Occasionally I ask people for writing prompts to get my brain working, and Dana gave me this one.

How do you un-write the trauma? What is the first step?

Dear Dana,

If only I could step out of the pictures on our walls and tell you. If only the movies in my mind would play on our TV. I’d give you access to all of it. All the tears, all the screams, all the terror, all the love. Oh, the love.

“Love.”

I can’t say whether she was in love with me. She claims she wasn’t. I can only speak to my own experience, and what that experience tells me is that she was. However, there’s a whole lot that goes into it (as with every story). Love is in quotation marks because I’m not sure it ever really was. There were genuine moments, clearly, but never consistently enough to believe that she wasn’t going to turn around and give me the silent treatment as soon as I wanted to spend time with her. I spent a lot of time playing the game. “How do I have to act to get her to respond to me?” The pattern I learned is that at first, it would be really intense. Everything I needed and everything I wanted emotionally. Then, when she’d had enough togetherness, I dropped off her radar completely. Getting her attention didn’t work. Ignoring her did, though. As I have said many times, the cat wouldn’t move unless the mouse thought he was about to break free. The more I ignored her, the more I could ratchet up her fear that I would walk, and all of the sudden, we were aces again… until the next time she was sufficiently satisfied that I was sufficiently roped in and no more effort was necessary.

I told my therapist today that it was kind of like losing my mother and my child, because for so many years we mothered each other until she took the upper hand permanently and wouldn’t let me reach for it anymore. When I say that I had the upper hand, I meant that I was “free therapy for one older and often not wiser.” I have quoted that before. I’ll quote it again. I feel smart… and used.

When I was a teenager, I felt like I was helping her because she couldn’t help herself. I realize it sounds impossible. If you Google her name and see her title, you will not believe one word of this story… and believe me, there have been plenty that haven’t, especially because of her name and title. Houston was all caterpillar, and Portland was all butterfly.

And here I sit, all these many years later, holding the empty chrysalis knowing that the butterfly just. won’t. fit.

The first step, my darling dangerous Dana, is to be ok with dropping it.

Every writer should have an essay called “The Comfy Chair” when they’re talking about therapy. I started on the couch when I entered the office, and realized that my personality is definitely more of a wingback with pillow to put in my lap in case I need to do something with my hands. I always need to do something with my hands. In fact, it’s probably why I’m a writer. What better way to get past the teachers for not paying attention than to be so quiet I had them completely faked out? Now that the statute of limitations has run out, I will tell you that I never went to a single class in high school. Not one. I had the woman I was in love with in middle school and early high school, and then I had that PLUS a girlfriend my own age. I could sit in the back and write ALL DAY. Knowing what a gerund is? Osmosis.

I’m sitting in the chair turning the pillow over in my hands nervously when she asks me where I want to start. I told her that I wanted to start from the very beginning eventually, but that right now because of this other blogger that is literally psychotic (said that my abuser’s wife set up my abuser and this woman to be raped and killed, for instance), I was in a near-crisis situation because I can’t eat. (I would absolutely link this blog to hers if I did not fear that I would become implicated as well. I’ve met her a few times, and I do not want to dance.) I am not intentionally starving myself, it’s that taking the time out to eat is taking a luxury. I am so scared that I am down to fight or flight and there are no luxuries here. And this is my base self. My inner teenager. I can’t rest until I know that no one is hurting her, or I will go into absolute and complete shock and browbeat myself that I haven’t done enough to save her.

People tell me that it’s wrong, that I shouldn’t do it, etc. I tell them that if I’d figured out how to stop, I would’ve. And as a Christian, there is a large part of me flip-flopping between disowning her and forgiving her seventy times seven. This is the impossible choice. She has already made hers. I have not. Because my reaction is not dependent on hers. I’m not looking at this from the standpoint of what she decides. I’m looking at it from the standpoint of the kind of human being I want to be. My earthly self says to protect everything I have left in complete fight or flight mode because now I have figured it out and she is the enemy. She is the one that got inside my head, not the other way around. My heavenly self says that I am doing what I need to do to be a good person. That despite the level of damage, she’s the mothermentorsisterfriend I got, you know? I should never count her out because I’ll never get another one.

