Relief!

Incredibly for the last three days or so I have felt amost normal again! The deep asuaging crap has subsided somewhat, I've been able to drink coffee for the first time in years and years and not feel funny.

Mind this morning I feel a little rough - as I must have had 3/4 of a bottle of nice wine with the curry I had with my mate Chris. Still - that's to be expected.

Yesterday I even spent three or so hours laying down loft insulation (1/3 done) - which I a) would not have had the motivation for before, and b) nor the energy.

I know there's still lots of things to work through. My youngest daughter returned from being away for the last 4 days or so and immediately I felt grumpy towards her. Why? Is it because she presses 'dad' buttons, or is it because she can be a self focussed mare? Everything is hard work with her, from asking her to get ready for bed, do chores, not do something. She wants to wrap herself around us, won't let my wife or I have a hug on our own (I've stopped that now) etc.

But. That aside, it's nice to not be so weighed down by working through crushing feelings.

Trapped

It is unbelievable how trapped I feel.. in the here and present - and yet it is a direct response to how trapped I was when I was a kid..

My dad, my mum and my sisters. My next oldest sister was like a shadow until I was around 11. She would follow me everywhere, and I guess I felt responsible for her pain even though there was nothing I could do about it. She was bullied so much at school. She was called "Medusa". She had to wear unfashionable "nursing" shoes. She was so unhappy. So desperately unhappy. And there was nothing I could do - was that another reason I pulled back from her? I couldn't deal with her pain. It wasn't my fault. I wasn't her parent. And yet no one else was doing anything.

So - she was my shadow. Then I had another three sisters who all looked to me in varying degrees. I was the oldest son - which conferred a certain status - but I was also the oldest, therefore responsible. I couldn't escape. I couldn't get out. I mean I did, I did get out. But at fifteen for example I had one friend I saw at church (he lived 45 minutes away by car). I was trying to make friends with another lad but he wasn't much of a friend himself. So really, the reality was I had no daily friends.

But there were always people at home.

The word that goes through my mind as I think about my wife at the moment is "cloying". The definition of cloying is "To cause distaste or disgust by supplying with too much of something originally pleasant, especially something rich or sweet; surfeit"

Yep. That's pretty much it. Something which should be nice, safe, pleasant becomes sickly. That is my mum and dad. My family. It's like they want to prove their love so much that they become cloying. Horrible. Sickly. Control, emotional blackmail, sickliness...

I hate it. HATE IT. And now I feel like that with my wife. And she is soft, gracious, sensitive. I find it so hard to separate the feelings I am contending with from my wife. She tells me she is soft and giving me lots of space. That she is not dominating. And I believe her, and yet I feel like this.

It is really really really difficult, hard. Like pins being stuck into my body, all over my body, whilst carrying a baby full of pins on my insides. I want to break free from it. Run a million miles to get away from it. Fight it with all I have.

I said to my wife yesterday that I wanted to run against a brick wall, throw myself at it. That's interesting she said, that you don't want to take it out on those who did this to you, but yourself.

It's so hard. So then to be with my wife is like being with my mum, dad and sisters all in one go. And that is difficulty personified. It makes me feel sick. Makes me want to run away.

My mind knows that I love her. Fancy her. Yet I shy away. Keep myself locked up and defended. It is so difficult to be with her, allow her to, for example, place her leg over mine. It's like I am forcing myself into incest.

She challenged me yesterday with.. it's right to feel the feelings, but it's the old template. Your adult mind needs to smash the old template, whilst allowing yourself to come to terms with what happened. Sounds so easy, but I tell you know, it feels impossible.

I mean what a horrible statement. Being with my wife feels like being with my mum, dad and sisters. All of them. All in bed with me. All wanting a cuddle from me. All wanting my time. My energy. My goodness. My strength. My attention. My care. They want me. All that I have to offer. All that I have and more. They won't stop. They just keep wanting, taking, demanding, controlling, making me feel guilty if I don't.

SSSSTTTTOOOOOPPPPPP!!!!!!

OOoowww says mum in that hurt voice. But I only wanted a cuddle. A horribly incestuous sickly cloying life draining wraith like cuddle.

I do not want to cuddle you. I do not want to give you attention. I do not want to make up for your hurt and your pain. I cannot do that, I will not do that. I find it repulsive, cloying, disgusting and it makes tremors run through my body. I hate it. Stop it. I don't want you to do it anymore. I will not let you do it anymore. And I don't want to put up with the guilt you make me feel either. I'm not going to put up with that. It is truly horrible, paralysing.

The only way I can stop this is not to see you - for if I see you you want to continue as if nothing happened. Enfold me back within your embrace. But I can't let you do that for to do that will place me back where I was. I refuse to do that, so I refuse to see you.

