Peace?

Had another nightmare last night - of him. Woke myself up screaming. God I wish he knew how horribly he hurt me. I wish he could feel the fear - even if just for a moment.

I recently met a woman who told me her father, too, had molested her but that he did 10 years in prison for it and died recently - in December.

"It was the first time in my life I've ever felt peace," she said. "Not that I wished him dead, just it was the first time I ever felt peace."

It made me cry. Her mother had been a staunch supporter of her through it all and I wondered - marveled - at that. Wondered what that would be like.

But then I kind of lost it and I realized I won't ever know when my father dies. How long does that mean I have to wait for peace? And what about the others? I won't know when they're gone. I cried for two hours over this. Sobbed.

Is that when you find peace after all this? When they're all cold in the ground or sitting in an urn on a mantle somewhere?

Knowing there's a rapist around every corner in every walk of life, will there ever be peace?

Emptiness (Poem) (possible trigger)

How can empty
get any more hollow?
There are no seeds;
no strings to follow
The darkness gets darker
no moon, no stars
you talk to loneliness
show your scars
but none other can see
nor hear the shrieks
from a deadened body
from whence blood leaks
at the whim of despair
the quick slits release
drops of blood
moments of peace
a ghastly reminder
we still survive
crimson droplets
prove we are alive
the reaper grows near
whispers your name
begs your surrender
to the monstrous pain
Consulting with loneliness
you quietly lament
secretly wishing
with honest intent
natural causes
will take you away
a coward to the end...

...so it seems, anyway.

(C) Cristina D. Kuptzin-Johnson, 2013

Strands of Trust

Trust begins as a thread of glass. The smallest, most fragile glass your mind can conger. To compare it to a strand of silk, torn from a robe or that of a spiderweb, would not only be too cliche', but also inaccurate.

You see, the web of a spider can be repaired and the thread of silk can be re-tied.

But the long, slender, fragile length of glass that represents trust, shatters into a thousand pieces and cannot be repaired. Sadly, it takes very little in these formative stages, for this shard of trust to disintegrate as if it never existed. It falls into darkness and dissolves there, never to be retrieved again.

This, however, is only how it begins. Begins as a small strand of fragile glass from one heart to another. Sometimes, of course, the strand never forms. The trust is broken before it is even created.

There is really no limit to the number of crystalline strands of trust one can have, although some do intersect and combine.

As time passes, this fragile strand of glass trust, thickens with consistency and patience; love and attention; compassion and caring.

As this happens, this strand of trust strengthens more and more. So that slight transgressions might create hairline cracks or cause little chips in what is now a thicker band of  glass trust. Fragile, but still in tact, if just a little worn.

As time continues, this trust begins to calcify and what was once smaller than a grain of sand, just like that grain of sand slowly emerges and evolves into something larger, harder and less breakable.

The difficulty and problem with this is that trust can be built - albeit with some hard work and a lot of patience and "I'm sorry's" - but then, when one who has calcified that trust, who has built a solid, sturdy band of trust, hurts you deeply, the trust won't break. And so you keep allowing it and allowing it and allowing it. You must deserve it, right? After all, this person built this trust. I know this person. They wouldn't hurt me unless I did something wrong.

This trust - this solid, calcified trust - is toxic and painful. The reverberations this band of trust echoes, shatter other, small, fragile forming bands on trust - the ones as thin and fine as a hair.

Trust is fragile. Until it is solidified. Then it is destructive.

I don't think she believes me

My name is Cristina D. Johnson.

I  don't know that I have ever experienced someone not believing me and the things I have gone through and am now experiencing.

I feel that way about Michelle, now.

I made an appointment with her because I have to.

But I feel sick about it.

I called her the other night. I left three voice messages (because there's a limit to the amount of time you have to leave a message) so I called her. I don't remember everything I said.

I cut that night.

I got scared. I panicked. I thought someone was in the house. That's the last thing I clearly remember. Everything else is kind of a blur.