She is not the one I loved to the point of passion. It was much more than that. She was the one I loved to the point that redefined unconditional for me, and I can be proud of that. I didn’t lose the game. I resigned. That thought keeps me remarkably even-keeled until you catch me on a day without myelin. I’ve had a few of those lately, and they usually end up with me sobbing because I just can’t get it right- or can’t feel like I can, anyway, which is probably more universally accurate.

Maybe that is the legacy of abuse… cutting you off from the places in your heart that are capable of receiving love, while entrenching you in the places that give.

My therapy appointment was a mixed bag. On one hand, I absolutely think that she is a wonderful therapist and that I got genuine validation from a professional that my emotions are valid and there is a very good reason I’m feeling as fucked up as I am.

You wanna know just *how* much she understands? She’s in her 60s and wants to refer me to someone younger because she thinks that my trauma is so bad that she will have to retire before I’m well.

So, that was my fucking morning.

I can’t even say anything else than that. I was right, and knowing I’m right alternately breaks my heart and sets me free.

Sometimes I hate the chord that runs between my abuser and me, because it turns me into exactly the kind of person I don’t want to be. There is someone on the Internet so crazy that she’s actually throwing around word salad regarding my abuser and several of her “cohorts.” I don’t know what crazy people call them. I haven’t taken 401.

Anywho, this woman who is a total lunatic is hitting that nerve. The nerve that whispers “it’s your job to protect her, and you’re not doing it.” So what did I do? Like an ASSHOLE I emailed all her friend and asked them to check on her for me. I used to call it “loving her by sneak attack” and then I realized that the information obtained was not actually keeping her safer, it was just driving me bananas.

I didn’t do anything to protect her. I just did something to implicate myself, as if I’m part of this whole thing instead of trying to be the solution. Perception is reality, and I will not come off looking good. I will just come off looking even sadder than I did before.

Once again, SOMETHING THAT COULD HAVE BEEN BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION YESTERDAY.

I get into the hero mode of “if I could only Y, she would X.” The Y comes before the X because it would never occur to me that she would be the actor. I’m always the actor. I’m always the one who does stuff wrong. By saving herself and only reacting, the game is that she has never done anything wrong. She just reacted, and I took it wrong for 25 years.

My appointment for PTSD is at 9:00 AM. I have no idea what I want to say. Where do I even begin?

Like every lesbian’s story, I suppose.

There was this girl……………………

In my grief therapy group that I attended after my divorce from Kathleen, one of the exercises we did was to list all our losses- those things we knew we’d never get from that person again. For my inner 37-year-old, I have to deal with loss itself. In an abusive relationship, if you are the enabler, you have to admit you lost. You were never going to change them in the first place.

It hurts, all those moments you spent wishing that something would change. That something would finally click, and the face you loved would love you in return, the way you needed it to. It doesn’t have to be a romantic relationship. It could be your father or mother. If you were in this type relationship with your mother or your father, you probably spent a lot of time wondering if you’d ever win.

Did you?

For me, it was not necessarily that I wanted her to be my girlfriend. I was already confused as to whether that was an intention or not. But beyond eros, there were a thousand other types of love wrapped in the chord that runs between us. It was so intense that even I don’t understand it. The closest parallel I can draw is in Twilight (I know, right?) when Jacob, in his love for Bella, imprints on her child. He has been in love with her for so long, and yet so much of it is beyond eros. I imprinted on my abuser, and it is so entrenched that it will never go away, because I would have to destroy the wheat and the weeds.

I imprinted on her, and she says to this day that it never happened for her. I believe her, and I don’t all at the same time. I believe that there is a leaking velvet box inside her soul, as well. I believe that if she doesn’t see the chord that runs between us, it may not be that it isn’t there. It may be that she can’t acknowledge it because it’s so fucked up and so true at the same time. But that’s conjecture on my part, just what I use to pass the time.

People ask the abused all the time why they stay. I think I’ve figured it out. It’s that the chord between two people in a relationship carries all sorts of things, positive and negative. What you pick up depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for positive aspects, they will leap out at you when you start to weigh pros and cons.

