Tenderness

I suppose you could say I'm kind of writing to write. Sort of stream-of-conscience. But not really.

Through most of my life, a tender touch always made me cry. Always, without question and often to the point of shoving the tenderness away, until my later years. I suppose I calloused myself to it, though I still hold a weakness for certain touches (the face, particularly).

I've always maintained my favorite English word is "whisper."

Today I sit and listen to Rain by Patti Griffith.

Rain is a silent, private tenderness. Delicate. I've never done "delicate" very well. A tough girl. A tomboy. Dresses make me feel like an alien (except during my promiscuous period, during which time the higher the heels and the tighter & shorter the dress/skirt, the better). Still even then I was seeking that tenderness that I almost always rejected. Strange oxymoron, I know.

Whisper....whisper is soft, like the breeze...I always envision it riding on the wind, sailing across the world, over oceans. Whispers of wishes and dreams and broken hearts.

Tears....tender.

So hard to cry...can't stand that tender part of me, that cries from some place of deep wounds and darkness. I can cry angry tears because anger is not tender, but tender tears are.

Tenderness is so hard to take...to accept. To be understood and validated hurts more than anything else because it's so foreign. To be accepted hurts because it's not believable.

To trust......all the years I've spent thinking I was trusting when, in truth, I've never trusted anyone completely. There are still secrets, dark ones where I can't let tenderness invade. Places of my own torment that - ironically, out of tenderness - I don't want others to see or experience.

Tears, rain, whispers, winds. Things that fade, but hurt so much because they touch something I avoid and always have.

That's why tenderness hurts.

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.

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.