One of the reasons that I need help so badly is that a whole bunch of people in my life are telling me that they feel manipulated by me. Even though my books on verbal and emotional abuse warned me extensively that this would happen, I am wrecked by it because I am already begging to be heard as I tell people that I need them to safety net me until I’m stable again and they are reacting as if I am creating an elaborate ploy. Maybe this is because they thought that exorcising all my demons was the end of my abuse.
Let’s clear that up right now. There is no end to abuse. None. It is ever present. It runs through my mind every second of every day. When I was on my way to lunch with my dad and stepmom, I said “I need to know two things. The first is whether either of you have ever been sexually abused or whether there’s been any physical violence in either of your families or anything that would create a tape similar to mine.”
He said no. This was unfortunate- not that I wish abuse upon anyone, just that they cannot even begin to have a frame of reference for the kind of beat-down I am. My worthlessness loop says “shoot yourself in the head” most days, because there are few where I really believe that people want me here and I am not a burden to them.
In fact, one of the most brilliant minds in the country is tired of my shit, and it is only that I think so that I will take her crap at all. Of course, it is Argo. My Argo. My favorite line about Argo, I wrote a year or so ago and I still love it…. that “I sleep deeply in the belly of the ship, where I know my passage is safe.” One of these days, I hope I am strong enough to be Jason, and not a deckhand in training. This is because often, the setting is the main character in the book. For instance, what would The Bible be without the Negev, Lake Kinneret , Mt. Tabor, etc? What would the Potter Chronicles be without Hogwarts itself? Actually, as an aside, Rowling is brilliant because she literally wove the story into the walls with the paintings and ghosts and moving pictures and shit.
Back to you, Bob! Let’s go to the phones.
The research says I’m right on target. I don’t act like I did while I was being abused, so my new personality isn’t “real.” One of my friends is treating me like my entire personality is a schism, that all of the light I emit is a show and all the darkness is who I “really am.” It is devastating to hear so repeatedly that I am a monster. It shows on people’s faces. They don’t have to say it. My stepmother’s words to me when I came to her for help and told her how broken I was, she told me that she was tired of being manipulated by me and turned me away. I will apologize right now to my dad that I am publishing this, but it is an abuse I will not tolerate ever again. You do not get to punch me while I’m on my knees. Not three times. She’s already done it twice. The first was after reading my Facebook post, she called Dana and asked her what was going on, and didn’t bother to call me at all. When we met for lunch, I thought it was going to be a shoot-the-shit kind of afternoon and instead, Angela showed up itching for a fight and beat me into the ground emotionally at a time in my life when I couldn’t defend myself, anyway.
This loss is devastating, because this relationship is broken. Maybe it will come back together, but not any time soon. It was not cemented in my mind that Houston was not healthy for me until that lunch. It was that lunch that I realized that our physical relationship had been broken for so long that when I came back into their lives on a day-to-day basis, we didn’t really function that well. There was a lot of cake and icing, though.
I am not unsympathetic to other people’s problems. However, I don’t feel forced to care about them anymore. This is because I have been caring too much about other people and neglecting myself since I was 12. There have been times in my life where I was living well and still looked damn near homeless because I’d already given so much of my emotional strength away, I couldn’t get myself to function.
Bending the spoon came when I realized that if I didn’t start having self preservation, one of two things was going to happen. The first is that I was going to die. Literally. I cannot stress this enough. The first time I told people I was going to kill myself, I was 13. It hasn’t stopped. I never get close enough to really make plans and go through with it, but I did the first time. I wrote Diane a letter detailing what I had done to myself. I’d drunk kitchen chemicals from under the sink. She said that I was lying to her. I agreed. It wasn’t worth it to tell her that I actually know what Drain-o tastes like…. or maybe it was Pine Sol. It’s been too many years now, I don’t remember the brand. What I do remember is that it had a Mr. Yuk sticker on it, and that’s how I knew it would get the job done.
Every gay kid has this story. EVERY GODDAMN ONE. Just for different reasons. Sometimes, it’s their parents that unwittingly encourage suicide because they (intentionally or not) treat their children as second-class citizens. It doesn’t have to be blatant. I’m from the South, bitch. I can tell you to go fuck yourself in several extremely polite ways. Argo would tell me to start using them (shut it, we’ll talk about it later).
Again, dad. I’m sorry. I’m not doing this because she deserves it. I’m doing this because I do. I will not let her get away with injuring me to this level and not allow myself to put it in the pensieve so that 20 years from now, I will still know what REALLY happened that day. She may not have meant to come across this way, but her words disowned me and my nothing box ached with grief until I was offered the chance to just leave. I do not know if said chance will materialize, but I know that I am out of here.
I didn’t burn any bridges. They were on fire long before this.
Stories That Are All True 