The negative that leapt out at me was that I never should have had to spend my entire life pining over one woman because she woke up my sex life before it was ready and treated me like I was her best friend. I never should have had a tape that ingrained that said she was The One when I was 13 years old. No matter what she thinks this is still undeniably true. Boom. It stands on its own without any emotion behind it- she did something wrong.

Why did I stay? I justified that wrong for a long time. It wasn’t until I tried to have a relationship that was more important than ours that this problem hurt in just the right way so I could see it clearly and when I did, I went into shock.

The shock has only sort of started wearing off, because the longer I sit with this problem, the shadier I feel.

I felt like I couldn’t save her, and the whole time she was playing me. Before I could drive. Before I could type. Before I could vote. Before I could responsibly be trusted with anything.

In the still of the night, I know it’s not that she hasn’t done this to others. I was just the youngest.

It’s been an interesting week, that’s for damn sure- especially physically. When I get stressed out, I tend to get psychosomatic illnesses like headaches and stomachaches. Not bad enough to stay home and check out of life, but bad enough to be a constant annoyance. My allergies are kicking up terribly, too, which adds a layer of frustration because when I get up to that level of snot, my singing suffers and my stomach hurts from even more post-nasal drip. Between those two things, I’m in relatively good shape… it’s just that hell hath no fury than when I’m inconvenienced in any way. I saw that on Facebook. You can steal it.

This week I have really been looking at my heart, or trying to. As I said earlier, the balance looks different between my abuser and me, and I am slowly determining what that means as I let go and remember. As I laugh and cry and look at old pictures and read old letters in her beautiful and consistently unreadable handwriting that slants to the left. I spent HOURS trying to reproduce it, and the only ones I ever got right were the D’s. I will tell you that it’s because my middle name starts with D; if you believe that, you haven’t been paying attention.

I remember what it was like to touch her… not in a romantic way, but in the way that you’d hug family. Even if this doesn’t ring true on her side, in my humble opinion the chord that runs between us is bigger and stronger than anything else in our lives. This is not that there aren’t people who are more important day-to-day, but I truly believe that if she *could* love someone the way she wanted to, I’d be it… and again, not romantically. I’m just talking about a relationship without constant hiccups and push/pull as we just stuff and deny, lying to those who try to get close.

She has told me with both faces that these things are true. Sometimes, I am the most important person in the world for her, and then the sun turns, and I am left to wonder what happened to the face I loved.

From what I hear, this is typical of this type relationship, and either I can hang with that or I can hang separately. I chose to hang separately, because I couldn’t take the swings. It was like playing Texas Holdem, knowing you’ve got the straight, and not realizing until after you’ve gone all in that she’s holding Kings full over Aces. You know the scene in “Rounders” where all the of the blood drains from Matt Damon’s face after he loses his roll?

Yeah, like that.

I find myself thinking a lot about that face… the duality of loving someone so much that it’s like having my heart beating outside my chest, and has been for so long that I don’t know where it started… and at the same time, realizing that it’s not impossible for someone with round cheeks and a great smile to be capable of abuse.

…but the Mississippi’s mighty,
and it starts in Minnesota,
at a place where you could walk across
with five steps down.

And I guess that’s how you started,
like a pinprick to my heart…
But at this point you rush right through me
and I start to drown….

Emily Saliers, Ghost

If we had a song, this would be it. She gave me a copy of the album and Ghost starts out, “there’s a letter on the desktop that I dug out of a drawer, the last truce we ever came to in our adolescent war.”

Letter? Adolescent war? Emily Saliers put an arrow through my chest.

I also think about the innocent people who aren’t me, and to that, I say this. It was going on under your noses the entire time we lived in the same city. You didn’t notice, because I didn’t call attention to it. I am every bit as responsible for all the lies as you are from that standpoint, because even though I had good reasons for it, I still covered it up right up until I couldn’t.

The gaslighting was everything- I covered for her, and she painted me as mentally unstable. But that’s not the person you know. That’s the person I do.

When you met her, she wasn’t 23. When I met her, she wasn’t a fully cooked adult yet. When you met her, you got to see her realized dreams, and not the poor college kid that made my heart beat faster. You weren’t there for her graduate school going away concert. You weren’t there to see the ways people abused her to even make her capable of connecting with me on that level.

