12/21/04

My third week with Aaron was different. Last week he said he wanted to talk about my mom's death. For the first time I didn't feel afraid to talk about it.

I walked into Aaron's office and the first thing he said to me was, "How is your depression?". I wasn't sure what to say. It took my by surprise that he asked that. We had talked about my depression a little it the first week I went, but that's all.

We talked about how bad it had been in the past and how it changed when I was living on my own.

I felt so frustrated, just like I did my second visit with Joy. I was frustrated that Aaron was focusing on my depression and not on Jack.

I talked to Hayley about it. Then I talked to my husband and he told me I should just go with the flow. If Aaron wanted to talk about the depression we should. Maybe it was for a reason.

After I moved out of my parents house I wondered how my dad would do not having me to yell at and be rude to. Sister Parker and Joy both asked me if I thought he would turn to my mom. I hadn't heard him do or say anything to anyone else but me, well except for that time with my aunt.

12-16-2004

I had my second meeting with Aaron. At first we went over what we had talked about the first time. We got more in detail about what happened with Jack. The only problem is that I don't remember much. It has become very frustrating. I want to be able to remember everything that happened, even if it is a lot worst then I remember. If I remember everything then I could talk about it and be able to deal with it. Why did it take me so long to remember any of it? It wasn't until my first meeting with Aaron that I realized that I never told anyone what had happened. Not Jack's parents or mine, no one. Feelings about Jack started to surface. Towards the end of the meeting I started to be angry at him. Even though it sounds bad that I was angry at him, it was good that I was finally getting these feelings out. Feelings I obviously shoved down inside. I didn't feel guilty or responsible for what happened. I knew that Jack knew that he was doing. There was no way for me to get away either. I was in charge of him while his parents were gone and I could not just leave him. (Aaron asked these detailed questions, which I could not remember. He told me I needed to remember these details) Why do I not remember so much? I don't remember if he did certain things or if he ever tried to take my cloths off. I don't remember even roughly how many times he held me down on his bed. I don't remember if my sister ever baby-sat him. All these questions Aaron asked me that I don't remember. Before I was afraid of things that would surface, but right now I want them to. I want to remember everything that happened so I can deal with it. We also talked about what went on with my parents. How I didn't really have any friends, about what my dad told me must have really brought down my self confidence and self worth.

Jack

What I remember:

• Jack held me down on his bed at least half a dozen times, if not more.
• I saw him naked at least twice.
• I baby-sat him at my house about 3 or 4 times. But he never did anything (that I can remember) there. 
• If he did not get his way he would threaten to rape me or he would become physically aggressive. 
• He would do karate moves on me- kick and hit me. 
• When I sat down he had to sit as close to me as possible and touch me. If I got up and sat somewhere else, or scooted over he followed me. 

About Jack:

• He as about 8 years old when I started watching him. (I was 12)
• He had 2 older brothers (they were adults and never there when I baby-sat)
• His mom was my science teacher in the 6th grade
• He was very active and loved sports.
• He collected Beaning Babies
• He took karate lessons.
• He was controlling and always had to be right. 

12-6-2004

I started counseling again today. I knew it was going to be different. I was determined that I was not going to have a guy counselor. I don't know why, but I just did not want a guy. Of course it is because I did not want him to be, but oh well. I guess I thought that guys aren't as understanding or can relate as much. Things with "Aaron" have gone pretty good so far. I know this time would be different then with Joy. I knew I was not going to be closed up and I would talk. Guys (or at least Aaron) are so much more direct. Aaron is nothing like Joy, but oh well. Like the first thing he said when we got into his office was, "What can we do for you? Why are you here?". You know, I was not as nervous as I usually am. I didn't have any problem talking to him. I told him about going to see Joy because of my dad's verbal abuse and going to SOLE. Then about how after I for married the stuff with Jack came up. He said that is very common. I had never though that much about it or Jack. Aaron has some good points like- Jack probably really like/ was in love with me because he was so physical. He had to have learned about sexual experiences somewhere, maybe he was sexually abused himself. Also- he is probably having the same problems now with other girls. One major thing he pointed out is that my my mind set I still have problems distinguishing between Jack doing something and Brad. Since I was not in control the, I need to feel a little more in control now. Since I was in charge of Jack I had no way to get away. Until now I hadn't realized that I had not told anyone about what had happened. To things to do this week- try to find a pattern to when Brad does something that triggers things. Have my husband ask if he can rub my back or do whatever, so I can say it is okay and I start seeing it more that way. We also talked a little about my family dealing with it and talking about my dad's abuse. They ignore every thing. I've been the only one to deal with it. Everyone blamed my problems (cutting) on depression. Saturday night while talking to my husband was the first time I admitted out loud that I go back and forth with depression. Sometimes it is pretty bad. Aaron and I talked a little about it today. I told him that right now I don't think that I am, but who knows. On my way home I realized I did not say "I don't know: once. Wow, even I was amazed. Even if I really did not know I said, I don't remember or I have not thought about that. It amazes me how much I have changed in 2 year. A year ago I could barely talk to Joy. Now here I am with Aaron and 20 minutes into our first session and he know what has happened and why I am there! It is so much easier for me to just talk. I am not afraid of people like I used to be. I am not afraid of or ashamed of the past. It has happened, I worked through a lot of it and now I need to get through this stuff with Jack.

