An Undelivered Letter to My Once Lover

I can not stop ruminating over our actions, my actions, my inactions and hope the consequences bear no fruit. I missed my friend and hoped to rekindle the friendship that seemed doomed by my love or lust for you. While our friendship seemed forgotten, I surmised that our friendship would have remained intact if I did not want you. Had we never slept together, we would still be friends. It goes beyond that as well. Had I been well, I would never have wanted you. You were probably the last person I would have considered as a lover. I would never have gotten to know the man hidden by the public visage that was what I knew of my friend. Your decency and goodness trapped my heart when all I wanted to offer was my body. My illness twisted me apart, when I discovered I could not hold my heart back. And you did what any sane person would do, you separated yourself from the craziness that was my depression, my anxiety, and the stress of the trauma done to me as it ripped through my soul. I clawed my way back to sanity, fought all the demons of my past and repaired the damage so that I could live normally. And I still missed our friendship. I did not want to rebuild our friendship only to lose it in my love for you, so I worked on that as well. I released any sick fantasy I had of working things out with you, of becoming lovers again, so that I could be honest in being your friend. Finally well, and ready to move on in my private life, ready and actually dating other men again, I contacted you. Contacted you in hopes of rebuilding our friendship, but, expecting nothing, expecting to get my few things back from you and not to ever see you again, friendship lost to my illness. Another price I would be forced to pay for the damage and abuse done to me, not like I haven't paid a high price already. My children, my sanity, years of my life, many of my friends, they are all part of the payment I have made for my abuse. I would willingly pay almost any price for the return of my sanity, but if I could avoid this payment, I would try my best. After spending a fun evening with you, and receiving my things, I was pleasantly surprised that you invited me to see a movie with you. Maybe I could avoid this payment after all. The movie night was, ummm, interesting. The week had been filled for the both of us with circumstances and situations that made everything difficult to accomplish and left us tired and having to wake up early the next day, work for you, school for me. Yet we tried to watch a movie. Just as the movie was getting exciting and reaching the climax, the projector light blew. Suddenly a dark theatre and only the voices of the actors could be heard. I think there was at most 30 minutes left of the movie and nothing could be done. Everyone was leaving with a pass, a promise of a free movie at a later time. The next movie was better. Free and you bought popcorn, a nice Saturday night. I tried to dress so carefully for every meeting. I do not think you realized how uncasual my casual dress was. Black slacks, black t shirt, not tight, not low cut, nothing to give the wrong impression when I met with you to get my stuff. Blue jeans and a t shirt for the first movie, black jeans and a black loose Henley for the second night. All carefully chosen to keep me as androgynous as possible. Maybe it was feeding each other popcorn, just stupid crap really. Flirting, but we always flirted. What could I have done to stop everything from unfolding and leaving me here to contemplate our actions. I have learned the hard way that I should not go into the home of someone I am on a date with, but I did not consider us going to the movies a date. I have been to your house many times and felt no danger from it. So I accepted your invitation to come in. We sat on your couch laughing and joking around, watching TV. Then, you kissed me. Suddenly I was pressing myself against you, kissing you back, touching you where I could reach, the sound of water rushing down in my ears. I got home on Sunday at about 3 pm. I wasn't planning on sleeping with you and we were woefully unprepared for sex, but I couldn't think from the moment you touched me and I could only want you. Unfortunately, I may have been at the wrong time in my cycle and two more weeks before I know whether my menses is MIA.

The Dating Game

I finally dealt with all the issues that have kept me from peace in the last 20 or so years. When you have a complete mental and emotional crash, it gets hard to deny there is a problem. All the problems you have figuratively buried in the cellar, start digging their way up from their hidden graves, clawing through your heart, scratching through your flesh. These long buried zombies then start eating through your well being, happiness, and all the firewalls you have erected to protect yourself and allow you to pretend to be functioning member of society. The only way to slay these demons is to face each issue that reanimates the corpses. Sometimes there are so many zombies, aka issues, that you think you have slain them all and it is all sunshine and applesauce. You can walk down the street and actually have a spring in your step and a real smile blossoming forth from your heart to your face. You feel ready to face the world on its terms, knowing you have the strength to push it to your own terms and you start to partake in the fun that you have missed for all those years. It is a cool evening, the sun is setting and a luminous moon rises above the horizon. There is a slight breeze blowing and you can smell the scent of fresh cut grass wafting across the street. You stop at a rose bush. There are several large scarlet blossoms pouring forth its heady perfume into the sweet air. You bend forward to inhale the scent, to fill your head with the drunken smell of the roses. You bend your head forward and inhale deeply, noticing a sickly sweet, cloying scent tricking forth to cover up the flower's smell. Suddenly, two hands wrap around your neck. You can feel the slime of rotting flesh and the thin brittle bones breaking through the decay. You realize you missed an issue. It is hard being a rape survivor and trying to date. I am not sure if I should call myself a rape survivor, or if I should just say I was a battered wife. Maybe I should say I am a survivor of child sexual abuse. I guess it really doesn't matter what I was, but what I am in the processes of becoming. Either way, going back into the world of dating has been an interesting thing.