So in short, I think about you and wonder if you’re talking about me in the same way. My peace comes from knowing that you are only reacting in fear, and haven’t made the connection that there are layers upon layers upon levels upon levels upon years and years of things you don’t know. Be mindful that not only is it terrifying going through all this, it’s even worse realizing that our friendship was abusive and I am taking a torchlight to the most fundamental impact on my development from the time I hit tweenage on.

You cannot imagine how much I value this writing space, because right now I’m talking to keep myself from shutting down entirely. I am grateful when you listen.

I’m not going to hell. I’m going through it.
———-

Friend: Do you really think that you are the only one? And I ask that both honestly AND rhetorically, and not to hurt you or diminish the feelings you had for her.

Me: The thought frightens my inner child so badly that I almost threw up on my keyboard.

Friend: She’s lived on the earth a long time. And not always within your sight line.

Me: I know. And I acknowledge. But I haven’t been able to look at that blast radius yet. My ego is too tied up right now. It turns my childhood from an accidental love story to To Catch a Predator

Friend: I think it was a combination, to be honest. And I mean that sincerely. Based on what you’ve said, and what I’ve read in your posts.

Me: I really, really hope so. To think there are others really taps into my worthlessness loop. I wasn’t special. I was just a hole.

Friend: Even if she “couldn’t help it”, it was still wrong.

Me: I am only saying that “I couldn’t help it” feels better than “I fucked half of teenage Amarillo before I got to you.”

Friend: Ya, I get it. For what it’s worth, she didn’t.

Me: ROFLMAO. It’s worth a lot. Thank you.

Christine is the senior rector of Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, but more importantly, she is MY PRIEST. I say that with every bit as much reverence as most people say that Tom Baker is their Doctor. Actually, becoming a priest and becoming The Doctor are a lot alike. Same software (theology), different case (personality). I have been meaning to e-mail Christine since, like, a hundred years.

Lisa is a recurring celebrant/preacher at Epiphany since she’s already gone through what my friend Sarah (of Going Jesus) once called “the swimsuit competition.”

Dear Christine & Lisa,

I thought I had my life all figured out until yesterday. I was sitting there, minding my own business (I WASSSSAH!), when I got an instant message from an old friend who asked me if I’d do her wedding in a far off, dreamy-eyed sort of way. What happened the first time someone asked that of you? Do you remember what it was like being a young priest, and really feeling the mantle? My reaction was confusing and humbling. My first thought was, “why would you want someone in network security to do your wedding?” It took me a second to remember WHO I AM.

I am not defined by my job. I am defined by the love of Christ that runs through my veins like water for grape juice. I am defined by the truth I find when separating the red letters from the black. I am defined by the feeling I get that even though we may not be related by blood, we are still siblings. It’s funny, the older I get, the more I read the Bible with younger eyes. Really digging deep theologically in my late 30s is so much different than my early 20s. It my early 20s, I was the academician. Now, I am the gnostic.

For me, God is every side of every story ever written. You cannot think God. Either you feel it or you don’t, and I am not interested in belittling anyone. My problem with organized religion is that when it comes to the people that just aren’t feeling it, they’re feeling oppression from other “Christians” that’s going to turn them away from Christianity before they really get a chance to experience it on their own. It’s especially prevalent in small-town Texas, where you are either Methodist, Baptist, or Other, but never EVER “none.”

Deciding whether I wanted to be a priest has been going on a long time, mostly because I fight between the idea of living a normal life and an extraordinary one. I know that sounds so arrogant, but to take on the mantle of priest at all is, in a sense, arrogance. You’re advertising to the world that you are a spiritual guide with your vestments and still fallibly human on the inside. One of my church members in Portland put a stole on me when I was preaching one Sunday and my stars aligned. There’s a picture from that day in which I am so grounded that I look back on it and God whispers, “get it handled. You are not supposed to be protecting these kinds of networks. You’re supposed to be creating mine.” God is such a bitch sometimes. I’m all like, “I think I know what I’m doing” and God is all like, “you clearly don’t, but thanks for ALL YOUR HELP.” God, in my mind, sounds a lot like Chandler Bing.

