Removing The Mask

 

My thoughts are scattered. I have wanted to write but have been flooded with so many emotions that I am not sure where to begin and what should and should not be shared. I will try to keep it short.

 

The curse and blessing of me… LOL I am told I am attractive so I will take their word for it but as a poet and writer I must be a goddess…I say that because people virtually fall in love with my pics and read me and get lost. I don’t get it but I must admit that the virtual attention becomes somewhat validating. I begin to accept it knowing it is virtual and a waste of energyin most cases, a few are great forever friends. Most of these men have wives, girlfriends, kids and lives outside of the net, yet when one gets caught up in the web of me I become an obsession. I am being really honest here. It ain’t my fault yet I feel responsible for their lack of self control and at the same time part of me likes it. It is weird. Maybe it is sue to the insecure parts of me, or the single woman that needs male attention.   But I feel it my duty to keep boundaries set and I fail at that some times. For the record these dealings don’t go beyond a screen and them writing how much I am everything.

 

It happens on my job too. I am become this object craved. It gives me mixed feelings. To be desired but not wanted. What I mean by that is so many of these men are involved so I am what they wished they had…. Or so they say. The other scenario is the single men in my life that tell me they aren’t where they should be for me. I deserve more. I am “too” much of everything. Again I become this larger than life object. I think I have been an object since a child which is probably why I have so many issues with the way I look. I remember grown men looking at me in inappropriate ways. I remember how theirs eyes burned my skin. I also remember the ones that touched me or made me sit on their laps. In some ways I am tired of being the object of lustful and fleshly desires but due to those perverted instances I think some parts of me need it even if only on a subconscious level.

 

 A sister and I was talking today about our metal functioning and realizing how much being molested has played a role in our self image. I am just now dealing with these things. I spent most of my life running from my past. At the age of 23 my past began to catch up with me but I swallowed it again. I was still caught up in a lot of traumatic and unhealthy relationships (with my mom and boyfriend) so I didn’t have time to deal with the past because my present was destructive. Then I met Ramsey in 04 almost six years later and his love begin to purge the pain form those sexual crimes committed against me. My earliest recollection is of about the age of 4 or 5. One of my parent’s friends used to make me sit on his lap facing him and grind. He used to always tell me how he was going to get my parent’s to let me stay the night with him and we would take a shower together. In the one incident I remember I recall feeling so many ways of awkward. My young body could feel the sensations that didn’t feel bad but my mind and heart felt bad. There was a guilt and shame as I did what an adult told me to do on his command. I must have known it was wrong because I didn’t tell my parent’s. Funny how you can feel responsible for protecting an offender. How a young mind can see the fall out of such events and want to protect all the adults involved with no regard for their own safety.

 

So when Ramsey came I couldn’t run anymore. I wasn’t used to healthy love. My parents were dysfunctional. My dad was absent. My mom was there but absent. The love he gave me was so new. It was scary. I was so used to neglect, pain, abuse that is made it hard for me to just be loved. To just receive and not have to give anything back. I remember telling him to leave me alone because the mess started to bubble out as he and I were together. Molestation and rape began to cloud my heart and mind and I had told myself that I was never affected by those things that I was stronger than that. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

 

Well, meaning people that have been taught as children not to cry when they skin their knee began to shut the process down again. I swallowed it back down. Ramsey was a man of God, so he tried to help me walk out some of my healing but he too felt like it was the past and I had to “get over it”. Being that I didn’t like being that vulnerable that I was what I did. I got over it by shutting it back down under the surface of my soul. I lied to myself that it wasn’t a big deal afraid to see the pain and feeling as if I couldn’t afford to be hurting because I had way too much to do. I also had way too many people looking up to me and depending on me. Then Ramsey died just shy of 2 years after my brother’s murder and now there was something new to swallow down.  I swallowed my brother’s murder. I swallowed down Ramsey’s sudden death and swallowed down my childhood heart aches that were trying to surface. I mean that is what is expected anyway because I am not allowed to feel anything other than great.

