Postcards from Purgatory: Alcoholism

I've been dwelling.

Not in the 'living in an abode' kind of dwelling. I mean ruminating.

I've gone through so much in the last year regarding cleaning up my brain. I've FACED and dealt with the facts of my abusive childhood and I feel as though I've - if not filed and organized, I've straightened and swept that area of my head. It's better in there than it's ever been.

My broken brain is acknowledged and petted every fucking day. I just say to myself 'THEY broke your brain, bunny - let's just move along here, not your fault' - this when my thoughts get stuck in either some maudlin pity party or else go all Dexter on me. [do any of you do this, btw? do you look at say, a homeless guy sleeping along a river bed and wonder what he would do if you ran up and kicked him in the face *hard*? Now I've made myself sound like a sociopath and I'm telling you I'd never follow through with anything like that - I give food and shoes and clean underpants to the homeless! but why in the hell does my brain GO to that place? Even unto myself, like when driving across a bridge and I worry I might suddenly decide to DRIVE OFF THE SIDE. I am not a thrill seeker and no longer feel the need to go to sleep and not wake up, so WTF? It's like my brain has this side that is all dark and twisted and icky]

I actually sometimes have worser thoughts pop into my head than the above examples. I think it is because I was exposed to some horrific stuff, possibly sexual abuse stuff, as a little child and so my brain is broken in that regard. But as I said, I pat myself on the brain-pan and move myself along to greener pastures. It's all I can do, I have to just re-direct and move along.

[I hate feeling like I'm crazier than anyone else but sometimes the proof is in the pudding.]

Anywhozle. As I was saying, I've dealt with so much stuff and now the dust is sort of settling and it leaves me thinking of what an unmitigated ASS I have been in my life. I've touched on this before, but my GOD I made some completely bone-headed self-serving selfish decisions. I owe apologies to SO MANY people and one of the most important people I owe an apology to is DEAD for chrissakes (Byron) and so while I assume he knows my heart and soul, I do wish I hadn't done what I did.

All of this stuff - I was constantly making decisions NO. NO I didn't make decisions. I let the wind and my varying emotional winds and hormones and fears rule me and I just kept leaping from lily pad to lily pad without ever even knowing I could have taken the time to look for the edge of the pond. I was panicked and running LONG past the time there were any monsters (my dad) chasing me. I paid all my bills, but you know, sometimes on the last day at the last minute with change from my ashtray. There was never any forethought. No plan of action or 'what next' critical thinking. No idea that tomorrow I might really regret this decision or that leap.

In no particular order, here are a few of my asinine idiotic life decisions. I hate myself sometimes.

1. I was working with a friend (turned out to be a narc *surprise!*) we worked for two attorneys. There was an auxiliary female attorney attached to the same office and she was married to a guy named Greg. I started having an affair with this Greg guy. He was a cop! yeah. Jeopardized my job which was always precarious at best. She found out and hilarity ensued. It was fucked. I was scared. This same guy tried to break my arm and little 3-year old Mike got into the fray.

2. Met a guy via telephone while I was working for an escrow company. We enjoyed a long and satisfying long-distance flirt. He drove up to meet me finally and he turned out to be amazingly great, 5 years older than me and had his shit together. He ran his own business and was just this amazing older MAN. He thought I was funny(!) and sexy(!!) and smart(!!!) and really, he thought I was the greatest thing since pockets. He also turned out to be married. I kept up with that affair in one way or another (meaning it wasn't always sexy-time but it could have been) until I moved to Maryland 2 years ago. YEAH.

3. Was sort of but not really dating Byron. We had been friends since 5th grade and all through high school we flirted (we were in band together! geeks!) and after high school we started hanging out and he had this HUGE group of guy friends and I was this levi wearing girl who hung out and they treated me like a sister except Byron and I had this *thing* and it was all VERY cute, and very sweet. This lasted for years. But we were always dating other people and keep our liaisons quiet. Then with one thing and another (alcohol, close proximity, horribly non-existent boundaries) I started flirting with HIS YOUNGER BROTHER and thus began the shameful-est part of my life. SEX WITH BROTHERS. ("not at the same time in the same bed! but during the same time period!" she hurries to clarify, making her less whore-like, right?) The one (John) knowing and the other, who I really really liked but couldn't really have (Byron) not knowing and then Byron died and I never could understand why all of our friends immediately hated me and it has come to my (much clearer) way of thinking that John told all his (our) friends what a whore I was and so of COURSE they all wouldn't talk to me and oh, this is one thing if I could go back but would have to live through my 20's again, I am thinking I would go back and change this shameful stupid thing. Also I have learned to HATE John, he didn't have to be a dick. His brother dying fucked him up but why take it out on me? He had told me that he loved me, so hell hath no fury like that I guess.

4. I manipulated the fucking crap out of people in order to get what I needed. Which sounds so New York but I am talking about couches (used) or rides somewhere or tickets to a concert. I traded sex for car repairs (not like, on a street corner but by magically dating boys who worked on cars AND who had things like dirt bikes). I guess I thought I was clever and uh, yeah, I guess that is so. Women have traded their bodies down through the ages but until recently I never thought of it from that angle. I just thought I was magically dating car guys.