Anyway, I don't believe in her and I don't believe she believes me.

What kind of therapeutic relationship is that?

I had another appointment Monday with a different specialist - Judy. She diagnosed me with PTSD (again). She also talked me down from my "DID is bullshit and doesn't exist!" mantra. A little bit, anyway. She wants to do further testing.

I wish I knew the things I left on Michelle's voicemail. I have not heard anything back from her.

When I was a kid, it never occurred to me that nobody would believe me if I told. I just didn't tell because....well, I think because I didn't want to get Daddy in trouble. I don't know. I don't remember any threats except once and that was when I was older. Nothing like, "I'll kill your mother"....did he ever say, "Nobody will believe you!"? I don't know...maybe.

But for whatever reasons, I didn't tell.

And now, I have told Michelle - some of it - and I feel like she doesn't believe me. That hurts.

Blame, Love, Hate

My name is Cristina D. Johnson. Forgive me as I ramble.

Over the last few weeks, I have delved deeply into the dynamics of my relationships - past and present. I have, in earnest, examined my role in these relationships, whether casual or not, and how I - myself - contributed to their demise.

And it was, indeed, a demise.

From jumping out of moving vehicles (a feat which I learned very young and did many times, escaping from the grips of "the system".... back then they didn't have automatic locks) to jumping INTO moving vehicles, I have done many things, to hurt many people.

I have tried to redeem myself, as I have come to recognize some of my transgressions, realizing they - my partners in these relationships - were the victim of me. Imagine. Me. A perpetrator of some sort. Never perverse, mind you. Nothing like my own transgressors but still.... perpetuating hurt on others, without awareness. Not that unawareness is an excuse - it is not, because their pain was (and, perhaps is) real - however, I was unaware of this pain I may have caused.

I knew no other ways.

I suppose people have loved me. I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to say, really. How can I say, when my one, true love - my first love; my father - was so destructive, so evil? That was my first love and I loved through hell. I loved through pain, torment, fear.... I loved him so much. So much, that I would do all I could - anything - to stop his pain. That was my first love.

Shattered, in most regards, yet still here. Haunting and taunting. Only now, now I am aware of this toxic love....this shameless, childlike love, which I cannot drain from my veins, no matter how many times nor how deeply I cut. This love is still there. This idolatry. This idealization. The perfect man... Daddy.

I stand on this fence, balancing clumsily with love on one side, hate on the other. The banister on which I have always stood, is comprised of hate, love, blame, confusion....

Will I ever know love, when I see it?

I know pain when I see it. I have seen it in the eyes of my children; whether of my doing or others'. I know what pain looks like. What does love look like?

And yet...

The dichotomy is this:

I hurt others, yet I withhold myself from others, because others have hurt me.

What a vicious, vicious circle.

When others hurt me, it is reason to submerge. When I hurt others, it is because they have - by my own perceptions which are, admittedly, distorted - hurt me first. Or perhaps they pose the threat of hurting.

Love, I suppose, in any form, any relationship, all relationships poses this threat. This threat of harm.

But isn't it strange that I would fear harm from love, when I have only known this one TRUE love, and never allowed for any other?

The gates are closed; the windows locked. There is no way in. Yet, I protect as if there is.

And I blame.

I believe there is nobody who can love the way I can.

This is because of the profundity of my love of Daddy. I know what it is to love through heaven: the heavenly sound of his music,  his voice, his hair, his arms - so strong - his poetic muse, his verbal prowess and intellectual fortitude. And I know what it is to love through hell: his kicks, punches and blows, his throws and holes in the walls and his tears, his painful, painful tears. His sexual perversions and humiliations. I know - God I know - what it is to love so deeply that no manner of sin or sainthood could shake it.

I carry it now. Still. This infallible love for the first monster to ever take my heart. Crush it. Embrace it. Frighten it. Shatter it. Put it back together again. All through the eyes of a child.

