Echo

Hey, check out Imogene’s awesome post titled, “Year of the Sheep (Ram)” from March 25, another one of her witty, riveting discourses, this time about sex, internet dating and the concept of dating freely.

(ps–In a few months, I’ll have hopefully built a site on my own domain and managed to figure out how to have real links instead of this copy/paste crap).

I think I’m locked into 3rd for ESPN fantasy basketball, so rather than winning the huge-ass plasma TV, I get the 13-inch LCD. This marks the first time in my life that I’ve been disappointed with 13 inches.

http://games.espn.go.com/cgi/fba/leaderboard?statType=1&seasonType=0

It was good to hear from you…I wish it had been under better circumstances. You’re going to be okay. Just focus on cutting through the unfortunate things from your childhood to put yourself and your well-being first.

4 new posts follow…

I’m trying to piece together what happened on Monday because things aren’t falling in place for me and I have red flags going up.

9:05am – Dawn calls me from your home.
9:12am – You email me to warn me about not emailing you anymore.

(supposedly within those 7 minutes, she called you and demanded the password).

You told me she read the emails at work. If you signed on into your account at 9:12 am, you should have been able to see my last emails to you when you went online to email me. Before she read them at work. Even if you didn’t have time to delete them, you should have been able to read them, or to at least see them. But you told me you never read them.

Something’s not jiving. You need to come correct. And for whatever reason, I don’t think you are and my radar has been going crazy that there’s some honesty lacking somewhere. I don’t do drama for drama’s sake and my trust is dropping by the minute. Nothing pisses me off more than being lied to. So what’s going on?

Resources:

Gay/Lesbian Community Service Center (has largest range of domestic violence services)
(323) 860-5806

LACAAW (LA Commission on Assaults Against Women – for all forms of dom. abuse)
(213) 955 – 9090
(310) 392-8381 (santa monica branch)
(213) 626-3393 24 hr. hotline

Sojourn (Where I went. They’re in Santa Monica, close to you)
(310) 264-6644 Office
(310) 264-6644 Shelter

-both #s available 24 hours

Therapists:
Barrie Levy (310) 450-0801
Ellen Ledley (310) 314-7667

What should I do if I am still in the relationship?
from: http://www.breakthecycle.org/

If you cannot safely leave the relationship right now, or if you’re just not ready to leave, you should still think about ways to keep yourself safe. You might want to think about taking the following precautions:

Keep important phone numbers nearby at all times. Always have a cell phone or have change for a phone call. Important numbers to carry include: the police, domestic violence hotlines or shelters, family and friends.

Bring money when you go out so you are not left stranded or dependent on the person you’re with.

Keep a journal of all incidences of violence.

Explain to as many people as you can trust that if they see anything happen, if you disappear, or they think you may be in danger for any reason, they should call 911. People to tell include: roommates, friends, family, people at work or school.

Develop code words with friends and family to use to signal to them that you are in immediate danger.

Plan escape routes from places like school, home, the abuser’s home and work.

Become familiar with domestic violence, youth or homeless shelters that you can go to in an emergency.

Avoid going into rooms with possible weapons around, like a kitchen, or rooms where there are no exits during an explosive incident.

Try not to be alone in isolated areas in public. Try to get a ride to school, or ask someone to walk or ride the bus with you.

Find a person or place where you can leave emergency money, keys and clothes.

Join a support group for victims of dating and domestic violence.

Make sure the original and copies of important documents (for example, identification, health insurance, immigration papers and other records) are someplace safe and where you can easily find them but the abuser cannot.

Keep all documentation of the abuse in a place where the abuser will not find it.

Know where the local police station and courthouse are located and their hours of operation.

Choose an email account password that the abuser will not be able to guess so that the abuser won’t be able to read your incoming and outgoing mail.

Print and save any threatening or harassing e-mail messages the abuser may send.
If you are accessing information about domestic violence on a computer the abuser has access to, learn how to clear the computer’s history or empty the cache file in the browser’s settings after accessing the Internet. Or, access the Internet at a local library, a friend’s house, or at work.

the last email

I understand that you’re upset. All I ask is that you trust me. You can still email me in times when you need someone to talk to. Bounce things off of me. I just can’t talk about the connection anymore. It’s distracting you. Just know that your soul knows but your mind must forget. I can’t address it anymore. To be honest, it’s not fair to anyone and it’s not helping you out in the right way.

