Beginning Again

[OceanSpray]

my good days have been outweighing my bad.

Oof need to try harder to remember this. Also need to try to remember that the majority of today was also great. It was just 9th period.

It has a certain combination of students that I’m not gonna lie almost had me in tears of frustration. I’ve gotten thick skin over the years, they don’t usually rattle me anymore. But I had multiple students who were testing the ever loving f_ck out of me. One could not stay in his seat and was wandering, grabbing things from the teachers desk, getting angry when I tried to get him to chill. Another student who decided it’d be fun to just repeat the first student. Two more who were determined to leave class altogether and egging on the first. I almost called security. Actually I probably should have. But I always hesitate because that feels like failing and I’m so rarely rattled.

But at least it was the last period of the day, I’m off now, I have a different class tomorrow. Gonna go home and do some self care.

 

[OceanSpray]

Today is starting off close to tears. Nothing has happened. I know that starting in a bad mood is a recipe for a shit day. But this melancholy won’t leave.

 

[OceanSpray]

I just want to crawl back in bed and cry and say f*ck work.

 

[OceanSpray]

Feeling relatively better. Read a few books lately and reread others.

Rainbow Parenting by Lindz Amer
This was mostly good, there was a lot I do agree with. Unfortunately, there were some key things that I don’t. But it did list several more books I want to explore.

End Game by Serena Akeroyd.
Rekindled my love for this author. It was pretty good.

Carnage by Shantel Tessier
Re read and honestly liked quite a bit. It’s still a little on the too shock value/too many sex scene side but meh.

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe.
I’m frustrated by this. It’s written in a way that would appeal to a very young audience. But then goes on to show images and thoughts about blowjobs and such. I want so badly for our sex education to be more encompassing and give far more information. But this isn’t the way. I don’t get why we can’t get the representation and education needed while also not giving play by plays on blowjobs aimed towards minor children. It’s not written towards older teens or adults.

 

[OceanSpray]

Today was a productive day. Got laundry, including all the throw blankets and pillows washed. Got food prepared for the week. Taxes filed. Did some chores around the property, and some more reading done.


His Name is George Floyd by Robert Samuels.
Their framing of George Floyd in the beginning is interesting. Trying to put drug use and dealing into a wholesome nostalgic way is definitely a choice. To be fair, I’m not sure how else to expect those memories to be shared by his family. I did really appreciate the depth they went into his families roots. It’s humbling to be reminded just how recent that past is.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata.
Kinda loved this, but it’s also a little bizarre. It was a very interesting look into a brain that operates so entirely differently than my own.

 

[OceanSpray]

I finished my list of shame. It kinda knocked me out for a bit. That was much harder than I expected. I thought I was further along in my healing than I apparently am. I meet with my therapist tomorrow to start going over it and I’ve spent today off and on sleeping and eating. It’s . . . I don’t know. My mind is pretty scattered right now.


More reading done:

The Slaughterman’s Daughter by Yaniv Iczkovits.
This was really fun. It dives into pretty heavy themes but does it with good humor.

The Giver by Lois Lowry.
Oh man. I read this in school as a kid, watched the movie, and retained good memories of it but rereading it is something I may try to do every year. This was such a powerful read for where my head is at lately. It fits perfectly into my goals for this year and through therapy. That probably sounds weird. What I mean is, I get so complacent in my life that everything becomes dull and the same old day after day. I don’t want that. I want to live. To experience. I want the vibrancy of life to permeate everything. Even the pain.

 

[OceanSpray]

I have therapy in a couple of hours and I really want to cancel. I know we don’t have to work on this stuff. She point blank said it’s okay if I decide not to, or don’t even add a single thing to the list. But that’s not helpful. And the alternative is to chat about my parents being in my head trying to micromanage someone else today. I couldn’t shut those voices off and I was feeling very, very opinionated over how someone else should be handling their stuff when it’s none of my business at all. Ugh.



Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur.
This wasn’t for me. I don’t know, the subject matter was something I’ve been through and should have been able to connect. But the style just really didn’t work for me. I also think I’m craving more balance. More positive. Not in a toxic positivity way. Just balance.

 

[OceanSpray]

Therapy went okay. I crashed pretty hard both in anticipation for it and afterwards. I don’t like working on this stuff, I mean, who actually would? But this does feel like that final big hurdle before I can say I’m done with going to therapy. It’s been years, I want to be done now.

I start a second job Monday, home health care work. I’m nervous but excited. I need whatever extra I can get financially right now. If I don’t like it, I still have the substitution job. If I can hold on to it long enough, it’d be great to use it as a way to pay for school and get going on my degree. It’s part time, which will help me immensely as far as brain power.


Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.
I loved this. I finally really liked a classic lol.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
This was really good.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Loved

The Moon in the Mango Tree by Pamela Binnings Ewen.
I tried, I couldn’t get into this one. Might try again some other time.