5/5/04

I was laying in bed trying to get to sleep & I started thinking about if I still felt pain or was angry at my dad about the past. The first thing I though was "I don't know", but that is not the answer.  searched deeper in my soup to find the answer. So I imagined me standing in a room and my dad started calling me all those things. Then over his words I heard the Savior say, "I love you." As I stood there I saw him come down & hug me & encircle me in his love. That pain, the anger is gone! The Savior's love over powers every thing!

4-21-04

During Sole I finally talked without being pushed to. I talked about how much anger I had at my grandma for not doing anything. I just vented and was more talkative. Our activity was the Trading Post. We gave up one of our stumbling blocks and got something in return. I thought about it and decided on what I wanted to trade. I sat back and watched closely at how they (Joy and Courtney) were doing it. Before now I have had such major trust issues, I was only willing to trust Joy. I wouldn't even think about talking to, opening up to or trusting Courtney. As I watched others go I noticed that Joy and Courtney would take turns doing the trading post. I made 2 huge steps, I volunteered to go without being forced to and I decided that I was willing to open up and try trusting Courtney. I told Joy and Courtney I wanted to trade being closed up. Joy asked if I was ready to & I know I am. Joy and Courtney would leave the room to discuss what they were going to trade. I was expecting Courtney, but Joy is who ended up talking to me.  I go a banner and a string. The banner I wear around me and across it reads "I don't know" (my go to, I don't want to talk about it phrase). I tear the banner off and pull the string. When I pull the string I let my feelings out and open up "I don't know" is gone. For the first time I have been comfortable joining in conversations in group. Every time Joy and Courtney left the room I would talk with everyone else. I feel like I can tell Joy anything without being pushed now.

4/13/2004

Today at SOLE I was picked on twice. It did make me realize things that I do have a lot of anger built up & I'm mad at Grandma. The week before we were to write a list of people whom we have hurt. My list included myself and Hayley. Beneath that I wrote my parents with a question mark. The activity we were once again blindfolded. I'm pretty sure we were blindfolded every single week! The blindfolded person sat across from a counselor, the counselor would pick a person off their list and they would then talk to that person (from their list). The first time I was up they had me talk to both my parents. At first when asked if I was mad at grandma, I said no. The more we talked the more I realized that I was! Everyone feels sorry for her, I don't. Everything she did, or didn't do was all her own choices. The second time (I was the only one who had to do it twice) Joy sat across from me and told me I had to talk to Anger. At first I was confused, Wait, this isn't a person. How can I talk to an emotion? As we got started I realized that I hurt anger by denying it to exist! When I got home I wrote: I have so much anger, hurt and pain built up inside. I don't know what to do with it all. I want it all to go away, if it were only that easy. I don't know how to let it go, how to get the anger out or how to get rid of all the pain. I try not to think about it or deal with it. My family's theory is ignore it and it will go away. I know that doesn't work. I have tried. All if does is stuff it down deeper. The one thing I feel like I cannot get over is my mom's death. For a while I blamed all my problems on her. If only she hadn't died, then I would not have had this life. I wouldn't have been raised by them. Most of all, I wouldn't have gone through the abuse. No one in my family even knows what my life has been like because of her death. They don't know what happened that morning. No one understands how hard it has been for me. A lot has changed in my life lately, but I feel very confused and not so sure of things.I still feel very empty inside. I wonder if that will ever go away, it feels like it never will. I said I wasn't mad at Mom B, but now that I think about it, I am. I'm mad that she never did anything about my dad. She would just sit there. Sometimes afterwards, she would come to my room & tell me what he said wasn't true.  Other times she would come and blame it all on me. Once after I moved out I went over there to get something and my dad ended up yelling at me. I told him I wouldn't come over if he was going to do that and I left. Mom followed me to my car and yelled at me that it was my own fault he yelled at me. I made him mad and he was being nice until I was mean to him and mad him say those things. She won't talk to me. I'm so mad at my dad for the things he has done to me. He was always comparing me to my cousins that he thought were perfect. If I didn't do something his way, it was wrong, even if the outcome was the same. None of my accomplishments were ever good enough. He denied or justified in someway everything he ever said to me. Mom B did too. It made me feel like I was going crazy or really imagining things. It drives me nuts that my family will never acknowledge the fact that my dad is verbally abusive. I lived with my uncle for 2 1/2 months. The first night I moved in I ended up talking to my aunt and told her why I had moved out. I asked her if she knew my dad was verbally abusive. All she said was "No duh, he is!". Then I told her that the main reason I had to move was because I was cutting to deal with my dad's abuse and to take away the pain. It didn't matter how many times after that I told her and my uncle that's why I was doing it, they always told me I was doing it because I was depressed and not because of anything my dad was doing. When I finally told my parents and aunt and uncle that I had been cutting they all made me feel so ashamed and like I was the biggest disappointment. My dad even told me I had a devil inside me and that I was really messed up mentally. I couldn't tell him that he was the reason I was cutting. I've hurt myself so much more then I ever really though I had. I was always trying to please my parents & would have to drop everything i was doing to please them. I never know how I really feel, because it was always how other people told me I felt. I wasn't allowed to have an opinion. One year for my birthday they asked me where I wanted to go for dinner, I told them PF Changs. Dad responded with, "No you don't! You want Olive Garden." It is ironic because the one thing my dad called me the most was selfish. If I ever did anything for myself he would yell at me that I didn't care about anyone but myself. A few weeks ago I realized that most of the time I feel nothing. I have no feelings, no emotions, just nothing. I tried talking to Brad about it, but he didn't understand how you could feel nothing. He told me it was just Satan trying to make it so I couldn't feel love. I didn't understand what he was telling me. The next day we did an activity where we tried to get from piece to piece bling folded & then with people trying to deceive us. After we talked about what the object of it was. I realized that it was exactly like what Brad was trying to tell me. Satan is trying to make me so confused about Brad and life itself. He doesn't want me to be happy for once or to be able to feel as though Brad really loves me and cares about me. My whole life has changed in the past year. Sometimes I feel very confused & not sure what to do.