Just rereading what I just wrote it's unbelievable how I feel.
agfo jgf jdfk adf sdfb sdfb jjsdfb skdfjb ksdfg df bjadfb hfjh f hj nb n b n

Still so much to work through

I still make my wife feel invisible. I still feel like a small child when she tells me how she feels. I still feel like she is telling me off. I still want to defend myself. It's still a case of right and wrong.

The difference however is that I at least have a greater understanding of what is going on. I still feel like the little boy - afraid of getting it wrong, defending himself in case he has got it wrong.

And that's painful too. That despite the therapy I've undergone I still feel not only crap as I come to terms with what happened to me, but that I still have so much to work through.

PPPPPPPPPPPPPPOooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww crap. Bloody bollocks crap. As I've already said I feel exhausted and tired. Why? Because I'm processing and coming to terms with the fact that a) it was crap, and b) it happened to me. That I was hurt. That it happened not to some fictional character on the telly - but that it happened to a little boy. And that little boy is me. Me in all my personal glory. Me in all my pain. Crap. It hurts. It's crap. It's not easy. It's painful. It's there. It's not going away. It was personal. It was directed at me. I was the one caught in the middle. It was me. Me. Me as a little boy. Me. Moi. The person I call I. I. Me. It happened to me.

And that realisation hurts. It pains. I grieve over the pain I myself have gone through. The wounds I have suffered. The things I could not defend myself against. The unchecked pain. The directed attacking emotion seeking pain. The personally on me centred pain. Right at the very core of who I am. Me. It happened to me.

IT HAPPENED AND IT HAPPENED TO ME. AND IT BLOODY HURTS. CRAP AND FUCKING CRAP.

I feel full of pain. Full of grief. I couldn't escape it, and I can't escape it. There's only one way and that is to go through it. Unsuppress that which was suppressed. Uncover that which was covered. Allow light to shine, truth to work it's freeing grace. And yet I can't escape, whatever the lofty words, how much it just hurts.

It just hurts. It just does. I feel it every minute of every day. Every second of every minute.

The truth of therapy

Working through crap. Wading through crap. Exhausted through crap. Crap on crap.

Energy levels are almost non existent. Don't have the motivation to do anything which takes energy. See a live TopGear show, decorate, tile, stain wood... I want it easy.

My wife's therapist explains that that's a by product of therapy. You are so focussed on dealing with painful things that the body almost shuts down to protect itself whilst the emotional/psyche side are in regeneration.

Why do therapy then? would be an obvious question.

Primarily because it's the search of truth. The narrow road. The way to the Father. The way to real and lasting relationships. Honesty. Openness. Genuine. Caring. Empathy. All the things that Jesus was so good at, and I've been so crap at.

Truth. You will know truth on the inwards parts. I am truth - by me you get to the Father. Where the Spirit is there is truth. Truth - sharp as a two edged sword. Cutting as a laser. If you open yourself up to truth then truth will in. Much as light will dispell darkness. So truth dispells lies. Deception. 'That which is hidden will be proclaimed from the roof tops'. That's what truth does. It makes it visible.

And that's what therapy is. It brings light into darkness. But boy does it hurt. When you believe one thing and have built your life on it, to realise that it's not so is painful. So very painful. Disorientating. The realisation that so much of what I've built my life on is sand. I thought it was solid, but it is in fact shifting.

To realise this is painful - especially when I am about to turn forty. But how painful would it be to stand before God and have this revelation after I'd died? Knowing that I'd lived my whole life on a bed of fabrication. Defences against past hurts which limited my development? Believing those around me were like the monsters I experienced in childhood.

No. I'd much rather deal with the reality of life in the now moment - than live with rose coloured glasses not daring to probe beneath the surface. Not knowing why I react so strongly to others when they probe my defences.

How ever much truth hurts, I'd rather know it than hide from it. So if truth is painful, then I must surely get on with it? Not flinch in the face of it but welcome it as a faithful friend.

A battle - Me v Parents

I realise that I am in a battle.

One the one side is me. my childhood. My experiences. My feelings.

And these appear to be in direct opposition to my parents. Their beliefs. Their requirements. Their desires.

And the two battle against each other. I want to believe what happened to me, they don't. I want to say what hurts. They don't. Worse, they say that if I am honest that I am directing a sustained and personal attack upon them. That acting as such means that I don't love them, am deliberately hurting them. My mother would have me believe that what happened to me didn't. That dad wasn't violent. That my childhood wasn't unhappy. That I didn't feel bullied, lost, alone, intimidated, fearful of my own father.

I had to work soooo hard at being able to cope in the world, enabling myself to be able to be a father, husband and a successful business man. It took everything I had. Because my parents didn't give it to me, I had to give it to myself. Now, in therapy, I'm having to work so hard again to go through all the crap.

