Brain dump.

Today I just need to unload my brain.  This is my brain dump.  Please don't comment with thought corrections.  I know intellectually that a lot of the things I say don't make sense.  I have to speak my heart and that is a very confusing place.

First I have to put on some music.

Being crazy sucks.  Yes, crazy.  Mental illness just seems like too neat and clean a label for what goes on in my head.  I take everything personally.  Some of the most innocent actions cut me so deep.

I am an addict, but I don't drink or use drugs.  I do sometimes take something to help me sleep when the melatonin doesn't help.  Prescribed, not illicit.  I am afraid that using drugs, even once, as a crutch will be something I cannot control.  Medical marijuana sounds like heaven, but I can not go there.

My weight is at a dangerous level.  I have never been this big.  I need to change to survive, but I don't care enough to change.  I try to guilt myself and tell myself to think about the kids, my husband.  I care about them but I guess not enough to change.

I am not one for self-harm.  When I was younger I would punch myself when my anger was threatening to spill over and I wanted to break something.  We were not allowed to be angry.  I have punched walls many times, broken many a phone.  Yesterday I cracked and hit myself again.  I am paying for it today.

I have decided that I need to be willing to face judgement from others in order to overcome.  I have to be vulnerable.  That is my new buzzword.  No more pretty smiling face.  Its there, and I love to smile, but I wear that happy mask when I need to show the broken me.  If I spend too long with the same therapist, I start acting better.  That way they won't get tired of me and I don't want to hurt their feelings by them thinking that they aren't helping me.  I will be seeing a new therapist next week.  I have seen so many.  I lie to most of them and use them to take the edge off my life.

I had a bad experience with a therapist.  I was feeling a breakthrough and allowed myself to fully cry in front of her.  I was asked when I would be finished my pity party.  I was not allowed to talk about my past, we had to focus on the here and now.  I have never fully processed my childhood.  I am missing most of grades 2, 3, 4 and 5.  I can remember grade 1 quite clearly.  I can close my eyes and remember the layout of my classroom, my teacher.  I have a brief memory of the 2nd half of grade 3, but 4 and 5 are blank.  The teachers' names don't even ring any bells.  That therapy experience fed my need to hide and conceal.

I will talk about parenting through this at another time.  My children are amazing, healthy, supported and loved.

I spent the first 8 years of my life thinking my grandfather was my secret boyfriend.  I never knew anything else.  For years after I moved away, he would call and ask if he was still my boyfriend.  My stomach still turns.  I moved away and in with other family members.  The abuse continued with a new abuser.  It was different.  He was rough and "no" wasn't an option.  He took it further than my grandfather ever did.  He tried again when I was 16.  I pressed charges as an adult and he plead guilty in court.  He still denies it to family.  There are others, but none as extreme as the two above.

I came clean about him to my family at the age of 16.  My step-father didn't seem shocked.  In fact, he turned to me and said "who else".  As I write this I wonder if he already knew, and if he did, how did he know.  I will have to explore that.  When I told my mother, she didn't react well.  There was no calm conversation.  It felt like nothing but guilt and blame.  To this day, I wonder how she didn't know.

And now the shut down.  Pressure valve released.  On with my day.