From: uribe@jarthur.claremont.edu (Lydia Uribe)
Subject: I'm back....
Organization: Claremont Shelter for Maladjusted Singers
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 21:59:19 GMT

Just wanted to say hello, and that I'm back home (and back on the net)
after my summer in Maine.

It was, on the whole, a good time.  I didn't accomplish much that was
visible, but I'd gone with the idea that if I did nothing else but get
some of my incest issues examined, the summer would have been a success
-- and I did that.

I've started dreaming more about my father and my childhood.  The odd
thing is that in the dreams, I am invariably an adult, but I'm dealing
with situations and feelings from my childhood.  Probably the worst one
that I had was one in which I was sitting in my study in the house I'm
currently living in (this was set in the present, too -- it was clear to
me in the dream that this was well after I'd sent my father the letter
in which I confronted him with his abuse of me), and somehow my father
had gotten into the house and was coming up the stairs toward me in what
objectively seemed like a non-threatening manner, and I was absolutely
*terrified*, and I couldn't move, and I couldn't scream.  I tried and
*tried* to scream in the dream, and for the first time, what I was
trying to do translated into real life -- I awoke screaming.  Thank
whatever that my husband was right there; he awoke and turned over and
held me in one movement, and kept holding me until I had cried myself
out (he did a lot of that for me this summer).

And I've finally started becoming acquainted with the frightened and
angry and hurt seven-year-old girl inside me -- and by the end of the
summer, I was actually feeling a strong kinship with her and a strong
desire to protect her.  She, in turn, has started to trust me enough
that she's started to release some of the pain and anger that she's been
holding for me for the past 32 years; I had my first full-blown
emotional flashback this summer, in which I cried hysterically and
screamed myself hoarse over the course of what felt like forever but was
probably only about three minutes.

Things are temporarily on hold for the time being, while I try to put my
house back together (we had a toilet break upstairs while we were gone,
and it flooded two rooms upstairs and three downstairs; we're
practically camping out in the house for the next few weeks), but I find
that I'm almost looking forward to starting work on this again.  It
helps a lot that I quit my job at the end of May, and I won't be going
back to work again until the middle of January!

E-hugs to anybody who wants or needs them, and I am glad to be back!

                                        Lydia

"You're more than beginning -- you're learning to fly;
 You feel like you're falling, but it passes in time...."
                        "From Me to You", Janis Ian
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| Soprano (Lydia M. Uribe)                       uribe@jarthur.claremont.edu |
| Claremont, CA                                          uribe@hmcvax.bitnet |
|            Cats, quilts and diving - what more could anyone ask?           |
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