Meursault's Journal

[sanmagic7]

stay staunch, indeed, meursault.   i've been thinking about you as well since i hadn't seen you posting lately.  i'm glad you're still with us.

bear spirit is very powerful as a totem animal.  immense strength and protectiveness.  so glad you got yours - i believe it will help you through this mess.  and taking your bear on a tour of your house has imbued it w/ bear spirit.  very strong stuff indeed!

and also glad to hear that you can now live in your house, that it is a safe place for you.  yay! 

keep hangin' tough, meursault.  we're hangin' right beside you! 

[meursault]

Thanks for all the support I get here.

I'm sooooooo terrified of all this, and I'm having horrible flashbacks all the time.  I was trapped under my dad's body.  Then trapped on a stretcher.  Then trapped by handcuffs.  Then trapped in a police station.  Then it's been trapped by the legal system since.  I can't handle if they trap me in jail.  I would wish I had never been born then.  So many years of that threat over my head, my life just frozen in the continuing trauma.

Anyhow.  Flashbacks and anxiety are coming in waves.  God does my life feel hard.

I wish I had found some lovely woman to have a life with.  Then even this stuff would be bearable.  (Bearable... get it?)

I had given that detailed writeup of my fantasy life growing and my therapist read it.  She said the ME that is in there, the idealized me, is the one she sees every time any ways... she told me how she sees me as strong and kind and that sort of thing.   That fantasy version of me could handle this.  I don't know how to be him.   And at the end of the day, is it worth it.  Just a life of suffering and trauma after trauma, alone.

Anyhow. ..  my limbs haven't been working well today.  I've fallen down a couple of times.  Its like my joints are made of butter and my muscles are made of electrified wood.

Cheers, everyone.

Meursault

[sanmagic7]

and cheers to you.  i can relate about some days i wonder what's the point?  and, my body does that same sort of thing at times.  it's the strangest feeling, especially my legs.  they just don't work correctly, and i walk like i'm a hundred.  i've named it 'the slows'.  it's been happening to me for over 20 yrs.  can't walk well, can't drive cuz i can't turn my head fast enough, nothing responds except in slow motion.  weird.

hang tough, meursault.  i feel ya!

[meursault]

I like Haiku, here are a couple I've written:

Haiku - For a Beautiful Woman

Reaching for the door
I stand groping in light and
The scent of flowers

Haiku - The Death of My Father

When the moment came
I was a hole in myself
Falling on the ground

Haiku – Triggered Trauma

The wind rattles me.
I am wildly dancing leaves
Floating in autumn.

Meursault

[Three Roses]

These are beautiful, Meursault. Thanks for sharing them.

Some stories make me wish I had unlimited resources available - yours is one. If I could, I'd donate to your cause and get you better legal help.

[sanmagic7]

ditto what she said.  beautiful verses.

[meursault]

Self-harm triggers.  Maybe something that could be seen as sexual in the poem at end.

Thanks Three Roses and Sanmagic!

I had originally written a longer thing about my legal situation and stuff, which Three Roses saw, but got worried about it for legal reasons and edited it out.  I spent the first four years of dealing with this doing it strictly alone, or guardedly in an edited way with therapists afraid anything I say would get me in trouble.  Everything about this situation exacerbates the trauma of it. Ugh.

I saw my therapist today, and I read her what I wrote above (Oct 16th) when I mention giving her my Tolkien based fanatsy life stuff.  I think she was a bit moved.

Truth be told, I was an absolute wreck today.  Crying, wailing, hitting myself (I'm all sore and bruised), shutting down so I stopped existing, I think I may have passed out a couple of times, shaking, "rending my flesh", convulsing, thoughts and feelings starting, and then exploding into a whirlwind of incoherence.  I was in rotten shape, and still am to a degree.  This whole thing is functioning the same way torture does on the mind, and has broken me down into something that isn't even human anymore, I think.

I got up, putting on my jacket, and planned to leave and not come back several times.

