Well, it wasn't so bad. Except he's almost surely Alzheimic. He was kind of obnoxious at some points, mentioning Pot and wanting to give us all some, fairly loudly, at the restaurant. Then something really rude, which I guess as Bruvva noted, is not worth repeating. Stepmom had said to others the bit about the memory problems.

It was fun, other than that. All of the kids were there, of my family, one stepbro and wife. Also my neice, dad's grandkid. Other one is still at school. I hadn't seen him or stepmom or

There is a theory brewing in my head about some people who have Alzheimers or like my mom have alcoholic dementia. The three people who I know are or I am sure are afflicted have something in common--that they have memories that are are really really bad--of things they did, and of things that were done to them as children. But the memory problem they are having in old age is preventing them from doing anything about their childhood problems or their adult behavior. Weird. I suppose everyone who has those memory problems has that stuff in their past, but it's interesting that those three do.

I had a sort of dream about Mom and Dad. In it I was Hermione Granger, with Harry and Ron. We were in this lonely deserted part of London and I was leaning back on a park bench with all this angst or whatever showing on my face. I remembered after I started dissecting the dream that that reminded me of HErmione after she erased her parents memories of her to keep them safe from the enemy, to keep her parents safe.

Eh, disorientation, the entry box is all weird. Like buttons? Eeeeeee!

Not feeling as bad as I was a couple weeks ago, I just felt bizarro depressed, just in sawdust, not dust and ashes, not so much repressed anger--maybe.

I have one more story from Everything's Eventual to read, I put that one off because it seemed creepy, even for Stephen King in a book of short stories with "tales of horror" stamped all over it.

[Just checking out the new LJ spoiler tags]
Bleah, bleah, bleah bleah.

Edit, only problem is I can't figure out how to get back to the non-spoiler posting.


Ah, I guess you go to html for a moment and start typing stuff in.

My youngest brother called last night and said my dad's yearly B-Day party is coming up, it will be at the Country Club or the Inn. I figured it was a 5 or a 0 year, we got to talking and sure enough, he's 80. Mom just turned 78.

I oddly said I'd go. For about 5 or so years, I have not talked to my dad. I was beginning to remember some very very awful childhood memories. Many of them featuring him. But they were not all like what I had back in the 80s, when I got the actual sensations of what happened. Some were. Some were too bad to give much of  a hint.

We have been working in home journal and internally on our relationship with him, and something large did give way. Kind of scary that someone "died" or Ascended or went back to the spirit world for good. I don't know who, but it was from our earlier childhood or preteen. It was a nice Ascendance, but that usually means the stronger memories will come back, the emotions, the body's feelings, etc. That means it gets graphic, not just someone saying "well, this and this and this happened," but the actual feelings.

The Family Dinner was nothing. It's kind of annoying to have them plan this and NOT tell everyone what it's about. Meaning the bros are in control. Sis didn't know anything about it, I don't think. Too much of the wrong kind of food.

I think the echinacea is working, but I wish the opportunities to eat too much of the wrong thing would not come up, or moreso that I would be able to just stick to the right foods and amounts. Ah. Well.

I was thinking about Betty Eadie's view of the afterlife, that negative emotions that are let out, dissipate into the earth's emotional atmosphere and are recycled into somehing better. Wish I could remember how she put it. Makes it as good an idea as ever to get out the anger, hate, bleah bleah bleah, let it go. When you can.

I told Glenn I'd be at the parade today--or let him know. Apparently I'm promising more than I can deliver. I went to bed after 12:30 this a.m., did not get up till 11 am. Well rested, but here it is 3:30 and I haven't even emailed or called.

Also I need to tell Linda what happened at the family meeting, I was really anxious about it.