If there’s someone from the Bible that I really identify with right now, it’s Moses. Not larger-than-life Charlton Heston Moses, but the kid who, when asked to lead the slaves out of Egypt, asked God why God didn’t want his brother, instead. It is the kind of transformation I am seeking. I want the kind of healing that will just stop me from saying “no” to the universe.

Love,
Leslie

One of my Portland friends told me that she’s moving to the Midwest. It feels good that I can have “my city” back, because I doubt that I ever would have gone back to Portland if there was even a whisper of a possibility of running into her. It’s not that goodwill doesn’t exist from my direction, it’s that I would much rather love her from waaaaaaaaaaaay over here. I am much more happy with the thought of having good memories than creating bad ones.

I think about what she means to me now and the balance looks different. The more people hear my story, the more convinced I am that I am not crazy and something really did happen between us. Whether that meant she wanted to lord control over me or whether it was really love is moot. Either way, I have been and will be affected for the rest of my life. She can deny me the truth for the rest of her life, but I will not let that affect mine. This is because I can hold it in my mind that I could be absolutely wrong about everything, but she has never once offered any explanation for anything and tight-lipped silence says more to me than anything. It’s not that silence equals guilt. It’s that not telling me anything has been worse than telling me everything (I hope). I am prepared for the possibility that the reason I don’t know the real truth has two possibilities: 1) Neither does she 2) she thinks it would be too malicious for me to bear.

I waffle between those two ideas often, because the former is much less threatening. The more I read about the psychological tactics that were used to get me to stay in the relationship, though, the less I feel secure. I wander through years and years of memories every day trying to come to some approximation of peace, and sometimes I find it. But the tendency to ruminate is so entrenched that peace is temporary.

I am learning every day that this “breakup” is solely dependent on me releasing myself from ruminating about a problem that’s been turning in my head since September of 1990, but I am not going to be able to do it alone. On one hand, I view her as one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my life, and on the other, she is a dark force that has controlled my breathing, never letting it relax from fight or flight.

I’m sure by now she probably thinks it would have been easier to just pay more attention to me, but I don’t think that at all. If I hadn’t had to go through this pain at this time, it would have been put off and become even more explosive. It needed to happen, and even if I didn’t learn the Truth, I still had to learn my own. By now, we’d had entire psychological battles in front of two congregations in two states in two denominations in two different DECADES. How much further did I have to be entrenched to see what was going on?

But that was the point! Keep me entrenched and I won’t be able to see that I’m whole, happy, and healthy… because you need me to be lesser than. I feel so much more powerful now, as if I have come back into my body after a long dream. Parts of myself are coming together better than before they were torn, because scar tissue is so much stronger.

It is starting to bother me that where I look for sustenance rarely contains articles about children entrenched in relationships with narcissists, because of course it does. I don’t want to read about narcissists dating habits, because I never dated one. It was never my choice. I was just in the right (or the wrong, depending) place at the wrong time. I sense my shame and try to go numb because I know I have to read it anyway. It’s the only way my wounds will heal. We were not dating, but sexual information passed between us so that I was sure we weren’t dating logically and married emotionally. Because that part of my life has never made sense- my utter devotion despite being kicked in the gut repeatedly- I spent years and years searching for “the hook.” How did I get so involved on an emotional level while being convinced I wasn’t? Here is my unverified theory.

She needed me more than I needed her, and telling me that there was no hope while stroking my ego gave her just enough separation from me that I was never going to be The One, but I’d give her whatever she wanted. Even if she couldn’t be The One for me, I was still welcome to waste as much energy on her as possible. I was still welcome to give her anything and everything about myself, which she would learn to use later in cruel, seemingly thoughtless remarks (that seemed meticulously planned). I’d listen to her emotional horror stories and I would show up emotionally. That’s what I could do, and did, for two years of my life at a time when two years was two eons emotionally. I arrived at the church where she was a scholarship singer the summer after my sixth grade year, and she moved to Dallas the summer after my eighth. By then, our dysfunction was entrenched, and we would never break it until I could hold it in my head that our relationship wasn’t healthy. Then, it seemed impossible. I didn’t have the life experience to see the ways in which I was being coerced, partially because she was sneaky about the ways she tweaked me so that she always had plausible deniability, and partly because let’s face it. Damn. I know how to pick ’em. Imagine that at 24 and you tell me how many kinds of knocked on my ass I was. At 12 and 13, there weren’t enough love songs in the world to describe a single moment of how I felt. There was just too much explosive joy.