I brought my stuffed bear today.  I showed him to her, and kept him in my inner jacket pocket, head sticking out, looking at her.  He looked scared and vulnerable and extremely hurt watching her, but hopeful and needy too.  (I get that this is just an inner child part of ME here...)  She had me talk to him a few times, and introduced herself and greeted him.  At the end of our session, she gave me a hug, and insisted my bear get involved in the hug as well.  She tried to sort of direct me to place him between our chests, but I'm so phobic of overstepping boundaries, I jerkily handed him to her so I wouldn't be creating any pressure on her breasts.  (I hope that's alright to say.)  I wish I hadn't done that, because I think it would have meant more if he was surrounded by our hearts.  She invited him back in the future.

I just got my bear last spring, but he is already looking pretty worn and "well-loved".  She asked me his name, and I told her.  I wasn't even really ashamed or embarrassed much about it all.  Here I am, a supposed man in his forties, an emotional wreck, showing his stuffed bear to his extremely attractive thirty-something therapist.  I mostly didn't feel humiliated or emasculated, even though there's a part of me that always wants to appear masculine and strong so I can imagine she thinks I'm attractive.

My therapist was saying today how much I've changed since I started seeing her.  Remembering back, I was so scared and distrustful of her.  Everything she said was a threat, and I interpreted things so negatively, thinking she was telling me what garbage I was with so MANY comments.  She pointed out that I am a very open and honest person, and even in our first session, told her that I don't trust her, and wanted to go back to my old therapist.  I told her how lucky I was that I decided to stay with her.  A couple of friends are as important, but there hasn't been anyone more important to me in my life.  The last tehrapist, the "email therapist" mentioned that she was probably the first positive female attachment I had in my life, maybe of either gender.  I still have moments of core mistrust of her, but mostly, I feel how she really cares and loves me.  (I rarely even feel that she is just tricking me and secretly ridiculing how gullible I am!)

I was talking about how I have no hope left.  How even if I survive jail, my life is over.  No-one will want me or love me.  She told me that she believes it will happen and I will find love in some way, and she will hold that belief for me even if I can't right now.  I think she sees I have nowhere safe inside of me right now, and the trauma and terror and pain of all this is basically causing me to "internally self-harm" in a pretty severe and fundamental way, so she was letting me know she will hold onto the goodness of me so it doesn't get destroyed over the next month.  I feel like there is a giant in me stomping around in terror and pain, smashing the place up before something even worse happens.  I really don't think what comes out of this trial in four weeks will be salvageable.  The human brain just can't deal with this.

I've been getting these waves, many times a day, that I guess are pretty severe dissociation, where reality becomes nauseating, unreal, and choppy, like existence is strobing hard.  It's very disturbing, disorienting, confusing, and scary.  Sort of like your brain shutting off and on, every few seconds, and each time you become aware, it's like a whole new world where you have to ask yourself "where am I?", along with a low grade motion-sickness feel, whole body electrical anxiety, rational thought that's trying to form in a blender, and a heart that feels like it's going to pop like a bubble with endless wailing and grief.  I wonder if this is psychoticism?  This constant THREAT, lack of safety and control over myself I am ACTUALLY under, and not "just" reliving, really messes with all the other PTSD and C-PTSD manifestations.  Ugh.  I used to not be so melodramatic, but this is really as well as I can explain this.

I feel like an emaciated, mistreated and abused dog, jumping out of its own skin.  All I want to do is climb into my therapists lap and yelp and shiver forever.  (She likes dogs, so that's not weird at all    )

Then I came home and wrote this poem trying to articulate what my therapist means to me.  It is WAY too romantic, though, and I don't really see her that way (despite occasional erotic transference), so I don't think I can show it to her.

I Promise You

If I could
I would
Dress
My heart in the finest
Three piece suit,
Or
Those dungarees and tight
White T-shirt
You seem to like

So when I enter the room
And my heart begins to orbit
The Sun
That is you, maybe you would
See it
And think
"In this gown I will dance with
that well dressed heart,
Or with this body I will cling and entwine
that rugged, manly chest
In its well-worn
clothes."

But I
Am only me,
And hope this battered satellite
Warmed by your heat
Is enough, feeble and naked,
for you to notice,
And say
"I will clothe you in my love
and dance through the nothingness
Together
Until we are
One."

