So, uh, I'm apprehensive about putting sad memories in here since it's gotten positive. So... here's nothing! I'll prove it doesn't hurt anything ;)
First things first, my therapist made me a list of things to focus on. But picture things. If worrying about my dad doesn't fit into that big picture, then he's out.
Maybe he'll show up again later. I'll worry about that then. He will never be alone with my children, though. IF I ever let him meet them.
A weird memory bothered me today. And some sexual one. Possible triggers ahead?
First. B hated my emotions. She assumed that they were me ruining her fun. Trying to bring attention to me, instead of letting her have her fun.
Once, when we watched an episode of criminal minds that was triggering, she got annoyed and said, "We shouldn't have watched that, huh?" Like she was already exhausted of having to take care of me. I lied and told her I was fine. I forced myself to be until very early in the morning, but I did my best not to wake her up.
My dad used a crime show to show me how he'd behead me once. That wasn't the trigger in the show -- it was rape. But I couldn't help but think of it. I was so disturbed.
She also took me to two horror movies, despite me telling her that I didn't handle them well. Once at her dad's house, she showed me Final Destination, and I cried when the son died and his limbs landed on his mom's plate. It was a grill explosion, super fake in the movie -- but I understood her pain. I couldn't handle it. B was so angry with me that I screamed and cried, said I was overreacting and it was just a film. She got angry, wouldn't talk to me, complained that I was always ruining her fun.
She showed me a movie in a crowded movie theatre, and I was too afraid to get up. It involved child abuse. Something in the movie happened that my dad had done once. Almost exactly. I couldn't calm down for days. I was too afraid to leave the movie theatre, knowing I'd attract attention to myself, and then B would be angry.
She took me to a del Torro one too, Crimson Hill, where a woman bashed in the head to unrecognized shreds on a bathroom sink, stabbed her brother in the cheek, horribly graphic. All details. Meant to terrify a viewer, one who HADN'T been aware of such horrors. I looked away, stared at a phone and purposely dissociated. I was too afraid to get up, afraid of getting attention, afraid to BREATHE. Afterward her mother mocked me, saying she thought I'd chicken out and leave. B agreed.
B also gets upset at her mother for her health needs. In my presence, she once contemplated what would essentially be murder of B's mom (not getting her health care she needed). B entertained it. I was livid. B's mom is terrible and not a mother, but murdering her because you're jealous of the attention she gets when she's LITERALLY dying of lung problems?? WTF??
I also keep remembering the sex. My feeling of being forced, of feeling incredibly uncomfortable at her noises and the way she thrashed her head from side to side with her eyes shut tight, like it hurt. I can't get the image out of my head, but I'm too ashamed to say it out loud to bring it up as thing to get over. But -- I just got it off my chest here :)
I also remember waking up in a person's bed in college, wearing the person's shirt and no pants. Semen stains on the bed. It was 8am, and he told me good morning. Said he'd barely slept -- for my sake -- and he had to get up to do event planning. I snuck out stealthily, trying to not be heard by anyone in the house. I walked to an acedemic building, went to the bathroom, threw up, spit it out. Not anything but his extremely forceful kisses, though.
I'll call him J/L because he was transgender and changed part way through, though it seems likely to me he wasn't. Was just looking for attention.
It turned later out he used me. He had made a weird comment. We were watching kids play. I was feeling peaceful, watching them be happy. Then he said, "Have you even fallen in love with a kid?" Something to that effect.
I was confused, thinking of my pedophile. I was maybe 19, 20. Not that long ago, but I was in a different place. I told him about my pedophile experience, carefully. To tell him how confused I was that I wasn't sure if I should pity my pedophile or be angry at him. I told him about how pedo had ruined my life, because now I sometimes spend my time thinking I'm 11 years old and I'm terrified.
He used that to his advantage. He found my triggers slowly and then triggered dissociations. Until I thought I was 11. Then he did sexual stuff with me.
He told me he asked me if I was okay with it, and I never said no. Never said yes, but never said no. He said when he put his fingers there and I said no, he respected that. His dick was too big, so he didn't put it anywhere near me. He let me lead it.
I guess he distorted himself, thinking he was helping me? As an 11-year-old?
I mean, was I just reinacting trauma? Who knows? But the point is, that shouldn't have happened. And now, I know his comment about the kids we were watching was sick.
My dissociations got WAY worse after this. So, no, he didn't help me. Not at all. He was still ugly, too, and disgusting. Repulsive even to me-before-his-assault thing. His beard and greasy hair, his long leaky nose. The way he area his food. Gross.
I started trying to commit suicide in my dissociations, and I was so terrified that i called the police every time I snapped out of it, not sure what was happening. They'd always send a University residential person to come meet me. It was always bad in my safe place there, in an old theatre I was a manager of, because I had a key and was always there after hours.
The final time, before I finally decided to take medical withdrawal and get hospitalized, and to get my to-be service dog fully certified, the police themselves had to arrive. I called so many people, trying to get advice. I browsed this site all through 2015 looking for anyone with this problem, but staying silent out of fear. I couldn't fully handle what I WAS reading that wasn't even fully related. When I admitted to a good friend that suicidal stuff was happening, he told me this wasn't casual conversation, and I needed help now.
