Moab Is My Washpot

*** Like all posts in this blog, there is a major trigger warning for what follows:

I love Stephen Fry. I want to grow up to be him, crooked nose especially. I've been told that I look like him a bit, to which I've responded by glowing.

My hypothetical and non-existent reader may be curious as to why I decided to write about this in my survivor blog. However dearly I love him, Stephen Fry can be a bit triggering for me. I first discovered this really unfortunate fact not long after I first started accept the fact that I had actually been sexually abused. I read The Liar a couple years ago. I picked it up from a friend to read at work. At the time I was working as a phone operator for a very large company, and I was so good at my job that my call times averaged at less than a minute, so I had some time on my hands. Like most unpleasant memories, I've forgotten the finer points of the plot, but the premise involved a device that could detect lies in a real way, even if the teller was unaware of the lying. There was a lot about how the brain processes information, and how it does it differently with manufactured information. I think why it upset should be fairly obvious. Even on my best, most assured days, I have a lot of trouble believing that I am not essentially a liar. On my best day, if someone were as me if my mother sexually abused me, I would hesitate. I am terrified of any action either way. I don't want anything else to happen to confirm that it happened, and I am even more terrified of being proven wrong.

My first therapist told me once that it didn't really matter when all is said and done. Ultimately, if I feel that my mother sexually abused me, that's my reality; I have to live with it either way. My mother remembers thing differently, or so she says, and both understandings of the past can coexist. To be honest, I was pissed the fuck off when he said that. How dare he? It was in my opinion at the time tantamount to saying I was making everything up, but to this day there is no other statement that can make me feel better on the days when I feel like I'm lying.

Those days happen more regularly when I'm doing better oddly enough. I am medicated and still living far away. In fact, I've been nigh untriggerable lately, so much so that I've been calling my mother regularly. I don't like admitting that. It feels like defeat. I have been having long conversations with her when no one is home, and not mentioning that I was the one who called her or that I kind of enjoyed them. At the moment, I can't emotionally or mentally remember any of the instances of abuse. This happens whenever I'm doing well, which means apparently that I'm not doing well so much as taking a break from doing not well. It's at times like these that what that therapist told me runs through my head daily.

"Moab is my washpot" is a peculiar title, but if it's good enough for Stephen Fry, it's good enough for me. This summer I am yet again at a job that leaves me with a lot of time to read. I'm reading Stephen Fry's autobiography, titled, yes, Moab Is My Washpot, I'm only a hundred pages in, but it's having a very similar effect on me. He writes a lot about lying. He writes about how prideful he was about being a good liar. I can relate to it heavily. I know I'm a good liar. I'm in a lot of ways proud about being a good liar. If I'm as good as I think I am, it is not inconceivable that I am lying about the abuse. When in a better mindset I try to remind myself that this can as easily be a symptom of sexual abuse, learning to lie and believe lies, as much as it can be a reason to believe I was not a abused. Stephen Fry not only reminds me of this internal dilemma, but he gives good reason in my disordered brain why I should lean toward the explanation that I wasn't abused. Stephen Fry writes about lying the same way I in a disordered way feel about it, but he was not abused. He says so directly. He feels that he was in no way abused, and he even goes somewhat in depth as to what the definition of abuse is. He feels nothing that has ever happened to him ever came close. This way of thinking can develop in someone was not abused. I could just be lying. It's not proof, but it's enough to trigger me into thinking it is.

This is in essence the triggering part of Stephen Fry's books. They remind me that the symptoms and behaviors I cling to to prove to myself that I was abused when I cannot remember the abuse itself could just as easily be unrelated or used as proof that I was never abused. My therapist was right, I suppose. I don't think proof exists, not in the concrete way. I don't know if my memory will ever be reliable. My mother's memory certainly isn't. All I have is that I feel like I was abused most the time, and whether or not that did happen, I still do have to deal with it. I still have a gut reaction to reject it. I want to insist that no, actually, I was abused. I am dealing with something real. I've never been one to accept the whole reality as a construct understanding of the world. Things do happen. They happen in context and with translation but under that they happen. Externally to me. That is what I need; external confirmation.

All this hasn't triggered me into any real PTSD symptoms. It manifests in super depression. I will finish the book because the other aspects are lovely and funny. It's these problems that remind that I need to go to a serious therapist, and work through remembering events and processing them. I can't deal with remembering, coping with the trauma of remembering, and repressing again and again forever. I need these memories to exist consciously in a way that doesn't hurt so much that I repress them again. While trying to think of them now only one or two incidents that I've always remember come up. I can think of nothing at all. It's frustrating.