The story where she gave me the journal happened on Sept. 10th, 1991. We moved to Houston the first week of June in 1990. That means there had already been a year’s worth of contact with each other before the journal came into it. A year’s worth of hanging onto her every word, and analyzing it to make sure I was feeling what I thought I was feeling. A year to be completely sucked in. A year to completely hear everything I needed to know in order to become a stark-raving lunatic at a moment’s notice if anyone tried to hurt her. The dynamic was always push/pull. There were no problems at all until I tried to stop paying attention to her at all.

There was lots of bait to get me to stay addicted, while she was telling me that she had to hold me at arm’s length because I was so obsessed with her. I now call this my “the cake is a lie” moment. That’s how she does it. It clicked. It doesn’t matter how I feel, because by the time I’ve been discarded, there are new people she’s suckered into doing my old job. It kind of feels like getting fired for a job I was never qualified for in the first place. It’s like she all of the sudden discovered that I was just three little boys standing on each others shoulders inside of a large trench coat.

Matthew 18:15-20

Jesus said, “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Christine preached on the Old Testament reading this morning, so I thought I’d write a reflection on “the other one,” even though it was the very last thing I wanted to do today.

It just so happened that this Gospel scared the ever living shit out of me and I didn’t want to write about it. I just didn’t. I was kicking and screaming and being a total eight-year-old about it in my head. And that’s when I realized I had to write about it because it bothered me so damn much. Why does this scripture stop me in my tracks? Is scripture supposed to hurt? I’m going to have to find a way to reframe this one, because it makes my skin crawl. I sit there and get completely fucked up thinking about how my abuser and I lapsed into a world of our own, under the watchful eyes of our congregation. They could see that I was just becoming a whisper of an adult at 14, and they were suspicions of her attention/intention.

Sufficed to say, I wasn’t. There was maybe a month’s time in which someone could have unentangled us. It was that quick. My parents turned around and they didn’t live with me anymore, because only my body showed up to family events. The rest of me lived with her. Which, if you’ve ever seen us in the same room together, that description will click in your mind. There was a long period of time where I felt like I was waiting on her, and when I stopped waiting and tried to walk, she’d pretend that she hadn’t given me the silent treatment for six months and I could walk on water.

Not seeing this truth about her is what led to the theme of my life so far. It started with one or two church members that were worried about me (and rightfully so). By the time those two got to me, my heart was gone and the trap was set. Then there were four or six or eight. You weren’t getting anything out of me. I’d die first. The weird thing was thinking that it actually *might* be necessary. I’d die to keep a secret safe. Of course I would. I clearly remember nightmares in which a whole host of things stole my repose, including beheading my abuser’s attacker so I could, in turn, free myself. To just kill him was entirely too forgiving. I may have felt even more rage than my abuser herself, because hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Someone mentally entered my cave and threatened my pack. I was dark, and I wish I could say moreso because of the abuse, but all women are abused in some way or another. It just takes different forms. That is to say there’s nothing special about my story except that it’s mine. I’m glad that I’m understanding it more as I find out on my own how her actions affected mine.

My powers in understanding the human dance because of my pastor father created a loyal friend whose intentions toward protection were sullied by inaction. I did everything I could to help her, and I had already been discarded. She was everything to me, and I still have no earthly idea if I mean anything to her at all… because I know I will always have a piece of her heart when she sits back and thinks for a second, but it’s never going to be like it used to, when those thoughts drove her to write to me and let me, piece by piece, know her like no one else… not better or worse, just different. The difference is that I put forth effort, and the more I needed the dopamine from her abuse and didn’t get it, the sicker emotionally I got and the more effort I put forth. I felt as if I could metaphorically hang myself, because I’d certainly been given enough emotional rope.

Growing up this past year has included forgiving my congregation for the fear they instilled in me of them because I did not want to believe that someone I loved so much could stand at a distance with her hand on my head while I windmilled toward her. The people that saw it tried to get me out and I assured them that she was helping me. She was, genuinely, but I more than paid for it.