And in no part of me that I recognize today, can I find a place to blame him for my own sicknesses. My own shortcomings. My own transgressions against those who may - or may not - have loved me.

They couldn't have loved me as much as I have loved, for they did not stay. Right?

Yet.... is it not because of me and my own words and actions, that they left? How can I hold others to the standard of a child who adores the man who twists and mangles everything within her, down to her very self?

Love.

I know unconditional love. I am living it. I always have.

For those who wish to leave me,  I feel angry.

But at the same time, I do not blame because love and hate are so closely related.

They say, "You only hurt the ones you love."

This means - to me - that only the ones who love you, can be hurt by you. The rest, could care less what you do or what happens to you.

I wonder, to this day, is he okay? Where is he? Will I ever see him again?

I also wonder, will I ever be free of this dichotomy? Will I ever not see him in my mind? Will I ever feel anything close to the love I felt for him?

Trying to love, trying to give, for me....

It's like trying to fix something without the proper tools.

I let people down. I hurt them. I test and try them and I don't know how not to do this.

So I shut down because I will not be the monster that is Daddy.

Until I learn something new, someone new, some new way or thing, I will simply not be. I would rather be nothing, than be a monster, even though I have seen myself as both many times in my life.

This world is crazy.

Ouch...

My name is Cristina D. Johnson.

Today was a tough, tough day.

I even considered voluntary hospitalization today because I was so afraid and because I literally felt as if I was losing my mind. For those who know me, this would tell them I was in a really bad place today. Hospitalization is an abhorrence of mine. I have been traumatized via hospitalization too many times to count. To consider it voluntarily, is like moving the Lincoln Monument.

Today, I came up here - to my writing room - and I cried. I came up here so nobody would hear me and because there was nowhere else to go. I felt ashamed. Today I came up here and I cried a deep, aching cry. I needed Michelle. I dialed her number several times and hung up. Finally, up here, I dialed it one last time and I heard her voice - her voicemail - and I left a message.

Although I felt such shame for such a heart-wrenching cry, I calmed a little after hearing her voice, even if only a recording.

Yesterday's session left me rattled and shaken. Today, I watched Law and Order, Special Victims Unit, Season 9, Episode 15.

That was it.

I have never, ever had a problem watching violence and rape in movies. I mean, there are some things that are too grotesque for me to watch, but violence and rape, I have always been able to handle. It's never made me emotional.

But this episode, well...it was chock full of triggers.

rape
child of the system
arrested for drugs without actually being involved
abuse of authority
lock up
orange jumpsuits
big, thick, brass keys
woods
machete's
the showers

I can't even describe how many things were there...how true this episode is to the experience.

However, that said, I watched the whole episode untouched, unmoved.

Disconnected.

Until the end. The very end.

The victim - an SVU detective - is asked, directly, "Did he rape you?"

and my soul felt like it was shot out of a canon into and through moments in time...dozens or hundreds of times when I couldn't answer that question.

The assault scene was difficult, but I managed it.

It wasn't until that question was asked: "Did he rape you?" that I was hurled into a blackened, charred history of uncertainty, childishness and terror.

And I felt it.

For the first time in my life, I felt these bizarre feelings. These intense emotions and I was bombarded with the question of "Why?"

Why? Why? Why?

I think about others and I think about children and child abuse and I am astonished by what is done to them but never have I been able to look at myself and feel, "Wow, that hurt. Ouch."

I wish I had written earlier but my mind was shattered. I wish I could have seen Michelle earlier. I wish I could have talked to her. I was riddled with emotions that were pulling me so deep, so deep. Deep into something I have never felt and it frightened me.

Bill and I talked the other night about how frightening out-of-body-experiences (OBE's) are, and it was like that today. Exactly like that. I felt like I was losing myself. Drowning. I couldn't see. I couldn't think. Every bump made me jolt in my seat. I was terrified. I fantasized about going to my neighbor, going anywhere...but then it felt like my body was tied down to an anchor and I couldn't move. I was crushed and crushing...I was immobile and absolutely confused and terrified.

