reawakening of memory

The sudden, brief recollection of slippery, terrible events is always a possibility. When I read the story about a young girls' incarceration and abusive neglect and violence by her mother, I read it with a ringing threat of dissociation hovering around my ears but I held on. My experiences were different. I was younger when I went through the locking up and starvation. When I got to be a certain age and size, and able to work and get food and fight for myself, my mother became more reliant on and emotional intimidation and abuse. I did not have a boyfriend, or indeed anyone who tried seriously to help me escape. There were other siblings, in various numbers, ages and sexes - they ebbed and flowed with my parents spouses - but they almost always made things worse, more dangerous, more worrisome at the least. Many differences between the stories, but enough similarities to wake up the ghosts.

They are why I reach out like this in the dark. It's nearly 4am. The sweetest, most beautiful lover is waiting for me in our warm, comfortable bed and I am here. With them. My prayer, perhaps the prayers of all the tortured and haunted, are some kind of release. Understanding? Acceptance? Could it just be the need to be HEARD? To have told someone and gotten it out? Maybe ONE person will believe and understand, maybe ONE person like me, inspired by Violent Acres, will try to exorcise the demons and get some fucking sleep for a change.

Today's haunts are brought to you by The Holidays and by unpleasant flashes of memories of someone holding my naked hip in the dark. The pursuit of government medical assistance for therapy and medication (which i assure you, i need.) are forcing me to finally pursue medical disability. I've been eligible all my life, but diagnosed and labeled eligible in my early 20's, and I've been lying to employers(though I must plea: sometimes without my own knowledge)
for decades so that I could try to be a productive member of society. Did you know that if you put post traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder and dissociative identity disorder (though when I first joined the work-force it was still called good old 'multiple personality disorder') in the place on an application where it says 'Do you know of any reason, medical or otherwise, why you might be ineligible for hiring...' - you will not get a job? Fortunately I'm crazy and not stupid, and so I never did that. And people gave me ALL kinds of jobs over the years. I never stayed at many of them very long, for lots and lots of reasons, though I have managed to keep a fairly good reputation as an employee over the years. Generally, I was smart enough to quit before I snapped or caused someone else too, though at times it got ugly. Police were involved once. I have tried hard to hang onto my sanity and my status as a Good American, but the physical side-effects of growing up as I did combined with the sharp shortening of my mental and emotional fuse have rendered me incapable of leaving the house some days, much less holding down a steady standard job. You don't want me dealing with your customers.

The personally dehumanizing process of going through the system and trying to be declared sufficiently mentally and physically crippled enough to have some help is brutal. I have not seen a medical doctor more than 5 times in the last 5 years, with the exception of one brief visit to a trauma stabilization unit last holiday season and the subsequent 2 months/5 visits of required county therapy, NO psychological care, because I have no health care. I self-medicate and try to stay healthy. I feel guilty about trying to get the help I need and I feel bad about myself because I can no longer care for myself. This does not help my depression. You do not want me working in a place where I prepare your food or care for your children so that I can afford the stelazine it would take to keep me employed there.

I have cause to be happy. I am grateful for the good things and I am learning to enjoy and appreciate them. But I ache to be able to voice the not-nice things. The harder truths. That love doesn't conquer all. That Jesus doesn't save. That people get what they deserve. I ache to know that someone understands that the darkness never goes away.