God, I am so glad that I got to own this part of the Lectionary. I think I would have had a really hard time in church if Christine had done it, and the Old Testament suits her preaching style well. It’s like playing against type. David preaching a sermon about Goliath. However, I will expand it to say that she is a wonderful, wonderful preacher. I was simply thankful that I did not become a basketcase in public, because I’m so emotionally vulnerable at church, anyway, that sometimes tears start before I have time to prepare and then I’m being handed Kleenex by everyone and receiving pats on my back while I pray and lose my snot with grief.

Electronic is playing in the background as I write this. It is a passion of mine, because drum and bass helps me think- really. I like everything I do set to a soundtrack of consistently mind-blowing mathematics. In short, it’s like looking at my music while I’m writing and scoffing, “keep up.”

Wow, that was arrogant. I like it.

Every day I have these confident-to-the-point-of-arrogance moments that make me see the person I’m becoming. I hope that means strong enough to be a leader and vulnerable enough to stay empathetic. That is just one of the amazing positives my abuser instilled in me. Even when you’re the leader, you get down in the dirt. Literally. She helped the groundskeepers install in the mulch in front of her office. Do you install mulch? I don’t know. I’m not really Oregonian.

I still get a little dreamy-eyed at that memory because I knew it was a life lesson as it was happening, like the wisdom that comes from throwing  a ball around with your dad, because I was there too- shoveling with everyone else. If you know anything about her, I want you to take away that she is literally the most powerful person I know, and she does crap like that all the time.*

Actually, she’s not the *most* powerful person I know, and when I say that, I mean it professionally. However, to tell you the most powerful person I know is just bragging. I can’t tell you the most powerful, but I can tell you the most famous. Donald Faison (Turk from “Scrubs” and “Murray” in Clueless) is married to one of my cousins. How close we are, I’m not sure. I don’t care about the math. I just work here.

Also, I have a cousin who appeared on American Idol. He used to be a funeral director and Simon Whatshisface (not Cowell, the producer) asked him to sing “You Raise Me Up.” Oh that’s so funny! I’ll bet he’s never heard a joke like that before! However, it was his brother that stole the show with the funny. In the package, he said, “Jason’s a horrible funeral director. Why do people go to him?” Then, later, “I hope this doesn’t go to his head, ’cause he’s got a really tiny head.”

Jonathan’s delivery was so spot-on that I would have given him a sitcom immediately. Of course, that’s not the only time he’s brought the funny. One year he came to Christmas wearing a yarmulke and called himself “Rabbi Claus.” Jonathan is a vanilla white Southern Baptist male. To think of him as a Jew *is* the joke. He was also not unaware of the physical comedy of a large man in a small hat.

All right. I think that’s enough for today. I have to go to work. What are you up to?

 

 

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*That’s the thing about lesbians. We don’t hire contractors so much as we learn to be them.

 

What were we talking about? The music just changed and I lost my tricycle of thought.

You know why there’s so many spelling mistakes in my blog despite the fact that I am a grammar Nazi? I know I’m being creative when I pour out my soul, and I don’t want my self-doubt to get in the way. I hit “Post” when I’m finished writing. I will go back and edit later. To edit before hitting post is to give myself a chance to think about what I’m about to put out into the world, which to some would be necessary. For me, it creates vomit-inducing visions of imagined repercussions to the point of absolute paralysis. It’s a perpetuation of the cycle I’ve always had, which is that my words aren’t worth anything. The more I think about the effect my writing has on you, the less I can think about how my writing affects me- and effects me, for that matter. My writing launches me into being, one day at a time.

True courage, where I can take the quotes off, comes after publication. I have never said anything in this blog that is untrue to me; where I have made errors are from lack of information, not malice. I know that I can stand by anything that I have written on any day, because it is so utterly me. Writing for “Stories” has been prayer. If you read it, you can see all my pain, all my raw places, and the way they’re being nourished… or not. You see all the places that I do in black and white that need work. I can rest at peace knowing that there’s nothing external that could rock me any more than I’m capable of doing myself. As I was telling my friend Aaron this morning, “if there’s anything I’ve learned this year, it’s that it’s all in my head.” Funny, because that phrase used to drive me crazy when they used it. Now I’ve re-framed those words to mean that I now have the internal power to drive those dark thoughts away, when I was previously defenseless.