There was one crazy thing that happened last night--I was in the parking lot on my way home and some woman walks up behind me, stops and says excuse me, may I ask you a question? This is not a good question for a number of reasons, for me. VERY bad. But I give her the benefit of the doubt. She actually has been trying to trap mice, has only two left in her apartment to get rid of, but they are stubborn and clever. Someone gave her a bottle of vodka, and she thinks getting them drunk will help overcome the cleverness and stubbornness obstacles. So she walked with me explaining the this whole situation almost all the way home, she lived beyond me and I got off at my street. It was really funny and a lot less boring than walking home all by myself, less creepy too. Potential boyfriend gave her the vodka, if I understand correctly. REally funny.

This is funny--relative to the post about not wanting to get too close to people, someone made a prompt post at embodiment asking respondants to write "five steps someone could follow to get to know the real you". I replied saying, "I am not sure I want people to know me! Right now I am not friending people since I tend to drive them off if they get close to me. Lol, so no steps for now!!!!!"

She replied, "Maybe you should write steps on how to prevent people from getting to know you :)".

Not a bad idea. I think the problem is I just don't have much in the way of boundaries. In gerneral that's it, but I guess I really need work on that.

But this is a good laugh.

I have some kind of family get together tonight, obviously going to be about cleaning up, getting the house in shape. I hope that's all, it probably is.

Bleh, the book only has five chapters online, free, and I was thinking it was the whole book. If I could ever do that thing I want to try, getting prepaid credit cards. But there is never enough money at one time, and I know if I tried to save up, I couldn't NOT run into the need to spend it on necessities, usually food. Unless somehow, if it's true that if you concentrate on the things of heaven, all else will be supplied. Which is at least sometimes true.

BTW, no way I can get this at the library, since my fine is $22, yeah I thought of that. Come to think of it when I buy books certain individuals in my family feel free to borrow without asking and never return

How the heck am I supposed to make a plan for eating properly, btw, when I don't have any income to plan with? And if I get a sponsor in OA, and I am calling in my meal plan everyday, won't I just LIE if I eat something that's not on the plan and that I'm not supposed to eat? If it's going to be like that, I don't want to get into it.

And when I got into it for a few months, I just gained weight. But I think that is around the time things were starting to come together and I figured out that I must be multiple. And I realized when I said in an OA meeting that of course I had not done anything as serious as commit adultery, oh no--I had done some other things but not that, that I sounded just like I or anyone else sounds when LYING.

And I'm always thinking, "now what's going on, what did I do really," or wondering if someone else outside the body did something.

Conclusion this morning (while on a bit of a vacation and able to think more clearly)--the abuse is still going on. There are too many places where there should not be pain, and too much impetus to go crazy with food, etc. This pisses me off, and then there's the part where I'm scared, paralyzed, can't move, etc., and in my system the people whose job it is to take care of keeping the one brother out of jail, and the one married, start sounding off.

Then the Al-Anon kicks in and says maybe that used to be our job, but is it still? Isn't this just something they should be doing themselves. And shouldn't that one BE in jail, and shouldn't the other be away from his wife and pets, who he's abusing?

And round the thoughts go....

Last week I guess I had a big crisis, looking back at it now I did. Way back in my late teens I had hit my mom. Right after my brother did it several times.  I don't really know why I did it.

All I knew was that I had this idea that I had blown something. I didn't know what I had done. I don't know if it was Liz but this is what I feel. The core, the Original I mean.

I was angry at her, she did a lot of serious things wrong to me. But this opened the door for her to act even worse. So I was angry at myself, opening the door to mess up even more.

I just didn't remember it a lot of the time, there was of course a lot of stuff I didn't know about.

Last month one of us made up a joke about the 8th step, which says "Made a list of all those we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. This was our take on it:


That sounds pretty cranky but it was the way I was feeling. I had two names come up, Bob and Barb, people I just couldn't forgive(2 people who don't know each other, related offenses though). For some very serious stuff. And they both came up on the same day, and I just said, I can't. So I opened up my inner ears and heard, "they know not what they do".

So that I guess was right, they did not specifically realize what they were doing. It still seems quite wrong, but ...I did some things that I didn't know were wrong, or didn't intend to do. We all get blinded by various influences in life.