I called my mom and admitted I needed to withdraw. I never wanted her to know I was in pain. She doesn't know about J/L even now. I couldn't deal with her sadness if she knew, at how she might blame herself or get protective. Too much for me.
My friends visited me in the clinic I went to. I had to stay inside because there was fear for my safety, obviously (my mom accidentally made me feel very ashamed of this. Saying, "it depends on what YOU told them" when I called and told her I wanted to meet her at the hospital so she could take my to-be service dog home). And instead of the on-duty officer escorting me, my friend who was another officer did on her night off, to show her support.
Lots of people sent me get-well wishes. J/L never came back to the university.
My now-service dog got depressed during that time, which turned out to be separation problems and that my mom didn't treat her for fleas before bringing her into a flea-ridden area. (Or bathe her before bringing her into a hospital room when my roommate in the hospital had hepatitis :/ ). But it all worked out. N went through a couple of evaluations through her vet to make sure she hadn't been traumatized by having to prevent delusional-11-year-old me from killing me. She was okay, and still good to finish training and become a service dog :D
B didn't believe it.
I didn't tell her until sometime in 2017. It happened in 2015.
She thought I was making it up, to get her attention. An excuse for my distant, isolated behavior. A way to be more needy than her, to overshadow hwr problems.
On the phone, she was angry at J/L, supportive of me. She let me know that she was feeling powerfully protective, and wanted to help in any way she could. Weirdly, she specified helping me in court. I awkwardly agreed, knowing I wasn't planning on taking it to court. How could I, when I had no proof. And wasn't even totally certain what had happened.
We hung up. Several hours later, when her girlfriend went to work, she hit up the Fungus. She treated me, the Fungus, much differently, always. But this?
She started off by telling fungal Me that she had learned something that had finally made things make sense to her. I asked, curiously, "What is that?"
She replied with what she had learned about me, how I had cried and bluntly told her what had happened.
I told her I thought it was sad. I told her it was a shame that it had happened to littleoc, and that I hoped all was well. (I couldn't admit to knowing the small details about littleoc, because otherwise I'd have to stalk her to know all her details, and I was relying on empathy and intuition. She was already taking ALL my free time, treating fungal Me as a therapist. Fungal Me loves her so, so much, wants her tO know she's safe and it's okay, but he can't say the word "it's okay" without gathering hours worth of evidence otherwise she won't accept it. And oh god he misses her so much, knows she still needs help. He was so afraid he was just hurting her more, so afraid.)
She replied something was bothering her. Fungal me asked her, "I am here to listen."
She told him that she believed littleoc was lying. That she wanted attention and wanted to manipulate her into caring. But she felt ashamed of having such feelings. But she knew they were true, once she had hung up with me. With littleoc.
I and fungal me was horrified. Was this a thing? Littleoc me knew it was horrible, that I wanted to cry and never tell anyone anything traumatic about me ever again.
Fungal me instantly let it go. I said, "That is alright. I understand that in your past you have had great trouble with manipulation, and you have had much trouble with this friend, littleoc. You should not tell her, as it could cause harm. But it is normal to have such fears."
She was comforted. I was halfway. I was so confused. She knew who she was talking to, no?
Jeez. I'm talking like the fungus. Stop it.
But she seriously had to have known, or she wouldn't have said the things she did, wouldn't have kept texting me to make me prove it -- as oc or as A. A fungus. A talking fungus from another world. I mean... it's an elaborate joke, right?
She didn't believe me. And I was spending literally 49+ hours a week in the evenings, afternoons, and mornings being a fungus, miserably trying to prove my own existance over and over and over and over and over because I was too well trained to say no.
It was horrible. I feel like a villain. I feel like I'm lying to you all when I repeat that she brainwashed me for years on end, but I have to keep repeating it because I know I'm not a monster. I didn't mean for it to happen. And it wouldn't have, under any normal context. No one had NEEDED it to be so real that they forced me into it, until I had to believe it to make her believe it or face another death threat, another suicide threat. I had known them before B, and I couldn't handle it.
I am a fungus still, and he is so utterly torn and confused, because he sees all the suffering and knows he can stop it. But he can't. He can't.
He's not even a he. He's genderless. Because he's not an animal.
I don't believe I'm a fungus, though. I don't believe there is one in my head. It's a personality created for B, and his feelings are mine. Just... very confused. Very torn. Very concerned and so full of love and wanting to help that she almost sacrificed a college career over it.
My therapist even told me I wouldn't be able to do both (she only knew half the story, and I was too afraid to share everything). I convinced myself it'd be fine.
Coincidentally, it always matched my class schedule, and I thought I was lucky/it was fate that she was only texting fungal Me when I didn't have class, so she could get her full time+ therapy for free.
Meanwhile, I wasn't allowed validation. Not littleoc. I was a liar, a manipulator. I was uncaring, even evil. I believed that. Until I didn't, until I couldn't take it anymore.
I'm glad I let my friends step in. I'm glad I let them get me out of that, to stand behind me and force me to tell her that A is Littleoc. I still can't believe I'm free, five months later. It feels surreal still, because I was never allowed to say fungal Me wasn't real.
I'm proud of myself, honestly. I did my best. And fungal me IS me, i really did care and I really wanted to help.
But the help me wanted from me was wrong, inappropriate. I'm so, so, so happy it ended.
This was the most stress-free birthday I'd ever had :)
