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."