This is another part of growing up around narcs that we don't talk about much. they fucked us up as kids and also we have no boundaries, no decision making skills. I have no passions (except I guess I used to have a passion for married men. That's not what I'm talking about here tho...) I have no talents besides a small skill at putting my stories out on the webz.

Picture if you will, a really hopeless Tarzan. Let's say, Mr. Limpet meets Tarzan. He flings himself out on a vine, LEAPS to the next one and clutches it with eyes closed, heart PoUnDiNg, and sweaty grip until he's sure he isn't going to fall. Heart still pounding he LEAPS to the next vine. And lather, rinse, repeat. THIS WAS ME. I could have let go of the fucking vine and slid down. There was nothing down there.

I could have stopped and built myself a tree house. I could have just STOPPED MOVING. Fucking crap.

Round about the time I met Married Man Via Telephone I was drinking like a fish. I had just lost all my friends (JOHN) and I was alone and sad and exhausted and tired of dancing. I met Mike's dad and got pregnant, and while that wasn't the stupidest thing I've ever done as I like Mike's dad and have you met my son? He's pretty great, it was another in a long line of leaping grasping clutching vine-jumping.

When I turned 39? Mike and I had moved into our last apartment, there in Garden Grove ca. I stopped dating. I had realized that the only common denominator in all of my bad decisions was, uh, ME. So I quit. I spent almost 2 years single and figuring stuff out. It was at that time I decided to stop belittling my child abuse and stopped pretending it hadn't happened. It would take me 10 years to really get it all cleared.

Finding you all helped so much. I've said it before, but I thought it was just me. I guess we have all said that, that we thought it was just OUR childhood. To find out about all of us ULBs...

I don't really have a point. I am avoiding looking at or talking about my abusive childhood because I have dug down to the point that I realize some really REALLY shitty things happened to me in Florida. And some of it makes me sound like a conspiracy theory LOON. And I just don't want to walk through that right now.

Remember that movie 'Erin Brockovich' and there was this one scene where Erin was trying to get a water sample from a drainage ditch but she absolutely didn't want the water on her - she pulled a dead frog out by the toe and UGH that's how I feel. If I could research this crap without getting any on me...

But reading about child abuse and thinking about child abuse and writing about child abuse - sometimes I feel like I walked through a giant spider web that was covered in dog crap. It just gets ALL OVER me, you know? And I need, recently, to take a (mental, metaphoric) shower and then not get any more on me.

Besides. I spent all this time (rightfully) blaming all sets of parents in my life for the things that fucked me up. But recently it has been important for me to acknowledge the ways I screwed up my own self and could have prevented it.

I don't know if it's worth it to contact anybody to apologize in person. None of the above examples! Those people can rot in hell - but there are girlfriends from long ago that I feel I owe an apology to, or a thank you to. But it is SO long ago. And I don't want to renew a friendship with those people - they were broken too, you know? I want to acknowledge my own part in my past, and maybe that is enough.

No sense stirring anybody else's life-mud to the top.

All y'all have so much going on - still fighting the narc fight. Still battling it out betwixt good & evil. Still walking and talking the walk and talk.

All I got is an internal battle so old it needs Ben-gay to get its dander up. I'm sick of IT and I'm sick of me and I'm sick of talk talk talking because here I am AGAIN fucking again, like a horse race I'm so far behind I think I'm ahead.

I get all centered and peaceful and something comes along and tosses me like a damned dwarf and I let it shape my reality.

I suffered under a narcissist but I harbor no illusions that he/they were of the malignant variety. Where I was ignored and sidelined and yes abused (which was bad, don't get me wrong), most of you all were in the Auschwitz to my Orphan Asylum. So many have dealt with so much worse and come out light years ahead of where I am emotionally. Mentally. Psycho-ly.

I srsly thought of taking my blarg down because SERIOUSLY. I mean, read y'own archives, bitch! We been here so many times they save us a seat.

I read you all and read your struggles and your progress and your fucking BATTLES with like BRAIN TUMORS and horrifying mothers and fathers and BROTHERS and MILs and ET SETT ER UH.

I have geraniums on my patio. I believe in ghosts and positive energy wahhh! and I'm all personal power, wheee! and YET I'm fucking FIFTY TWO YEARS OLD and yes. TW, you were so right, progress not perfection, right? But I've been buying and selling this same shirt for so fucking long and look! Nobody else is in line to buy it OR sell it! LA LA LA it's just ME!

I married a broken guy, and lo and behold we have problems, but he tells me he loves me more than pants and I love him right back and I'm really fairly happy and HONESTLY NOW - wouldn't I have problems anywhere I was? Cos, let's say it together - no matter where you are, there you are.

OH OBV., I am not taking this blog down. I have to stop running away from myself. How's this --> I HATE that I was honest and told all my crap in typical vomit-the-story-on-everyone fashion. Because DUH I can't revise my own history now like I've been taught to do from the git go. And no, I don't need y'all to tell me it's FINE because yes I know it is, it's FINE and I'm me and I actually DID get back up faster this time, I'm at peace faster this time, so yes progress but shitballs. I bore myself.

When I hear the phrase "let's go have a drink", this is what I see in my head: