Hurt

I have been hurt by people who hate me, people who love me and people who don't even know me.

I have been emotionally stepped on, stomped on, chipped, broken, shattered and kicked while I was down.

Yet I chose to stop being hard and unfeeling. I decide, everyday, to experience and feel the world around me. I am learning how to let people in.

I am learning to be human.

I refuse to be a robot any longer. I am learning to welcome the pain and hurt because it means that I can also feel love and joy.

I'm learning that it's okay to cry when something hurts. It's okay to express what I'm feeling and thinking. And sometimes... not often, but sometimes, it's okay to be completely irrational.

I can be afraid of things without being a lesser person. I can say no, I can ask for what I want, I can even demand.

I am a survivor. I am proud of being a survivor. I can survive a lot of things.

Now I'm learning how to live.

Not surviving or existing but actually LIVING! I have spent so much of my life surviving that I don't know if I've ever lived before.

I'm sitting here on the bedroom floor crying, trying to process my emotions, trying to move beyond survival. I don't want to wet the pillows with my tears and I'm afraid that if I crawl in bed I won't crawl out.

So much has happened in my short life - I could drown in the sorrow of it all - but every second of it made me who I am today. Every second of it made my husband love me. Every second of it made my friends love me.

Flaws and all, I am loved.

I am hurt and hurting and I hurt other people but I am loved. I am liked. People think I am special. People think I am worth investing in.

That makes me cry more than the hurt.

I am loved. I am loved. I am loved. I am loved.

Saying it, not saying it, doesn't make it any more or less true. Whether or not I believe it's true doesn't make it any more or less true. It is fact. It is truth.

It is a truth that is a washing of the wounds for this broken little girl. It hurts, it feels better, it feels worse and it is beneficial.

Responsibility

I still feel responsible for what happened to my family after the sexual abuse was discovered.

I was the victim. I am the survivor. I was the secret keeper.

I could not keep the secret.

I was the one standing between my family and the truth. I could stand no longer. And my family was fractured because of it.

I readily admit that continuing to keep the secret would have killed me. I'm not always sure that would've been a bad thing for my family. Spending this Christmas as a prodigal helped reinforce those feelings.

It is time I accept a different responsibility - I am responsible for trying to mend relationships.

And that starts today.

I have an amazing husband.

I think I have the best husband in the world.

He knows that I haven't the slightest idea how to be a wife and he helps me improve. He asks me to do things that most wives do without thinking and then is still nice me when I forget to do them.

Some people would say that he's nice to me because we're still newlyweds. I've known enough newlyweds to know that's not always the case.

Our disagreements are short and usually end in jokes and/or tickle fights.

He is gentle and calming when I start crying in the middle of the night.

He eats my failed attempts at new food and offers very helpful tips and advice for future attempts. He almost always encourages me to make future attempts.

He wants to buy me any and every kitchen gadget I might ever want to use - and is willing to buy the good stuff.

He complains that he doesn't make enough money to buy me every little thing my heart desires.

He appreciates my willingness and ability to make most of the things we can't afford (and some things we can) and to buy the cheapest versions of things we do buy.

He readily makes adjustments for my medical problems and often asks what I need to make things easier for me. He also encourages me to take the medications I hate taking.

He physically carries me. One time because I was sore and limping. Another time he wanted to carry me because my shoe had broken but I finally convinced him that I could walk just fine under my own power.

He asks to cuddle with no ulterior motives.

When I told him he was going to get his Christmas gift after Christmas, he looked at me with all seriousness and said, "I already got my Christmas gift. I don't need anything else." The gift he was talking about was me.

Sorry ladies, he's taken. :-)

Fact

About 3:30 this morning, when I couldn't sleep, I started crying.
I tried not to cry because I know my husband has an extra long day at work today and I didn't want to wake him. But I couldn't help crying. The best I could do was to cry quietly.

I was crying because I was thinking about the conversation we had last night. I was thinking about my insecurities. And I realized that every one of my interactions with the world is affected by the childhood abuse I survived.

I'm sure I have realized this at least once before but it is something I hoped to... outgrow, to heal beyond, to undo. The affects of abuse cannot be undone or outgrown. Whether or not I can heal beyond them is debatable.

Everything has been affected by the abuse.
Which new recipes I'm willing to try is affected by the abuse. What clothes I buy and wear is affected by the abuse. My personal hygiene has been affected by the abuse. The way I relate to my husband has been affected by the abuse. How I interact with my friends has been affected by the abuse.

I don't know if there is a single moment, a single thought, a single decision that isn't affected by the abuse.

This morning, that fact made me cry.

Today, in the sunlight, that fact is simply... fact.

The abuse made me who I am today. Good, bad and indifferent. It is not the only thing that made me who I am today but it is a huge part of who I am. I'm not always concious of this - if I was I'm sure I'd take a long walk into the ocean - but it is a constant truth. There is a slight comfort in knowing why I am the way I am.

