm exhausted.
fuck.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
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