Wine night!

I have chocolate, some tasty French red and Lower rate DLA, which has put up my income support, which means clothes are being bought, Ladybird clothing - the best as far as I was concered when I was a kid - because I liked ladybirds. Always fascinated by gender bending, how could something called a 'ladybird' possibly be a boy? Anyway, I'm gonna buy tickets to see 'Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off' with G. I love to see most things that are on, but after reading the play for school I have always wanted to see it. I remember the way Scots is used to explore universal themes as being fucking awesome. Liz Lochhead seemed to condense all the wisdom of Scottish women in a way the humbled and inspired me, her understanding of history, gender, war was formidable. As far as I remember I hope I don't end up siting there without a bloody clue and if G feels that way then fine, it will equal out how I'm going to feel all the way through 'Smurfs 3D' on Friday. Couldnt say no, wee man barred from nursery because of diairea and I struggle to get us out enough by myself, cabin fever setting in...

Did I mention I was really grateful about the recent rise in income... It just means so much to me and the wee man. Its the confidence boost that comes with enough money that is missed the most when there is not enough. There must be some mistake, here I am a parent with a 2:1 honours degree, enough money, no rape, flat of our own, more or less sane. It's all rather beautiful.

I am Selfish.

I wish I wasn't but it part of the healing I hope, so I will grow out of it. I need the time to focus on me, to figure out what I need, what I need to be without. It's not as simple as it once was, when all my energy went into getting out of what ever situation, relationship that was hurting me the most. Life becomes easy when your life is in danger, my vision literally, became tunneled, my whole brain focused on finding the door, the words, the acts of violence or the movement of money that would get me away from wherever I was. There was no need for consciousness it all happened by it's self.

These days my priorities are different. I have to do housework, get the shopping in, bring up my son, do the bastard ironing. It's all so much harder than run, fight or switch. People mean something, everything means something. In survivor mode everything and everyone is a tool to aid escape or not worth bothering about. I balanced every carefully up, did the best I could and didnt worry. Everything is much more complicated now that I am in charge of managing my relationships!

I hate how much I resent the housework sometimes. What is wrong with keeping a good, safe, clean home for my son? But still this persistent feeling that life is too short for regularly cleaning the bastard kitchen floor and that washing the friggin cutlery is a waste of my time and talents. I miss the faces, the hands, the little bodies that when I held I knew my role in life and my position in the universe. I was to protect them using every conventual and unconventual method my imagination and training could come up with. I so rarely feel that certainty anymore.

I did work in a kitchen in my teens to pay for my hash and hated it, I'm sure that hasn't helped me not despise all kitchen work and the inferior role that is associated with. Washing your rapists dishes is no fun.

But I think part of me is to scared to want to build my life around my son in case he is murdered or taken away like the others even though I know that's unlikely. I just hope my issues don't become his. When he was small and I held him I had to hold back all the memories of birth and babies but some broke though, mostly good ones when I loved and was loved so much easier than I feel I could now. I am ashamed of my desire for space from my current wee man when I think about how hard I fought to be in this position. Just to get pregant, give birth in a hospital, register the kid and live as a single mother on benefits. The life I have now was all ever wanted for so long, no guns, no glory just peace and love.

Drama Therapy

Tears, this week. Last week we focused on a young man with huge absent father issues (I got to be him). The week before, a really quiet bloke got madly shouted at when he played the role of Smily who played her own mother. She got right into it. It was one of the powerfullest things I've ever seen or heard. She seemed so controlled, the way she poured out that vile. I have only missed one week so far, very good attendance record for me.

It's getting close though and I'm terrified of the thought of losing control. Kneeling on the floor, imploring Smily, who was again playing the mother, but in this time for Griny who was dealing with her mother's detachment. I was the child again, asking for recognition, for respect, love, attention, anything from the parent. First for the young lad and his dad then for Griny yesterday and her mother. It's amazing really, makes me feel all hippyish. Its not easy to feel comfortable with your hippy side when I spent years of my life with a head wired for war. Hippyshit in war is insult to injury, it's the evilest of enemy propaganda because it doesn't encourage you to fight as hard as you need to survive. It's a cop out.