I ran through my mind so many different times in my past. Was that rape? Was this rape? Was it rape if I didn't say no? I didn't say "no" because I knew I couldn't say no, but does that mean yes? Is that rape? If he didn't penetrate me, is that rape? Did I ever fight back that hard?

I bent my brain desperately reaching for memories, trying to recall moments when I fought. There are times when I know I did. Times I remember.

The man who nearly strangled me to death. I remember I must have fought because he wouldn't have strangled me if I hadn't fought, right? I don't remember how I came to be at the place where we were. Was it a motel? An apartment? I don't remember a kitchen. I remember the television and the nightstand and the rotary phone. I am confused. I thought - because I was street smart - that he was one of those that was full of piss and wind and he wouldn't kill me. I could mock and intimidate him. I could beat him at his game and he wouldn't hurt me.

I thought...

But he almost killed me.

In the end, he didn't (obviously) and in the end, I was right: he was malleable. I remember laying there - I was around 13 - and he was limp, flacid. Pre-semen hung like sinew from the head of his dark penis and I knew he was infected. I made fun of him and told him he couldn't rape me because he couldn't even get it up because he was diseased. I knew, somehow, this would work.

And it did.

I remember I tricked him. I convinced him that I cared about him and that I would come back when he had healed himself of his disease. Probably syphilis or gonorrhea. These were rampant in those days.

And...I remember that I fought the men off who attacked me when I slept.

Did I scream? I don't remember.

I know as one sat on my chest, his testicles against my neck and he kept  trying to shove his penis in my mouth, the rest were ripping off my clothes and I was kicking and fighting and I didn't mean to but I kicked on in the nuts and he said to me, "Don't ever kick my nuts you white bitch!" and he slammed me in the mouth with his fist. They threw me out into the snow and I was wearing very little. I was frozen. I was 12 or 13.

I must've fought, right?

There must've been sometime in the past when I fought....

I said "no" to Daddy twice...twice...

The first time, he hurt me sexually. The second time, he smothered and choked me.

Did I learn to not say no?

I am so confused and hurt and bewildered.

The feelings I felt as I sobbed, briefly, today...I should say "allowed myself to sob" today...

These feelings were too much. Too hard.

Too much.

I wished Michelle were here. I wished she could see it so she could tell me what was happening.

I wished I could just do it all right then in that moment. I thought, god please let this be all I need to feel, to heal.

But I knew - and I know - that wasn't it.

There is more.

I shut it down. I am good at that.

This pain...this is worse than anything I have ever known, yet it is the track on which my train travels and I cannot move forward, without the track.

I won't get off track. I may stop or stall, but I will not get off.

It kills me - some part of me felt stolen today - but I will stay on track.

I will do this. God help me, I will.

Lost in moments

My skin is on fire, just as surely as if lava ran through every capillary beneath it. Everything is loud; ten times…no, a hundred times more than normal. My stomach is in my throat, upside down. I want to vomit. I can’t stop shaking…this bizarre shaking… my hands tremble but it feels as if every cell trembles, every muscle and bone, everything inside.

And it’s so simple, really. Just a compilation of things.

Today I played games online - games from my childhood: Pacman; Donky Kong; Donkey Kong Jr.;  Frogger; Space Invaders... so many... I was keen to note the dates they were released. I was trying to find some place in  time in history. Some kind of validation or verification of times and ages and dates that are lost in my mind. This need is always there. This need to know, where was I when this happened? Where was I when that happened? What age was I?

Seemed harmless at the time.

But then things started to happen and, one by one, they began to build until the weight crushed my stature.

Memories. Unable to separate past from present, even though my mind consciously knows the difference.

Still, I was swept away to points in time when living was unsafe, unkind...

The kitchen was tiny. So small. No bigger than a prison cell. 

