Re: a woman talks about her life as a former raped child

So much of this article sounds like me. In a lot of ways I am very
different, I have trouble facing anyone with any kind of confrontation,
much less venting vitriol on them, but the disconnection from my own
life is just like what was written there. I can't feel things directly,
or maybe I'm afraid to and won't let myself. Fear is the only thing
that really gets through my walls, and that comes wave after wave,
crushing me. fear of others, fear of myself and what I could do, what I
have inside me caged like some monster. I have children too, and
sometimes it's all I can do to control the rage that wells up out of
nowhere. Sometimes it's all I can do to keep from stuffing myself with
pills and cutting veins. The only reason I have survived this long is
that my spouse is suportive and understanding, and knows when to take
over and let me go run and hide in my room, attack pillows or break
things where no one else will get hurt. When to wrap arms around me and
hold me until the shaking stops and I manage to struggle out some of the
tears and pain. I never can get it all out, I cry myself sick and it
doesn't even scratch the surface of the thing inside me. Like an ocean
of pain, a monster of rage, an entire universe of horribleness that my
brother put inside me and I can never get rid of.

And it affects everything I think and feel and do, even when I don't
realize it is. It keeps me from making decisions for myself, from
facing responsibility, from watching certain movies, from being able to
look someone in the face and tell them, "Stop hurting me!" I find
myself drawn to other unstable people, people who just add layers to the
hurt already in me. Somewhere I got lucky and found someone who loves
me for me, who accepts me even with the horrible thing in my soul. And
yet still I am drawn to others, sudden and uncontrollable crushes on
people that anyone with sense could see are looking for someone to
victimize. I am broken inside and I don't think I can ever be repaired,
and I just desperately hope no one I care about cuts themselves on the
sharp edges under my skin that cut me up so badly inside. As
disconnected as I am with myself, I connect far too easily with others.
Maybe I'm still looking for some broken person whose breaks fit together
with mine to form something unbroken but it doesn't work that way, the
pieces of other people's puzzles can never fit the holes in mine.

so I vent in my stories and I swallow my poisonous pain and guilt, and
wall them off inside me where I hope they can only hurt me because I
don't have to feel it anyway as long as I keep hating and hurting myself
and I don't know how to stop anyway, even though I want to, and I
probably sound like an insane person and maybe I am. I used to augh at
the idea of insanity, I used to think it was funny or fun, and maybe
that's because I hoped insane people didn't have to feel their hurt
nthey could just live in a perfect world in their heads but now I think
I realize insanity is really another word for the way I rake myself over
te coals, through the glass, salting my wounds and smiling because I'm
not inflicting my real pain on anyone else. Like the song says, "and
when they're out for blood I always give."

Anyway I'm going to stop ranting now, stuff it all back inside, and hope
it didn't upset anyone, but I'm going to post it anyway because I think
I need to and a large part of me wants the attention it might get me
anyway. And it's kind of cathartic too, another little way of
anonymously squeezing a little of the monster out of me, and hopefully
not onto anyone else.

-Angie