But in drama therapy, everything is valid, There is no taboos and your body is your tool for your own and others healing. It feels so clumsy trying to explain how it all works in the group and make up names or descriptions that convey people well enough. I definitely like mental ill people and drama therapists, but I knew that.. They're who I fought for (with crystals in my pocket - the darker the stone the better because I think everyone needs a bit of faith - it brings luck when the goin is hard)...

Then afterwards I met G.

Who (of course) I no longer have a massive crush on now that we have actually met in the Holy presence of Queen Dolly.

I had the soggy student pasta followed by Belgian waffles and chocolate sauce washed down with two glass (1 large 1 small) of actually semi decent red. She had the macaroni again, like in Edinburgh... Blimy I am interested in her in a whole load of weird ways. Nothing I am able to rush into though, unfortunately she doesn't seem the able to talk about anything at a level I need to leap into anything. She might get used to me, people have gotten used to me talking comfortably about abuse related issues in public places before. She didn't seem happy when I talked about Drama Therapy in the quiet bar and she works in social services, I'm a little worried shes trying to take her work home with her. She said I was lovely in a txt earlier on. I waited hours and txted back 'thank you xxxx'.

One thing we definitely have in common is relationships "and stuff" freak us us out.

Contact with abusers

I think I'm moving on from feeling a sharp pang of jealous isolated pain when I read about abusers not having a choice but to have no contact with their abusers. It hasdn't worked out that way for me. My abusers were family, all of them, my community, my school teacher, my friends, everyone I knew basically. There was so many networks some used all of us, some didnt. People pic an mix. Meeting new people was so hard, they would be forced into the abuse as well usually the sort that used options, like 'do this to them or we will do that'. Nowadays I am too crippled with socialising problems, post tramatic stress symptoms, trust issues and general bad health to get out there much.

There is no point wishing my life away. In some little way I believe there is more to me valuing the support I get currently from my mother and my relationships with my sisters that is more than resignation to situations outside my control. It has helped me see them as victims too, helped me seperate what happened from me because I had no option but to sperate it from them. Parts of me has forgiven my mother and my oldest sister, but as far as my dad and my other sister go its a very differnet matter. Now that I've moved out and away I doubt there will be many occasions where I see my dad or middle sis, they will no longer play a role in my son's life. I knew I couldn't cope on my own and had no where else to go but I mourn the life we might of had constantly.

I can understand how people think it is wrong that I still have contact and allow contact between my son and people who I know have done horriffic things to me. But I hear a lot less lies, I won arguments I refused to let it go. It has made me stronger.

So much more to reality than words such as 'abuse', 'rape', 'ritual abuse', 'satanism' can ever cover. I think I am too ready sometimes to not feel alone that I deny the unique horror I expierenced. I try to make something palatable for other people when the facts are simply not palatable. I tried so hard find another way out but this is the only one that worked. My trials are over, I dont expect to have house full of cloaked up rapists using forms of sexual and emotional torture that I cannot repeat. If I work, doing anything for anyone the money comes home to me. My son will know nothing of the experience of it, these things I am sure of. It's a different world, and every big scandal and toppled dictator confirms it.

Psalm for the unregistered children.

 

    Taking survivors' accounts seriously can help us decide whether lives     such as they describe could conceivably have been lived. Sarah Scott,     Beyond Disbelief: The politics and experience of ritual abuse (2001)     p.66.

 

 

        

            No cloaks here.

 

    But April snow pelts the jogger in shorts

and the granite memorial in a one pub

        two cemetery North East village.

The nerves of another wisdom lost to grinding

won't give up. I am not buried.

