Odds & ends

I’m sick. I don’t know whether it’s from morphine withdrawal or I have a bad sinus infection. I got the morphine script filled tonight, so we shall see.

It’s 3:09a and I am so totally exhausted I don’t know what to do. I’ve taken my sleep meds, but I only got sleepier and did not fall asleep. What is up with that? They’ve always worked!

I went to the gym while awaiting my prescription. I wanted to check my theory about my “late” being too “late” for someone who has to get up and go to work in the morning. No data yet. The person for whom I was looking didn’t show up. Oh well, perhaps another time.

However, speaking of the gym, I think I’m beginning to see some definition in my muscles. If I had to guess, I think my thigh is going to be quite prominent because of the quadriceps. I also think that I’m going to be able to nip that whole “wings on my upper arms” thing in the bud. I didn’t want to change shoes, so I concentrated on my shoulders and chest tonight. I’m still good at only 40 lbs., but I’ll move up in a week or so.

I got home and didn’t feel like cooking at all. What I should have done was make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. However, if I made one, I’d want another. Granted, I hadn’t even begun to approach any calorie intake, so I could eat what I wanted. I just didn’t want to get in the habit. Instead, I broiled a steak that’s been marinating in the fridge for two days. This time, the girls didn’t steal it from me and I actually got to eat it! Coupled with King’s Hawaiian rolls, it was divine. I tried to wait for the broccoli to finish cooking, but I was too exhausted and just wanted to eat. I’ll finish up the broccoli another day.

Finally, I just wanted to let you all know that the other, private, blog has been set up. That means you guys won’t have to suffer through my anger, angst and bewilderment regarding GLENN as much here. I hope that scum bucket’s eyes fall out since he’s checking to see what I’ve written. The posts on the new blog are password protected and the blog itself is hidden. Therefore, I can get as real as I want to be with my feelings and work out the nitty gritty of the book, thereby leaving this blog for other matters.

That’s it. I’m going to try to sleep now. Did I mention I was exhausted?

Moving on

I don’t know how many posts I’ve written about Glenn, but I do know there are a lot of them. Anytime I begin to feel guilty about not moving on from a thing, I get very insecure in my interactions. What runs through my mind goes something like this: “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I know that people are sick and tired of hearing about it. I should probably have moved on by now, but I can’t. Maybe I’ll just avoid people or put on my ‘face’ so no one will know how I feel.” That is not good. What’s worse is that I’m starting to feel that way. That’s very unhealthy for me because no amount of antidepressants will reach that level of depression. Once I get in The Pit, getting out of it is hellishly hard. Therefore, it’s best not to go there in the first place.

In order to feel comfortable in my relationships with the little community we have here, I need to write about Glenn where I won’t feel as though I’m being judged. I should say that, as far as I know, I haven’t been judged at all. You guys have been great! It’s just that I’m beginning to get paranoid and feel guilty. That’s all on me. I also need a space he can’t get to and I know he’s been here and on my other, very public, blog. I found out about the latter Monday because I religiously pay attention to site metrics. Of course, I’m also very sure that he jumped to some damn stupid conclusion he made up in his head. He really has seen Fatal Attraction too many times. Because he won’t pay attention to anything I say due to that fact that he firmly believes everyone is as devious, cynical, toxic and mean as he is, I’m sure that he thinks I’m going to stalk him or something. I don’t have to. He’s made himself quite public and it will come back to bite him in the ass.

Now, if he were to say that I’m obsessed, I’d agree with that assessment, but not for the reasons he thinks. I’m obsessed with finding answers. I am always obsessed about finding answers no matter the subject or people involved. That’s just the way I am and I won’t apologize for it. He owes me a hell of a lot of answers, but he won’t give them up. He does what he wants and damn anyone and everyone else except his inner circle. Actually, even the inner circle can go fuck off as far as he’s concerned. What matters is him and, perhaps, one or two other people who are in the innermost circle. In short, although I have said this before and then changed my mind, he is a narcissist. Narcissists are always bad news. Where I am concerned, not only is he narcissistic, but also non-consensually sadistic and quite homophobic. He hit me with a string of homophobic rants among other things the day he destroyed the person I was a decade ago. I’m not going to allow that again at all. He tried to bully me into not writing my book, but he can’t touch me legally until it comes out. Even then, under New Jersey law, he has only about a 25%-40% chance of winning since I’m writing about my own life. As I said the other day, he really thinks I’m an idiot. I’d have to be not to look at the applicable laws involved.

