In the Box

No, I’m not in the penalty box in a hockey game.  It’s where I feel I am in regards to several issues that I’m dealing with right now.

First, the medication I am on now does actually seem to be working.  However, switching from being a graveyard shift to a dayshift is causing havoc on my body.  It’ll be several months before everything settles down. With the new schedule, I have managed to get away from one of the biggest work problems and that’s a good thing for me.  My body and mind still haven’t realized it yet but they will and things will be much better.  Another good thing about being on dayshift is that I am doing a lot more so my energy level goes up.  It also means I’m more tired at the end of the day but I also feel like I accomplished things and actually did something.

Second, I am and am not sure I can handle going back to Mass.  I was able to finally attend an All Saints day vigil Mass Monday night.  Yet, I am having problems with the thoughts in my head.  Reading the stupid crap traditionalists have written on CAF and whatnot have really screwed me up.  I still have thoughts about how to bash on women (they worthless, useless, always causing men to sin, should be stay at home mothers and wives, women are property, never to be educated, etc) which is really bad since I’m a woman.  I hate that I’ve learned to hate myself because of my sex.  My own family didn’t acknowledge the fact that I was a woman.  I had to figure that out on my own.  I was made to hate and ignore my own body because I was a woman and because I wasn’t what my parents wanted.  Now in my attempts to get away from that I’m running right back into it from so called traditionalists and faithful Catholics.  I won’t even get into the whole Quiverfull/Patriarchy/Vision Forum fringe garbage.  It’s like any advancements women have made are forgotten or ignored or labeled satanic and that if women just went back to being their husbands’ slaves then everything would be perfect.  No it wouldn’t.  Denying who you are and what you like and squashing all that down and stuffing it into a box is bad but that’s what many want.  They think of women as children and property not as people.  And many of the people with this attitude are WOMEN.  Why do women fear other women so much that they have to strike out and hurt them?

Third, I’m still stuck on the idea that other people get to do things that I am not allowed to do.  Like, they get to be happy and I have to be miserable.  They get to have dreams and lives they want and all I get is a dead end job with no possibility of advancement and stuck for the next thirty years.  Or they get to live their faith however they want (with in reason) and I have to follow a strict regime of rules and prayers and still not be a good Catholic.  Or that they get to spank and I don’t.  Now, I don’t advocate spanking but this is where this all stems from.  I got spanked, largely for anything and everything, especially for stuff my sisters did, while my sisters got rarely spanked if at all.  At least, growing up, I figured on some level that eventually I would be able to spank someone smaller and weaker than me and my rage and anger would be satisfied.  I feel like this got taken away from me, that my ability to spank and punish and hurt and let out the rage and anger were taken away from me and all I’m left with is this feeling of being told to suck it up this is the way things are going to be from now.  That’s it.  But wait, nobody else had these things taken from them because they never had them in the first place.  My sisters never had the rage or the anger or the pointless blaming for other people’s wrongs.  I got all that but they got away with murder and it hurts.  It hurts that they had my mother’s love and all I had was my mother’s anger and rage.  That’s the legacy she left me.  She never showed me love.  It was either rage, anger, neglect, or indifference.  Very little praise and never any love.

I think this is why I have a hard time making women friends (plus, I’ve been “betrayed” by several girl friends in the past) and look for someone to take her place.  I never had a mother in the emotional sense.  I physically have a mother but we have no emotional connection.   She doesn’t love me and I don’t love her.  What little love she did have she gave to my sisters.  Now I’m not saying my mother is evil or bad.  I realize, after reading several psychology books, that she was raised this way and didn’t make the choices to break free of this parenting.  It wasn’t largely her fault, it’s just the failings of past generations that have continued on down to mine.  My dad’s family wasn’t much better but his was also much larger and much different.  There was affection but my dad didn’t really know how to relate to having all girls.  They still are guilty of some things but not everything.