 

    but was a soldier as a child flat chested,

armed, sewing the heather with wire

        eating out of tins and counting everything

twice until the November

    when my peers took me back to the burn

        where I shared my plans to show me theirs.

        
 

                     Stones

        and cold Angus waters. One girl can hold so much.

    Like our old white hen dead beneath the hen hut; no more clucking

        amongst the common reds.

The air was turning green when the game keepers

    gave me my options, sky

and birdsong soaked up their empty souls,

         I chose the kennel

and further resented Ernest

        for over salting his tattie skins.

    It's not good

for you

        and he knows I hate too much salt.

    Uniforms set me loose, hosed of the dog shit, took me to the suits

then left me in the field

            with orders to ask for help.

        I watched the Scholastic ledger turn to cabinets

through my application

        Years on the phone

making holes in the wall with

            with a cork board pin sent me

and my E cups in a C cup bra

        to a warm Southern suburban study

    a golden tree dappled light full of savinours and art objects

        that I would have to kill to examine alone

    Make sure they know not to mention the money, emphasise costumes,

and if they cant remember any baby sacrifices make one up.

        In Latin as broken as he was.

 

    The bracken turned to split bones

all the houses are machines. I scrubbed carpets and rinsed

    signs from my body and no longer worried about what they meant

        You will see the world.

 

    drugged, dissociated and subjugated. This is a pewter chalice

either half brimming or fallow my god I could make any alloy shine

        Pulled to a T shrinking to a dot, just another zero,

no xs left to mark the spot

but still I reproduce, there are corners

    in every Holliday Inn

        that will be forever me.

            May hail

 

    clatters through and open north facing window

the cat stands on the space bar and the monitor lights

    up the room. I'm huddled and racked

        in period pain smiling

as Junior sings gaffuwing in his sleep.

 

    It's almost

        almost June. My dreams went from rust

to jade overnight, the bikes are opening up along the straight lines

that lead from the house. Outside my niece is singing

 

Someday my prince will come, we'll meet on match.com

and of to pub we shall go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Admit it grrl. Your disabled.

Even the government thinks so.

Not that I agree with them much. My GP told me about someone who was recently failed for DLA, so asthmatic he could barely walk up the corridor. I guess sometimes the taboo nature of bad mental health can bring positive things as well as being a major factor in what keeps some people ill.

Have joined Triberr which I am very grateful for, @Prozacblogger and everyone else who has made me feel a bit less isolated even if I it makes me feel like I'm being touched. Realising this is pretty important, that I shut down at any sort of touching, emotional or otherwise. Thanks to G for the hugs that have helped me realise this to. Doctor on Wednesday morning, no word from any psychiatrist so need to chase it up and start getting real with her. I self medicate, I'm sure I've told her this. The current prescribed meds are either not working or making things worse. I've already cut down on them. I want another specialist and I want to know if I have aspbergers. Usually there is a lot of sympathy but nothing can be done. If the docs could legalise it they would. If I've found it to be the best treatment, stick with it. I've often went in with expectations of a 'drugs are bad' lecture but found myself being the only one that is saying there is anything wrong with it. Thank fuck for all the good GPs I seen over the years. Their compassion for me and insight into whats wrong with me have been the difference between a life without hope and a life with one.

I just wish they'd written better notes...

mutterings

How can you not get into music?

How could I turn down any oppurtunity to defend my self?

The police showed me a tape. It showed a bloke touching me and then me beating him. The bloke was missing. They thought I had agreed to it all. I didn't.

What was I supposed to do?

I forgive myself for being an agent in my own exploitation but this does not mean I accept that it will continue.

I wish I could tell you about the music, some of it was beautiful and it was mine. I made it. I knew what all the levels and dials did. I didnt need to disassociate. I was always disassociated.

