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.

Nope. No feelings.

Started to feel
felt a rip
reached for the drawer
grabbed my scrip
tears choked me
I gagged on the pills
but needed to stop
the bleeding that spills
into my bones
floods my mind
relentless, cruel
pounding, unkind
turned it off
like I was taught
within this whirlwind
I won't be caught
I refuse to look
at the reality
that keeps coming back
and tormenting me

Everything just simmers there inside me, scorching me with unknowing and uncertainty. I am afraid to feel because I don't know what is right or appropriate. I am afraid.

It's okay? Really??

My name is Cristina Johnson
Oh what a day today has been. I was dreading my session with Michelle. I had a specific thing to talk to her about: That "feeling" of "breaking a rule" when it comes to loving someone.

As I walk in, she makes no qualms: You look like hell.

And I did. I have cried every day since Saturday - good cries and bad ones - and my mouth is so sore with fever blisters. "Yes," I agreed. "I look about as good as I feel."

"So what's going on?" she asks, her typical starting phrase.

I was afraid to tell her. How strange, I think now. How strange that I was afraid to tell her (or anyone, really) that Bill heard back from an employer here in CT and there's a good chance he could be home for Christmas.

I was scared, so at first, I didn't tell her. Instead, I told her about "the rule" and asked her what she thought about it.

"Where does it come from?" I asked. "Does the fact that Hannah and I are incest survivors have anything to do with it?"

Oh no...she won't let me off that easy.

"Where do you think it comes from?"

I said (cleverly avoiding my own responsibility for the answer), "Well, Hannah says she thought it might have to do with not believing we deserve it."

She said nothing, just kept watching....oh she doesn't let me off easy.

"But I don't think that," I finally said.

Her eyes widened and she said, "You just threw me. This is a different 'you'," she said. I would expect Hannah's kind of answer from you.

"No, no," I said. "I mean, I don't believe it consciously, anyway. And I don't believe it for Hannah or anyone else."

We spent a few moments batting back and forth about it and she finally - thankfully - helped me weed through the marsh of my mind.

"When people go through trauma - especially complex trauma like yours and especially when it includes the people who were supposed to protect and love you - it turns your perceptions upside down," she explained.

I'll sum it up:

Love always hurts. Duh. I know that. Anyone with any experience in it, knows that. But for me, as a child, the only two times I didn't do what I was asked (oh, so benevolently) to do by my father, I was either (1) sodomized or (2) strangled and suffocated. That's why it only happened twice. I learned to never tell him no. It also happened through the rapes...the many times when, if you cry or show any emotion or physical pain, they hit you. This taught me unequivocally, that love equals punishment.

"Who is going to punish you?" she asked me.

This is where it got tough, and I shrugged, rather childishly, looked sideways to the cream-colored carpet.

"My facebook friends?" I offered.

"What do you mean?"

"They'll ostracize me and chastise me and judge me."

"Right which would be excruciating for you, since you just went through that."

"Yes," I admitted.

"Who else?

I began to tear up, I whispered, "You?"

"Why would I punish you?" she asked, incredulous. "Now, now we're back to the Cristina I know," she said half-jokingly. "Listen, unless you have a gun and you're ready to use it on yourself, none of the decisions or choices you make are really my business," she said lightly. "What do you want?" she asked. "What does Cristina want?"

I was afraid to answer...still.

She wouldn't let up. "It's okay. Whatever you want, is okay. It doesn't matter what anyone else says, it's what you want and if it's not self-destructive or hurting others, then it's okay!" she stated.

This was when I told her about Bill and the job and I read to her the end of my last blog, crying as I read the words...remembering the feelings I had that day...remembering the power of them.

"So who would disapprove of that? Obviously Cindy approves and Trevor definitely approves. So who would disapprove?"

I, again, said "My facebook friends, you (meaning, her), Bill's family..." I cried. I cried not just because of these fears, but also because I was so afraid in that moment.

She said: "My husband is my best friend and I have to tell you that if I had to walk away from every family member and friend for my marriage, I would do it without question." She said she was telling me this because relationships are personal and because some need distance, some need closeness, some need to be shut off completely.

I ached with this resounding joy in my heart....I could feel it throughout my body, that I'd just kind of gotten permission to love. To love Bill. To want him here. To miss him.

Other things were discussed but this was the most important. I left with a sense of purpose and resilience and I felt elated to have these words echoing in my mind: "It's okay for me to love Bill? Oh my God it's okay? It's okay??"

I later went to see my medical doctor and he kind of hurt me...made me feel like a worthless piece of shit (which isn't really his tendency, just my own issues) but even that - even though I sat there crying as he was telling me I was beyond his scope of care - I left almost bouncing. "I have permission to love him! It's okay for me to love him!"

Nothing about this whole situation has made sense to me until now..... it's so much of that tangled barbed wire I speak of inside, that I have to untangle, but I found a loose end, and I ain't lettin' it go, not til I figure out how to untangle it. I don't want to lose this feeling. In fact, I want to expand on it. I want it to grow and bleed into everyone and anyone in my life. I want to not fear loving them.

But Bill.... Bill I love you. I always have. I miss you.