You won't get me to admit this any other place but here, but I started by responding to ads on Craig's List. I stuck to the strictly platonic section, as I was not ready yet to give up on my once lover. I would meet men for coffee or at a club and just have fun socializing. I noticed some men did not understand the meaning of platonic and it became glaringly obvious by the time I started putting out my own ads for friends to hang out with. But I plodded on. I think I finally released my sick fantasies about working things out with my once lover by the middle of July. I still wanted to offer my friendship to him, but I was finally over him. I was ready to move on. I put an ad in Craig's List, titled ready to date in the women looking for men section. I was stepping away from the protection of platonic friendship. I decided to take a vacation and date several men on my nights off. In the end, I arranged to have 4 dates and meet up with my once lover to get my things back and see if we could be friends. My schedule was Monday night, my first night off, I was going to sleep. Go out Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, stay home Friday night as it would be my son's first night home from Juvie, Saturday night I would meet up with my once lover, stay home Sunday night so that everyone could be ready for school on Monday morning, go out on Monday night and back to work on Tuesday night. I am going to save the story about Saturday night with my once lover for another post, and just concentrate on my 4 dates and how I was not as prepared to date as I thought I was.

Tuesday night was pretty nice, but in the course of discussion he accidentally mentioned his wife. Hope she knows what he is up to.

Wednesday night. This is where things got interesting. He was one of my platonic friends. We were suppose to catch a movie, but I ended up on the phone with my once lover basically to cement plans for Saturday night and the conversation lasted about 1.5 hours. So I messed up my dates plans to go see a movie and we ended up at his apartment watching the Olympics. I also spent many hours fighting my date off. I did not realize this would be a common theme among my dates. I barely got out of his apartment with my clothes on. Hand slapping just does not work with some men, persistent fuckers, figuratively. He sent me a text message to tell him when I got home safely, but I decided I would rather not have anything else to do with him.

Thursday night. This man was really nice. He took me to this really nice bar under a hotel with soft couches where we could sit and talk and not be disturbed by other patrons. We had great conversation and really had a good time. Of course, then came the expectation of sex, but he took it in stride when I told him I would not go home with him, nor do I sleep with men on my first date with them. The bar closed down and we happened to be just outside the bar doors in a quiet area of the hotel. It was an old building, probably 200 years old and it was very nice down there, no one bothered us and we left at about 4am. I did make out with him and that was very exciting, his kisses made my toes curl. I had every intention of meeting up with him again, but we can not seem to get our schedules to match up. Maybe it is fate. As we have been talking on the phone, I find he has lots of issues with the mom of his 5 year old son, and it may be why this really neat guy is still single. I am planning to keep him at a friend level, sexy kisses and all, as his ex problems really do dominate his life.

Monday night: This one started out really great. We met at a Thai restaurant and had a great dinner and good conversation. He is well traveled and we talked about the foreign countries we visited. We planned on a movie next, and we left my car and took his car and that is where my first problem came up. He smokes, I have asthma not a good combination. I even put in my ad, no smokers. The movie, what parts he allowed me to see, seemed pretty good. A Dark Knight. But sometime in the movie, this man grabbed my head to pull it towards him and kissed me very roughly. He was very aggressive and I was shocked and felt extremely helpless. He wanted me to go home with him, but I wanted to go home alone. I told him I needed to go home to my kids.

The next day I was feeling pretty disoriented. My stomach was twisting in knots and my hands were shaking. I felt like crying and I was not calming down as the days went by not getting better. Finally, I analyzed my feelings and discovered that I was in the middle of a episode of PTSD. Suddenly, I knew I was reliving the rapes I had endured from my husband and I divorced him almost 20 years ago. Uncovered, a hidden zombie, hiding in the rose bushes waiting until I was off guard. Now, I have another zombie to hunt down and slay so that I can live a normal life.

