malaise

I'm feeling... I'm not sure what. There is something there, something just below the surface but I'm not sure what it is.

I'm incredibly restless and bored. I can't concentrate on anything. I can't sleep, I just lay in bed tossing and turning, looking at the clock, dreading having to go to work in a few hours.

My body feels kind of funny. Tingly almost. I'm trying to get in touch with these feelings, to name them, to honor them and then let them go.

I think I'm anxious, about what I'm not sure. Well, actually lets dig a little bit here. I don't want to go to work. I really dislike my job. I always say it pays the bills, but being utterly unhappy and seriously stressed out for 8 hours a day is not good enough to pay the bills. Some days I would rather be living in a cardboard box then go to work. But at the same time I at least have a well paying job that does more than pay the bills. So I guess it evens out, to some extent anyway.

I am also excited. I haven't seen my boyfriend in over 2 weeks, he gets back in town on the 3rd and I'm picking him up from the airport. I can't wait to see him. We've only been together for about 2 months now, but I've fallen pretty hard. He treats me like gold, something I've never experienced in a relationship before. And I trust him. I trust that he won't hurt me physically. I can actually sleep soundly when we are together. I feel safe in his arms, like no one can ever hurt me again. I miss him terribly.

I am also sad. Sad because... I don't know. I'm sad. I can feel the tears pressing behind my eyes, but I won't let them out. I won't let them fall. I can't. I've still got the stigma that crying is weak ingrained so far into me that I just can't cry. I can only cry when things mount to a certain point and then I've lost control, and my tears take over. Until that point, there are no tears. I fight, I exert an incredible amount of energy into not crying, that if I just cried and let it out I don't think I'd be quite as exhausted. I just don't know how to get the words of my mother out of my mind, "crying is for babies... you're not a baby are you?" Every time I start to cry, I can hear her screaming that to me as a child, only making me cry harder. And when that happened, out came the belt "you want something to cry about, I'll give you something to cry about" and down went my pants and she would repeatedly hit me with the belt until I either screamed or just stopped crying. Sometimes it was so bad it hurt to stand, sit, walk, anything. I would lay in bed for hours on my stomach staring at the wall wishing I was dead.

We were out at the cabin, I'm not sure how old I was, probably 9 or 10. There was a cabinet between the beds with these hinges that stuck out about 1/2 an inch from the door. When I was climbing up onto the top bunk I hit my knee on the hinge. It cut my knee down to the bone. I remember sitting there staring at it. It hadn't started bleeding yet, and I knew if I said something I would just get in trouble for interrupting my parents. I don't remember it hurting very much either. So I just sat on the bed, looking at the huge gash in my knee when it started pouring blood. I didn't know what to do. There was blood on the bed, blood dripping down onto the floor, I didn't want to get in trouble for making a mess. I lowered myself off the top bunk and went to get towels to clean up the blood, but the blood was running down my leg, leaving a trail on the carpet. I was so scared, not because of the cut, but because of what would happen if my mother and father saw the blood and the mess that I made, never mind the fact that my knee cap is exposed and I have a gash of about an inch on my knee. I didn't even make it to the bathroom before my mother walked into the cabin and saw the blood. She started screaming at me, I started to cry. She slapped me really hard and told me to clean it up. I pointed to my knee and she looked at, told me it was my problem and to clean up the fucking mess, that there better not be a drop of blood anywhere or else I would really get it. I went to the medicine cabinet and all we had were band-aids. I got a little creative. I grabbed an Always Pad and cut it in half. I took the skin that was hanging there and pushed it on top of the gash the best I could and put pressure on it to stop the bleeding, grabbed some duct tape and taped the pad to my knee. I then proceeded to clean up the blood, not a drop was left behind. I had to change the pad a couple of times on my knee before I went to bed. By this time, it was throbbing and incredibly painful. It was at the upper part of my knee, so every time I bent my knee slightly it would just reopen and start bleeding again. They never did take me to the doctor to get stitches. It took a very long time for my knee to heal, and to this day, there is a large malformed lump of skin that turns purple when I'm cold or wet, like going swimming.

I guess I'm sad because of the above, and all the other memories that are floating around in my head that I wish I could just take a plunger and flush out. I don't really remember anything happy about my childhood. I'm sad because I never had love as child, not the way a child should be loved. Protected. Cared for. I'm starting to realize the loss, and the fact that it can never be recovered. Sometimes I think writing about this stuff just causes more pain, more sadness. Sometimes I think it's not worth it. But the goal here is to realize these things, to understand them, acknowledge them and accept them.

Sometimes I don't think I will ever reach that goal.