Meursault

[Three Roses]

I hope you are keeping this poetry in a safe place! Personally I'm not very poetic but I always seem to enjoy yours.

Maybe you will write a book about your experiences, when you are beyond them. And I do believe you will be beyond them someday.

Dear friend, thank you for sharing yourself with us.

[meursault]

Triggers for despair.  Very negative rant.

I'm pretty much at the end of my rope.  This legal stuff has kept me in this frozen state, destroying all possibility of socializing for years and years.  I am doing so poorly I can't even describe it.  The emotional pain I'm in right now is worse than any time I've ever had.  I'm so alone and unloved.  I don't know what to do.  It's basically all I can do to keep myself from just starting screaming and never stop right now.

Wrote my therapist saying I'm not coming back.  I give up on all that.  Still in"drafts" and haven't sent it.  This legal stuff has destroyed any possibility of ever having a life of anything other than unlimited pain. 

The cops psychologically broke me down immediately after the trauma of being trapped under my Dad's body,  And every moment since has been torture.

This is soooo beyond anything I can take any more.

When he died, I had lots of friends, and I bet over a hundred people offered to be character witnesses if I needed it.  Now I have no-one.  There is nothing human, and nothing worth salvaging in me any more.

The ONLY thing I've ever cared about having is the love of some woman, and all that partnership would entail.  I don't want anything else in life, and it's not possible to ever have that.  I am so hideous and subhuman and disgusting, even the legal system is forcing me to live in a loveless exile.  The whole world is telling me I am unlovable and using the threat of force to prevent me from even trying to find love.

Ok.  I am just garbage.  I get it, world.

Meursault

[Three Roses]

I don't believe you are garbage. You are not sub human. You are worthy of love and respect. You haven't done anything so horrible, only had horrible things happen TO you, done TO you.

There is hope.
There is hope.
There is hope.

[radical]

I wish there was something I could say that could penetrate the pain.  I don't think there are any words that could.
You have shown yourself here and we love what we see. 
I believe you will find the love you have longed for and be held and cherished.  I wish it could be now when you need it most, but it almost never works out that way. 
I find this poem comforting when I feel at my most hopeless.  Spoken aloud.

TS Eliot 'The Wasteland'
What the Thunder Said:


Then spoke the thunder   
DA   
Datta: what have we given?   
My friend, blood shaking my heart   
The awful daring of a moment's surrender   
Which an age of prudence can never retract   
By this, and this only, we have existed   
Which is not to be found in our obituaries   
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider   
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor   
In our empty rooms   
DA   
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key   
Turn in the door once and turn once only   
We think of the key, each in his prison   
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison   
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours   
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus   
DA   
Damyata: The boat responded   
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar   
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded   
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient   
To controlling hands   

[sanmagic7]

dear meursault, there are no words for me to express how my heart reaches out to you.  my earth mother being wants to gather you in, wrap you up, embrace you until the pain subsides.  i've seen no monster from the very first time you've posted, but i have seen a sensitive human being who is working at keeping the demons at bay with all his strength.  hang tough, dear friend, i'm hangin' right beside you.  i wish i could do more.

[meursault]

Thanks for the support!  I'm afraid I am about to do a huge unloading of what's happening with me....  Sorry about how long-winded I am.)

I love Eliot's poetry...  I'll post another one of my poems which fits in answer to the last part of what you quoted:

Ship

The seas around are turbulent:
A storm not of my making.
Who would wish for seasickness
When everything is breaking?

To build a ship of any worth,
You need the proper training;
But in this wreck, with drowning deck,
The hull is over-straining.

The masts are splintered, cracked, and bent;
All the nails are rusting.
The drying tars, the broken spars,
The freezing winds are gusting.

I do not know where lay the shores,
But, oh, the ship is creaking.
I'll douse the sails, and when that fails,
The waves will drown my shrieking.

