Pretty Good Day

Pretty Good Day
by Jennifer Roth

I woke up this morning almost on time.

I only spent ten minutes in the shower.

I only tried on 3 different dresses and I wore the one with a skirt that rests just above my knees. I wore the black on that you liked and I only spent a few minutes thinking am I showing too much leg?

I only had to take two pills. I only drank one beer to help me sleep.

I didn't even take the tranquilizers.

I didn't have to load the gun.

I didn't have to barricade my bedroom door last night.

Because you don't live here anymore. I have made this mine. Sometimes you're still a visitor but at bedtime, I ask you to leave.

You've begun to measure your life in miles and conquests and completed desires.

I found that wishes and inches are much more precious than they ever were before.

So, I wanted you to know I only thought of you once or twice today.

And that's a pretty good day.

Day 29

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE SHORT CHAPTERS
by Portia Nelson

I
I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk I fall in. I am lost ... I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes me forever to find a way out.

II
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I am in the same place but, it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

III
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in ... it's a habit. my eyes are open I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

IV
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

V
I walk down another street.

__________________________________________________________________

I found this poem online about 10 years ago when I first attempted therapy. At that time, I thought the poem described my life exactly... making the same mistakes over and over. But you know what, I think I am at Chapter 3 now. I can see why things happen, I understand the why and the what but I am still working on the how...the how to make the change and move on to Chapter 5.

I recently found some old books and notes from the past. It included my books "The Courage to Heal" by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, along with an autobiography that I wrote and several other poems that I had found online. In that autobiography, I wrote that I wanted to get better (mentally) because I wanted to volunteer to help with abused family or be a child's advocate for court or maybe a child's psychologist. My words were "I want to be able to help a child feel that they are not alone in this world and that someone does care and knows exactly how they feel". After all these years, I still want to help children but I know that I need to help myself first, then my own family. Maybe after all that, I will be able to help others. I would love to be a foster mother someday - especially since my own experience in foster care was almost as traumatic as the everyday stuff that I was getting away from. Funny how it works out that way. I feel that if I was ever a foster mom, I would try to help the kids placed with me, try to help them feel accepted and loved. A song from Anything Box says, "All we need is love...".

Day 23

It has been a week of... knowledge, sobriety and emotions. First, I have shared this blog with my sister. After talking with her, sharing memories and discussing this blog, she suggested that maybe I should include actual names so that there is accountability. That made sense to me as I am not keeping secrets anymore. So I am going to go back and edit past blogs and insert actual names.

This conversation must have triggered something in me to know where this man - wait! his name is Albert - was because I started searching online (with all my knowledge from working at companies with less than ethical standards). It seems that Albert still lives in Carlsbad New Mexico, in the house once owned by his grandmother. He has been visited by the police twice this year so far, as noted by the police blogger in the local newspaper. It sounds like he hasn’t changed at all. This knowledge has created some issues for me because for the past several days I have had reoccurring “conversations” in my mind about confronting Albert, learning the truth and moving on with my life. But not in one “conversation” does he apologize. It is actually the opposite with him verbally attacking me, turning the facts around and being sick with descriptions. How can I have thoughts like this and why did I even look for his name? Sometimes, knowledge hurts.

I decided to request the copies of the police report from 15 years ago. I want to read the facts for myself. I know that as time goes by we tend to change the story to fit out needs. For example, I used to be embarrassed that I grew up poor so I never mentioned the multiple times we had no gas, electricity or food. I used to be ashamed that my mother was beaten severely over and over and that I was sexually abused so I never talked about my childhood. So I wonder if my version of the ending of the abuse is somehow different than I remember it. Did I really run away in order to not have sex “like a girlfriend” with Albert as he wanted? Did I really tell the authorities who promptly pulled my sisters and me out of our home and put us in a foster home with people who were unsympathetic to our plight? Did I really get sent away to a mental health facility because I was acting like a teenager or was it more than that? Was there really not enough evidence to prosecute as I remember or did my mother tell them not to press charges? Really! What is the real story? What happened 15 years ago because my memory as I remember it is fuzzy now?