 

So here I am three years later and faced with facing everything. I marvel at people that tell you to just get over it v/s just get through it.  We teach or selves to suck things up and swallow them down instead of facing them and what happens are they manifest in our thoughts and actions almost undetected. Those parts of our humanity that we believe we are not entitled to become wrong desires, negative relationships, unwise decisions, fits of rage and anger, bouts of depression, lack of energy, doubt, fear, numbness, impatience, anxiety, compulsion, obsession, and the list goes on and on.  So I am going through things that have been buried and things I was told to just let go of. Let go without realizing they were? You can’t let go of things you haven’t even fully acknowledged as being real. You can full your mind into accepting any reality but the subconscious will control you far beyond your realization. So today I face me as if for the first time, yet again.

 

 I have been noticing how much we are so afraid of being human. I am realizing how we stifle the natural processes of healing God designed our beings to experience. Could it be we afraid to see other people deal with hurt because we may have to face our own? Why is that tears cause so many people to be uneasy? You will hear people say don’t cry cause you are going to make me cry as if it is the cardinal sin. When people comfort each other it is usually to make them stop crying not to reassure them but to put a muzzle on the flow of emotion. We even stifle our laughter in fear we will look silly or childish. We become rigid and afraid of anything that shows we are not in control of every breath but honestly we are not control of any breath. If we were, most of us would never die, or the other some of us would quit breathing today.  Even something as simple as handing a crying individual a tissue tells the mind to compose itself because we have taught ourselves that tears are a lack of composure.

 

Earlier this year I posted a blog entitled Naked typos and all (http://tish050975.multiply.com/journal/item/776/Being_Naked..._Typos_and_all_.._2.6.8) and my dear friend Fruhlings felt the need to pose a question of sorts.  He said something to the effect of well I will be able to tell if you are really changing or if these are words you are just typing. I will post the link because that is the condensed version of his comment. I was furious about it because it was bit condescending to me. But I was more so furious because that is the attitude we take with each other of I will be the judge of your growth. The greatest changes that take place in an individual is usually so intimate that even those closest to them don’t see it so how can we through a screen fully determine another soul’s progress. Anyhow I am sure his posting actually came from a place of encouragement but the way it came off didn’t rub well with me.

 

He also said something about my words on here vs real life. I want to say this again and hopefully everyone will get about me I am Tish here and here… I don’t play some role on the computer. I don’t have a computer persona and a home persona…  I am me online and off. I don’t feel any freer here than I do in my real life. In other words I am as “naked” as I can be here in accordance with what I feel needs to be exposed and following God’s timing for expression of certain things. I haven’t been sharing as much because I am doing me with out too many interruptions. I am doing me without the well meaning rhetoric that we tell each other because it is the expected response. I am doing me with out apology or need for approval at least in this venue. My growth and lack there of and the changes being made are solely mine to judge and of course God.

 

I don’t need the suck it up and get over it message I preach that to myself enough and I have tried that for 32 years. I am at the place where I can call dung, dung and know that it is okay. Sometimes things get dungy… Sometimes I am a mess. We sit here and tell people that have lost a love one to get over it. My brother has been dead 5 years in May and guess what I am not over it. I won’t ever be over it but I am finally getting through it because I allow myself the right to mourn him, grieve him, rejoice him, and miss him. Okay he is in a better place but I am not (at least in that sense) so I allowed to have human reaction.  The funny part is these emotions even God has. The scripture said God was grieved. The scripture said Jesus wept bitterly. All I am saying if God can grieve some stuff so can I. I have decided that if I have children I won’t discourage their tears when something hurts them. I will console them and love them and say I know it hurts right now but Baby you will feel better and kiss them and give them the healthy amount of attention they need as children so they don’t grow up to be maladjusted and disillusioned adult lying to them  selves about the truth of who they are.

 

 I am done. I am not sure when I will blog again. I am not sure if this adds healing to another or not. This one right here is for me…I love you all.. Be well.

 

Author's Note

This hasn't been proofed yet.

Reviews

[Mr. Deft Diction]

Very personal. Another side to your writing. Keep going with this.