So I have a hard time with the concept of a loving God.  Distant, sure.  Occasionally there for a special moment, definitely.  But unconditional love is not something I’ve ever know or experienced so it’s not something I can fathom.  It’s too difficult.  It’s not real.  It can’t be real.  Someone love me for me?  You have to be kidding me.  I’m used to conditional love.  Being loved only for what I can do and not being loved when I can’t.  Only being “loved” when I make someone else look good.  I understand unconditional love in an intellectual sense but not in a heart/emotional sense because like I’ve said, I’ve never experienced it.  Yet I am asked to believe something I cannot wrap my mind around, that I am loved.  Actually, it’s more like I don’t want to believe.  When you’ve been unlovable as long as I have, being loved really screws things up.

I have no emotional attachment to the Catholic faith, at least it doesn’t engender an emotional response in me.  I almost feel burned out, numb even.  I don’t want to go to Mass. Confession, sure.  It’s the first step in going back but yet, it’s easier and harder as well.  I believe everything the Church teaches but the people make it hard.  The people and Jesus.  I don’t connect with any of them.  Being emotionally damaged, it is hard.  Right now, I’m not sure I can handle Mass.  I need to go but my body and my emotions can’t handle it.  Not right now.

 

Why I Need to Get In Touch With My Inner Bitch: The Traddies are At It Again

After reading this post at The Church Fanatic (I am in the process of writing an article about it for this blog but I am doing a lot of research for it so it will be a while) and seeing this thread at CAF, it seems like the Traditionalists are trying to out-extreme the extreme fundamentalists.  What’s worse, is that they seem to be able to convince innocent people that their opinions are Church dogma and that if they don’t follow they are going to Hell.  To top that, I get persuaded that I am not being a good enough Catholic, I start thinking all these horrible thoughts that I need to dress in a burqa, consider myself leading men into sin if they see my wrist, and that I need to go to the Latin Mass because the Mass I attend isn’t good enough even though I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near those kinds of people and there isn’t one near me anyways.

Actually, traditionalists have had such an impact on me that my thoughts go towards thinking

-I am horrible just for being born a woman (not true) (what’s worse is hearing this kind of claptrap from women who hate themselves) God made me woman.  God doesn’t make junk therefore I am not horrible for being born a woman

-not wearing skirt/dresses all time means I’m not dressing right (I’ve gained so much weight due to my depression that I only fit into my pants)

-that I need to be a stay at home mom (I’m not married nor do I feel called to marriage and I have to stipulate that this thought is along the lines of I have to be a stay at home mom but everyone else that is other women can have careers and hobbies and such while I have to stay home and never go out except to Mass) ( it goes along with my depression and the thought processes that I learned/fell into growing up) I was taught/learned that I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t athletic enough, wasn’t pretty enough so the only thing I was good for was being a mother and staying home.  Yes, my mother used to tell me I was stupid, that I wouldn’t amount to anything, and that I was going to Hell.  Can we say screwed up?  Oh, she loved to tell me I was fat when I was a size 6.

-that I am going to Hell because I’m not getting it, not living the Catholic faith “right”, not praying the Rosary 24/7 (I actually pray three decades of it on the way home from work because the local Catholic radio station airs it when I get off in the morning but I have issues with the concept to mother and Mary as my mother when my own mother abused me.  Plus, I want a mother all to myself and not one I have to share.  I know that’s selfish but that’s where I’m at emotionally when it comes to healing from the mother’s abuse.  Again, this comes from the traditionalists who want conformity and uniformity and not the universality that is the Church.  Traditionalists are so focused on the external that Jesus and God are practically forgotten except as a hammer to beat people over the head with to force people to follow the “traditionalist’ way of doing things.

There are more and they are usually worse at work (I work graveyard security and the radio doesn’t work in my patrol vehicle so I’m left with my thoughts).  Suffice it to say, I need to get in touch with my inner bitch.  What I mean by that is accepting and being pleased with the fact that I am a woman, that I have power as woman, and that I can and do make things happen.  That I can and should stand up for myself.  That taking care of myself is okay.  That I matter as a person.  That I am worthy of love and respect, not because of what I do but because of who I am.

I am me and that is Good.

I do not need to be afraid of me as I was taught.  I am not a bad person because my mother said so or because I don’t adhere to some anonymous traditionalist’s ideal.