And then came this thing with hitting my mom. Which didn't really help me any, and she..I don't know she really took it badly or took it as permission to use that. Officially my bro had hit her first, my dad before that, but she now says neither of those are true. It was all me. Of course my bro does not admit it now. So I pressed him and he said, you are the violent one, yeah he hit her, but he was a kid when he did that--but he was older than me then. I guess I don't want to argue the legality of it any more. It would just aggravate.

I don't know why it came into focus. I was praying for her to get saved. And the day I did that she left a note on the table asking for a Bible. And honestly I didn't want to give her one. I have several but they are not available due to a weird no-see-em bug attack, they like paper. So they're in plastic bags. My other one I use and I was reluctant to give her that, it's in my backpack. And it was like why didn't she already have one?

Sigh.

I said the women in my family do not do much in the way of keeping track of their dreams, possibly excepting my sis. I just happened to pick up a notebook and read oneof hers once, Nosey, but I never did it again.

Anyway, my maternal grandmother, dad and mom each told me one of theirs.

My mom said years ago she used to dream she was driving all of her kids in a car and ended up in a ditch. I think this was not just a one time dream for her. She used to go to church around that time, and of course one of the Gospel stories is "the blind leading the blind"--hypocritical religious leaders who lead each other the wrong way. I am pretty sure she had an affair with a priest around that time, and she was allowing her mother to babysit us overnight--NOT a good idea. I am assuming that she either didn't remember that her mother abused her, or believed she wouldn't do it again to her grandchildren. Wrong.

My dad had a similar dream, after he divorced and was working in for the city/county as the supervisor of a community center. He said he and his dad were driving around the area there, where he worked and partied. They came to a particular street there and suddenly there was a dead end, an iron fence I think. The street in real life went through, didn't dead end. He mentioned once that his father was "a <i>real</i> Black Irishman". Black Irish are Irish descended from Spanish sailors who landed on the coast after shipwrecks. They may have black or brown, or blue or green eyes. But they have very dark hair and pale skin--kind of like Robert Downey or Ray Liotta. My father and grandfather were like that. But I guess his meaning was that his father was <i>sinister</i> somehow.

If that's true, then I guess it's a good thing they didn't live near us, we only got scattered visits from them. They were quite far away and G'pa was really really skittish about flying or crossing any bridges, so he didn't travel much. I don't remember anything in particular about them being bad, I always thought they were mostly morally upright. G'ma had a little Scotch problem after G'pa died young, but her friends talked to her and she but it out mostly.

But I didn't remember anything bad about my mother's parents until recently and it's been some secondhand information. Also looking back at suspicious stuff again, without using the tool of utter denial.

My grandmother, who probably was either multiple or possessed, I'm not kidding, had the following dream, which had an echo in my life:

prologue: she had a very unpredictable and somewhat violent mother, and was sent to a religious boarding school, probably when she was older, after she'd had this dream (more than once I think). She would wake up screaming from it at night and her mother took her to the family doctor. The doctor got her alone in his office and sat her down and said, "is there anything you would like to tell me?" Like a lot of kids probably would be, she was reluctant to say anything and I think had a lot of reason not to trust adults. The nightmare was that her mother pushed her into the linen closet and slammed the door shut. The shelves divided her into  a lot of pieces.

Since her mother was violent with her, that might have seemed like telling on mom anyway, and she would not have known whether the doctor would share this with her mother.

Unfortunately I don't think my grandmother got any treatment for her depression, not of the type you get when you go to an analyst. They would just give her Xanax or whatever. And she would act like a saint, or act out, but mostly likely was not conscious of the fact she was getting up and night and fucking up little kids. Someone is saying LIE right now, so maybe she didn't. But my indications are she did. We do have a lot of "lies' going on, sometimes to cover up for something someone should not have done with the body, but also it was a survival technique for a long time--denial, that nothing really bad happened. Because how else could you live? Until you are ready to handle it.