Quick Update

with everything that has been going , I haven't had time to write.  So a brief update.  My son has been in Juvenile since October, but now he is home.  Since he is bright and kept getting into trouble in high school, we (the mental health staff at Juvie and myself--at my urging) decided he will skip the last 3 years of high school and go straight into college.  (he should be in 11, but flunked 9th grade--he only attended the 1st and last day of each semester as those are the best days--his words, not mine.)  So I spent most of the summer trying to register him for school, taking him to the local junior college for entrance exams when he had the occasional weekend pass, etc.   After jumping through all sorts of hoops and barrels, I got him registered for college--no remedial classes, so he did better on the entrance exams than I did.  He was released on August 22 and his first day in college was Aug 25.  Since then I have been taking him to appts on Tuesday and Thursdays for medical, mental, Parole Officer, etc stuff.  So it is not surprising that I was extremely busy.  I failed my last remedial algebra class that I attempted to take in the summer cuz I did not have time to open the book.  Took 3 tests all completely blind before not bothering to take any other tests.  This was going to be a problem as I had to take college algebra and statistics to get into nursing school and I hoped to be done at the junior college in may and skip taking classes next summer.  So I studied and retook the math portion of the entrance exam, passed it so I am where I would have been (in college level algebra) if I hadn't failed intermediate (remedial) algebra.  So I am still on track for UT Health Science Center SA in the fall of next year.  My son is at San Antonio College with me and so far it is working out.  Oh, finally cracked through my depression.  It was that personal responsibility thing.  I still get the blues, but it rarely lasts more than a day or two, usually only a few hours.  My therapist released me as she feels that I am no longer in need of her services.  I haven't had an appt since June.  Oh, and with work, I do not know if I mentioned that my boss, the one that hated me, was offered the choice of resigning her position or getting fired.  She resigned.  The other boss that did not like me goes out of his way to treat me fairly and does not target me for crap.  The first time he smiled at me and said hello, I thought I was going to be written up as he only smiled at me when I was going to get written up.  It took me a while not to freak out every time he walked passed me.  I guess having worked with the new supervisor (and the boss of my two bosses) and him knowing that I am a valuable employee has been good for me.  I am sad for my old boss, now is not the time to be unemployed.  I suspect she was given chances to make changes, but was unable to or did not want to.  I hope she was given the chance to change, it would be unfair if she wasn't.  So currently, my job still sucks (but the environment is no longer hostile, and I wonder if that allowed me to get better so suddenly) but I don't mind it.  My son is at home and we are learning to work together and get things done.  School is going well for the both of us.  Oh, and my youngest daughter.  I tried to tell her what her past was like, but I guess I wasn't clear, so now she thinks her dad use to beat her up.  Her therapist believes that she is not ready to learn that I meant sexual abuse, so we are leaving it at that.  A sort of reprieve.  It is not easy to tell your child these things, especially if they started, if my suspicions are correct, when she was an infant.  Oh since her brother started college 2 months after his 16th birthday, she wants to go to college when she is 14.  My family tends to be competitive with each other. 

Hillary Supporters Need to Support Obama

My daughter, who is 22, was an ardent Hillary fan.  She wanted Hillary to be the next President.  She is highly disappointed that Obama is the nominee.  Truthfully, I did not want Obama either.  But Hillary is not the nominee and the choice is really between McCain and Obama.  My daughter has decided that she is not going to vote.  I am trying to convince my daughter, and other Hillary supporters, that they need to vote and vote Democrat.  I wrote this for my daughter and others who feel like she does.

Yesterday, the US Supreme Court voted on Bush's policy of denying habeas corpus to enemy combantants, prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other detainees.  It was a 5-4 vote that upheld the writ of habeas corpus, that was way too close for my taste. 

Why am I bringing this up when the question is whether Hillary supporters should vote for Obama?  Well, it is believed that the three following Justices are planning to retire or otherwise leave the court during the tenure of the next president
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
John Paul Stevens
David Hackett Souter

We have 4 extremely conservative judges
John Roberts, Chief Justice appointed (nominated) by George W
Sam Alito  appointed by George W
Antonin Scalia appointed by Reagan
Clarence Thomas appointed by George Sr

Now if there is a Republican in office, he (McCain) will replace these 3 judges with 3 conservative judges.  This will affect the future of our nation far more than who is going be president for the next 4-8 yrs and for much longer.  Scalia was appointed in 1986, so he has been affecting the laws of the land for 22 years.  He is 72 years old, which is not that old at all.  (Oliver Wendell Holmes served until he turned 90)  Just recently, the Supreme Court struck down Bush's policy that habeas corpus does not apply to enemy combantants or prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.  It was a 5-4 vote.  The 4 Justices who wanted to uphold Bush's policy, which would start the destruction of our Constitution in my opinion, are the 4 conservative Justices appointed during the Reagan/Bush Sr/Bush Jr Presidential tenure.  The 3 Justices believing to be leaving the court were all part of the 5 majority.  This is a very close vote.  If just 1 of these 3 justices had left the court earlier this year, habeas corpus would be no more.  While I understand that Obama is not the one you wanted for our next President, he is the only choice we have to rescue our Constitution from being totally destroyed by the Republicans.  Sit back and just imagine what this country will be like if there is another 8 years of Republican rule.  (think Orwell's 1984 or Atwood's Handmaiden's Tale)  If you are thinking about moving out of the US to be free of all this crap, (as my daughter has mentioned) how easy will it be to move when Americans are viewed so negatively by the rest of the world?  Will it still be easy to travel, it keeps getting harder and harder to get on a plane and the cost may soon be prohibitive.  Is it fair, as well, to ignore the pressing problems in our country, allow a Republican to get into office out of disillusionment or apathy, then leave the problems for others to clean up?  This is a pivotal election and it is more important than ever to vote, and vote Democrat.  Our Constitution depends on it.

Oh, and then there is this video:

http://www.youtube.com/v/x7Z4dxjRv4g&hl=en

Help My Daughter Win A Scholarship

Hi

My daughter is in a scholarship contest.  The more people who will go to this page and vote for her, the better her chances of winning.  Please pass this around.

Thank you

Tori