*sigh* I’ve probably already said too much. I didn’t want him to know that I know what he is up to. He’s trying to set me up. Uh uh. I am not falling for it. If it weren’t against the law, I’d say that he needs his ass kicked but good. It’s not against the law for me to say it, just for someone to do it. Ah well. I can fantasize.

Due to my insecurities about writing so much on the topic of Glenn when he really doesn’t deserve my attention except for the fact that it bugs the daylights out of me to have questions hanging over my head, I need a new space to write what I need to write. I’ve set up a private blog where I can say what I want without making my hands hurt by handwriting journal entries. Geez, that’s now three blogs I’m maintaining. There’s a fourth that I don’t really do much to unless I know someone needs to look at prior work. Even so, that’s a lot. Granted, I’m only writing for myself on the new blog, so I really don’t need to write in it all the time. It’s conceivable that I start writing this year and leave it alone until the book is ready and Glenn begins his twisted little rampage that will give the book more sales than if he’d sat there and shut the fuck up.

I have one final major thing to say about him here. He’ll probably check in here a couple of times more and then satisfy himself that he’s won or some such nonsense. So be it. What I’ve come to realize is that he seemed so sophisticated when I was younger because he was from the NYC area and I was raised here. Now, I realize that I am far more sophisticated than he’ll ever be because he doesn’t see that most people don’t think the way he does. He’s been all over the world and he still can’t get that most people are fairly decent even when it seems there are a lot who aren’t worth two cents. I think I may actually have encountered more types of people than he has even though his passport is full. He’s not nearly as accepting of people, which is something that I’ve just realized although the signs were blazing neon all along. Well, at least since I came out. Ever since then, he’s been very angry with me and it seems to have continued. That was over 20 years ago. I mean, I do understand hanging on to feelings for that long, but had we actually had a conversation, those feelings would have dissipated. I’ve been willing to talk ever since that night when he called in search of someone to get him off and I refused. Maybe he’s never been refused. I don’t know anymore and it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he didn’t grow into the man I’d hoped. I find that sad and the person he is to be pitied even as I watch out for him to come out of nowhere to stab me wherever he can get me. He’s assuming that I’ll crumble. Not this time. Not this time at all.

Writing about abuse

There is a post I’ve wanted to write for a while now. It is about my history of being an abuse victim and then an abuse survivor. Wash, rinse, repeat. Without a doubt, the majority of the abuse I’ve experienced is emotional. However, a great deal of the emotional abuse is tied to sexual abuse. I sat up in bed after watching programs on the DVR that needed to be erased and told myself, “I’m going to do it.” I tried and I couldn’t. You see, it isn’t enough that I write about my own experiences. I have to include the statistics and other data because that’s what one does when one is a finder of fact. It’s second nature. However, when I began searching for the stats I used to know by heart, I found that my insides began to throb. I felt as if there were some tumor growing in the center of my rib cage as I read. Finally, I had to accept that, at least for now, I can’t do it. That isn’t to say I won’t be able to do it tomorrow or the next day or next week. I just can’t do it now because I’m too close to last week’s events surrounding Glenn and reading old journals that definitely portrayed him as an abuser. Granted, his method was emotional, but it was definitely abusive. He plans to continue, but I’m not a teenager or a 20-something or even a 30-something. I, very literally, have a spine of titanium. I forget that a lot of times because I’ve been conditioned by experience to believe consciously or unconsciously that the abuse–be it emotional or sexual–was somehow my fault and that I am wrong to fight back. The part about it being wrong to fight back is something I lay squarely at the feet of my mother and her family. For them, perception was/is everything. You didn’t complain. You quietly endured whatever and whoever befell you like a proper lady. I had to learn that I had a right to defend myself. I still have to actively remember to remember that fact when it shouldn’t even be a question.