So that's twice. Thanks. Crap. It hurt so much the first time. And it's hurting just as much the second. My parents have been crap. Crap at protecting me as a child, crap at being parents as I grew up, crap with my wife, my girls, me. Everything in fact.

They are just crap parents.

And still the battle rages. A part of me telling me that I am wrong. That I don't feel like this. That my parents weren't really like that. Alice Miller would say that it's as a result of the fourth commandment to honour thy parents. But I'm not sure it is, though of course my parents drilled that one into me. I think there is a more base reason, that me want to believe the best about those who brought me into this world, fed me and clothed me.

And the battle rages. And it's tiring. Exhausting.

Sea of Fatique - And a Prison

For the last week or so I have felt really really tired. I didn't visit my wife's family at the weekend for the same reason. I felt better this morning, but feel exhausted again now.

Why do I feel so tired I have been asking myself.

Is it because I'm still working through the aftermath of the realisation of how I feel towards my mum? Or rather the feelings I feel myself in regards to my mum? Is it because I'm still in the aftermath of the email to my dad which he still hasn't responded to? Is it because I'm realising just how exhausted I was doing the company? The impact of a lack of parenting by my parents? I.e. just about everything. Catching up with me. Catching up with me because I'm giving myself time to allow it do so. Despite how frustrating it is..

Sigh. I just feel so tired. I'm sleeping fine, more than eight hours a night. Yet I've had a snooze every afternoon this week bar today as I was round at a neighbours. When I got back I felt so exhausted I needed a coffee (which I never drink!) before driving my youngest daughter to a hospital visit.

Crap. My parents were crap. I had a crap upbringing. From the age of 2-8 it was like living in a prison. Nowhere to escape the rampages of my father, no friends, in a foreign place... actually I hated it. I don't think I've said that before, or thought it. But as I look back, it was horrible. What was there to like? What? There was nothing. Crumbs at most. An old lady who was nice. And really that's it. No friends. Foreign language wher my dad taught me everyone was out to get me. A sister who stuck to me like glue. Fear. Abandonment. Rejection. Intimidation.

There was NOTHING positive about the whole experience. I can see no benefit to me. No loving care. No warm feelings.

Yes Mark, it really was that bad.

A living prison. In constant mortal danger. Basic needs taken care off. Emotional needs pushed asunder.

A living prison. And if it wasn't for moving to england at eight and making a friend over the road I think I would have died. And I mean that literally. It was that bad.

I hated aspect of when I came back to england too. The bullying mainly, as well as the home life. What home life?

And I'm allowed to think that, and feel that, and no one can argue against it. That's what it was. No matter what my mum would have me believe.

Mum, it was bad. And you didn't let me believe it was because that would have reflected on you, and you couldn't handle that. So you had me believe that what I was experiencing wasn't the truth - that really I was a happy loved boy. But that's crap and I can see that now. Or rather I'm starting to see that. But as I see it I have to allow myself to feel what I really felt, and that's horrible. Because I've lived in a lie all these years, perpetuated by my parents. For them to know how I really felt would reflect badly on them, and they can't allow that.

So, I lived in a misreable prison up to the age of eight, and a prison after that apart from when I was allowed out.

Great.

MUM, YOU WERE WRONG. AND YOU STILL ARE. AND STOP TRYING TO GET ME TO BELIEVE WHAT YOU WANT ME TO BELIEVE.

Exhaustion

Well. I'm washed out again. Mentally and even emotionally I feel ok. In fact for the end part of the week I'd felt really good. But then two days ago I started to feel really exhausted, as if I needed to sleep all the time. I couldn't work it out. We skipped visiting family and seeing Blackpool illuminations for that reason. Skipped seeing family today too.

I feel like I've undertaken a two year tour of Afghanistan. I've got back home and now I'm feeling the full effects of the traumas I underwent there. It's like my body wants to shut down whilst it recovers.

So I look back at what I've done over the last few weeks (and years!). Two weeks ago was a major thing - seeing how trapped I felt by my mum. YURHFHCH! The feeling was so strong, that to remain with my wife took some effort. Real emotional deep guts type. And I think that that, as well as the impact of my life has left me feeling utterly wasted.

And I'm trying to listen to my body. And it's saying it's tired. So don't do anything taxing like driving a long way. Seeing lots of people...

And be nice to myself. Take it easy. Thank you Lord for an understanding wife.

Ramifications of entrapment

So, a week later and how am I doing? The realisation that I felt as trapped by my wife as I did my mum was such a shock. When my therapist asked me yesterday how I was feeling, or where I was feeling it I said throughout my entire body.

As if it was a major trauma. In fact it reminds me of when I was a young boy (around 5) watching a film with some older boys/girls. A man in Africa whilst asleep had the lower portion of his leg chopped off (gangrene?) - and ever since my left lower leg feels "funny" whenever blood/gore etc is talked about.