After I wrote last, I had an alcohol breakdown. So, with the help of my therapist and my husband, Jack, all the alcohol is out of the house…with the exception of the bottle of chardonnay in the fridge that is for cooking – looks good enough to drink most of the time – or the red wine in the cupboard that is also for cooking – hmmm…maybe that needs to go also. Anyway it has been over a week since I drank and I am craving a drink. I can’t even drink diet coke because I am used to having vanilla vodka in it. I have been drinking green tea like crazy... not the same really. It is really tough to not drink. Sometimes a drink just helped ease life. My purpose of drinking was never really to be drunk, unless it had been that bad of a day (like the day after I read a letter from my mother). Drinking served two purposes for me. One, it helped ease the anxiety and frustrations in my day to day activities and helped me sleep occasionally. Two, it helped loosen me up and allowed for me to communicate with others and even sparked some creativity. Well, the creativity is gone and I want nothing to do with anyone else really except my husband, kids, therapist and my sister, Amber. A lot of my anxiety has left while I have been off work for the last 3 weeks but many other things are surfacing. I read 15 books in the last 12 days and can’t sleep much at all.

Emotions have been trying to get through. I just don’t know what they are called. I know things are bad when I am eager for my therapy appointments and I try not to cry on my way there. It’s like I know that it is safe to release everything that I have to keep locked up at home. Stupid reasoning, I know. Not sure why, I just think that as a mom I am not supposed to cry or be upset in front of the kids. This week I have researched emotions or feelings more. I am still trying to figure it all out. Like did you know that the feeling of disappointed is a combination of sadness and surprise? I wasn’t even aware that surprise was a feeling. So after some research and referred websites, I was reading one website that had a list of feelings when needs are met and a list of feeling when needs are not met. Much more interesting to me was the list of needs that we need. I saw this list and the first thing I thought was, WOW, I have none of this. After discussing this in therapy, I do have many of these needs met NOW, but not as a child. This led to a conversation about ego state therapy. More research…

Ego state therapy is interesting. Of all the research that I did, the following is what interested me most.

“Parent ego state contents are taken in, i.e., introjected, from parenting figures in early childhood – and, to a lesser degree, throughout life – and, if not reexamined in the process of later development, remain unassimilated or not integrated into the neo-functioning ego of an adult. Since the child’s perceptions of the caretaker’s reactions, emotions, and thought processes will differ at various stages of development, so also will the actual content and intrapsychic function of the Parent ego state vary in relation to the developmental age when the introjection occurred.

Introjection is an unconscious defense mechanism (involving disavowal, denial, and repression) frequently used when there is a lack of full psychological contact between the child and the caretakers responsible for his or her psychological needs. The significant other is made part of the self (ego), and the conflict resulting from the lack of need fulfillment is internalized so the conflict can seemingly be managed more easily (Perls, 1978).

In addition to the various physical needs of childhood (Maslow, 1970), a child’s relational-needs require the attuned involvement of parents or significant others (Erskine, 1998; Erskine, Moursund & Trautmann, 1999). These relational needs include:
1) security within a relationship – a physical closeness and the freedom from humiliation and physical violence;
2) validation of the child’s feelings, thoughts, fantasies and various needs;
3) being in the presence of someone on whom the child can rely for protection, support and guidance;
4) having a shared experience such as playing and learning together;
5) self definition within the relationship;
6) making an impact – influencing the other, at least some of the time to respond in accordance with the child’s wishes;
7) or desires and respond accordingly; and
8) the expression of gratitude and love to the caretaker – the manifestation of bonding and loyalty.

When these relational-needs are not acknowledged, validated and normalized by significant others there is a rupture in interpersonal contact – the bond between child and caretaker is disrupted and a conflict ensues between the caretaker’s mis-attunement, invalidation, emotional neglect, or physical abuse and the child’s desperate attempts to have his or her relational-needs satisfied.

As a biological imperative children require both a physical and psychological attachment to maintain psychological health (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980). When needs are not met the resulting anxiety stimulates an unconscious defensive identification with the other. The external conflict is solved by internalizing the other and disavowing one’s own needs, thereby the child can stay attached, bonded and loyal. This is often accompanied by a sense of resignation and the formation of a compensating script belief such as “If I can’t get my needs met then I don’t need” the external conflict of relational-needs not met becomes internal where it is handled within the individual rather than continue the external relational conflict. Metaphorically, the conflict of needs-not-met is as though there was a psychological vacuum in the relationship. That psychological vacuum – the absence of interpersonal contact – is filled by unconsciously identifying with the significant other.

Brown says, “Introjection allows a person to avoid her painful feelings associated with the loss of a person, place, or event by creating within herself an image of the lost object. Her unconscious fantasies maintain her association with the lost object and prevent her from working through the painful emotions connected to the loss” (1977, p.5).