After I apparently got pregnant and was treated to a surprise abortion by my mother, then got home and was none the wiser, I had the same dream. I dreamed I was in Chicago (never been there but my G'ma was born and raised there) and it was the kitchen pantry just like our Cincinnati home, that I was thrown into and cut into pieces on the shelves.

So when I first found out I was multiple, I thought my mother had caused it. Now I think it was a combination of things from childhood, but she was definitely part of it then too. It's just that in my adult life this was the most traumatic thing that happened to me I guess--especially in the sense that I probably died for a short time during the abortion.

( girly stuffCollapse )

And it seems like with so many people in the system it's impossible to do anything but survive at the most basic level. I have problems doing laundry, just getting up the resolution to do it.

It really is getting better, I'm pretty sure. I do feel a lot better since knowing I'm multiple and being able to discuss it and realize what is and has been going on.

My mom's friend Gwen called at noon, mom was sleeping, so I asked if I could take a note, & did.

Gwen is someone she met at the Forum, a self help or self improvement course that does not describe itself as such. They do say right up front that they are a business, they make money, they are for-profit. They say right up front that this is not therapy, and in the application to take their classes they say IF YOUHAVE AN INCOMPLETE COURSE OF THERAPY YOU ARE NOT READY FOR THE FORUM. You have to agree that you have not had an incomplete course of therapy.

Mother Dear does not mind technicalities, they are not for her. She just doesn't see how what they don't know won't hurt her. She must know she was not following the program, and that there is probably a reason why they say you shouldn't.

The reason I think is that they say it's  a program for successful people, that they will be the ones to gain more from the program. It's not that you can never take the program if your course of therapy was incomplete, you just have to either be able to explain what happened, or go back and confront yourself, you need to look at your problems honestly and deal with them somehow.

Mom's second therapist, David, had told her that drinking was a very serious problem. He told her that very nicely. And I guess he left it up to her to deal with. She quit drinking. For a while, then her demons came back to haunt her. And she hid it. She didn't deal with her demons and they drove her to drink again.

The reason David knew about her drinking at ll, is that I brought it up. The reason I brought it up was that she dragged all her five kids in for David to tell us to move out of the house and appear successful. She had no plans for what to do when we moved out, I think she just wanted to order people around and let us know how we were hurting her. But I have no idea what the problem really was, if any.

She never got into rehab, AA or any other form of therapy other than the Forum. And the Forum says, they are not therapy.

I do get the feeling my mom lies to her friends and misrepresents what goes on. Gwen has given me arrows, just glared at me. I steal food, and live at home rent freet. All because my mom feels guilty for all the things she's done to me--or she wants to look like a saint--or I don't know what.

I don't have a hope in hell for her friends any more. I know they are nice middle class people who do things right not out of love or respect for themseves or a higher power primarily, but out of habit, for their own financial stability and comfort, etc. They are nice people, but I think they might be just as lacking in honesty as my mother.

Whatever, this isn't doing me much good, I'm just venting. There are two sides to every story, but I think my mother is never going to admit the things I remember her doing to me. She still believes in appearances, that you should get by on that.

And what does that make me? If my parents are so derelict, what kinds of things have I gotten from them that I dont' know about?

I don't know but I feel like I haven't given up, haven't allowed myself to become awash in materialism and just laying back.

My mom's friend by the way, Gwen, she has a big tapestry of the Last Supper in her dining room and it's tasteful art, not like blue collar families have. She's sensitive to the arts and probably has things she does to help other people. She favors tasteful handmade crafts, not crocheted afghans or crafts made from the Reader's Digest, paint-by-number kits or any modern equivalent of that. [I forgot to say that Gwen also has noticed that we women sometimes put our handbags down any old place, and only God and the angels know what has really collected on the bottom of our handbags. So she never lets anyone place their handbags on countertop or table at her house. My mom also went through a streak of not allowing handbags on the table--not a bad idea, but it's also just a piece of crap she goes through to pretend she is normal and cares about people].

