So, to be honest...

Posting here actually helped me feel a little better. I don't know exactly how it works, doesn't make any logical sense to me, but I guess psychology works for me, too. I'm always spouting things at the rest of the world that while I do believe for others, I don't believe for myself. In this case: sometimes you just need to get things out, even if no one else knows it.

I tell people this all the time. People who have a hard time expressing themselves, people who feel no one is listening, people who just want to forget. I tell them that they'll explode without release, that the only one who needs to hear is themselves, that they'll never forget but maybe they can let go, and even if there is no one to send a letter to putting the the words to paper in itself can be freeing. And I do believe that, I've seen it a million times it seems. I just never though it would work so well for me.

And I still feel... well, everything I felt earlier this week, but somehow it's more manageable, so I guess it's working.

I'll be honest, my biggest fear is that it would make me feel more lonely. I've been very lonely recently. It happens sometimes- more often than I will generally admit to, really. More than that, I feel very alone. You know that cliche of being alone in a crowded room? Yeah, not like that. But even the short reprieve I seem to feel when around others is just a distraction.

It's not often, but I do get painfully frustrated with my sex life. Trust me, it's really not often. I tend not to think about it as much as one would think for how much time I spend thinking, talking, and reading about other people's (real or fictional) sex lives, but it does come up every couple of years. Especially at times like now, when I am feeling so alone. Sometimes I think my brain registers a desire for intimacy, and when no viable options for emotional intimacy present themselves my body defaults to a desire for physical intimacy.

Other times I think I've just needed a hug for a really long time.

I know it's not a good idea for me to be involved with anyone right now, but I really want. I'm beginning to think it never will be a good idea- sort of like having kids, you can never really afford it, but you do it anyway and you make it work. Maybe this is a close as I'll ever get to being in a good place to date. There are things in my head that I don't want there anymore, things that come up so quickly and without warning when other people are involved, things that make me a horrible person to date.

I used to pride myself on being low-maintenance. And I was, I really was. I'd do pretty much anything, talk about pretty much anything, took almost nothing to heart. I didn't care how much time you spend with your friends, if a week goes by and I don't talk to you I assume we were both busy, you didn't even have to be nicer to me than anyone else. Just sit by me, don't be afraid to talk to me or touch me in front of other people, tell me you missed me or you're glad to see me every once and a while and make some time for just the two of us at least once a month and I was happy. Easy as pie, really.

Now, I feel abandoned or unworthy or some other tripe when I go a week without someone calling me. Not everyone, just if a week goes by and no one has called me, I feel like shit. I second guess everything I think, feel and do. I'm begging for someone to save me from myself most days and I long for physical affection so much it hurts. I've become clingy. I hate clingy.

And on top of that, I'm seriously messed up. I feel the need to hide myself from people so much more now than ever and yet I really want someone to know me well enough to know when I am hiding and push me out of it. I've been intimate a handful of times since I crawled my ass out of that room and now. Now I feel like I know nothing. People tell me no to worry about it, it's like riding a bike, you never really forget. But they're wrong. I have forgotten. I'm as nervous and unskilled as a virgin. More than that, I'm so terrified.

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. When is he going to hit me? When is she going to tell me to get out? When are they going to break me? I've been through a lot in my short life, and it's left me with some really... shameful problems.

I was molested as a child. I don't think of it that way though, even still to this day. I remember how much it hurt. I remember how scared I was. I remember how he would touch me, pull me to him and wrap me in his arms. Gentle, like I was something fragile and precious. I remember what he would say, how I was beautiful and smart and good, that he loved me. I remember thinking that I should want this, that it was wrong and dirty and no good for me. I remember that I really did want it. I remember feeling betrayed when he left, waiting for him to come back for me, wondering what I had done wrong to make him leave so suddenly. Later, I remember being angry at my parents, thinking they had found out and taken him from me. But I was smart even at eight and I knew that little girls who were hurt by adults had to go to doctors and see lawyers and I never did. I remember I hated him for leaving, and I hated myself for loosing him.

I remember being told it was just a bad dream. That the man who had been sent to jail for molesting his own daughters had never touched me, had never even touched them. At first I was so angry. Who were they to tell me it wasn't real. I loved him and he loved me and I swore they would take that away from me. Then, later, I was confused. She was so sure, patting me on the head and telling me it was only a bad dream, even tucking me back into bed and smiling so sweetly at me. She was always right.

I still don't know what's true. If I'm a 'troubled' adult because of what happened, or if I was a disturbed child because of what didn't. I think maybe I'm both. I don't have the courage to ask again. Either option scares the hell out of me.

It's weird, because I actually remember remembering. I have very few memories at all before the age of five, who does really? I do remember my parent's divorce, right after Stewart left. I remember being sad and angry and wondering what I done wrong, I don't really remember why. As an adult, I can't tell if it was the mixed up feelings of a little girl loosing her family or something else. I just remember being eight, a dream that had me waking up panting, scared and sad and excited and remembering. But I knew what Stewart had gone to jail for, I knew what it meant. My parents never believed he was guilty. I knew his sentence had been longer because he stabbed someone while he was there. He said it was the guy who actually did it. What if he wasn't lying. What if it was just the workings of an overly imaginative eight year old who was too smart for here own good?

It could be. By eight I knew what sex was, I knew how it worked, I had mental images that were accurate. I knew what a hymen was, where it was, that it would hurt to have sex the first time, perhaps longer than that if the penis was too large to fit into the vagina without tearing. What if I did just dream it up. At eight. What the hell does that say about me?

What bothers me more, is that I've never quite been able to shake the feeling of love I had in the memory. It's been 20 years and I still compare my relationships to it. If I didn't make it up that's pretty sick. If I did, well, that's never going to work out for me. Reality is never like your fantasies.

I don't know. I started all of this because I was talking about being lonely. I was going to give a brief detail of all the past relationship baggage that makes me undateable. Hah. "Brief" never works out for me. Either way, I think that's enough baggage for now. I'm really tired and I haven't been sleeping well so I'm going try to catch some sleep now.