Introjected elements may remain as a kind of foreign body within the personality, often unaffected by later learning or development but continuing to influence behavior and perceptions. They constitute an alien chunk of personality, embedded within the ego and experienced phenomenologically as if they were one’s own, but, in reality, they form a borrowed personality (Erskine, 1988, 1997).” (www.integrativetherapy.com)

After all that research, I was concerned that maybe my therapist had me looking at all this because I was “crazy”. He confirmed I am not. Thanks. I just feel that way. From the research on ego state therapy, it is made to sound so easy and normal to communicate with the different states, find out who is dominant and create harmony among them all. I just wish that is how things really were. Wouldn’t it be great to talk to me as the child I was? Tell me that I love me and that things aren’t that bad once we are all grown up? That not every man is bad, that not every mom chooses dependency over her children, that not every touch and emotion will hurt? I am still looking for the “cure” to the abuse. It is not there, not as far as I can tell.

Day 13

It has been a while since I have posted. Part of it is that I am at a stop sign or a point and not sure which way to go. I haven't drunk alcohol in over a week for the need to not hurt. I haven't smoked now in several weeks. I haven't even taken my "pick me up" pill in a couple of weeks. At first, I thought something must be wrong because I am not crying so much and I am not feeling hurt and abused and misunderstood. I felt that maybe with everything going on around me that my "inside me" was saying lock it back up and get on with life - stop the f****ing crying and move on - you are not that hurt. Then the "now me" thought that maybe I really needed the alcohol and pills to help all this hurt come out. So what is it...

I still feel that I am at that roadblock for several reasons. One is my feelings or lack of. How can I process this crap as all the books suggest if I have no idea what the feelings describe are? How can I say I am sad or hurt or any of those other words to describe how I should feel when all I feel is ANGER and FEAR? One would think after 15 years that it goes away at some point. I am here to say it doesn't. If anything some days I have more anger than I did when I was 15 and taken away from my sisters and sent away. So who am I angry at? Albert? Why did he choose me to do this to? Mom? Why did she choose to put herself before her children, choosing a man over us? Myself? Why didn't I do something sooner? Why didn't I just kill him?

Getting in touch with my feelings has been extremely difficult for me. One, I just have no idea how to figure them out. What one person says is a feeling isn’t the same for another? Is there a book with facial expressions and a description of what I should feel like if I was happy, hurt, or sad? I struggle with this and always have. Another reason the feelings issue is hard and it is also my other roadblock is that with each passing day, I wonder "did this really happen?" I ask this because I remember less and less. An incident happened over the weekend with my husband and it caused me to react in a way that I normally wouldn't. My reaction scared me and of course, my husband. I didn’t have any answers to what had happened and just told him that it wasn't his fault. While discussing this in therapy, I found that the entire time my heart was beating fast and hard and I couldn’t get it to stop. Part of what upset me about this whole thing is that I couldn’t remember WHY this incident triggered something in me. Not remembering is worse than the images I used to have because now I have nothing to help me associate this incident with (or other incidents). I left my therapy appointment and called my sister...my sole safety net while I was a child. I asked her completely out of the blue if she remembered me telling her of any of the things that was done to me. Of course, she told me what she knew but I don't remember most of it. Some days I feel as if I just woke up in this life, stuck with pain but not knowing where it came from. I used to remember...I used to remember so much that I saw it happening constantly...in dreams, in the faces of other men, in life. Funny to think about it now but I feel as if I have had blinders on for so long. Everything is fuzzy.

I really have to thank my sister for saving me...twice! Even though the first time didn’t work out the way we thought and even though I never told her again for almost 6 years, she was still the one person I could trust. As a child, my sister always knew how to choose the right and I always choose wrong but she loved me anyways. I think the best thing my mother did was have my sister.

So it has been over a week since I cried a good cry. Well, here it comes. I just cannot stop the flow. How do I feel?

Angry... angry at the man who did this, angry at my mother, angry at my sisters (sometimes and it makes me feel terrible because they were innocent), angry at the world for not knowing how to protect me, angry at everyone who has ever said they loved me and then hurt me, angry at GOD (if I should even believe in this), really angry at ignorant people who say just get over it, angry at myself for being angry all the time.

Hurt (disappointed)... hurt that those who loved me didn’t stand up for me, hurt that someone would do this to a child, hurt that I had no protection, disappointed in our judicial system where abuses get off because there isn’t enough evidence, disappointed in myself for letting this all get to me.

Terrified... terrified that this could happen to me again, terrified that this could happen to my children, terrified of knowing the truth, terrified of confronting the truth, terrified of myself.

Fear... fear of wanting of revenge, fear of my life being taken by this man or associates, fear of me taking my own life just to stop this madness, fear of being free of this pain, fear of finding the "real" me.

Worried... worried of never getting better, worried of hurting my family, worried of hurting myself, worried about my other feelings.