I will never be glad that the abuse happened. But I am learning to appreciate more of the things that have come about because of the abuse.

It is a journey that will not end until the day I die.

That is not the torturous though that it used to be. I am growing and feeling and wanting to live instead of simply surviving.

I have gained hope.

Hope is beautiful.

Music

I cannot sleep. Not yet. I woke up in the middle of the night once again. I can really only write when my husband's back is to me and even then I have to be careful about the light from my screen and the clicking of my keys.

We have a "noise neighbor" who started listening to Christmas music seemingly 24hrs a day. We can only hear muffled bass parts (thanks to basic acoustics... don't get me started on acoustics - I'm likely to tell you everything I know) but it's enough to identify some of the artists - TSO, Burl Ives, Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, Josh Groban... sometimes I can only identify the song - especially with The Little Drummer Boy.

Most of the time I don't even notice the music. During the day I ignore it until I recognize a favorite song of mine. But when I wake up in the middle of the night and have a hard time falling back asleep, that music is maddening! I will not complain to our neighbor. Neither will I complain to the apartment management. (Nat King Cole singing Adeste Fidelis.) In normal situations the music doesn't bother me at all. But I will be annoyed in the middle of the night when I'm already having a hard time sleeping. Since my inability to sleep through the night is not a normal situation for normal people, I will not try to make my noise neighbor change their behavior. I will not be an unreasonable neighbor...

Being awake in the middle of the night does allow me more time to enjoy sharing a bed with my husband. Which is something I seem to enjoy more each night! I have yet to mind his snoring or kicking. I have made peace with the dogs being allowed to sleep between us. I think we've resolved the covers sharing issues - I get the blanket while he gets the flat sheet. (Andy Williams singing Happy Holiday) I like being able to look over and see my sleeping husband. I even somewhat enjoy "hiding" the fact that I'm writing in bed so as not to disturb his slumber.

I will not post this until daytime simply because that is easier and less disruptive for my husband - who is quietly snoring beside me and a dog is sleeping between us. My world is complete.

Without

More and more I find myself writing in bed while my husband is sleeping and I'm wishing I was alseep as well. As far as writing goes, this is not a bad thing. As far as posting goes, however, this means death.
Sometimes I fall asleep writing. Sometimes I fall asleep thinking, "I must remember to post that!" But invariably, I wake up thinking about everything else that must get done.

We're having an informal party next weekend and the preparations for that consume my time. Besides that I am quirky.

And crunchy.

Most people don't have multiple web pages bookmarked for glue recipes. Most people don't know how to make cosmetics out of eggshells. Most people do not daydream about making their own window paint.

I try to be reasonably frugal - I buy ingredients instead of mixes and premade food. I make buttermilk out of plain milk and vinegar. I buy the cheapest herbs and spices I can find.

I am making the best of what I have and trying to learn how to live without. When I make pasta I use a soda can as a rolling pin. I roll out the pasta dough on a cutting board my cousin gave me and I cut the pasta with a pizza cutter my friend got me. (My husband gives me a hard time about the uneven-ness of my pasta. I try to convince him that pasta is suppoed to be thin at one end and half inch wide at the other but he doesn't seem to be buying that.)
I love to bake. When we are low on eggs I make shortbread. When we are low on butter I make more pasta.

I am willing to make just about anything - but the ingredients to make those things cost money. I would prefer to make my own lip balm and moisturizer because the store-bought products I can afford don't provide enough moisture. But I can't afford the simple ingredients to make my own.
I can make cosmetics out of eggshells, but I have no way to apply the cosmetics - my freedom came with a price tag.

I have almost none of the things I'm used to having.

The extent of my winter clothes is a set of long underwear. I could knit myself some winterwear except that I am without my plethora of yarn and knitting needles. Instead, I stay inside as much as possible and wear one of my husband's old jackets when I have to go outside. I look atrocious but it keeps me warm.
I am a natural problem-solver. I could possibly solve one of our pet problems with a cardboard box, yard bags, packing tape and some items we're already using. But we can't afford yard bags. We don't even have regular trash bags. We don't even have a trash can.
I would love to cook with fresh vegetables. I LOVE fresh fruit and berries! We can afford none of that. There is even a local discount distributer and a friend of mine who's willing to share the cost. We still cannot afford fresh fruit and vegetables.
I worry about bed bugs but we can't afford to replace the torn-up plastic covering our mattress. Nor can we afford a mattress pad to make sleeping on torn-up plastic comfortable.
My asthma does not tolerate cold air. We cannot afford the wool blend scarf (or yarn) required to keep moist breath warm. So it hurts me to breathe. And I cough.

The price for my freedom seems, at times, to be extremely high.

This prodigal will not return.

My freedom is worth the price.