Dolly Parton

... with G. Goodnight despite the state I've been in recently, too much traveling to get dangerously drunk and Dolly was lovely. What a figure man.. G was intersting, lovely at times but when I txted her to ask if it was a date she replied 'lol, dates and relationships freak me out' I didnt like this, espically at first but I understand I am in no position to criticise anyone one else for immaturity! Wasnt sure about her wanting lots of hugs though. I was bound to be a bit uncomfrotable with physical contact with the amount of anxiety I've been feeling. It's been horrid, really horrid at times. Really sliding into dysfunction which made my guilt ridden before I had the wee man who is currently next doors watching 'Dispicable Me' with a bowl of ham, raisins and cheese. I have some cooncil rocky, which is; apparently, shit loads better than nothing as I'm blogging this and not under the duvet or pacing from room to room.

GP this week, this isnt working. I need to feel I'm at least working towards a better diagnosis and better meds.

And Dolly, who I've always admired and respected... it was very good to see and hear her, even if the Queen Latifa impression made me slightly uncomfortable.

home

Well, my friend drop by and left a little 'friend' so I'm no longer thinking of sticking pins in the eyes of radio one Djs or fire bombing the exgirldfriends of lovers that drank my blood. Theres fuck all mysterious or supernatural about being scared of people who drank your blood. Its a fucking awful thing to do to another human being. To take the life force of someone else inside you without their permission. And thats without thinking about how they obtained said blood. Lots of believes about freedom coming from literaly destroying boundries. It doesnt destroy dualism only strenthens it. I wish I could say more. But this is primary an outlet for me, although I have a lot of time for people who have missions to educate and enlighten about abuse thats not where I am. I am all about me, this is all about me, waiting and doing my best to believe that its not going to happen again. I dont need to be split anymore, its ok to look down. All thats there is belly fat and there is nothing wrong with that, its cushiniong me from the outside world. Protecting me like a cacoon so I can come out a beautiful butterfly when it the time is right. And yes indeed, this is good grass.

Rocking

Just read a piece that says cannabis can help with aspergers tics. Although its been suggested I have it, its never been diagnosed but without cannabis I struggle. I rock, dig my nails in my fingers and bit my hand sometimes. Of course all that could just be my body feeling stressed because something it is used to having isn't there any more. I smoke because it stops me feeling like a victim, I can write essays, poetry when I have a smoke, without it everything feels like walking in deep dry sand. Of course it makes me feels weak relying so heavily on something that is illegal, that makes the very people who worked me more money but it has been my best friend for a long time now. A friend I over use at times, that is sometimes too strong, or polluted but it makes me feel alive and gives me hope. 4 times today I have read the opening lines to Charles Dickens hard times and then put it down again. Smoking endless roll ups and doing my asthma no favours. One thing I'm sure of I would need something or someone to provide the support I feel I get from smoking if I was to ever give it up completely and I cant see where that would come from.

I woke up feeling like there was someone lying beside me, it was calming, comforting but he's not here. He is married with children and businesses and a whole bunch of shit I don't have. I guess the clique about never getting over your first love is true in my case. To be honest I never get over anyone, too much memory loss to make enough sense of something so I can let it go. I go round and round in circles of remembering, heart breaking want, forgetting then remembering again. While the people who are the focus of it all get to move forward with their lives, their relationships, their careers.

I wish him courage and love and hope he wishes the same for me.

I wrote this without my best friend, its not nothing. But what do I do with the rest of the evening? Music doesnt help, just takes me back to the studios and reminds me of the people taking the profits from work I was raped into creating. TV doesnt help, it makes me feel isolated. My few friends are all working. But I feel better for writing this and at least I did the dishes! lol

Study diary

I am studying philosophy to help my brain, its not a matter of trying to return to previous understandings its about making new understandings, new ways of seeing. The old ones couldn’t of been that good anyway. But all the memories brought back about the circumstances in my life and my flesh that were going on all the other occasions I read or tried to read the same old texts. I argued against them well once do I need to do it again? Is studying just a form of selfharm by constanting picking at mental and emotional stabs looking for the perfect skin that was once there.