That is all. Sorry for the long absence. I don't have much to write about on this front when I'm in this state of mind. In the interest of continued honesty, and irony, I suppose at this point, I can say now that I've been diagnosed with PTSD. There was a lot less fuss than I thought there would be. I told the doctor my symptoms. He said I had depression and PTSD, prescribed some medication, and I was on my way.

There is a lot to be said for what's been left behind.

I called my mother today. If you've read my last post, you'll know that my mother was my abuser, and while there were others, the baggage I have left from her is by far the most significant. Why did I call her? Well, there were a number of reasons-- it had been a few months, I could tell she was getting anxious (the distressed voicemails tipped me off to that one), and though I hate to say it, I miss her. My mother has a number of diagnosed mental illnesses and an abuse history of her own. In my experience not calling leads to a suicide threat or maliciously outing me to the rest of my family. Ultimately, none of the practical reasons to call matter. I have no dependence or relationship with her nor my family any more. The rest of my family disowned me after my mother outed me as trans and gay to them the summer before last, and I have no reason to desire continued contact with her. I miss her or I still care about her apparently. At the very least, I must feel some sense of obligation. I really have no other excuse. I spent twenty years of my life with the woman, many of those years in complete enforced isolation. It's hard to let that go without a few lingering phone calls.

Needless to say, talking to my mom devestates me. She still will not admit that she abused me, and often times she purposefully acts ignorant or innocent to trigger me. I was expecting that when I called. I had a cigarette and glass of wine on stand-by. When she answered she was crying. She had just put my dog to sleep. Fuck. I started crying on the phone, which triggered the hell out of me. I am not nearly ready to be that vulnerable with my mother. I told her I had to go, and sobbed. Thankfully, I had the cigarette and wine nearby. I took a bath (with the wine and cigarette), dried myself, and sat down to write this.

I've been weird lately in regard to my PTSD, which, by the way, I would like to disclaim I have not actually been diagnossed with yet. I haven't seen a therapist or doctor since I moved to Chicago nearly a year ago. It wasn't until after I moved that I started to display more serious symptoms. What I have resembles PTSD most closely, so I use that term in order to more easily communicate what I'm going through. In anycase, I've been fluctuating wildly between super regression/flashback/lost triggered to feeling exactly like I did before I even started to think about any of this, which was a God awful place-- entirely numb, convinced it was either normal or that I wanted it, etc... Reading Freud for my Social Sciences class has certainly not been helping. I have been falling into old habits. This means I've wanted to stay in my room forever, comfort eating, self sabatoging, and whatever semblance of a sex life I had with my SO has fizzled for the time being. I've been purposefully triggering myself by reading horrible incest fics on the internet. Thankfully, I have managed to not have this effect school and my relationship with my SO is still good, but something is going to break and soon.

I'm hoping my dog's death is not the breaking point. My dog's name was Sandy. She was a tan (sandy) colored cocker spaniel. I wasn't very inventive in naming her, I'm afraid. We got Sandy when I was 8 or 9. My time lines aren't very reliable. We got her right before the worst years of the abuse. She was my only friend throughout all of it. I don't know if I'd be alive if it weren't for her. What also gets to me about her death is that I feel that the one creature who I couldn't blame is gone now. Sandy is the only one who never betrayed me with her silence. So many others must have noticed something, but never said. I still have issues today with friends who knew me toward the later years of the abuse, knew what was going on, or knew some of it somehow, but never took that step to tell someone who could help me. I was a troubled kid, and no one ever tried to see what was happening. Teachers, friends, family members, neighbors, no one said a word. I feel like my only friend and witness is gone. It's upsetting. The witness part is throwing me in particular. As my mom is utter denial, there is no one to confirm that I'm not crazy. Of course Sandy couldn't have actually said anything, but she was there. That was always comforting for some reason.

I haven't seen Sandy hardly at all since I moved out of my mother's house. I missed her before her death, and I still miss her. She was one of the many things I had to give up to get out, and now there's not much to go home to, even if I wanted to. She was a good friend, my only for a long time, and a good dog. It is always sad to have a pet die, but I can't help but mix this with my feelings about my abuse, which is why I'm posting my thoughts here.