Sitting with the messiness...

Sitting with the messiness and the chaos, in the present moment, and learning from that discomfort.

I like that.  Perhaps we are sitting with the messiness remembering we survived, and learning we are surviving.  It was awful - whatever happened - but we are here.  We are sitting in the messiness and seeing the big pieces, and getting closer to scanning, then examining the small pieces - then we sweep away the debris and live clean.  Think it can happen that way?  Or, let's make that current and more powerful - Do you think it is happening that way?

What is amazing is that since we started this I have lost a little bit of weight.  I am not stuffing down my feelings as much. Being a little bit hungry is not frightening me.  When I am hungry it is definitely a feeling and feelings must be stopped!   And I have been cleaning house more efficiently.  The house was clean but cluttery.  The clutter is starting to bother me.  And I want to be in the garden, working.  I want it to be beautiful!  And I think best outside, in the real dirt!

I read once that your favorite fairy tale tells your story.  I always loved Beauty and the Beast.  I admired moody, wounded men.  I knew that if I just loved one of them enough, magic would happen.  One day he would open his eyes and thank me for saving his life.  Then we would be happy.  I can tell you Happily ever after never comes true.  Not fairy tale style!

Is Hansel and Gretel a favorite?  Do you like the idea of outsmarting the adults and finding your true parent?

Memories...There was a lot of sex play with the neighborhood kids when we lived in Kane.  I can't tell if it was normal playing doctor, or if there was something more. We can only judge by our own experiences, and mine leave me with a severe lapse in judgment.  I do remember it was a major focus of the group.  And I know something weird was going on with the kids across the street.  Even when I was little I recognized a wounded soul.  You were about 2 years old.  You could have been caught in that.  At the Gap I remember you going to the woods with B#3 to play "games" - the family euphemism for sexual assault.  Because of our experiences in Kane, it seemed normal to me. I was already warped...

And Center St. was a horrible place to be.  It was not safe.  The guy across the street belted his children routinely.  The kids on the other side of the graveyard had an older brother who forced them to perform sex acts.  And when I found out, it seemed like, "Yeah, that happens."   I didn't have a strong reaction when the two kids described what happened.  I guess I made them feel okay and accepted.  I had no sense of right and wrong - or of appropriate and absolutely inappropriate.  I told a neighbor, an adult,  who said, "Oh, he's doing that again."  This all normalized abuse/sexual abuse as a typical family function.  And the bigger kid down the street was scary as hell.  I still feel frightened when I think of him.  I wonder whatever happened to him.  But I remember his parents were the ones to scream the loudest when the PTA wanted to teach sex ed in the upper elementary grades.  I remember his mother said she and her husband never needed anyone to teach them what to do...

Do you want me to explore these memories out loud.  I am naming the messiness, and understanding myself better, understanding the situation better.  I noted things in extended family, too...