So my already horrible situation was made so much worse three years ago by that girl who got mad at me for refusing to get into rehab with her so she would have protection from bullying.  She was making fun of me as I was crying and talking about how scared of jail I was, so I told her I didn't want to know her anymore (I wasn't polite).  The next day she tried to force her way into my apartment but I was able to push the door shut.  She ended up calling the cops and saying I had guns in my place.  The cops were even apologetic once the tactical unit cleared out, since I think they understood what happened, but the main cop told me his supervisor was making him arrest me because of all the spectacle  (they had closed down the major street, and there were at least nine cop cars I counted, plus a couple of vans, fire trucks, ambulances etc.  I saw at least 15 cops.)  It makes no sense how vicious that was.  I had only ever been nice to her.  She had a drug problem, and when we hung out she would start begging for money, and when I refused, would sometimes end up getting naked trying to lure me or get drugs in exchange for sex.  I never took advantage of that at all, though I'll admit I find her very attractive.  She nearly got us both killed when she did that when we were drinking with a couple of bikers once (and I mean REAL bikers, not just guys who say they are), begging for drugs or money, and I basically got crazy enough with them, threatening both of them not to touch her, even though either one could have pasted me to the wall.

That just made it so I have no life whatsoever.  She called the cops, saying I had guns, and a whole tactical unit stormed my apartment.  They obviously didn't find anything, but I had the bail condition I wasn't to possess alcohol, and their were three beers in my aartment, so I spent a few days in jail, then a year more waiting until a trial for breaching those conditions, but nothing came of that.  I already had all the damage inflicted from the new bail conditions.  I was evicted because the police "disturbed the other tenants", forced to live with my Mom, who was so abusive as a kid, sleeping in my Dad's bed (they had separate beds), while my mom had the TV blaring all day every day those true crime investigation shows about sex crimes, cut off from my social contacts, forced to attend AA, see a probation officer, be driven anywhere I had to go (vehicles are very bad for me mentally since the accident).  It destabilized everything, and I've now lived in more places in the last three years than I had lived in the previous 41 (I have to go to court every time I move).  And I've had this curfew for three years now.  It's basically amounted to a year of house arrest.  I ended up in psych ward from staying with my Mom.  The psychiatrist wrote a letter for the court saying I am being re-traumatized on a daily basis there and it is crucial for me to be out of there.  The prosecutor still refused to consent to that (which the psychiatrist and psych ward manager were stunned by, saying that had NEVER happened in all their years), and I ended up having to go to court to fight it.  Moved into a place for a few months, and then moved in with a girlfriend (in retrospect, she used me to pay for everything).  We got a foster kid, and I was all gung ho, but GFs adult son started doing drugs with the foster girl.  I had a problem with that and wouldn't relent, so GF kicked me out.  More time at Mom's, then a couple of days living with woman I met in psych ward, but she and her special needs daughter were BOTH very sexually invasive with me and I fled.  I've been pretty limited, though, because I have that eviction because of the police, finding apartments has been hard.  Thankfully, I now have this house.

I have faced more punishment from that than probably 99% of assault or sex crime convicts, and I don't even have a conviction.  Meanwhile, the accident with my Dad is still not resolved by the courts after 6.5 years.  The damage they have inflicted from that amounts to more than probably half the murder convicts.  My governments courts just threw out a first degree murder because the crown and courts had stalled for three years.  And here I am, with a lawyer who acts like this is all normal.

I can't go out in the peacefulness of the night, see the stars, get away for a day, socialize at most events with friends.  I went to court to get permission to go on my camping trip this summer, which my therapist wrote a letter saying was psychologically going to be very beneficial.   It's the only time I slept well in a year.  It has completely cut me off from so much of life, and I'm effectively exiled in the midst of the world.  How cruel is that?  Every BBQ, house party, music festival or show is off limits to me because of that curfew.  Can't go to six AM yoga, can't join in on sports tournaments I would have.  I sit in my place every night, on the verge of jumping out of my skin for hours, expecting a "curfew check" by the police.  Too afraid of making noise in case I don't hear them knocking and they kick down the door.  No wonder I sleep so poorly.

