humpty dumpty sat on a wall...

Child molestation is not a happy topic, especially when an American college football coach is in the middle of the scandal. You've probably heard enough about the man they call Jo Pa, too much in fact. His kingdom is crumbling and he is partially to blame. I have no sympathy for him and the wall of lies built around his unhappy valley.  I want to know where are the stories about the traumatized children and their families?

  

I am enraged.  I am sickened.  I am embarrassed, once again, for our country.  We are socially inept.  We've proven this in several ways.  We claim to help the world, yet at home, our residents are flailing.  Morality and ethics are lost a midst team jerseys and statistical polls.  Blinders must have been on sale this past decade, on the shelf next to the foggy glasses and rosary beads. 

Yes, I'm referring to the Catholic mess.  The entity who raped my generation of dignity and trust.  The church I trusted to teach my children about honor, respect, loving one another, and helping those less fortunate.  My fault, I didn't read the disclaimer:  'priests may seem holier than they appear.'  The Vatican cover up and the Penn State cover up are huge.  Two powerful, public, influential groups who have been revered and praised for good deeds.  Two groups of human beings choosing to look the other way, brush under the rug, deny, create excuses, and harm.  Once wronged, shame on you.  Twice, shame on me.  Action is needed.  

My interest is twofold.  I am a mother.  I am a psychiatric nurse. Protective maternal instincts cannot be matched.  Like the wild animal charging the invader too close to her babies, this mom feels like kicking butt and taking names.  My patients have shared horror stories of child molestation and abuse, sometimes  at the hands of their loved ones, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles...stories that explain the psychosis, dissociation, self-hatred, and self-harm of adulthood.  Where does the cycle end?  How?  When?  

I promise each of you this:  if I see an adult sexually molesting a child, I will be talking to 911 dispatch sooner than that predator can pull up his pants.  Period.  No second thought.  I knew this 22 years ago when my daughter was gracefully growing inside of me.  I know this everyday and forevermore.  Help is my middle name, even when I may be requesting, I can feel others' pain.  Maybe there in lies the motive for my anger today.  Maybe my anger is ever present because I so strongly feel the hurt around me.  I hurt for the children unnecessarily put in contact with predators, unhealthy adults who were given multiple chances to prey, given permission from their bosses, their confidants, their elders, their bishops and cardinals.  I hurt for the children who lost their youth and live daily with doubt, and wonder why they deserve their horror.  I hurt for the students at Penn State who do not understand the severity of their university's indiscretions, their judgement clouded by the pedestal's shadow.  I hurt for the believers who follow doctrine, blindly and unquestionably, their muteness deafening.  

Yes, to be human is to err.  I, of all humans, am a walking err.  I will not cast the first stone.  Too late for that pebble.  I'm looking for a rock to chuck, a boulder to roll, a stick of dynamite, anything I can use to awaken senses and knock heads.  Wanna' join me?

go green!

peace and love

~L

another one bites the dust OR being alone on my birthday really sucks!

Not feeling forward momentum today.  Sliding backwards, sliding away.  Feeling the old creeping in and encompassing the good vibes.  This is a recurring pattern, not as often as years ago, but does occur.  so maybe it's the seasonal effectiveness of grey skies and torrential rains for 12 hours of awakeness.  Remember every fall and winter years ago?  Black tunnels of Hell.  Not anywhere near that now.  Thank you God.

So why the mood?  Why the pout? Why the negativity?  Good question.  Be thankful for what you've overcome...

Emotional abuse from two men, well, one man and one wanna be man.  Back to back blunders for me.  Not realizing the pattern for many years...see how you get caught up?  When someone says they love you and you believe them and you expect certain ways for their love to be expressed to you, you can get caught up. Caught up in looking for those expressions and expecting your expectations and needing more than you are receiving.  Becoming vulnerable by the minute because you believe what they tell you and then they don't produce what they promise.  Believe that you are the reason for their unhappiness...when you haven't done anything differently than the first day.  The day you were born, the day you met, the day you agreed to give yourself entirely.  Dad or boyfriend, doesn't matter, both are who I wanted to please and wanted for them to please me. 

Trusting a father is something a child is born with.  Trust that you get taken care of no matter what.  Trust that you will be comforted and protected and listened too, eventually.  When that day doesn't come, and that day turns into fear and uncertainty and confusion...that's when you turn to someone else who may be able to fulfill your wants and needs.  Friends who use you and talk shit to others about you.  People who assume you are someone other than you are and take what they can.  You let them because you need to feel needed.  You let yourself be someone else, be somewhere other than where you are because that doesn't work anymore.  You strive to change into a foreigner, someone you don't even recognize.  Fuck your self respect, he tells me it's wrong anyway.

