From: anon-1174@twwells.com (macavity)
Subject: none
Organization: Anonymous Posting Service at twwells.com
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 07:36:03 GMT


I want to confess, first of all, how hard it is for me to post this.
It's weird for me, realizing people are actually reading this.  I
suppose, lying here behind my anonymous number (and the almost anonymous
user name that goes with it), it's easy for me to feel like I'm talking
to myself, or out to a void.  It's like when my therapist says something
that makes me realize she cares about me: it's a shock - not necessarily
an unpleasant one - like waking up to the phone ringing.  Something that
always remains a surprise, no matter how often it happens.

Hi Nancy.

sasnla@shadow.unx.sas.com (Nancy Agnew) says:
>In article <BsowM7.9HL@twwells.com>, anon-1174@twwells.com (me) writes:

>Sometimes I think feelings aren't all they are cracked up to be,
>but then, they are a part of life.  Without them it's just, I don't
>know, theater?

And theater's so much easier, isn't it?  All the drama, with none of the
risk, and nobody has to know what's really going on inside.  Except 
they're the ones who get all the drama, aren't they?  It makes me think
of _Waiting For Godot_; like every act of my life is just a replay of
the one before.

I know it's a hollow existence.  I also know it's not what I want, which 
is new.  I'm just so frightened of everything - how can I possibly let
my guard down?

>Well, to be zen about it, you have everything you need to unlock
>the treasure within yourself, looking outside yourself won't cut it.

I have found this out mostly by watching other people.  I also spent
two years in a relationship trying desperately to "repair" someone who
didn't believe he had the ability to "repair" himself.  My head figured
out pretty early that I couldn't do anything for him; my heart took a
beating before it got a clue.

My self-esteem is a curiously factured thing.  In some ways it is strong.
In other ways it's like a cobweb waiting to be brushed away by a careless
or unknowing hand.  Last Friday a friend of mine stomped on some pretty
raw bits of my psyche.  It wasn't as if what he did was that bad, although
I think it at least qualifies as rude; it's just that it triggered a
million little conditioned responses.  I don't think I'll ever feel the
same way about him again, which is a shame, since he had no way of knowing
where my vulnerabilities lay.  (Another consequence of keeping secrets:
even people who don't want to hurt you can't always help doing it.) 

>Lots of us find that a professional with experience
>dealing with survivors can provide a lot of help that friends don't
>have the knowledge to provide.  

>From time to time I'll make a list:  Things I am blessed with.  At the
top of this list (at least recently) is my therapist.  I have been
relatively lucky in my experience with therapists; my first was harmless
but unhelpful, my second helpful, but only to a point.  Almost two years
ago now, at the suggestion of my physician, I hit on someone with whom
I seem to be able to make real progress.  I am still working on issues
of trust; but every week it gets better.  And every week I seem to walk
out with a new piece of myself in my hands, like a tiny gemstone.

>One of the things that began to give voice to the young part (that they
>almost succeeded in killing off before there were words) is, believe
>it or not, writing.  

I still wrestle with this one.  Oddly enough, I seem to learn more when
I write fiction.  For example, for years (as long as I've been writing,
really) all of my protagonists were without mothers.  I didn't think much
of this; my relationship with my mother was always very good.  But
recently my heroine has acquired a mother, and the character is not
exactly peaches-and-cream.  It made me realize that I do harbor some anger
toward my mother for all the things she didn't see, and all the things she
saw but was herself too young to understand could hurt her children.

I have never fictionalized my own abuse, either the emotional or the
sexual.  I think it's because I don't know how I can end the story.

Thanks for listening out there.

macavity





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