Spring 2004

The untold story... I just realized that I never wrote it in my journal and thus it hasn't made it way into a blog post. So many times growing up I wondered if maybe I was just crazy. Maybe I imagined the abuse or blew things out of proportion. After all, no one else ever saw that side of dad. Then something happened that made me realize that I did NOT making it up. My aunt called me to give me directions and the time of her grand daughter's baby blessing. While talking to her she told me, "I gave direction to your dad, but he couldn't find the chapel on a map. I tried explaining that it is new, on a new street and it wouldn't be on a map. He told him turn by turn how to get there so he wouldn't even need to find directions.  He told me I was giving him wrong directions on purpose because I don't want him to be there and I don't want him to join the church! I've never seen him like this before!" All I could do was laugh and tell her, "Oh, he's like that ALL the time!"

3/30/04

Tuesday: Monday after my fiance went home, I sat in my room and realized that a lot of the time I felt nothing- No happiness, excitement, nothing at all. I ended up talking to him in texts. I told him how I was feeling & he told me that he thought it was Satan trying to bring me down & try to keep me from feeling love. I didn't really get it. The next day at SOLE we had an activity. You had to get from one square to another without touching the ground. The squares were 2 to 3 feet apart and scattered all over. Even normally it was hard. They a few people had to do it blindfolded, with a person telling them where to turn and how far to reach. Next, someone was once again blindfolded with a person helping them, but the rest of the group was instructed to give them wrong directions and try to mess them up and not make it. After it we talked about what the object was. It was Satan (& others) trying to lead us astray & get us confused. Everything started to sink in. That is exactly what he was doing to me. I'm so used to just shutting down. If Satan can get me to not feel loved, then I will doubt it & if I doubt enough I will not believe it is there. On my way home I called Joy to talk to her, but she didn't answer. I left her a message and she called me back the next day. She said I've really improved. I actually talk more I feel more included and wanted.