Day 6

Today is about the word "secret". Secrets have been defining my life for a long time. Until I say NO to keeping a secret, then that word and the act of keeping a secret will continue to define my life. Knowing all that should make it easy to say NO and tell someone else of the situation/act/etc but it is extremely hard for me. All the secrets aren't bad but they do place me in sticky situations most of the time. Like knowing that one owner of a company is unhappy with the other or that the other owner is doing things behind one's back. Or knowing that the work I am doing is illegal, immoral or unethical at times. Or not talking about the abuse I suffered because it hurts everyone else too much.

One of the books that I am currently reading (very slowly because it is hard work) is called Living the Truth by Keith Ablow, MD. In the first chapter, it talks about the truth. "As we mature, small lies we tell ourselves about the past build into an impenetrable web of denial and fantasy that conceals our pain. This web has to be unraveled if we are ever to find our way back to the people we were meant to be. We all tell ourselves lies; we all have buried truths. Most of us fear revealing them, even to ourselves. So we leave them buried and do whatever it takes to keep them there, sometimes forever. Our lives become more and more inauthentic." (Ablow, pg 15)
--I like these two paragraphs because this is exactly what a secret is and does. Whether it is fear of knowing the truth, fear of telling a secret or fear of ourselves, we all keep secrets and hide the truth.

Well, my secret (and the truth) is that I have been sexually abused. I have been verbally abused. I have watched a man try to kill my mother at least 10 times. I have lived without food, electricity/gas and a home at times. And I have hidden all this from myself for so long that if I just don't think about, then maybe it didn't really happen. Maybe my life is just a bad dream. Maybe one day I will wake up and everything that I have experienced will be a figment of my imagination. Maybe I won't be moody, or unfriendly. Maybe I will trust people again and maybe I will find love and happiness. Unfortunately, it is not a bad dream and it IS MY LIFE. What do I do? How can I get thru this? How can I make the pain and anger and hurt go away? How can I get others to realize that the real me isn't there and that I long to come out? But how? In therapy, we talk about speaking the truth, don't hide secrets, find feelings and cry through the pain. Right now I am crying but for what. For the child I wasn't? For the adult that I can't be? All I know is that my heart feels like it is breaking in two.

Day 5

I am going to skip some of the early memories. It was hard to try to recall so much from my early childhood and I felt like I wasn’t able to write if I didn’t keep it in order. Well, screw the order of things. This is my meandering writing…I am going to start writing whatever I happen to remember.

I have a vague memory of Albert, my mother's boyfriend (10 year relationship from beginning to end) reaching out for me one day. We had moved to California and were living in Pomona with Albert’s aunt, her husband and 3 kids. It was Albert, my mom - Kelly, and my two sisters, Amber and Mary. I think I was around 7 years old. I have tried to push this memory harder because I want to know if this is when it all started. In this memory Albert is lying in bed and reaching out for me.

I remember when I was in the 3rd grade and I got the chicken pox again. I remember because my mom had gone to visit my grandpa with my baby sister, Mary and Mary got the chicken pox at the same time as me while she was there. While my mom and Mary were gone, I remember Albert making me lay with him on the couch a lot. I don’t think I knew what was going on. We lived in this apartment in Ontario at the time. The neighborhood was made up of apartments only. Each apartment was 2 stories and there were 4 apartments in each building, like a square split into 4 more squares. We lived in the front right apartment. We moved out of this apartment and moved about 4 buildings down to another apartment on the same street. Several days later, the deranged landlord (of the apartment we moved out of) went into the apartment of the tenants that lived in the in the rear right apartment with a gasoline tank. He dumped gasoline all thru the apartment, even on the baby in a crib. Then he walked out and set fire to it. The family managed to get out and everyone was ok, but that apartment was toasted. I don’t know why he did it. I was 8 or 9 at the time. I remember my sisters and me peaking around the apartment when no one was around because it was so fascinating. I think my sisters, my mom and I were the only white people in the neighborhood. To us it was nothing but the norm as Albert was Hispanic and told everyone we were his daughters. My first boyfriend (crush) didn’t even speak English.

I remember when I was about 9 or so. Everyone in the house was sleeping, except me and Albert. He always found a way to keep my up when everyone else had to go to bed. This time was different though because he wanted more than usual. He penetrated me and I started to bleed. It must have been enough to scare him because he made me go upstairs and wake my mom up. She thought I started my period and gave me a pad. The next day, my mom and Albert took me to lunch telling me what a big girl I was now. It was such a big deal to them. I don’t remember how long it lasted but I never bled again until I was 14.

