From: an2344@anon.penet.fi
Subject: Re: Button, button, who's got the button?
X-Anonymously-To: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Organization: Anonymous contact service
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 05:09:22 GMT

 In article <Bz8p6H.9n@twwells.com>, anon-1280@twwells.com (Alaska) writes...
>Ugh, I just read my post as it appeared in asar and it sounds so
>disconnected and depressing. I don't want to scare anyone, so I
>just wanted to reassure those who care that I'm ok. I'm still 
>not real, but I'm ok :-).
> 
>  ________
>  |alaska|    US: anon-1280   Finland: an881   Australia: anon.34
> 
>                     Look ma, I'm a regular jet setter

I'm glad you're O.K. and thank you for your post.  It brought me
out of the woodwork after a few months of lurking...

In article <Bz8KyL.n54@twwells.com>, anon-1280@twwells.com (Alaska) writes...
> 
[...many valuable comments about depth of difficulty and retreat
to "Alaska" and getting away from others to save them/self 
deleted for space...]
> 
>I couldn't read _The Courage to Heal_ for days. I didn't even feel
>worthy of touching the book, let alone reading it. [...about
feeling distant and 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...
> 

Good to hear you, Alaska.  So many times, over the last few
months, you've expressed feelings I can't, oh-so-exactly, as have
many others here.  I've been lurking since I realized I
probably share the issues of sexual abuse...no memories of this
part of the abuse yet :^( or :^) or :^0 -->(as in one loud
scream), depending on how you look at it.

Your expression of the feeling that "they" are "real," I am
not... I am not "one" with them--exactly!  Hard to explain, yes,
hard to understand, no.  I am not "one" with the "they" in TCTH,
nor with those of you here, despite how much rings for me.  And I
extend that to "they" are courageous, I am not..."they" deserve
support, I do not...So very, very familiar and on-target.  Thank
you for expressing it!  

Something that hit me as interesting about that is the fact that,
to me, Alaska, *you* are one of the "they," and here you are
writing about some other "they" that excludes you.  Maybe we
can be in groups we do not see ourselves as a member of?  At any
rate, thank you for all of the things you have written that makes
you a "they" and very real to me.

[...deleted part about wonderfully creative mind movies...]
> 
>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. 

The part about the "feeling" of not being real--ah, yes.  Since I
began my healing (I am in therapy), I had one distinct moment of
being "all there."  It is crystal clear, like little else.  I had
been working on tough issues all week and had experienced a touch
of that feeling of believing there might, indeed, be another life
out there to have--flashes that, for me, come and go in as short
of a space in time as the memory bits I'm trying to work with
(and only during times of equal pain and struggle).  I stood in
my kitchen on a beautiful fall Sunday afternoon, the kind that
usually feels quite oppressive to me--like "who but you wouldn't
be able to feel a day like this as nothing but pressure to feel
better than you do."  For one solitary moment I was all in one
piece, standing in my kitchen, looking out the window between the
opening in the curtains, the curtains blowing in the breeze, the
sun streaming in.  And it really was beautiful and I was there! 
As crazy as it sounds, it's one of the only times in my whole
life I can say that was true.  For that moment, I was a part of
what I was seeing, instead of looking at it, wishing I could be a
part of it.  It was an amazing feeling, gone as quickly as it
came, but it was "real"!  

>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. 

I think you've got something there...I hope healing to be like
the moment I describe above, at least that's where "normal"
people look like they are, to me.  Right now, I too, need at
least one foot at a time in "Alaska," or an equally safe and
isolated space.

I believe there's a you to come back to, Alaska, even if there's
a lot of things in the way, right now.

>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>

Boy, do you hit the nails on the head...pictures familiar only
because I've seen them before, ah yes...the family movies I had
put on tape a couple of years ago.  Around 9 or 10 there's
suddenly this shell sitting there, where a little girl used to
be.  I, too, disappeared.  At one point in the movies of the same
events carried out the same way year after year, I became a just
a smiley face sitting there reflecting whatever she was told.  No
identity, all responses.  Happy to please all of you taking the
movies...Smile and spread the skirt of my dress perfectly around
me, as phony as possible?...Why, of course, whatever "looks"
best...Sit with my hands perfectly folded in my lap and a perfect
smile on my face even if I'm crying inside?...Of course!...Is
there anything else I can do for anyone?  It's pitiful to see
this shell sitting there where there once seemed to be something
of a little girl.  An angry, difficult, fighting, testy little
girl, but a little person with her own self, nonetheless.  The
little one even seemed to have brief moments of mischief and
delight, which completely disappeared once the shell was
completely formed.  Was that before she hadn't given up on
changing things, or were those rehearsed, too?  Can I tell the
difference?  I don't know if I can know, as I've been that shell
ever since.  

Anyways, despite all this, I hope you do save those pictures for
a while, maybe she'll come to life for you a little later.  I
know "I"'m in a bag in the store room off the garage with all the
other things I haven't unpacked since I moved :)

I'm sorry to relate like this.  I don't feel like much help in
all this corroborating I'm doing...I don't know what I've done
here, as a matter of fact.  It is just what streamed out (the
stream-of-consciousness form of communication seems to be
somewhat common in this group, which is something that makes me
think that I may feel at home here, she says at the end of a
sentence with 7 commas and a 4000 word post that began as
40... :^) 

Thanks for being a "real" part of my "they," Alaska.  And for the
closing words.  They must have been hard to write, but they sure
do express the very real conundrums that I know make me feel 
like a yo-yo, sometimes.

ehugs, if they are welcome.

Just anon2344 for now


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