In it was a stove and a small two-top table, wedged beneath a window (I think), and next to the stove, something I can't recall. A spice rack, maybe? A tiny little group of shelves? A little bitty pantry? A small microwave stand? I don't recall.

The story is more complex but tonight, I was standing at that stove, my back to the little two-top. I was wiping down what I'd already cleaned, desperately avoiding looking at my step mother who had come to sit at the table behind me.

"I don't know what to do," she said.

I said nothing. I was in fourth grade. For most of my life, I'd believed myself to be 12 at the time but I know now that I was in fourth grade - Bethany school in Summerfield, N.C., so I must've been nine or so. Ricky McGeehee was the most popular boy in school. Tracy was the most popular girl. It must have been around 1979.

I was terrified. I just nodded at the stove, kept wiping.

"He [my little brother] says your father molests him," she said, with her gentle Bostonian accent.

I felt my body freeze, my head spin, my tongue couldn't move. I stopped so briefly ...didn't want her to notice, so I quickly continued wiping. There was nothing to wipe clean.

"I don't know what to do," she said again. 

She must have pondered the truth of my brother's statement out loud because I remember looking down at the stove and quietly saying, "He's telling the truth."

I heard her ask, "What?"

I turned, looked at the floor and repeated. "He's telling the truth."

Later that night, Daddy tried to get to me after he punched several holes in the walls. He screamed at me: "Tell her the truth! Tell her you're lying!" and she got between us; saved me from him.

Tonight, I went there - to that moment in time. I thought I could handle it. I shoved it away. Pushed it back.

Went back to cooking.

Began cleaning. Cleaning.... cleaning...

Heard banging, felt the energy shift. The irritation. The frustration. Felt it as if I caused it. Believe I caused it. Felt responsible. Frantically searched for anything I could clean.... Gotta clean.... gotta do something.

My hand burned and I was six.... again....

I was six and I couldn't move my hand because it was so badly burnt but I tried to hide it. I was terrified when they said they were  going to call my parents because I couldn't write. It was my left hand - my dominant hand - and I couldn't write in school. I pleaded, "Please, please I'll use my right hand! Please don't call them!"

They assured me it was okay and I wasn't in trouble, but that they needed to call my parents.

They didn't understand.

I was beaten for that.

For a moment, I was there again..... in the classroom, people were looking at me, looking at my hand. I didn't want them to look. I wanted them to leave me alone, to let me try to do my work with my right hand. Please don't call Daddy....

For a moment, I was with Gary again.... he was yelling....he was slamming things, kicking things, throwing things, cursing at the dog, the kids, anyone....

And, in that, for a moment I was with Daddy again; he was kicking things, breaking things, yelling, angry. Then he was kind, benevolent. Then he was angry again.

That's when everything  got really loud.

I tried to escape.

I couldn't.

And now I am here

My skin on fire. My stomach in my throat, upside down, choking on memories I am trying to swallow, trying to put into their rightful place.

But my hand - as I burnt it, washing things in the hot water - was no longer my hand. It was the hand of a six-year-old girl. The counter was no longer the one in my apartment. It was the stove I cleaned with my back to a loving and courageous step-mother. The restlessness, irritation, irritability was no longer my friend; it was Gary. And that was ultimately Daddy, yelling in a rampage.

Unpredictable, frightening. So frightening.

So goddamn frightening.

Unable to talk, accused of sulking......

Unable to talk.

What is today?

The time is close.

Sexual Dysfunction (Warning: Raw, graphic)

Today was a very hard session, and I can't even identify the hardest part(s).

One thing I know is this is one of those times when I want to push away the very people I need - particularly Bill. I want to push him away so hard....no, no, no....no you can't come in, no you can't see this...Oh dear God if you knew....you can't come in.

And Cindy, I am content just letting her be there, just kinda hang out.

I don't want this. I hate this. I hate me. I hate my body. I hate what and who I am.

