Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Fracturing

Sat, Nov 11 DREAMS: I dreamed I was at my Mom's house --(no house we've ever lived in) and we were cooking turkey and I was making potato salad. Mom handed me a big bunch of onions that looked overgrown and rough like the tops had been in a wind storm--They had iris-like flower remains on their stems which I cut off. Mom was talking about she "always" used fresh products and field grown versus cultivated. I felt in shock as I chopping up the onions for the potato salad. I didn't remember her ever saying any of that or doing it either. But I had the feeling that she was right and I hadn't remembered correctly. She was washing the turkey (one that had been free to range) and I moved my stuff to another sink in the kitchen. I kept watching my Mom and Dad as I peeled boilded potatoes. Even my Dad was carrying on about liking fresh fruit and vegetables. I couldn't believe what I was hearing! I looked down and I had the whole turkey roaster full of peeled and quartered potatoes. I started mixing in the mayonnaise but the pan was so full that it was very difficult to keep it all in and not let it fall out. Then I realized my Mom was about ready to bring the turkey over to put in the roasting pan and I had it all filled up with potato salad so I asked her if she had another big bowl or container and she said to put it all in a metal bowl. I didn't think it would all fit but it did. I told Mom I didn't remember her always wanting "fresh" and "organic" food and she looked at me strangely and said yes--she always had. I felt disoriented and sad.

...It's hard to live sometimes. I wish people understood how hard it was.

(Tuesday, Nov. 14th)
I am afraid of running out of money. I am afraid to be the strong one. I want to be sheltered.
I try to be normal but I can't quite remember how. How did I use to buy groceries? Get clothes ready for work? How did I manage money? How did I get ready for the holidays?

Sun. Nov 19.
I am still sleepy and down. I went to Lydia's to get some Xanax after I was at the library and looked at a book on childhood abuse--it had listed symptoms that I have. It made me feel very anxious and odd and I put it down. Linda wasn't home so I have no pills. I feel like this: FRACTURED or like this: a fractured child or a a fractured pyramid. I don't particularly understand these images bu these are the images that come to mind. A child--vulnerable--shattered yet stying together--
A pyramid--a place of piritual energy--shattered. a tomb of kings--shattered yet still holding together. A pyramid is also a place that protects dead people. I'm the pyramid--am I protecting a dead person? My father, my uncles, my cousings? Women? Friends of the family? I don't know.
Maybe I'm protecting the dead part of me and I'm facturing--the protection is fracturing.

Dear Mom,

Wow, this part is hard. This is, in fact, the part you didn't want to face; you just kept putting the potatoes in the bowl, knowing that the image presented by your parents was complete crud, but internalizing it into you "remembering it wrong".

Your parents were not who you thought they were, that is what this dream is telling you. You can keep it all "in", but you can't do what you need to do (roast the turkey), with all of this inside of you. You transfer your pain, and it fits! but it doesn't change what happened.

Indeed, you are protecting the dead. And that protection was shattering, but it was still holding. Mom, I wish you trusted your mind. You were so bright, so imaginative, so creative. If only you could have listened to the little girl. The adult had to die because the little girl was dying, would rather die, than face what was "remembered wrong".

You are right, too, that *you* were shattering. Your image of yourself was based in this "protection", and when it shattered, so did you.

When I was a child I thought I was telepathic. Come on, we all believe we are special as children. I felt I could lift my mind through the layers of mental static, like cloud-layers, and go up and up until I reached other minds strung out like veins and arteries across the sky. I met some very interesting people this way. The image was always the same: layers of clouds I floated through, up or down, and veins and arteries of thought. I could open one up and place a thought into it, or I could touch the vessel and communicate with its owner.

When grandpa--your father-in-law--was dying, even though I was 30 years old, I closed my eyes and went through the clouds and the layers to find his vein. It was still strong, the vein, even though, when I entered it, the thoughts were fuzzy and unclear. And I spoke with him, as he lay dying. I told him about the relationship he could have had with me, ruined by his molestation and inappropriate touching and his thinly veiled desires to do more sexual violence to me. I talked to him about how we could have been so close, how I loved him so much, but that we could never be close, and he could never be around my sons, his great-grandchildren, because he had chosen to behave like a monster. I mourned the loss of a potential friend, the potential relationship. I showed him how it could have been, and I realized that this was Hell for him: in this moment of death, he would see how he screwed up his one and only life.

And then, I could let him rest. I could even wish him peaceful rest, because all I had wanted--ever--was for him to understand what he had lost by choosing his actions. I felt him die, so it was no shock when my father called me and told me he had passed. I knew because I was right there with him when he died.

Does it matter that this was all in my head? No. We live in our heads, mother. Our reality is what we say it is, what it is inside our minds. And your mind was screaming at you: your memory is a lie you told yourself! But the little girl is still there, in your mind, and she needs to speak with you!

I am glad you told me details you knew of my molestation. It must have been so hard for you, when you could not face what happened in  your life. I am convinced, Mom, that you were molested, too. And you turned a blind eye and "forgot" about it, which is why you were able to deny, even to yourself, that I was still in danger as a child. You learned to deal with it by denying it, by re-remembering, by maintaining the image that the only way your family ever hurt you was by making you feel plain. But that wasn't it. You were trying to be invisible.

Your protection was fracturing, Mom. We'll see it in a few more entries from now. But it held up. It held up your whole life, the denial and the protection of the dead. I think it had a hand in killing you.

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