Feminine hygiene products are difficult for me. I think it all relates to my first experience with them.

 

I was very young, maybe five. I don’t remember how long my father’s touching me and having me touch him had been going on. I really don’t remember my younger years too clearly. I think I blocked a lot of it out, to be able to cope. I know it has taken lots of therapy and hard work to be able to express anything about the sexual abuse I survived. I could not talk about it much until after Daddy died.

 

One night he had been touching me and I got up to go to the bathroom. When I looked down I was bleeding. I know now that he had probably penetrated my hymen with his fingers, but at the time I was scared. I called Mama and she came to the bathroom, when she saw the blood she must have been very confused. She told my father and he said that I must be starting my menstrual periods. Mama thought I was really young, but she was naïve enough to believe this story. She went and bought pads and a belt for me to wear. I remember how uncomfortable it was. I also remember how that box of sanitary pads stayed in the closet for years, with me seeing it from time to time and feeling ashamed.

 

 Shame is always what I feel when I buy such things. I wish I could get over it, but that seems impossible for me. I do not really feel good about myself even after so many years.

 

I found out a few years ago that my father also abused my nieces. I did not know this. I knew I was not the only one because in the 80’s he was convicted of child molestation and had to do some time in jail, but I never told anyone what had happened to me and continued to be done to me until the man’s death. See, I loved Daddy, and did not want him to be punished. He had so often told me that there was nothing wrong with what he did. I did not believe him because I knew it made me feel dirty, but I wanted to protect him.

 

A few months ago Alex came to me and told me that my father had done inappropriate sexual things to him too. I was so angry. For the first time in my life I hated my father. Now, I am back to forgiveness, but it tortures me that maybe had I said something others would have been spared abuse.

 

My brother who is father to my nieces only learned about the abuse that happened to his girls recently. He wants to kill my father, but he is dead, so revenge on him is out of the question. He got the idea into his head that my mother knew what had gone on, and he wanted to punish her. I had often wondered if Mom knew what happened to me, but I doubted it, because I could not imagine her letting it go on. When my brother threatened to confront mother about his girls, I finally went to Mom and told her what had happened to me. I asked her if she knew, and she told me no. I do not understand how she did not know, but I believe her. I stood up for her with my brother, and now he no longer speaks to me. I hope one day he can forgive, and move beyond his anger.

 

One of my counselors says that my schizophrenia is the diathesis stress model of the disease. She says part of what I suffer from is post-traumatic-stress-syndrome, and this makes sense. If I had not been so horribly misused maybe I would never have gotten sick.

 

I still love my father, but there are a lot of ambivalent feelings attached to my thoughts of him. Sometimes I have thought of him as the devil, but I know he was just a very sick mortal man. Sometimes I have difficulty with the concept of a loving father God, because my concepts of father are so skewed.  I forgave my father long ago for what he did to me. I kept the secret to protect he and my mother, and because I felt so guilty myself. I wish no one else ever had to go through the torture I have lived through, but it still happens and unfortunately sometimes no one knows except for those involved.

 

I hope I offended no one. This is not an easy story to tell, but if it could help one person, it is worth it.

 

I’ve been debating writing this a while. I hope I was not wrong.

 

Always,

Jo Ann

I am reading The Road To Reality, and quite enjoying it, even though the mathematics is way over my head. I am not a math person. What Penrose is saying does however make some kind of sense to me somehow, even though I can not prove his assertions. I wish that geometry was something at which I was good. I should probably take some time and brush up on my math, but it is not pressing to me. I do have the desire to understand all this because I am very interested in physics. Especially the part of it that deals with time. I have been fascinated with this quantity for years.

 

I haven’t anything witty to say tonight. I do hope that your Sunday is wonderful.

 

Always,

Jo Ann

Well, she finally left and I got something to eat. Mom says that my ex-sister-in-law is sorry about how she acted, that she did not realize I have tried to get a job, that she did not know I was cooking, but I don’t feel those things should have any bearing on her mistreatment of me. She should have never said those things and attacked me physically no matter what I was doing or not doing. Performance does not make a person an object of ridicule.

 

I am not ready to be accepting of an apology yet. I have to work through all the feelings surrounding the issue and get balanced. This will take work. I know it is possible to resolve it in myself with time and effort. I am doing it for my well-being. I must learn to deal with opposition without letting it destroy my sense of self.

 

I finally figured out a way to attach our session notes to the last entry. I just could not import them as text because they reformatted in transit. I wound up taking screen shots and saving those as jpeg files. Worked well.

 

I think I am going to relax a while now.