I need to write so badly that I ache. I want to scream and shout and pound my fist into the wall because I so want to write but I can’t. I can’t because I’ve written so much about this one person and one subject that I’ll lose the little family that’s developed here even though I started this blog for myself and myself only. If people chose to take the ride with me, great. If they decided to by-pass it, oh well. Now, I’ve gotten spoiled. It’s sort of ridiculous, really. If I want an audience per se, I can go on over to my other blog and write something that will get attention and publicize it. I don’t do that here. This is the space I set up where extremely few people know who I am, leaving me free to write whatever the hell I want to write about. Well, right now, I need to write about abuse and I need to write about Glenn and I need to make what’s in my head real by putting it in writing. The only thing I want to know about Glenn is why he’s been so damn hostile ever since I came out to him 20 years ago. The string of homophobic hatred that came across my screen that fateful day was shocking and as deadly as ninja throwing stars. It was so shocking and damaging that I actually forgot about it until I read my journal entries. Asking him is pointless because he’s not talking to me. Even if he were, he’d never actually explain anything. He never has and he never will. It’s as though he believes he’s got some God-given right to do and say whatever he pleases and not explain or talk about it at all. And if you’re outside of his circle, you are fair game to be mistreated in any way that amuses him at the time. He did it to me for two years as I “chased” him, something to which I will readily admit. I was 16 at the time and he was Glenn.

I’m sorry, but I have to say this: that S.O.B. hurt me. I know that was his plan and that my pain gives him pleasure. He is a non-consensual sadist. That, too, was part of his tirade that day a decade ago. He’s like a domestic canine-wolf cross. You never know what behavior you’ll get. Will it be more wolf-like or more domestic canine? He can, and frequently is, quite cruel. He is also quite charming when he chooses to be. As a former mutual friend said, so I’ve read, he’s frequently overwhelmed and confused. This is true. His way of dealing is to run or strike before he feels he’s about to be struck (figuratively, that is) or both. Reading, he’s not someone I want to be with again. He’s got a domestic canine side that I loved dearly. Now, the only thing I experience is the rabid wolf. Mind you, I absolutely love and adore wolves and give most of my meager budget for charitable causes to efforts to save wolves and to the ASPCA. Therefore, in a sense, I’m libeling wolves. *looks west toward Michigan and beyond* Sorry guys!

I am trying to recover as quickly as possible from last week. I need to move on because I wasted an entire week on him that I really didn’t have to waste. To show how hurried I’ve been, I wrote a thousand word post, thought I’d uploaded it, didn’t see it hours later and went to look for it in “Drafts,” then realized I’d erased all of my drafts to create more space on my iPhone. I wanted to scream. I feel a lot of pressure to “get over it” even though I know it’s not that simple. I feel a pressure to just shut up about it already and I can’t. I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just set up another blog where I am the only person who can see what I’ve written.

OK, I think I’m beginning to kind of understand what I’m feeling. Some of my thought pattern is the PTSD rearing its head. I have noticed that I feel as though I’m on the edge of a cliff about to fall off if I take one misstep. I also feel as though no one will like me if I say one more word about HIM. Honestly, I don’t want to write about HIM, but how do I not and still write about the pain I’m in? I can’t have it both ways–at least not here.

In trying to write about my experiences with abuse, I ran across a list of some of the effects of childhood sexual abuse on the site PANdora’s Box.

• Long term effects of child abuse include fear, anxiety, depression, anger, hostility, inappropriate sexual behavior, poor self esteem, tendency toward substance abuse and difficulty with close relationships.
• Clinical findings of adult victims of sexual abuse include problems in interpersonal relationships associated with an underlying mistrust. Generally, adult victims of incest have a severely strained relationship with their parents that is marked by feelings of mistrust, fear, ambivalence, hatred, and betrayal. These feelings may extend to all family members.
• Sexual victimization may profoundly interfere with and alter the development of attitudes toward self, sexuality, and trusting relationships during the critical early years of development.

That’s not the full list, but what’s there describes me. I have tried so hard to overcome the filth of my mother’s second husband since I was in my 20s. I’ve probably made a lot of progress, but right now, I feel as though I’ve failed myself and others. My head knows that I’ve made a great deal of progress and asks who these “others” are. I think the “others” are those who couldn’t get close to me because I was afraid. Those I did allow in were often abusive themselves and subsequently abused me. I have to fight to maintain self-esteem. It took me a lot of time to accept that I deserved better than HIM. Having done so, I’m afraid of slipping back because I have so many questions. I’ve never been good at accepting that there are questions about people for which I’ll never get answers. I’m the kind of person who absolutely must understand things of importance, especially when what I’m trying to understand is an emotion or act be it mine or someone else’s. I know a lot of people who hate the word “closure,” but it is what I truly do need. Otherwise, I am left with holes that are very dangerous because I will inevitably try to fill them with either another person or some idea I’ll settle on that may not be very complimentary to me.

OK, I’ve written nearly 1500 words. It’s time to end this. I’m at the same place I began. I have a knot in my chest and I want to scream.