I also want you to know that you have helped me with what keeps me running without knowing it. I don’t know exactly what it is but I’ve been fighting my demons one by one my whole life hoping I finally slay the granddaddy of them all, whoever he is. I went through incredible psychological and emotional pain growing up. Pain that overwhelms me until I have no words with which to speak. Because I am very sensitive to things, and like I told you, the connection to my mother is very strong so I pick up a lot of her currents. After I got your email yesterday, something clicked in me. My dream the other night. I called my mother yesterday morning and asked her, begged her, to just be honest with me. If she only married my father because he had been abandoned his whole life and she felt she shouldn’t (couldn’t) leave out of pity and obligation. Because she was afraid to venture out into the world, and risk not finding someone else. If she already knew she was unhappy and wanted to leave before I was born, yet she had me anyway, hoping I would come into this world and help her with her own loneliness. And then she broke down and cried. My mother is a rock. She NEVER cries. And she said yes. She said she knew it was wrong, and she knows it was the wrong decision and she did my father, my brother and I wrong by not being stronger, but yes. Oh, how hard it was to hear my mother sobbing, begging me to tell her how she could make it up to me because she would do anything. I told her, she doesn’t have to. I’m making it up to the universe now. And I also told her, I wish she hadn’t had me.

I went to bed every night with them screaming in the next room. And now I can’t fall asleep without either someone sleeping next to me, or having noise/music in the background. (So you want to know why I hate sex? Because sex is the price I have to pay just to have someone to sleep next to me so I can rest for a little while.) And the excruciating pain of feeling the suffering in the people you love most, but as a child, your hands are too small to stop all of the bleeding that just keeps coming and coming and never stops. How worthless does that make one feel? I left home three times after I got my driver’s license, when the anger and frustration from the marriage became emotionally or violently directed at me and I finally had a way of escaping. But the last time, they told the school so when I finally came back 3 days later, the school had a police officer pull me into an office and scare me straight about what happens to people who do things like that (“You want to be a bum your whole life and go nowhere? Because that’s where you’re headed.” I’ll never forget that. He just stood there yelling at me, putting me down, an honors student who had never gotten in trouble at school, who barely even TALKED to anyone, who couldn’t look anyone in the eye, and never once asked me if maybe there was trouble at home. I had no one to talk to. No adults who could possibly understand or cared enough to understand the violent storms I came home to. And how could anyone believe me if my ability to find words failed me?) Soon after that they also sent me to a psychiatrist who I will hate for the rest of my life. I would sit across from her, and not know how to speak, and wishing she would open up the conversation for me and help me find words, but instead, she threatened to hospitalize me if I kept pulling shit at home. Oh man, people have not given me much reason to trust them.

God, I never ever want any vulnerable child coming into this world to go through what I did. This loneliness that has always been a part of me, it’s been there for so long, it will probably always be a part of me in some way, no matter how much work I do. Because it’s my past and where I come from. I will do the best with what I got, but the reality is that it is a part of who I am, for better or for worse.

When my mom tried to leave my dad 8 years ago, I wanted her to, but he told me that he would kill himself if she did. And there we all were, trapped. God, they are not bad people I swear. But the marriage, such a bad marriage, brought out the ugliest things. But emotions, abandonment, it’s a tricky thing. The right thing often feels like the impossible thing, the dangerous thing, the cruel thing. We were all trapped.

Why I recognized your sadness? Because it is the same as the one coloring my world.

One day, I will write you a poem about my house. How the silence had teeth and echoed all around. And the darkness that churned inside of me because of the unhappiness of my most loved ones. I created my own cage inside myself, to mimic the cage of the trapped people around me, because you will suffer their wrath if they know you are actually free. And I’m still looking for the key to that cage.

I understand your unhappiness. I’ve felt it before. In the woman whom I would lay down my life for, who needs me to help her fend off the demons of her own decisions, but who thinks I do it out of obligation rather than a deep, unquestioning love. And now you…also in such pain…it agonizes me. And for your unborn child…pain beyond words. How much I want to protect it, protect you. But my hands are still too small. You ask me what torments me and this is it.

I know you have so much going on and you have some hard decisions to make and I wish to God that you didn’t. But you aren’t going to face them for anyone but for yourself, because your life is your own and exactly what YOU make of it. I don’t want to complicate your life because I don’t want you to feel like I’m giving you any kind of pressure in any way, for any reason. And I don’t want you to use me as a source of pressure to motivate you. No, I don’t like to feel your sadness. But ultimately, there are things in my life that are for me to tackle for no one else but for me, and vice versa.

I don’t want to become entangled in that and confuse the situation. I want you to do the things you want to do, the way you want to do them, at the times that feel right and I feel that if I’m too close to you, it will feel more like pressure than support. So that’s why I’m trying to take a few steps back. Please…I’m trying to do what’s right for you. And this is the only way for things to turn out okay.