From: anon-1280@twwells.com (Alaska)
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Subject: Button, button, who's got the button?
Date: 14 Dec 92 06:35:07 GMT
Organization: Anonymous Posting Service at twwells.com
X-Email-Accepted: yes


I've spent the last few days in a fuzzy, painful haze (physically and
emotionally.) It's not Holly's fault. I shouldn't have let her
words affect me so much, just as she shouldn't have let my words
affect her so much.

I apologise for being too flippiant about something that was obviously
very important to her. I never meant to hurt anybody.

Part of what "Alaska" is all about is wanting/needing to get away
to someplace where I won't be around other people so I won't hurt
them &/or they won't have to put up with me. Since I can't really
go to a deep underground cave in far northern Alaska, I go there
in my mind. I spend far more time in Alaska than I do anywhere
else. Sometimes I wish I could go there permanently. I function
fairly normally even when I'm in Alaska...no one knows.

I couldn't read _The Courage to Heal_ for days. I didn't even feel
worthy of touching the book, let alone reading it. I read a little
bit of it tonight and felt so distant from it. Every single page
has something that is familiar to me, so I don't know why I feel
so disconnected from it. 

Nearly every page has one or two paragraph interview slices, taken
from women the authors have talked to. Even though these women
very often say things I also feel, I don't feel "one" with them.
It's hard to explain. I feel like they are "real" women, and I'm
not. This/That applies to them because they're real and I'm not,
so it wouldn't work for me. I'm not a real person, never have been,
so good luck to them...don't think I'll ever be real, wish I could
be, wonder what it's like, to be real. Reality, what a concept...

I know where this comes from. I spent so much time inside my own
mind movies while growing up that it's still affecting me. I hated
myself so much that I was always someone else. I was a famous
actress/writer/singer/dancer/whatever-the-mind-conjured-up-that-day.
Some of my mind movies were on-going and intricately detailed, some
just lasted for a short time. They were always with me, always the
*most* important part of my life. *That* person was the real me,
not the fatuglystupidawful lump who took up space in the general
world. 

I eventually got to the point where I didn't have mind-movies
anymore, but the *feeling* that I wasn't real has stayed with me.
I guess that's part of what Alaska is all about too. I go there to
get away from myself. When I'm myself I always tend to screw up,
I can't do anything right, I cause other people pain and problems,
I'm totally worthless, blah blah blah, so it's better to not be
real, it's better to be in Alaska. 

I think that a part of me is *always* there, thank goodness, or
I wouldn't be able to handle life(living with myself) and I'd
be dead now. I can shutdown, shutoff, shutup, shutout, shutaway
anything I want, anytime I want. Sometimes I don't want, but I
do anyway. 

Will I be "healed" when I feel like a real person? Maybe I don't
want that. There's nothing to come back to...there's no real
person there to be...how can I be real when I never have been...
maybe I was once...geez, a belief in reincarnation must be so
comforting. 

When my mom died I became keeper of all the family photos. I just
took them. Mom always meant to put them into photobooks but never
got around to it so they're all in 2 boxes. A couple of months
ago I dug out my favorite photo of me, from when I was in kinder-
garden. One night I sat and stared at the photo and tried to
get inside the child's mind. I couldn't do it. Then I started
imagining the photo as it would appear in a newspaper next to
a story about a child who was missing or found murdered. I started
to cry because I realized that the child in the photo *had* gone
missing and was murdered. I haven't been real since she died.

Last week I went through all the photos and separated out all
the ones of me. Looking at them all, especially the ones where
I was a child, I felt as if I were looking at pictures of 
someone I didn't know. The photos were familiar only because
I'd seen them before, not because I remembered anything about
when they were taken or because I knew who that child was.
Who was that girl? She looks real enough in the photos. I really
kinda with I'd known her. She had a lot of potential, maybe.
(que sara sara, whatever will be will be the future's not ours
to see que sara sara) I put all the photos of me in a bag. They
might go into the trash someday, but I feel I should keep them
for a little while longer. I don't know why.

<sigh>

Thanks for listening. Thanks for the support. All the e-mail
(most of which I haven't answered because I was so deep into
Alaska that I was nearly at the earth's core) goes into a
file marked "To Be Administered As Needed" and they make me
feel like I'm kinda real.

Guilt, the button that Holly pushed, rules my life
Shame, it eats away at my heart
Hatred, for myself. Muted sometimes, but ever-present
Fear, that I'll never be normal
Terror, that someday I'll be normal
Confusion, makes mush of my brain
Disgust, at myself, for letting it all matter so much
Numbness, the best feeling of all

________
|alaska|



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