I am me and God is okay with that.  He loves me for me.  He created me.  Like I said,  He doesn’t make junk.

 

 

Another Week in the Healing Process

If I thought last week was bad, this week was tough.  I had one of my worst crying jags Sunday night/Monday morning at work.  At least the coworker who heard part of it brushed it off as lack of sleep.  (I had chewed him out over something that was not his fault.)  My shift supervisor has issues with me and I have major issues with her.  She decided not to tell me several key things Sunday including a coworker going home sick (the coworker told me and I had to pick up a few of his duties which was wasn’t a big deal but the whole not telling me was), that the coworker I chewed out was doing something she told him to do (I think she made something up just to get him to do some work), and lied to me.  I had every intention of talking to her Monday night but that didn’t work out because she decided to deal with an issue and then hang out with one of my coworkers.

The big problem is that this supervisor hits all my triggers because she acts just like my abuser.  I have talked to her about a month ago about her behavior but it didn’t last because she honestly believes she is doing nothing wrong and won’t take me seriously.  She says that she has to act the way she does because of the work that needs to get done (which she likes to dump on me instead either doing it herself when it is part of her job description or delegating it to other officers who have the time and ability to do it), that I am her most capable officer (like I said she lies)(yet she treats me like dirt; she treats almost all of the female officers like dirt unless they are married or have children) (she hates the position I work), that I’m smart (but only so far as having completed college; being Catholic is the unforgivable sin to her) (actually, believing or even accepting evolution and using science is the unforgivable sin) but I feel that I’ve been singled out for her abuse.  She hates working there and has said so repeatedly.  She lectures about her religious and political views when those are big no-nos at work and especially as a supervisor to a employee.  She has let certain individuals get away with behavior that should have gotten them fired and plays favorites (even though one of her “favorites” can’t stand her).

Except for this supervisor, the job isn’t that bad.  There are a couple of problematic employees but one is switching to the construction side of things, the one I see for only a few minutes, and the only I only have to deal with for six hours though if he screws up like the stories that go around about his last time here, he won’t be here long.  First half of my week is okay.  I  have an excellent supervisor that appreciated what I do and the position I have.  The other half of the week is the bas supervisor and I dread coming to work the second half of my week because I don’t know what will set her off, what she’ll blame me for, what stupid, insane thing she wants me to do now.  She totally stresses me out.  I’m stressing out just writing this, remembering what she does to me, what emotions she evokes in me.

I hate putting myself in a situation where I can only expect stress and fear.  I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for her to come up with some imagined slight or mistake on my part and I get fired.  Doesn’t matter if it’s real or not. I wish I had a better job waiting for me.  I wish I didn’t have all the bills to pay that keeps me in this job.  I wish that people who abuse would understand what they are doing and the effect they have on people.  I don’t know what’s going to set her off.  I have to walk on eggshells around her.  It’s just a job but it seems like so much worse than that.

It also doesn’t help that last week I had the fact that my father doesn’t think much of me either.  I was never either of my parents’ favorites but I still has the delusion that my father loved me.  Nope.  My sister K gets all his love and attention.  I got the random backhanded gift out of the blue growing up but K was and is his total favorite.  My sisters S and G are my mother’s favorites though S more because S has a son.  I understand that my mother chose to hurt me and has an undiagnosed mental illness (possibly) but to have consider and possibly accept that my dad chose someone over me still hurts even at 29.  To know that neither parent really loved me really, really hurts and is unimaginable.  I still had that delusion that my dad was on my side, even just a little bit.  Not any more.

This really sucks especially since I don’t have anyone in real life to talk to about all this.

 

 

The Healing Process

Everyone wants to heal.  But they never really tell you that it’s difficult.  Oh they say it, but you don’t quite believe them.  Right now I’m going through a really rough, tough patch in my healing process and there are times when I wish I wasn’t.  My emotions are all over the place.  I cry too easily.  I fall back into depression.  I feel like there is no future, that I can’t get any farther, that where I am at now (especially in regards to career) is where I will always be.  It doesn’t help that my abuser doesn’t recognize, refuses to admit that she abused me and that her choices affected me and affected me deeply.  Some days are so bad that I honestly don’t want to get out of bed, don’t want to go to work or do anything.