She is furious at my mom's kids apparently. If you have 3 of your adult unmarried over 50 or almost there kids living at home, it is a sign that they are screwing her. Not that she is encouraging dependancy on her for the sake of control.

Sheesh. I know she'll never change but I keep thinking I'll get over it. I keep thinking I'll develop a tougher hide, but I don't. She still scares me. Have I given up?

Family gatherings did not used to be filled with misery the way they are now. They are filled with hate. I can't explai how weird it is, because there are things I cannot talk to the rest of my family about becasue they are things my mother did that they would not believe, that I know about but cannot remember. Things I'm sure would embarrass me too, because I never wanted to get married or have kids, but then someone in my system decided to get pregnant, based on my father urging me to get pregnant outside of wedlock when I was a teenager.

He is a sick puppy of course, but I didn't remember the things he used to say until the last few years. I know there's more, but I have only memories of what he said to me over the phone, not what he did. Others hold those memories for me.

My mother said she does not speak to him anymore, because he is afraid of what she will do to him. Which is a continuation of the fantasy that she has that when he first started physically abusing him, she fought him off, slapped his hands away and told him to just stop it.

I have no idea what she really did, maybe knelt and whined like a dog for pity, but she sure didn't tell him anything, put him in his place, fight him off or in any way cause him to respect her. He's an unrepentant baby fucker as far as I know, a college educated, I'm-going-to-get-what-I-want-no-matter-what-get-away-with-it piece of shit. She resents the hell out of him, but she's afraid of him and her oldest son, the one I refer to as my older bother. He whacked her around too. SHe's a cowardly uncaring insane person.

Which brings me to M. Scott Peck's book, People of the Lie. He names four characteristics of evil people:

1. They lie

2. They're stupid

3. They're cheap

4. They're confusing

I wonder if simply indifference isn't also a marked characteristic.

My mother is the one who I'm concerned with here, the father of origin was horrible, but she never had whatever it took to be any better than him. She does not have persistence or character.

The thing to do now would be to list the characteristics in order and then support them. I'm feeling better having got this far, and I'm kind of stressed because of the heat and other stuff, so maybe I can continue this another time.

Out of order, CHEAP: everything is about money, saving small amounts of it, spending inordinate amounts of time worrying about small amounts. Which tends to rub off on me, but at least I feel like I recognize it. She actually writes notes about it if she finds a piece of tinfoil from a Hershey's kiss in the wastebasket at Christmas. IT doesn't matter to her than time and people are worth more than money. She doesn't realize that relationships with her kids would improve if she would stop nagging about jobs and money, and that if she...

Eh, I'm tired.

STUPID:

Last night I was watching tv, Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters with Patty, and I heard someone say "Charly". They pronounced it 'Sharly'. I don't know if it was because it was someone who didn't speak a lot of English, or maybe a little kid or what.

Anyway, I had a dream then with "Charlie Sheen" in it--not him but my inner Charly, maybe that's how I should spell it. He was really nice, very warm, a quality I had not always associated with Charly. But come to think of it, maybe it's on and off.

When I woke up, I remembered my child-molesting aunt say years ago, that you can understand why people shake their children abusively, when they are upset that the kid is crying. I remember my dad shaking my sister and I and screaming and cussing whenever we cried as children. He picked me up and threw me. I thought somehow she was actually feeling sympathetic for him, my child-molesting dad. Then I wondered if she was talking about herself or my child-molesting mom. Maybe there is more than I know about.

There is a baby in the system, whose needs to cry. Every once in a while he or she comes up and there is completely silent wailing, it's so awful. Baby is so scared. I can't let her cry, or mabye she won't, because she'd get yelled at. I just was not allowed to cry.

Being that it was Charly who seemed to come up with the question of , one of my schizophrenics (not a nice label is it), that made me think of the shaken baby issue, I wonder if that is something that could be a cause of schizophrenia. It certainly could contribute to MPD/DID.

[somebody just came up and said hi to me in the library, I hadn't seem him in a while.]