The 2:1 is precious though. There must be some mistake! I can feel it seeping into to be and making me feel less of a loser, good news. Couldn't of done it without Marge Piercy and my delusional pespective that reads Women on the Edge of Time as laden with historical and biographical fact. The same word in our notes 'bizzare behaviour' and the burning hot sense of humour.

Exam coming up, oh dear...

Cant get any page views for 'Song' - its beautiful people! bloody philistines. Only joking of course, LisatheRiver put a link up to it and every second someone spends on here means a lot. Its a difficult issue - how do you make ritual abuse palatable? Or least palatable enough to be taken seriously and given any thought at all..

I know I can't do the hours I need to do this now to be a 'writer'. I am the proud recipient of a wee bit disability money. Very proud recipient. He's 4 now, ordered new clothes and wellies for us both. Cant wait to see him in the rain in his new raincoat and fireman wellies - he will stand out for sure on any grey day :)

Couldn't believe how easy it was to publish from word, what a dough ball I am. Might use it more often makes for prettier pages.

Anyhow, cheers to an extra £200 a month, to a growing boy in new clothes and a mum who has eventually come to terms with her body enough to buy the size 14...

aplogiese to the vunrable overworked souls that probably made the clothes. It's not right I know I respect and hurt for you... I misunderstood something pretty fundamental when I voluntereed for single parenthood, i.e. the need for a bread winner...

Song

    

 

...taking survivors' accounts seriously can help us decide whether lives such as they describe could conceivably have been lived.

 

Sarah Scott (2001) p.66.

 

    

    Song.

For the unregistered.

    
 

            No cloaks here.

 

    Just April snow shrouding the bare legged jogger

and the granite memorial in a one pub

        two cemetery, North East village

the nerves of another wisdom split by years of grinding

    pulse on.

        

        I am not buried.

 

    but was a soldier as a kid, flat chested,

and initiated sewing heather with wire, casing the boothies

    lying in the lichen eating out of tins

        and counting everything

twice. Until my sister's birthday

            when they took me back to the burn

        where I shared my plans to show me theirs.

        

Air turning green when game keepers debriefed.

    Open sky and birdsong drown out their death.

         I choose the kennel and further resented Ernest

    for over salting his tattie skins.

        It's not good for you

    he knows I hate too much salt.

            

Green berets pulled back the bolt

    hosed of the grainless dog poop

        took me to the suits

            then left me in the field

        with instructions

to keep talking. The Scholastic ledger I dutifully kept

    turned cabinets to crates to warehouses

partly through my appeal. Bracken turns to bleached femurs

        the houses are marching machines.

     I scrubbed the symbols of my flesh

    and lost interest in the meanings.

 

        You will see the world.

 

    ..drugged, dissociated and under orders.

 

This chalice is neither brimming nor fallow

     gentlemen

 

my god I could make those alloys shine

        like moonbeams between my fingers.

 

    Pulled to a T

shrinking to a dot, just another zero, X marks the spot

    still I reproduced. There are corners

        in every Holliday Inn

    that will be forever me.

 

It's almost

        almost June.

 

Racked in period pain smiling

    Junior sings guffaws in his sleep.

        My dreams go jade

from rust tranced by the bikes opening

    up down the straight lines

        that lead from the house.

        
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Criminal' part 2

I am depserate to write about the way the organisations worked and the sort of people who were in them. I dream about really getting down to all the little differences between people socially and how they were translated into acts of violence in both structured and spontanous situations. But I'm scared, I have no criminal record and there are no records of me giving statements or working with the police in any way. Not that I can access anyway, at the moment. I watch the news, waiting. Waiting for something that might bring about a breakthrough. I'm more stable now, I have a voice I'm not scared of the press. But there was a lot of very public, influencial people involved as well as drug or arms lords and gang leaders. I'm scared of the positions the hold within the public consciousness. I'm not even sure if I have the right to challange the common culture like that.