That's what I could feel when I sat with my therapist. A very strong sensation.

I realised that not only had my dad been a crap father, but my mother had been a crap mum. Great. Crap parents when I was born, crap as I was growing up, crap when I left home, crap when I got married, crap when I had my own children, crap as they were growing up, crap now. All in all, crap.

Entrapment

Sat last night with my wife I was struggling with feelings of entrapment. But why?

Firstly we had spent the day together. When we got home my wife wanted me to hug her on the sette (a cuddle) as she had a cold. That was when I first felt it. I wanted to get on and so something for me. But I cuddled her for five minutes or so then headed off to my laptop to do some writing.

I ordered a kebab for tea, then after tea I was wondering whether I would go on the xbox, maybe download the photos from my camera.. but my wife was wanting my presence. I felt trapped. I sat on the settee next to her and she placed her legs over mine. I was really battling and wanted to run. So much in fact that I felt adrenalin pumping down my legs to the soles of my feet. As I pondered this a feeling of utter revulsion came over me as I realised that it felt as if I was trapped by my mum.

YYYyyyyyyyyyyyeucchhhhhhhhhhhh! Incest Alert! I can't begin to explain how that feels. Revolting. Sick to the pit of my stomach. Poor me and my poor wife! I mean, what did either of us do to deserve that!

I had to get up, and sit in another chair whilst I tried to think it though. When I told her some 20 minutes later she shuddered too.

This morning lying in bed I thought some more about the whole sordid thing. Was it that I thought my wife was my mum (in a transferrence or projected way) - or was is the fear of entrapment? The same fear I feel when I think of my sisters.

IN FACT - GET OFF! I FEEL SICK TO THE VERY CENTRE OF MY BEING JUST THINKING ABOUT THIS. That horrible wraithlike sickly sticky entrapment which traps me in a web of disgusting sentimental guilt. SHUDDER!

MOTHER - get off me! NOW! GET AWAY! RRROOOOOOOARRRRRRRRRRRR. GET AWAY. GET OFF. GET YOUR SLIMINESS OFF ME NOW! STOP TRAPPING ME. STOP USING FEMINE CONTROL TO GET ME TO DO WHAT YOU WANT. IT STINKS. IT'S HORRIBLE. IT'S DEMONIC. IT'S FOUL. IT'S DISGUSTING. GET OFF ME NOW. GET AWAY FROM NOW. YOU ARE NOT PERMITTED TO COME NEAR ME UNLESS I SAY YOU CAN, AND RIGHT NOW I AM SAYING YOU CAN'T. GET AWAY FROM ME. GET OUT OF MY SIGHT. REMOVE YOURSELF FROM ME. IN JESUS NAME.

Picture a man on all fours. Wanting to puke, lost in a mist of confusion. That would be me.

It's the first time in my therapy process that I have wanted to call my therapist. Help! I feel like my wife is my mum. And it's the most foul horrible slimy putrid disgusting revolting thing I've ever considered.

What can I do now? Focussing on it as I am right now makes me want to vomit with all that is in me. And then some more.. Or I package it away and get on with my thing. But that leaves me operating woefuly short in my capacity as husband. And my wife pays the price. As she has and is doing.

Mum - why did you control me so much? Control. Dominate. Jezebel. Using that whily femine charm on your own son is incest. Getting that little boy to do things for you (nothing sexual I hasten to add!) by utilising that skill of yours was wrong. I did nothing wrong. It was not me. It was you. Your weakness. Your need for control. Your need to get us as kids to do the things you wanted. You could not handle any form of backchat or independance - as in so doing we would stir the wrath of dad. And you couldn't handle that either.

Do you did all in your power to stop the boat from rocking. You used your secret weapon. Dad's weapon was very much in the open. We all knew about that. But you were secretive, slimy, sentimental. Control. Manipulation. ojjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjhEUCH!

Let's get some things straight.

MY WIFE IS NOT MY MUM!

MY WIFE IS NOT TRYING TO ENTRAP ME!

ENJOYING MY WIFE IS IN NO WAY RELATED TO INCEST!

IT WAS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT TO WANT TO REBEL AGAINST MY MUM. IT WAS RIGHT FOR ME TO LEAVE FOR UNIVERSITY AND NOT COME BACK. IT IS RIGHT FOR ME TO NOT TO WANT TO SEND CARDS ON MOTHERS DAY. IT IS RIGHT FOR ME TO NOT WANT TO SUBJECT MYSELF TO HER CONTROL AND MANIPULATION. MUM - IT IS YOU WHO WAS IN THE WRONG. I WAS A BOY. I WANTED YOUR PROTECTION AND NURTURING. YOU USED ME.