The effect of growing up in church life is that you become an empath at an early age, whether you were biologically wired for it or not. The way that played out for me is that when my abuser told me things about her life that made me want to protect her, it affected me more deeply than I think was ever intended, and yet it shattered something in me.

There were people out there like that, and one of them had hurt the one I was supposed to protect. My process now is to back away from living in fight or flight mode. My knee-jerk reaction to everything was just an exposed nerve, and the upward climb is re-adding myelin.

My dad and I were at breakfast, and he said, “where are you going with this?”

Without hesitating, I said that I hoped my story was worth something in terms of helping other people learn to identify insidious types of abuse because so many other people are coerced into believing it wasn’t or isn’t real, as well. I also said that it was important to me to have written record of how far I’ve come…. or not, as the case may be.

My blog lets me just INFJackass all over the place. I am so judgmental. There are some days when I feel my life could be better represented with a table-flipping Jesus bobblehead. I look back at my old entries just to make sure those moods pass, frankly. It’s not pretty. I’m angry and self-righteous and think I have a right to be… right up until I really start looking at it and say, “that’s enough.” Then, I go back to beating myself up for having said anything at all, and it starts the vicious cycle over again…. stuff, deny, emotionally vomit later.

I click “Post” before I have the chance to think my words are worthless in the hopes of avoiding the worthlessness loop altogether.

The other day, Dana and I were with our friend Stacy at lunch. Stacy asked me if I wanted a recommendation for a therapist (she’s a pastor, has the hookups). Dana, without missing a beat, says, “is that going to be ok with you? She’s not Jewish. Stacy stood there and looked confused while Dana explained that when I pick out new therapists, I go through my insurance booklet and circle all the names that sound like New York Jews. My last therapist was a guy out in the burbs of Portland- it took me 20 minutes to get to his office- and yet nothing could dissuade me. He was the guy. I would drive 20 minutes for Howard Rosenbaum, who will always have my respect because he called my sweet Dana a “Portland Pioneering SuperJew.”

Dana’s Jewish ethnically. It’s a long story. She’ll tell you.

“Oh, but she IS Jewish!” Stacy said. HA! Bet you didn’t think of that one, DANA! My Methodist pastor friend ALSO knows Jewish therapists….

…and that is how I came to be, sitting here with my laptop and coffee, waiting for Goodman. She’s supposed to call at 9:00 to schedule my new patient appointment. It’s only 6:46.

It was on June 9th of 2013 that I all of the sudden and without warning moved to Australia… well, not exactly. Metaphorically, with dingos and kangaroos running through my mind. It was mentally walking through the center of the earth to come out on the other side and finding out the toilets really do flush backwards (to us). It was a surreal moment, this upending of my planet earth, and still hasn’t stopped feeling exhilarating and creepy.

June 9th, 2013 is contained in three words for me.

June 9th, 2013 is the day the gaslighting stopped working.

It stopped working for me that the story written for me was that I’d had a cute crush on her growing up, and that I never really grew out of it. Sure, it was weird, but what are ya gonna do?

It stopped working for me that my role in the relationship was failure, because obviously I was failing. If I wasn’t falling short as a human being, then she wouldn’t have to push me away.

If I had a problem with her behavior, she had no issue with inviting me over to talk- as long as it could be somehow re-spun by the end of the conversation that she is completely blameless… and I am ridiculous for even bringing it up.

It didn’t work for me, because I kept wondering why I was willing to try so hard when my batting average was always zero. I kept at it for two reasons. The first is that someday I was bound to get *something* right, and the second is that I really believed everything was all my fault. Really.

It was June 9th, 2013 that I was yanked my my bellybutton and dragged through the mantle, quickly and with force. It wasn’t all my fault. She said so with three little words. They started the downward decline into mental instability, because they created the moment that the color drained out of my face and I could no longer ignore everything that happened. I was not going to let her get away with blaming me for everything that’s been wrong with our relationship for the last 24 years because they are her words, not mine. She owned the game. She owned it.

Three words.

I. Befriended. You.