 

[OceanSpray]

Covered a lot in therapy. A lot.

But found something pretty healing. There’s a YouTuber named Dr. John Deloney and he’s got a lot of shows surrounding the topic of child molestation and abuse. It is so freaking good to hear a man, specifically, openly show anger and condemnation for it. It’s so incredibly different than my own experiences around men.

 

[OceanSpray]

Haven’t had a nightmare in ages and suddenly there’s a stalker rapist following me around and gets a hold of my dog and tortures him as a message for me.

Gonna be a great f_cking day.

 

[OceanSpray]

I’ve been in a weird place lately. First working on shame has actually had a pretty big effect on the space in my brain. It’s actually working.

Then I started an exercise from the book The Artist’s Way, that’s really great. It truly is. It’s basically doing a very large brain dump every day. Over achiever that I am, I do it twice a day. Like I said, it helps organize the sh_t show hoarding that the inside of my brain looks like.

But with this room, comes new memories. I find myself ruminating on things that haven’t been an actual deal in ever. The latest one being that I witnessed the best friend of a sort of niece of mine on the hospital bed mid overdose. She didn’t make it. I buried it completely because it wasn’t my best friend. I didn’t know her. I didn’t really have anything to do with her. So it wasn’t my trauma to carry and I’ve never brought it up in any therapy because it just didn’t affect me. I didn’t think. But here it is popping up like hey remember me. And now the image of her is implanted front and center like a screen over real life.

And then I got extra weird. I started browsing the medical examiner’s website for my area. Absolutely no reason to do so, but morbid fascination? I spent way too long looking at every detail of every death recorded since the beginning of November. It took actual willpower to not go further back.


And then I got even weirder. Yesterday I should have been at work but I didn’t actually have anything scheduled so I hid away from the house by going to the library. They have an ancestry portal that I decided to explore. I used to have it myself and did extensive work on several sides of the family. But of course there’s a few dead ends and I don’t know, I just wanted to poke around.

Somehow poking around meant going deep, deep, deep back into my primary abusers family. Why? God only knows. Did I learn anything? Oh ya, multiple suicides, prison stints, so much military and prisoner of war records, girls getting married and having babies at fifteen in the deep, Deep South. Coal miners and farmers, intertwined. Not that different from anyone else’s family history, including my own.

But it had me way too absorbed in all of their lives and how rough it would have been and how all that sh_t does get passed down. I’m not new to exploring generational trauma, have always known it existed heavily in my own tree. But I guess I was looking for an explanation for why he was the way he was. I think I found it, to some extent anyway. I know it doesn’t excuse the things he did. I know that. But also, doesn’t it kinda? If that’s all you’ve known?

 

[Friday]

Not that different from anyone else’s family history, including my own.

But it had me way too absorbed in all of their lives and how rough it would have been and how all that sh_t does get passed down. I’m not new to exploring generational trauma, have always known it existed heavily in my own tree. But I guess I was looking for an explanation for why he was the way he was. I think I found it, to some extent anyway. I know it doesn’t excuse the things he did. I know that. But also, doesn’t it kinda? If that’s all you’ve known?

You said it… pretty much every family has that kind of history, or other kinds of trauma that really make it a difference without a distinction.

So why aren’t all families abusive assholes, raising more abusive assholes? Because most people just aren’t abusive assholes. They go through hard times, and poverty, and war, and plague/famine/violence, and, and, and…and love on their kids/friends/families, sacrifice for better, try and make hard times easier, are kind/loyal/creative/empathetic/etc. Perfect people? Pfft! Nope! But decent/good/caring people making the best of things, instead of abusive/neglectful/cruel.

On the “all you’ve known” front? Maybe 2/3s of the people I knew in the military came from bad childhoods. Abuse was all they’d known at home, or living in gangland at home/school/streets. But the overwhelming majority used that as a guide to “what NOT to do” & “how NOT to live”… rather than becoming abusive, themselves. And that tracks all civilian studies, as well. The overwhelming majority of people who were abused as kids? Do NOT go on to become abusers themselves. (Even though the overwhelming majority ALSO act out / lash out in highly predictable dangerous/abusive/self-destructive ways AS kids… at a certain point? Kids grow up. And start making decisions about who they want to be, and how they want to treat others.)

So… sure. If you’re talking about COCSA, or bullying, or other typical behaviors of abused kids… that’s pretty much a “pass”. Because a) it’s all they’ve ever known & b) they’re kids. They haven’t grown up, and decided who they want to be, and how to live their lives, yet. They’re reacting to their own lives, instead of responsible for their own lives.

But adults? Have to be willfully ignorant …or locked away on a compound in extreme since birth; never attending school, reading books, watching tv/film, having friends, going to work, knowing colleagues & clients/customers …for abuse to be “all” they’ve ever known. Everyone else? Has observational skills, and experience outside of abuse, and is aware that there are a whole lotta different ways to treat people, and to choose how to live one’s life.