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.

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.