I will try to explain..... but it's rather um...personal and graphic and I apologize in advance for humiliating my friends and family. As far as me, well, I presently feel I have no dignity left. I am a shadow, with no substance. I feel vulgar, damaged.

I hurt myself the other night - intimately. Nothing serious, but painfully punishing.

I spent most of the day hitting myself (mostly punching my thigh or slapping myself in the head or face) as memories of my self-abuse flashed in my mind. This occurred even as I was in session today...hitting myself...it's like my arm takes on a life of it's own and I can't keep it from hitting me.

First let me clarify one thing: I do not and never have enjoyed masturbation. I've done it to satisfy my partners (mostly Gary). I don't like touching myself (barely can stand taking a shower) and I certainly don't like looking at myself. My ex-husband used to make a comment about my um...vagina that was, I suppose, intended to be a compliment but all it really did was imply that proper maintenance was required. That was back in the day when I felt it necessary to douche four times a week, or any time after sex. So, see, my body's always been ugly to me. Like it's not even mine.

I want to also point out that I have had a total of four serious relationships - two of them marriages. Yet, somehow, I am a "whore".....My father, brother, ex-husbands, and other key men in my life have said this to me and if they didn't say it, they treated me like one (like my most recent ex).

And, naturally, when you're standing on the cold tile bathroom floor with your father's penis in your hand and being told what a good little girl you are to do this for Daddy, that ugly, dirty feeling sets in, even if you're too young to understand what it means or where it comes from. Such conflicting emotions.

My family/friends yesterday encouraged me to tell Michelle (my therapist) about my most recent issue.... I wasn't going to do it. I started her an email, wrote two sentences, and then clicked "cancel"....too humiliating.

But then I thought about it....... a lot.

And today I told her. It was excruciatingly painful and humiliating but she was very kind and understanding. She asked me a lot of questions (first, obviously, if I was hurt).

So we talked about being a whore; talked about masturbation; talked about the reasoning behind my rationale.

At times I couldn't talk. At times I folded myself up into my own lap, pulled my sleeves over my hands, hiding every bit of my skin I could hide.

She kept assuring me..."It's okay, Cristina. You're okay. It's okay."

So I tried explaining to her, my rationale, stuttering breathlessly through the whole thing. It's the first time I ever told anyone that I'd done this before....sexually punished myself.

You start off as a whore, something happens and you want it, so since you want it, you're even more of a whore and since you're a whore and you want it, you must be bad, and if you're bad, you must be punished, and if you're bad enough to punish yourself, then you need to punish yourself for that, too. This is also the case when you do things for men, that you don't want to do (such as was the case with my ex) just to please them. Yep. You're a whore. The process repeats.

"Even now, sitting here, I can hear it in my head, over and over and over again. 'You're a whore! You're a whore!" (I also had flashes of an online conversation I had one, where he was drunk and put in giant bold letters, "WHORE!") - that, too, kept flashing in my mind and it was actually that image that had me crying on the way home.

That was my explanation. She sat across from me (I didn't look at her most of the time but I could feel her posture).

She sat quietly for a moment and then she asked me what I meant.

"I'm just trying to connect the dots for you so you understand what I mean."

She paused and then she said, "Cristina, I am never going to lie to you, and I am going to tell you when you're wrong. I am your barometer," she said, and I looked up briefly as she turned away to illustrate. She held her hands up to simulate a dial with a needle. She held her right hand in a circle, used her left pointer finger as the needle.

"This," she said, with the 'needle' all the way to the left, "Is okay."

She moved the "needle" all the way to the right, and said: "This is bullshit."

She didn't say it meanly, but she turned and looked at me and said, "Those dots don't line up. They don't match."

I was surprised by this. "Well, then I need new dots because these are the only dots I know."

She explained that women often try to take blame for their rape/incest, in an effort to have some control. This made me cry because it made so much sense....I had never thought of it before. I always blamed myself, "I shouldn't have been there," or "I should have said no" or "I asked for it."