Smoke up, forget.  Drink up, forget.  Drive a carload full of drugged up kids, forget.  Lie about everything, forget.  Forget how to be yourself.  Forget what loving yourself means.  Wait, I never learned how that feels.  What does that mean anyway?  You are supposed to agree with your thoughts and like what you say to people and know that you may make mistakes but you will survive after that?  What the hell does all that have to do with feeling loved and wanted and included and listened too?  I'll go on following the other high kids and see how much comfort that brings me. And if that doesn't work, I'll find someone else who can provide my instant gratification...to forget and feel good.  No matter the cost.  I never developed morals and values and opinions of my self behavior, so there's nothing to act out against or feel guilty about.  Fuck it!

See Dad, see world, see how I can make my own decisions and survive my way?  Barely...survive right into the arms of another abuser.

Well he didn't start out that way.  Actually I introduced him to drugs and he turned ugly soon after.  I started using him and he turned it around on me...who'da thunk?  By the time I was left ragged, wrung out, and broken, he was in rehab and I found my way out.  I didn't plan on breaking up with him over the phone, when he called me from the hospital...but he got mad and I got mad and I did it.  I planned on telling him the next day when I visited him.  His parents already knew I would.  His therapist knew too.  I met with his therapist.  Why?  Because for the last 2 years he threatened to kill himself if I left him...and I didn't know what to do about that burden.  He was in a safe place and the supporters were ready for the worst, so I cut myself free and haven't spoken with him since.  Done.  Finality. Freedom...for three weeks exactly.

Then the next, unexpected lifetime begins.  Boyfriend, daughter, husband, move, son, move again.  On our own.  Here we are.

can't find my way home

I am good at pool because I grew up with a pool table in my basement.  And ping pong because the table fit on top of the pool table and my brother and I would play matches.  Haven't played in a while but it usually comes right back to me.  The blue chalk, the bridge cue, the break triangle, all the tools of the trade.  Oh, the green felt and the way my hands formed around the stick...like riding a bike.


Listening to the guitar chords of Eric Clapton. Singing the blues through those rich guitar chords, feels like private conversations between two other people, maybe I shouldn't be listening...but now he's live and the entire audience hears him...


Plant your love and let it grow...let it grow, let it grow, let it blossom let it grow...


Remember listening to this album while my sister and I drove to visit our bro in college, the same college I graduated from the year before.


when I was in college I had no college life.  maybe freshman year, before I started believing what he was saying about me.  before I decided to give up my friends, roomie, and study habits because of what he said to me.  Pretty pathetic when a college student isn't smart enough to make her own decisions.  I missed everything.  I look through my one yearbook from those four years and I see photos of people, students, having fun.  My fun was ordering a Garcia's stuffed crust with sausage and extra sauce and buying a pint of chocolate chocolate chip Haagen Daz from the Piggly Wiggly for desert.  And eating all of it by myself after smoking a one hit or two.  Pathetic.


I used to glob onto my neighbors.  They lived in a big house, 2 guys and a girl from Sweden...they smoked too and listened to great music, so I sat in their house and helped myself while they studied.  Pathetic.  That was after he dropped out and I was totally alone.  Thank God for people's sympathy. 


Freshman year I had fun.  I hung out with a high school buddy and we checked out the parties and partied hard.  i hid booze in my dorm room fridge and tempted my RA to open it to see if I wasn't lying...she didn't.  I safety pinned the calves of my jeans to make them super straight, like my friend across the hall did.  she was from Chicago and much wiser than a girl from the burbs.  We went to football games late and drunk. We sang Beatles songs in our dorm while eating the cookies my Grandma sent.  We bought posters at the union to decorate our walls and ate bags of flavored popcorn while we studied in the common room on our floor.  I always wore this bulky knitted sweater that tied closed...a gift from my dad from some carribean island or Las Vegas...and knitted bootie slippers from Canada.  We were comfy and content and carefree.  One year.


Then he started telling lies about me...to me.  What an ass.  Me, I'm the ass, for believing what he told me.  For believing that I was wrong and believing that I had to follow his ideas.  do his homework and laundry.  WTF?  lame and pathetic.  Abuse? possibly.  for 3 years and one after graduation.  No good times at college for me to savor...sad, very sad.


So when I look at myself in the mirror today, I try not to blame myself.  I try to say it's OK because you made it out of that.  You are OK now.  Am I?  Am I telling myself what I should?  what I need to hear?  It's easy to abuse yourself, to talk negatively like you have been for decades, to listen to the doubt and remember the shame.  Reaching for the light of positivity and compassion is difficult for an abuse victim.  Time moves slowly and every step taken may end up being negated by one back.  Frustrating to say the least.  Necessary to stay alive.

You don't believe the compliments at first, or after ten times heard.  You avoid situations that remind you of your weaknesses.  You cry because other people are happy and you know you can't be.  The negative talk.  The doubting yourself and wishing you were someone else. it's trying and tiring to live this way.  but you don't have enough energy to figure out the other way to live.  Decades of tired.


Even after I shed the old and begin the new, I am broken.  The healing is not quick.  The help is sparse and undefined.  The little things are disastrous and the big things are neglected.  He is kind and just as young and doing his best.  I am not trained to be a partner.  I barely know how to be me alone.