It’s tough and it isn’t fun.  But, once I get through this, I hope that I will be better than I am now.  That is the only thing that makes it worth it.  Pain without purpose seems pointless especially when you are trying to heal.  It doesn’t help that I can’t really explain or talk about this with people largely because they won’t/don’t/can’t understand or I’ve tried in the past to talk about my abuse and haven’t been believed or I’m just comfortable discussing this with some people.

The Past

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here but I am a survivor of abuse.  Emotional/psychological and verbal abuse.  Not much physical abuse and to my knowledge, not sexual abuse thought there was abuse by my mother that could be considered if not sexual abuse then boundary abuse.  And yes, my mother was my abuser.  That went on for nearly the first twenty years of my life.

Then I went off to college at 18 while still carrying all that baggage/garbage, etc.  It wasn’t until I was 21 that I was able to start drawing lines and when I was 22 realize my parents didn’t care all that much about me.  My mother was abusive, my dad neglectful.  And I thought that this was all normal.

It wasn’t until I was forced into counseling my senior year of college (I had gone to my advisor to get an extension for a paper and was in tears because I was so exhausted but she thought I was depressed and made me make an appointment with the counseling center) that I had someone outside the situation actually say what happened to me was abuse and neglect.  I tried to say that to people while in the last year or so of high school but no one believed me.  From hearing things like I must be making things up to my parents weren’t really like that I doubted what really happened to me and even believed that I was making it up.  There are still times I think I made up what happened to me and then I remind myself that, no, it really happened.  Why would I be as messed up as I am if I hadn’t been abused?

I recently read a book about daughters and their mothers.  I really shouldn’t have read past the first few pages and returned it immediately to the library.  It was the absolutely the worst book to read.  This women advocates that all women and I mean all women need to be best friends with their mothers regardless of how their mothers treated them in the past and that the only friendship a women needs in one with her mother.  Actually, the author advocates that the only relationship a women needs is the friendship she has with her mother and that her mother should be the center of her universe.  That a women being a mother, a wife, a sister, a friend to other people is considered unimportant and even blasphemous to this whole mother-daughter friendship the author advocates.  That’s such a load of BS it isn’t even funny.  There are many of us that can’t even have a civil relationship with our mothers let alone a mother-daughter relationship and a friendship is completely out of the questions.  Yet this author can’t see that.  It upset me to read the book and I really shouldn’t have read it.

But this mentality hurts because I’m also getting it from a supervisor at work.  Now, this supervisor at work doesn’t know that I was abused and I’m not going to tell her.  But she can’t conceive that parents might abuse their children and that those children can’t have anything to do with those abusers as adults as a means of protecting themselves from getting hurt.  My supervisor lives in a very unrealistic and a very self-selective world that’s definitely out of touch with reality.  She gets along great with her mother but then her mother loved her.  My mother wasn’t capable of loving me.

Another effect of my mother’s abuse (from all her screaming) is that I don’t handle loud noises really well.  If I’m aware that there is going to be loud noise, I can prepare myself to handle it but there are times when that’s just not possible.  Part of my job in security deals with responding to alarms (there’s actually more to alarms to than that but that’s all I can get into).  Many of these alarms are loud and extremely obnoxious.  Enough, even after my time working there, the sound stresses me out.  A lot.  I cringe and want to run away which isn’t possible.

The cringing and running away when I feel I really can’t also happens with regards to personal space.  If I feel someone is sitting too close to me (which has happened a lot at Mass recently) I start to cry and want to run away but have this overwhelming feeling that I just have to stay there and let the bad things happen, that I have to let the hurt happen.  Because leaving and running away is not an option.  It is for everyone else but not for me.  I can understand how screwed up that is but that’s what’s going through my mind when someone sits so close that it feels like they are sitting in my lap and I can’t move and that this person is going to hurt me and I have to keep silent and let it happen.

So this has been a bad week for me.