 

TTYL,

Jo Ann

I went to bed at 2:00AM and woke up at 8:54AM when mother called me. I wanted to stay in bed until the alarm went off at 9:00AM, but Mom persuaded me to get up. I ate some of the bread that was leftover from Outback the other night. I packed up a cooler with Diet Cokes and put The Road To Reality by Roger Penrose in my book bag so that I had something to read while waiting on my appointments. I left the house about 9:30AM and stopped at a gas station to fill my car. That took almost $21.00 because the gas is now $1.89 a gallon. Bush economics! I protest!

 

I drove on the Atlanta Speedway at racing speed. Made the thirty-five mile trip in about thirty-five minutes even with heavy traffic at some points. I signed in to see my counselor and psychiatrist and sat down to read the new book. I was a little surprised it is so enjoyable, physics interests me a great deal, but I am not much for mathematics, but the author makes it palatable. I may even learn something with his supportive attitude. That would be a plus.

 

My counselor and I did a lot of work today. I will attempt to denote some of it here though I am not sure how it will show up on the page. She made tables and I told her what should go in each category. This was hard work. I attempted to import our charts here but I cannot get it to work.

 

That was our session and it was very intense. I am glad I had some time  to sit in the waiting room before seeing my doctor. He said that I was doing fine, not to worry about my lack of dexterity that it would improve. Then he told me to try to relax and have some fun. This has been his consistent advice for many years. In my experience fun often entails expense, so I do not get a great deal of it.

 

I came home and as I got out of the car mother told me that my nemesis was coming to visit. I did not want to leave so I shut myself in my room and turned the music up loud enough to block out their voices. I have been here over three hours now and I think she should leave so I can have lunch, but seems she is going to stay all damn afternoon. I am feeling angry, abused, put upon, and overall hungry. This shit is so unfair that I am a prisoner in my own home because of her disregard for me and rudeness. I need some food. It is after 5:00 and I have not had an opportunity to have lunch. This sucks. I may have to go out of here and I am not sure what will happen. I would prefer to ignore her, but she is so inconsiderate she may say something to me. WTF???

 

Well, that is all I have for now.

 

Always,

Jo Ann

I went to bed about 1:30AM and woke at 7:10AM. After taking Alex to the bus I came back and crawled back into bed. I did not get back up until 10:20AM which means the alarm clock screeched for twenty minutes with me ignoring it. Mom got me up. Must get new alarm clock! Tomorrow may be the day to do that.

 

I took a shower and wrote an email. Then I spent a good hour paying bills. I hate to see my bank balance dwindle so quickly, but it happens.

 

Alex had a half day at school today so he came home about 12:30PM. I read some of my favorite blogs. Then we had to go for the parent/student advisory meeting at his school at 2:15PM. The advisor was not there when we got there so I looked at his schedule and we discussed it. We waited twenty minutes and the advisor did not show. I left him a note to let him know I did come… and we left because Alex had a 3:00PM appointment with his doctor. We talked about Alex’s novels while we waited. My teen-ager is an excellent writer with a super imagination. He will go far if he does well in the Marines… I still wish he would choose something else to do with this war on, but I have to support him and just pray a lot. We finally saw the doctor about 4:15PM and were quickly out of there.

 

We took the prescriptions to SAM’s to fill them and picked up a few things in the store. I have ink cartridges for the printer now. Alex got Sims 2 and a memory card for his iPAC. He wanted to go see a movie when we left SAM’s so we went to the mall and checked movie times. The one he wanted to see did not start until 7:00 which was two hours and we decided to go on home. Then in the car I asked if he would like to get something to eat. He said sure and suggested Krystals, I said I was thinking more Olive Garden or Friday’s. He said, "Oh yeah, Friday’s." Then a few seconds later he said "Second thought it was really bad last time." I said, "Yeah well, then how about Outback?" His face lit up and he said, "Outback is great." We almost never eat at nice restaurants, so this was a treat for both of us. We will not do that again probably for a few months. We had excellent service, excellent food, and enjoyed ourselves immensely. By the time we finished I decided we could make the movie without too much wait time, so we saw CONSTANTINE. This was a very good movie, although I may have some nightmares tonight. Some of it was a little too close to my experience to be really comfortable, but it was good.

 

The coincidence thing is still happening for me a lot. I read something or think something and it comes up in conversation. Really strange, but life always surprises me. I was so busy today in "real time" that I did not get to be in the virtual world much. I enjoyed my day. Alex is great company, and he and I continue to get along so well. I am blessed by this child in so many ways. He is a true gift from God. He still loves to spend time with me, and that is wonderful in a sixteen year old.

 

Typing is still hard. I am so glad I see my psychiatrist Saturday. This malfunction really worries me.

 

I am going to finish making the rounds to other blogs and settle in for the night. Hope you all have a great Friday!

 

Smiles,

Jo Ann

This prompt comes from Just Journal For Fun a book by none other than myself:

 

Faith can move mountains… Where do you need to apply it?

