The People Behind My Eyes

I’m feeling kind of closed off, isolating a bit I’d say. The last two week watching friends struggle has been difficult but then there’s my stuff too. I don’t know, I feel like I want to shut the PC off and just go to bed.

In therapy Dr. D and I again discussed the picture I drew of myself as a little girl showing what I might have felt like had I been afraid. We talked about how I don’t really remember being afraid. Now that I think about it I can remember 3 specific incidents where I was afraid but mostly I remember being angry, feeling like a deformed misfit in that family. I remember a lot of pain but I don’t remember feeling a lot of fear. I felt sad, alone, hopeless but afraid isn’t something that comes to mind when I think of my childhood and early adulthood. Perhaps I was too busy thinking instead of feeling, planning to stay one step ahead of her instead of feeling. Well, I felt but I guess fear didn’t show up too often. I felt ashamed to be me. I felt disappointed in myself for not being able to please my mother. I felt ashamed of being what I felt was a disobedient and wild daughter. But fear? I don’t know, not that often I don’t think, not that I recognized anyway.

As an adult I feel fear often. I get a sick feeling in my stomach. I lose eye contact. I think of running away from the situation. I rock a little bit. I look around the room, my mind goes blank, I’m afraid. That is how I recognize when I’m afraid as an adult. As an adult the person I fear most on earth is the woman that gave birth to me. I may not have known it as a child or young adult but I know it now. I’m afraid of her. I’m afraid she’s going to make her regular visit when I sleep. I’m afraid she’ll slip in the bed next to me. I’m afraid she’ll find out I’m in therapy and that I’ve told so many things. I feel fear when I talk in therapy and I feel pain because I can feel each and every lash of that dowel rod as if it was happening right then and there. Somehow, and I’m not even sure why, but somehow I handle flashbacks of the sexual abuse better than the torture. I guess because the torture was more often, constant really. And she made such a show of it. She made us buy those stupid dowel rods, told us she chose dowel rods because they hurt. Bragged to people who thought she was kidding that she tied us up and beat us. The waiting was a killer. It was like, okay if you’re going to do this then do it, don’t leave me down here waiting all day, just do it and let me get on with the rest of my day. It use to piss her off so bad when she’d leave the room and I’d turn the radio on and dance as if nothing at all happened. Gracious! There is great humiliation attached to knowing I was 20 and still at her mercy. That is hard to wrap my brain around. I try to reason it out by saying I grew up her servant. It wasn’t as if I knew any other life. Turning 18 didn’t suddenly mean all brainwashing stopped, all belief that I didn’t exist outside of her didn’t stop the day I could legally leave her house. I try to reason it that way. Sometimes it helps but other times I think of myself………I think of myself that way and I can’t help but cringe and feel deep self loathing.

I didn’t recognize fear as a child but I know it now.

I haven’t been to anyone’s journal in awhile. I apologize for that. This seems to be a common apology anymore.

Art therapy note: I told Dr. D the reason I draw my lips on most art with a face (therapy and otherwise) is because I plan to speak until there is nothing left to say. My lips are going to be moving here, there and everywhere until the last word is set free. I’m not obsessed with my lips, I just want to be free of secrets. Flowers in art therapy pieces symbolize emotion of some kind. It feels safer to draw them as flowers in therapy pieces. At the end of flower peddles or even the stem I’ll put a little droplet. That’s where emotion has accumulated like a boil. Yellow usually represents cowardly emotions, red is sometimes anger but most of the time it just represents my being the opposite of my mother. Orange usually symbolizes bravery. The twisted feet in many of my images symbolizes the club foot I had corrected early on. Nudity has to do with being exposed and having nothing that belonged to me…not my thoughts, my body, no space, nothing. And the belt around the child’s neck while she stands nude shows the child waiting for the mother to get good and ready for her play session. Play, man I hate that word. It becomes very obvious that I spend a lot of time disguising my feelings because it just doesn’t seem safe sometimes to express them as they are. It feels like they’ll kill me.

My Art Therapy gallery can be seen here.

Austin

Fear Therapy Discussion-Tuesday, April 15, 2008-3:14AM EST