What Does all this MEAN?

Today I came home and hit the punching bag. Only after I physically exhausted myself and caused myself some pain from hitting the bag was I able to release like…2 micro sized tears. When all I FUCKING WANT TO DO IS RELEASE THIS EMOTIONAL FLOOD THAT IS RAGING INSIDE. I have been conditioned to not show emotions. I have been conditioned so that tears is a sign of weakness and ridicule. I have been conditioned to feel shame for crying. So I learned to not feel. I used my power over my feelings to believe I was winning. It was all I had. It was all I had control over.

Now that I am in therapy working on ‘feeling’, I can feel it inside. I can feel it in my shoulders. I can feel it in my chest, in my jaw, in the way my body will tense and sweat during meditation exercises. I can feel a bubble, a wave of ‘something’ that is churning inside. And God, all I really want is to let it out. I want to be awash with ‘whatever this is’. I don’t want it to be a story anymore. I’ve told the story. Now I want to feel the story so I can heal fro the story.

How do I start to heal from this? I want to own my baggage…not it own me.

So much inner conflicting emotions churning inside as I work toward allowing myself to feel my past pain. Growing up feelings were not meant to be felt. Mom was the only one allowed to feel emotions and hers were extremely volatile. I was a child that was seen and not heard. I was a child that was emotionally berated during daylight and sexually abused during the night. With my mother I grew up feeling whatever emotion allowed me the quickest and safest exit. If I thought crying was what would help, I would cry. If I was supposed to act happy, I would act happy. Her emotions called for strict adherence and nothing else would be tolerated. She ruled the roost. She was borderline. One second she would be lying on the ground in the middle of the yard telling me she hated me and wished I had never been born. Another minute she would be walking the perimeter of the yard stating she was trying to go home. Another minute she would be chugging bleach or swallowing a full bottle of medication. Yet another she would be sobbing into my arms and wailing she needed me more than anything else in life. That if she didn’t have me she would be already dead. All this by the age of 9 or 10. Previous years I don’t have real memories of..they are just fuzzy.

Here steps in the hero, my pedophile father. Shhhh, be quiet and go to your room and be a good girl so mommy doesn’t get mad. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I played with my toys, read my books, colored and drew into the dark hours of the night. Sometimes he would come and other nights I would tuck myself into bed. When he did come he would sit next to my bed with a chair from the dining table and tell me wonderful fantastical stories about Michael and Marcy, two almost Harry Potter like characters that he had made up. Sometimes he would tell me bible stories and other times he would sing bible songs to me. Sometimes he would comfort me if I were crying because I “had done something wrong” in mommy’s eyes. As he rubbed my back he would touch me. And he’d rub my front. And the young years are fuzzy. I really only remember when I would start to clinch my legs shut as hard as I could and tuck my arms in at my sides. I must have been around 12-14 at this point. I think it was only then that I started to realize something wasn’t right. I don’t remember much before that. I remember the one time mom was gone (I was 15 or 16?) and I was taking a Sunday nap in bed with my father and he touched my breast and I instinctively turned away from him. I think that’s when I started to keep from being in situations with him. And I think that’s when he stopped. He was never a man for confrontation.

I was such a confused little kid. Not only did I have an emotionally fucked up mother, a pedophile father, but I was so confused sexually as I was gay and living in the Bible Belt of the Deep South. I was different from every other kid I knew in so many ways. I went through my childhood living in the clouds of dissociation. I don’t think I was ever present. I used sports as an outlet. And I was good at them because I was so immune to pain I could run and play through anything. My parents never came to my games or meets. The few times my mother did, she would get angry at me saying I didn’t spend enough time with her and I’d end up bawling in the car on the ride home. This even happened while I was in college at rowing regattas.

Then she finally did end up succeeding and taking her own life. I wasn’t able to get their in enough time to save her. Here I was, the daughter who when visiting home for christmas break she would send away in tears saying she was disowning me and that I would never hear from her again…and here I was the daughter who felt she couldn’t get their in enough time to save her. I was pulled to both extremes my whole life.

SO WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?? WHERE DO I GO NOW THAT I AM ACKNOWLEDGING IT?? What do I do with it all?! How do I make sense of the un-sensible? What do I do now? How am I supposed to feel? What am I supposed to feel?