3/10/04

SOLE Week 4 I blew up at SOLE last night. Yeah, even Joy was blown away. Last week I kind of blew up with her (not in a negative way, just finally expressing my emotions!) She said that is the most she has ever heard me say. It's not like I finally came out and talked, I got out there with all this stuff & emotions. I don't ever remember all I talked about. I realized that I always thought "Once I get married, then I will be happy, then I will not be alone." It doesn't work like that & it frustrates me so much. It's okay, I still have these feelings, I may always have them. Now for the first time I have someone by my side, to be there for me and help me through. After group I wrote, "Why do I not open up? Growing up  I never was allowed to. My parents never asked and I never shared. I'm used to keeping everything in, but eventually I explode. Sometimes I blow up & tell someone how I feel or I take all my anger and frustration out on myself. "I shut down emotionally when my mom died. I was never allowed to deal with it. My parents never talk about my mom's death or what she was like. They don't know what my sister and I went through that morning. I don't think they want to know. For 10 years I ever talked about it, I never thought about what it was like that morning she died. Now all the pain is so built up, I only let a little pain out at at time. It feels like I will never be able to get it all go. "My parents tried to control my life so much. I was never allowed to express my opinions or anything I wanted to do. Even now I hardly ever what I want because I am so used to someone telling me. My parents would tell me what to eat, where I could go, where to work, what to spend my money on, what standards I should have, basically everything. "When I do open up to my family, it is never a good thing. Maybe that's why I am so afraid of it. For the last 6 months my parents had no idea what was going on in my life. I spent all my time alone. I'm not used to any normal or real conversations with people. "When I was living with my parents, I shut down so much emotionally that it got to the paint that if I didn't move out, it was going to destroy me. I finally decided to move in with my uncle for a while. But I knew before I did I needed to explain to my mom why. "One night I actually sat down and talked to her. I asked her if she had ever realized that my dad was verbally abusive. As first she was shocked that I would dare think such a thing. Then she started feeling bad that she never did anything to stop it. Every time he did it, it was in front of her & she would just sit there. Then to get rip of that pain she was feeling, that he husband was abusive, she started justifying it. She told me that it really wasn't that bad and what he said wouldn't bother most kids, I was just overly sensitive and he didn't do that often, so it was okay. Later on & ever since then she has turned it around & blames all the abuse on me. That it was always my fault he said those things. I always made him mad & made him yell at me. I guess I am really terrified of people's reactions to thing I say when I open up. "I feel like I don't even know me. I feel so emotionally screwed up that I never know how I feel. A lot of the time I feel nothing, I don't feel happy, sad or excited. The one emotion I probably feel the most is frustrated or empty. Sometimes something will make me excited or happy, but it never lasts, it always withers away to nothing. "I feel so alone. Here I am engaged to the man I have always dreamed about & I constantly feel lonely. I feel like I have been abandoned by my biological father, which I was & then by my mom. I have never really had parents, just grandparents. I would give anything to just have a caring, loving mom that I could actually talk to. "When I am struggling I pull away from everything. I'm so used to dealing with everything myself & keeping it all in. I guess I'm more comfortable with dealing with everything myself. Even though I have found that it is better for me to talk about it, I am getting better at talking to my fiance. The first time I opened up to him, it took me 2 hours, not it only takes me about 5 minutes to get something out. "When I was living at home I had to teach myself that words meant nothing as a way to deal with the abuse. Now it is hard for me to understand that words do mean things. When my fiance tells me his feelings, I still at times don't get that they mean something, that they are not just words said out of drunken anger. "I've found that I block a lot of things out. If something is too painful or too much to deal with I just block it out or shut down. I forget about is to I don't have to deal with it. I didn't even remember the morning of my mom's death until about 2 years ago. It was too painful to even think about. Now there are times that I relive that day over & over again. I wonder if it will ever end or if the pain will ever go away."

2/18/2004

SOLE week 1 I started SOLE yesterday. I like it so far, but I'm just too quiet!

1/25/2004

Tuesday with Joy was alright. I was all talkative before I left & then I got there I'm all quiet. That is just so me though. I go again Tuesday and then I have to be in Provo by 2. Today at church, right before Relief Society Bishop W came in & we talked for a minute. He asked if I have moved yet & I told him no, not until February. He asked if I was still at home & I told him that I have been living with my uncle for a few months. He got this big smile like, 'She finally listened to me!'. He said I looked happier. I guess I am. I will ever more after we move.

1/18/2004

After last Sunday, talking to Hayley about the church & abuse I decided that I am going to write a book about it! Seriously, I want to. Lately I've been listening to the CD I made for Hayley and I. I called it the "Out of it Mix". Some of the songs are just powerful & I feel have to do with overcoming abuse. I think one of the best things you can do is write in a journal! You get all your thoughts & feelings out. I love going back and reading things I have wrote and what I have been through.

1/11/2004

I am going to quit my job! I went from an abusive home to abusive work environment, not good. I love the baby but I can't deal with his parents. (FYI, I was a nanny). This had been stressful for me and a lot of things emotionally are piling up at once. After dinner I went to Hayley's. We made brownies, played Uno and spoons and later we went to the park. We walked & talked, I love doing that. I just vented about certain things like everything with my family. How my mom keeps turning it around & blaming the abuse on me! Hayley brought up that she could tell I was about to start crying during church. I almost did, I almost walked out too! Certain songs I guess bug me, like the closing hymn, Love at Home. Does the church ever think about the people who don't know what it is like to have love & all that good stuff at home? I know I want it for my kids, but it is hard to explain.