 

I think I need to apply faith to my relationships, and to my financial situation. Lots of times I have difficulty in trusting others because of the abuse that has been heaped on me. This lack of trust undermines current, and future relationships. People in general are not out to cause me harm… I need to be more understanding, accepting and less paranoid. This is hard work, but I have accomplished hard things in the past. I am sure with diligent effort that I can accomplish this. I should also have faith that when the time is ripe I will find "the right one" with whom to spend my life. I need to let go the pursuit and allow what is to happen to happen. My attachment to the outcome will not hasten its occurrence. It will only bring me dissatisfaction. Happiness must be my goal.

 

My financial situation is a crisis waiting for the opportunity to happen. I do not have much control over it beyond trying to stay afloat. Faith states that God will provide and He has in so many other places that I need to believe He has control over this sphere as well. I want to fix it, but that is beyond my power at the current time. I may be able to influence the outcome in the future, but for now I need to stop worrying over things that have not become reality. I need to be content that the situation is going to work out for my betterment not my harm. Peace is my goal.

 

Do you need to apply faith in your life, not necessarily faith in God, but maybe faith in yourself or others? You could explore it in writing. Sometimes writing crystallizes things for people and gives new insight. It often works that way for me. I find solutions to problems when I write and I learn to better deal with difficulty.

 

Always,

Jo Ann

First of all I want to thank Reeking_Havoc for giving me a new title. I hope adding it to my tagline on Spaces was okay. It definitely makes me smile… though I am not sure it is accurate. I don’t think my diagnosis equates with sane, but I am trying to function at a semi-competent level.  

 

Well, this was an interesting session with my counselor, because at the last moment I chose to have Mom attend. This was a hard decision for me for several reasons. When I was younger Mom refused to go to my sessions. It might have really helped me had she gone, but she could not be bothered with it. She tends to think that I always talk about her in sessions, which is not true, but she has a negative perception of the process. Then lastly, I was nervous to have her in that intimate a setting with me, I was afraid that if I was honest that she might fuss at me over whatever I said after we left the office. Sitting in that little room and talking with both these people was really difficult for me and took a great deal of courage, it was intense.

 

My counselor handled it with aplomb. My respect rating for this woman increased exponentially this afternoon. I already thought her exceptional, partly because she sees me without any monetary compensation, partly because she has helped me get on the pharmaceutical aid program, partly because she has a heart, and I am honored to call her my friend. Today she just completely outshone all my expectations. She worked so flawlessly. I am amazed. I knew I was blessed to have her in my life already, but now… I am speechless.

 

This session did a tremendous amount to ease the tensions between mother and I, and I feel brought new understanding to both of us. I just hope the strategy we put in place works, and I have every reason to believe it will. Mainly we worked on giving me some boundaries here at home that would serve to give me some feeling of safety and security. Like mother asking my ex-sister-in-law to call before she comes to visit mother so that I may leave the house before she arrives and thus avoid confrontation. I had already tried to convince Mom to agree to this, but she would not. My counselor convinced her that it was a really excellent idea and that it should be no inconvenience to my ex-sister-in-law. It only after all takes a moment and might advert all sorts of unpleasantness. I told them that I now seriously feared for both my emotional and physical safety with that woman. I also brought up the fact that she has been known to, in the past, carry a concealed firearm. Tempers what they are anything could happen… and I don’t want to be shot. Though I at some points in the past thought dying would be appropriate, I no longer feel that way. Another thing we talked about was the fact that my vocal volume increases when I experience almost any intense emotion, it even happens in session at times and I am mostly unaware of it until someone calls my attention to it. It happens frequently at home, and I mean no harm. Anyway, my counselor talked with us about it and we agreed to work on it in a constructive way instead of my mother yelling at me that I am hollering at her. If she can remember and overcome years of habit, she is going to make a soothing hand motion and ask me to quiet down politely. I will also try to heed the signal and lower my tone. This could be a major breakthrough in communication between us.

 

My counselor and I are going to work on emotional management in future sessions. We were already planning this, because I had told her it was an issue. She gave me homework to do from a book called: Don’t Let Your Emotions Run Your Life by Scott Spradlin. I am ordering this book from Amazon when my check comes in, so that it will be easier for us to work on it.

 

Thank God for earth angels like my counselor. I only wish there were more like her.

 

Mom wanted to stop in town for fried chicken, so we did and she bought me supper. Then she offered to buy Krystals for Alex. So I did not have to cook tonight.

 

I am back to writing in One Note because MSN crashed on me again and I am afraid I might lose my work. I like the bigger font size too, only drawback is it takes up more space.

 

Well, I am still having difficulty typing and my hand and arm hurt so I am going to take a break. This was a pretty long entry. I may be back later. You all take care.

 

Always,

Jo Ann