I packed from 7pm last night until 7am this morning. Almost everything is packed now. There are only a few things left (including the computer) but I can’t pack them until I get some more boxes. Mom, Randy, and my roomie were supposed to help pack, but they didn’t really. My mom packed a few boxes from the kitchen, Randy packed 2 boxes and all my roomie did was pack his room.

My back is sore as hell. Today we have to move all this shit. Randy and the others will definitely have to help. I have to get it done today because I have to go back to work tomorrow. I probably won’t be back online until April 5th. That’s when the cable company is connecting the internet at the new house.

I’m happy to be moving out of this apartment, but I’m freaking exhausted. I had to rush packing because we didn’t find a house until yesterday. I didn’t want to start packing before because I was afraid we’d have to stay here another month and I didn’t want to have to live out of boxes.

Anyway, I need to get going. I have to go rent a U-Haul truck.

Memories of my past have been haunting me. I had buried them deep within myself and kept them there for so long that even I had all but forgotten about them. They weren’t gone; not even close. They were in hiding - growing and festering inside me - dreaming of the day when they could erupt and rise again… all at once.

That day has come. I shouldn’t be surprised. I knew I would eventually have to confront my past before I could truly let it go, but that isn’t making it any easier. Luckily, I’m not going through it alone anymore.

I’ve been feeling shitty since Friday. I didn’t mention it in my last post, but the real trigger for Saturday’s near-cutting crisis was seeing the man who raped me when I was seventeen. It made me feel like it had just happened all over again. I had no idea it would affect me like this… its been almost 11 years.

I had been raped prior to that countless times by my ex-stepfather and another family member. You would think I was accustomed to it by then - and I was, but only by those who habitually sexually abused me. Typically, the invasions began while I was sleeping. If I awoke during the violation I usually pretended I was asleep until it was over. It was easier to block it out if I thought of it as a bad dream. Sexual assault is always scathing, but the usual attacks I endured were non-violent and over fairly quickly; except my defloration - I was six years old. I won’t go into a lot of detail about the rape itself. It is still too upsetting for me. I don’t want to trigger a cutting session.

I’ve had a pretty rough week. I feel like I’m whining, but I have to have some kind of outlet for my feelings. I thought my life was the hardest it could be before I went to Brookhaven. I hoped that after leaving the hospital everything would magically be okay. I wanted that to happen so badly. I thought if I made myself believe that everything would okay then it would be. Unfortunately, few things are as simple as we would like them to be.

The truth is that life was pretty simple when I was discharged. I had learned so much and I was so determined to get better. I thought I had finally learned how to fix myself and I didn’t even give a second thought to how life would really be. I thought I was making so much progress, but I’m not so sure now. I’m really confused.

There are very stressful things burdening me: I have 6 days to find a house, pack and move; I’m having financial difficulties due to the time I was off work, among other things; and I haven’t even started doing the work for my algebra class which ends in about five weeks.

About half an hour ago, I was lying in bed thinking about the things that are stressing me out. I was trying to find solutions, but there aren’t any simple ways to resolve my concerns, problems, or issues. I began getting discouraged because I let things get to this point. A short while later I started blaming, chastising, and berating myself - just like the good ol’ days. Before I knew it I had an urgent need to feel pain and see blood trickling down my legs. The yearning filled me completely - I was paralyzed with it.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life and I have been punishing myself for those mistakes for years. I have made myself so miserable it hurt to even breathe. I have always felt inherently bad and I deserved everything that happened. My therapists tell me that I had to blame myself for all the bad things that happened to me in order to survive my childhood. They say I had to keep the people who did those things good because they were the people I had to depend on. At first, the concept sounded completely ridiculous, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it and it is starting to make sense. Maybe I’m not as horrible as I had convinced myself I was.

As a little girl I could not fathom that my step-father would verbally, sexually and physically abuse me for his own pleasure, so I must have deserved or provoked it. I couldn’t allow myself to admit that my mother cared more about men and neglected me because she was selfish and only cared about her own needs. I told myself that I was bad, unimportant, and unworthy. I thought everything bad that happened was my fault.

For example, I was six years old the night my step-father took my virginity.

While I was in Brookhaven I admitted that I needed to make some serious changes in myself, my behavior, and my self-image. After years of trying to cope with some of the more damaging things in my life, such as: being physically, sexually, emotionally, and verbally abused by my alcoholic/drug addict step-father and others; ignored by my drug addict/co-dependent mother; and rejected by my biological father, I didn’t think very highly of myself. In fact, I don’t think I could have hated myself more. I was plagued with feelings of hopelessness, shame, guilt, worthlessness, despair, and rage throughout most of my childhood and adolescence as well as my entire adult life, thus far. I didn’t have much faith that anything good could come out of my life.

I started down the path of recovery almost two months ago. I thought after making the choice to get help and get better it would be easy - or at least easier than my life had previously been. I also thought that my decision was final, but it wasn’t. There are frequent stop signs on my path and some of those stops have more crossroads, some of which lead to dead ends.

Yesterday’s post took a lot of energy. I relived the entire month of January for that entry. To my surprise, I cried a bit while writing it. Carrie, my old therapist at Brookhaven, would have thought it a breakthrough. She tried to get me to let myself cry, but I could not. I had forgotten how exhausting crying could be.

After I shed my tears, I was not ashamed over crying as I usually am. I did not feel weak. I felt pain and relief at the same time. It hurt like hell to think about some of those things again, but I was relieved because I pulled through it and because I am not in that dark place any longer. I never want to go back there.

I found out Wednesday that Directv wiped my record of the 33 attendance occurrences that I incurred while I was in Brookhaven. Six occurrences are grounds for termination. I’m satisfied now. I don’t loathe going to work like I was because I don’t have to worry about being fired and escorted out anymore. I’m not sure what caused their sudden change. It could be one of two reasons: either they developed compassion overnight and decided to accept the medical proof I provided regarding my condition or they received the discrimination complaint I filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I’m betting that the latter is the true reason.

I didn’t want to accept the reality of my circumstances because I hadn’t figured out the reasons for them. The fact is that I may never fully comprehend the reasons for certain events, people, things, and circumstances in my life. Nevertheless, I have an obligation to myself to accept the reality in which I live and act accordingly.