K_ and I sat out on the bench and I asked my usual questions.
Beginning with: _How was your day_ and usually ending with a work out or games of ping pong.
K___ needs to buy a vehicle when he gets home. He’s going to get it off Craig’s list, so every week or so he has a new prospect. I ask him about it. This time it is a corvette. He never actually follows through, but he always acts like he might.
_Can you imagine? A corvette. The parts would be expensive but I could learn to work on it._ he says.
K___ is confident when it comes to mechanics. Same as most of us guys, I think. But K___ reminds me regularly one way or another. He will talk about the corvette for days, same as he did the old Nissan truck and the Titan. I have a plan to buy a used car and fix it up in my spare time when I get home, but I haven’t mentioned it to him, it seems normal to me, not something to brag about.
Sometimes K__’s way of conversing will be deceptively similar to someone boasting. W___ used to do that, too. He doesn’t mean it, but I begin to feel uncertain anyway.
We go to the gym. The other guys in the gym are effortlessly confidant, effortlessly have their own power. They joke around, and K___ joins in, while I keep to myself, and feel uncertain.
I feel what isn’t true and it angers me. My body feels shame, insecurity. I know those feelings are wrong. According to Tolle, my mind’s conditioning causes thoughts that create these emotions. But I read what I write and see that my mind is healthy. These emotions are in my body. What they did to my body ..
According to the articles inner barriers recommended:
_Anger = Energy = Power. When we are angry we are feeling raw energy that is ready for use. This is our power._
So I allowed myself to feel angry.
I’m always selling myself short. The reason is that I’ve known few people, had few friends, and fewer relationships. I’ve known few positive experiences. Still, the feeling and tendency is wrong, despite the reasoning. It’s infuriating that I sell myself short, creating dynamics and situations that dishonor the true me.
I wish I had set the house on fire. The four of them inside, consumed in flames as they slept. I wish I could have killed myself when I was seven, like I wanted to, instead of making that deal.
_Intense anger is called rage. It is so intense, that it begs for a physical release,_ the article said. _It is very common to think about violence when we feel rage, but thought is not action and violence is never necessary (except to protect our lives, of course)._
As I bench press, I wish I could punch K___ in the face along with every other guy in the gym. I wish I could go back in time and start hitting people, beating people.
My life didn’t start until I was in my twenties. I know how extreme abuse works. You are on level four, but suddenly forced to play on level twenty something. It’s not until your age reaches that level twenty something that your life begins. Your memory always a land of mystery, like an accessory, like a film playing in your head. The only way to move on is to accept the pain that those years are lost forever.
I can feel those years stolen from me. I want it to go away, so I can go back to living my life. But my life’s empty without the entire circle, without the pain.
The anxiety and nervousness remains because the world had been turned upside down, because it was possible to be raped by the person you least expected. That anxiety and nervousness sabotaged every moment. At the same time I wanted to be liked, I didn’t, afraid of the new danger -- inexplicable violence, indefinable to a little boy.
Every day, every moment, the anxiety roared in my thoughts, and caused knee-jerk reactions from my body, pulling away from any situation that might invite that violence, which meant I would have few, if any, human connections.
The worst part is when I feel the pain and the anger, I’m effortlessly Him. Like some horrible addiction.
I think about how much sex I missed out on. I think about the film In the Bedroom, starring Sissy Spacek, about these older parents whose only child -- a guy in college -- is murdered.
They had invested everything in him, including college, and it was taken from them. They were too old to have more children, so the two of them were technically sexually unsuccessful in life -- which the film plays on, initiating its violent conclusion. But I don’t judge them for it the way I sometimes think to judge myself.
Violence is all I think when I feel this way. I try to hit the punching bag, but the bag feels no pain, so there’s nothing therapeutic there for me. I tend to take it out on K__ by shutting him out. Then I feel worse. Of course I do it this time.
The body can be tricked, and the hateful know it.
I cried in the shower. Not tearful, but I squeezed my chest with my arms, and exhaled, and hung my head down, feeling tears somewhere behind my eyes. I crawled into bed and the same thing happened. I made sure not to make any sound.
They used religion to disconnect me. From age eight to eleven I didn’t listen to myself. I only kept an ear out for what god wanted, what god felt, what god thought.
Earlier, Sgt Sch___ stopped by and sat on the bench as I finished a drink. He was on his way to Sgt D___, his best friend here. He told me how he and Sgt D__ were complete opposites but respected each others opinions. D__ was the son of a preacher, and a Christian republican conservative. S___ was not. Finally I asked him what he really thought about Christianity. He answered quietly, like it was a secret: _I think it’s mind poison._ And I knew what he meant.
There is a difference between indignity and pain, one I’ve never made out before. I don’t mind people seeing my pain, as long as I can feel the difference. I have equated pain with indignity. Hence when I feel, pain, I feel my insecurity the most. It’s an untruth abusers rely on. It’s not pain I fear, it’s further indignities and humiliations. As long as I can write, I can see how indignity and humiliation are not possible.
It will require a leap like the one on June 1st. One I can’t justify. It’s like my confidence has a good argument against me. My lack of confidence now isn’t due to the Abuse of the House but of the numbness I took on.
How can I be confident about myself when I was rarely aware of myself during those years? The leap will be a confidence I cannot back up with a list of stories of coolnesses or successes like K___ can. Otherwise I’ll keep selling myself short.
I looked up a particular college more closely than usual because it seemed promising. I looked at its stats. It had twenty percent more women than men. It is inevitable that I will choose.
Like when I got that job at the restaurant. Suddenly I’m most eligible bachelor. I had to go away for a few weeks of military training and when I returned I was expected to choose.
I might do what I did then. Choose the most good looking simply because I didn’t know any better. Or the most ordinary looking one -- even though she’s crazy -- simply because I feel like I fit in better with her. In the end I secretly chose both, even though they were sisters.
But I won’t choose by how I feel or what I want. When I met E__ it wasn’t a choosing. I was simply impressed by her, and she impressed by me, and what began at that moment was a roller coaster ride at times stabilized and smoothed over by a baby grand piano.
I was immediately impressed with K__ and I guess he with me. But I sold myself short in my friendship. I mistakenly thought he was better than me, so I let him do all the talking, let him think he might be the alpha male, created a dynamic between us that was erroneous and impossible. I do the same with most people I like.
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