So, a bunch of friends were having a supper party tonight for a friend's birthday.  I had been looking forward to this for weeks.  Actually being able to hang out at some event with friends, meet some new people, maybe even a woman.   Actually having a moment where I was allowed to be a human, a person, and participate in life...  But nope.  The SISTER of that girl who caused me so much damage was coming.  I get horribly triggered by her.  I also stopped a mental health program this spring because her OTHER sister was enrolled in it.  I just fall to absolute pieces around them.  It takes me days to calm down after seeing her sister.  I didn't ask for her to not come, but I mentioned to the hostess that this is a major problem for me.  Her response was basically "too bad!  Hope to see you next time!"

I was really looking forward to that.  I'm less than four weeks away from this trial.  I wish I had had a chance to be a part of the world before it all ends in court.  I don't understand how these friends couldn't have allowed ONE event where I was able to go.  I'm so completely  alone and lonely. 

Anyhow, a guy I met in the crisis unit a couple of years ago is doing poorly, and came by my place tonight.  Just helping be a support for him actually distracted me from my stuff for a while.  Meanwhile, the house party is still going on, and I'm stuck here alone as always.  Brain just cycling in waves with this strobing dissociation.  Like reality is a bunch of separate vignettes.

God, is life hard.  Every year is getting harder than the last, and they have been brutal since I was four or five.  And in three or four weeks, I go to court and battle dragons.

Not to mention that girl who turned my life upside down messaged me last week, saying she was sorry, and it was all the fault of the alcohol and drugs, and hopes I'm living a good life, and she misses me.  Just twisting the knife.  She does that every few months to a year.

It would have been good to have the support of my friends tonight.  I was looking forward to seeing a bunch of them and at least chatting with a few of the women I vaguely know that I find attractive who would have been there.  Just to feel a rare moment that it's POSSIBLE I could find love.  On the bright side, one friend messaged me saying she didn't think it was right, and how  I'm the strongest person she's ever met.  Made me feel a bit better.  I also feel pretty good hat I didn't send a bunch of snide, passive aggressive texts to people.  I really felt like it.

Sorry about my long posts.  Probably almost no-one reads them  Thanks to those who do.  I'm just going through so much, and have been for quite a while.  I think I want to be back in the sub-arctic facing off with that bear.  I was happier then!

Also, saw that guy who I saw as a brief therapy therapist for a coffee yesterday.  He used to be a cop before becoming atherapist.  He was the first person I trusted at all to tell anything about growing up, although I didn't give much in way of the major stuff or detail.  We've kept in touch in email, and I asked if I could see him professionally, but he can't, but he said we could grab a coffee and catch up.  He told me I need to write a book of my life.  Last time I saw him for therapist session a couple of years ago he told me he's seen four or five thousand clients over his career (he's a "Crisis response" type therapist), and even without the stuff about  my Dad, my life would be in the "top one, maybe two percent most traumatic".  Made me feel like I'm not just weak, and a failure, and complaining about nothing.  To my family, I am just a stupid, weak, laughable, lazy whiner.  I try to remember what he said when I'm being put down by them.  I'm trying to remember what people here are telling me too, but it's hard when I'm so overwhelmed.

Anyhow, sorry for long post.  I just really need to articulate some of this stuff.  Helping that one friend, and the messages from that other friend in support of me, really brought me back from a precipice.  I was disintegrating really badly earlier...

Meursault

[Three Roses]

I may not always answer your posts (some days writing is beyond me), but I read every single one - sometimes more than once. I look forward to reading your posts; you are one of several people I always look forward to hearing from.

I have thought the same thing about you writing a book!

I'm so sorry you didn't get to go to the BBQ - if I could, I'd plan one just for you and only invite people you wanted there.

As someone here said just the other day, you have shown yourself to us, and we love you. Thank you for your post.

[sanmagic7]

dear meursault,

i'm really glad you got some outside support from people, and i hope you can hang onto that while you're in the midst of this whirlwind.  i agree with both of them, you are so strong and courageous in the face of such odds.  you didn't send those snide messages cuz that's not the kind of person you are!  we do love you, see the very best of you shining through, even when you can't see it.  it's there, it's real, it's you.  big hug, meursault!  hang tough!