Albert did drugs most of the time. During these early years he got my mom started also. We girls used to walk in on my mom or Albert snorting white lines on mirrors quite often. Albert also beat my mom quite regularly and severely. In the beginning, it wasn’t everyday. Maybe once a week or less, it seemed. We would be eating dinner and they would start bickering, then full on fighting. Once my mom dumped a bowl of potatoes on Albert’s head and hit him with a frying pan.

I used to collect these little girl figurines. I had this real pretty shelf that hung in the living room with them all. I always seemed to lose one after mom and Albert fought.

Somehow, my sister, Amber, found out what was going on. She was always looking out for suspicious things for some reason. I think she walked in on it once and Albert told her to get out. She asked me what was going on later that day and I said nothing. She kept asking and I finally told her. She told me that I had to tell mom. So one day, I wrote my mom a letter telling her everything and left it for her when I left for school in the morning. When I came home that day, my mom was furious with me. She accused me of making up lies, saying that I didn’t like Albert and that was why I said it. I don’t remember the whole scene but in the end, my mom had me pack up my belongings and took me to live with her friend in another city. I lived there for about 3 months or so. I went to school there. My mom would come visit me every once in a while and she always brought me a gift. After the Christmas holiday, I was allowed to come back home. When I got home, all my stuff including my mattress where thrown outside on the balcony/roof. Albert had thrown it out there. Amber helped me bring it all in. I remember Albert ignoring me for a while or being mean to me if he did speak. But for a while, he left me alone. I don’t remember how long that lasted but I know we lived in the same house when it started again. I don’t remember how it started again or what was said by Albert but I knew that I wasn’t supposed to say anything this time.

Day 2

Outline: I was born in small town in Wyoming to a young mother of 17 and a father of 19. I am the oldest child and have a sister that is 13 months younger than I am, as well as another sister 6 years younger. I am currently 31 years old and had been a victim of sexual abuse from age 7 to 16. I had also been witness to domestic violence, alcoholism and drug abuse, as well as being in lack of home, utilities or food many times.

My goal is to summon up my memories and write about them and how they make me feel. This will be a challenge for me because it is a struggle to remember my earliest memory clearly. I hardly remember ever being “happy”. Strangely, my memories are angled around what grade of school I was in or what house/apartment we lived in at the time. Below are some memories. I think I will just write them as I remember even if they are not in any order. After all, this is my page.

· I vaguely recall preschool – I remember eating pudding and playing on yellow ducks rockers. I remember my mom always watching soap opera shows on TV and eating the cheese puffs that were in a can.
· I faintly recall Kindergarten – I only have visions of apples.
· I know we went to church on Sundays. I recall Sunday school and singing “Jesus loves me”.
· One Easter Sunday when I was 5 or so, the church van picked my sister and me up to take us to Sunday school. At some point the van braked hard and I fell out of my seat and onto an old tire hubcap that was lying on the floor. I cut the palm of my left hand, under my thumb. I only remember how difficult it was to collect Easter eggs in the Egg Hunt with one hand. I would find an egg, put down my basket, pick up the egg, place it in the basket and pick the basket up again to look for another egg.
· I remember walking to school in the snow, no matter how deep. I must have been 6 and my sister 5 for us to being going to school together. There was a time that my sister and I were so cold and we had to start walking and we decided to warm our jackets up first. This was an old house that had one of those large four foot floor vents. Our jackets were similar to a ski jacket, I think. My sister and I laid our jackets on top of the floor vent, not knowing that it would melt our jackets. It did. I remember my mother being furious at us and I remember having no jacket.
· One time our shoes were in terrible condition, completely full of holes and falling apart in the sole, and the school nurse took my sister and I to a local shoe store. She purchased each of us a pair of shoes and several pairs of socks.
· I remember making balloon Paper Mache globes in school. We would blow up a balloon and then wrap them in the gluey strips of newspaper. Once they dried, we painted them blue and painted on the continents. I feel like this may have been first grade but it could have been second grade.
· Because winter was definitely “winter” I remember the time that I decided to taste the handrail at school. That was very silly because my tongue was stuck.
· I used to get so many nosebleeds at school. I remember always going to the nurse’s office.
· **HAPPY MEMORY** I remember having a “gramma” like lady who owned a donut shop feed us freshly baked and glazed donuts on our way to school. Of course, because of this stop, my sister and I were late to school often.

Day 1

Today is the first day of this blog. Today is the day that I begin to set things straight and take my life back. Today is mine.

In this blog, I will re-live my beginnings and find the strength to move beyond it. I need to stop living in the shadows of fear and rejection and learn to believe in myself as a human being, a wife, a mom, a friend, a co-worker and an individual.

I am not just a victim. I am not just a survivor. I am me.

By the way, my name is Sarah.