Yeah....that's the mantra of many women, I suppose.

Then she made a comment that startled me: "...when you were assaulted."

Daddy never assaulted me.... well, only twice. But that was because I said "no" so it was MY FAULT. Other than that, he was always kind and benevolent.

I told her I had two lives. She asked why two lives.

"Daddy, and then the rapes."

Oh

"They were very different."

"I see," she says.

Either way, I have always been a whore.

Things got still for a moment, and I quietly cried into my kleenex, whispering to the wadded up tissue: "You know what I want?"

"What?" she asked.

And I cried harder, and I admitted, "Bill. He's never said or done one single unkind thing to me. Ever."

"That's what you deserve," she said. "I'm glad you have him."

And here I am....sitting in my office....

Wanting desperately to push him away.

Sex with Daddy, a Dream (TRIGGER WARNING)

I call it a dream, not a nightmare. I described it to Bill as if I were telling him how to bake cookies - no attachment, no feelings. I felt nothing, yet his response was, "Wow that's a nightmare!"

It is? I didn't wake up sweating or shaking or crying.... isn't that what nightmares are?

I have never (or don't remember ever) having a dream or dreams of any nature about my father (or any of my abuse or rapes, for that matter). I have a snapshot of him in my mind - this vision of him from more than 20 years ago, and though I've been told he's now fat and bald, I remember him to be beautiful...so handsome, hair that women would die for...he was a fabulously good-looking man. That is what I see in my mind...

And that is what I saw in my dream.

Begin Trigger
*
*
*
We were in my apartment, only it wasn't this apartment...it was somewhere else. I recall that I initiated sex with him. I was aroused. In my dream, I was the same age I am now. He did not say anything, just smiled as I commenced to performing fellatio on him.

From there, somehow I was able to have intercourse with him while also receiving oral sex from him. Again, I was wanting it. I initiated it.

Next thing in the dream, we are sitting on the floor, and I was leaning against a bed frame. There was no mattress or box spring - just a space where they used to be. Beneath where the bed was supposed to be, were a few pair of shoes - one of which was a pair of little girl's black shoes. I remember thinking, "Wow I haven't seen those in a long time." There were other shoes but those stick out the most in my mind.
 *
*
*
End Trigger

I told my father I was going to sweep while I could get to it...

As I began to sweep, I looked over and my father was drinking a glass of wine. I didn't know where he'd gotten it because, in my dream, I had no wine. Furthermore, he was drinking this "wine" from one of the margarita glasses that I left at Gary's house when we split up. I looked at what he was drinking and it wasn't wine; it was juice.

Coincidentally, this is what Gary's father used to do. He once told me, "I like to drink cranberry juice out of a wine glass so I can fit in."

Obviously there are things that stick out - the little girl's shoes....but one thing that troubles me deeply is, in the dream, as I was initiating, I was feeling the same feelings for my father, that I have for Bill. This hopelessly in-love feeling...this complete devotion.

It's worth noting, as well, that my adoptive father recently bought me a bed frame.

When trying to interpret this dream, I struggled. Usually Dreammoods is pretty good, but this left me blank.

It's also worth noting that I recently ran out of anti-depressants and have not been taking them. I have read that anti-depressants will amplify dissociation so I wonder if not taking these medications for a few days now, might have unblocked some things, along with my getting in touch with some intense new feelings that I have had with Bill.

After it all sank in....after I thought about it, I was saturated with shame. I felt like a whore. How could I even possibly dream this?? This is despicable!! *I* am disgusting! Who dreams this shit?!

Is this possibly me, getting in touch with parts of myself that I have never touched, via new, healthy, restorative relationships and feelings with new people?

I've never once given thought to whether or not I wanted to be molested. I didn't. Ever. Yet I willingly participated for a lot of different reasons. Some are obvious, others probably not. Being told by my therapist yesterday that it's okay for me to love....did that open up something?

Will these dreams continue? Will they get worse?