Author: Athena Dion

Black Balloon

Black Balloon

Athena DionLeave a comment

Why don’t I have any pics of my dog on Facebook? Because I am playing out my relationship with my mother in my relationship to our dog. I know on a primal level, because I would never do it on purpose, but I was kind of ‘trained’ to be this way by my own childhood. It’s one of the many reasons I didn’t want to have another child. I was truly afraid of this carrying out with one of my son’s siblings. No human deserves to be treated that way.

It’s bad enough that my dog has to live through it. He isn’t mistreated or anything, I just don’t make it any secret that I am a cat person. I think he knows that I don’t mean it personally, in his much calmer, and wiser, dog intelligence. I think dogs instinctively know how to react helpfully to traumatized humans (this is why they are so helpful for therapy). I know that I am doing at least one step better because I have actually, on multiple occasions, cried to the dog, apologizing for the unfairness and repeatedly told him that I know he is the best dog, and that I do love him… (yes, I have literally done this).

And yet, my own mother, the woman who gave me life could not do this for me. She would rather never talk to me or my son again. She let her pride be bigger than how much we would need support when he was diagnosed with autism. She turned ⅔ of my family members against us so that it felt like we were losing them all at once at a time when we needed much more than the little support network we had.

My dog is jealous of the cats in the same way I was jealous of my half-siblings. They were so obviously favored, it was sickening. They were so much younger than me, it was more like I was their handmaid than their sister. They were close with each other, but I never became connected in the same way with them. I felt I had to hide so much of myself because my mother made it clear that she believed I was a bad influence, and that she didn’t want me affecting them in a negative way. They didn’t know why I kept getting checked into psych wards. They got the edited, censored version of it. They weren’t allowed to know when I worked at Hooters, when I started stripping. They weren’t allowed to know the real me.

I know what our dog must be feeling when he sees the cats sit on my lap and sleep in my bed because that’s what I felt when my brother went to the doctor for an ear infection while I went six months or more complaining about abdominal pain caused by an infection. He thinks in his doggie inner voice, “Hey, I’m a pet too. Why can’t I sit up there like that?”

I thought, “Hey, I’m her child too. Why can’t I be loved like that?”

 

This post inspired by Black Balloon by Goo Goo Dolls

Plush

Plush

Athena DionLeave a comment

My body can never relax because I never actually feel safe. In any given situation I will see a reason to judge myself or worry about something that may or may not ever happen. My mind will always find something terrifying about every single situation I find myself within.

There are voices of a thousand judgmental, hypocritical assholes living in my head, and I believe them as if theirs are the only true opinions that count. The tricky thing is, they are AUTOMATIC. I don’t literally hear them. In reality, I feel what they say, and react to it, without even acknowledging that a negative thought had crossed my mind.

This self-damnation happens constantly without me even realizing it. Then I wonder why I’ve felt depressed and anxious for decades, why no psychotropic medications seem to help. I am not chemically imbalanced. I am not in need of mind-numbing zombie meds. All I have needed to do is just ACKNOWLEDGE IT. I had to see my true reality clearly. I had to accept it.

This is extremely hard to do when the thing you need to accept is that your mother doesn’t love you, and that she never will. Our culture puts so much pressure on children to honor mothers. But this well-intended cultural expectancy is based on the idea that mothers are infinitely loving and giving as our hormones are built to harness within us. Yet, we all know how disgusted we are to hear about a mother killing her own children. We know there are horrendous instances where this doesn’t hold up. And a lot more of these instances involve sadistic abuse rather than outright murder, which, unfortunately, can also feel like death.

Please stop saying to people, “Yeah, but that’s your mother! She gave life to you!” Not all women who give birth are mothers. Let’s get that clear right here and now.

This post inspired by Plush by Stone Temple Pilots.

Image by andrea candraja from Pixabay

Fade Into You

Fade Into You

Athena DionLeave a comment

I still reject myself within my own mind. I still discount myself, to my core, as a ‘less than’ person. Even though, logically, I can tell I must be interesting and attractive based on the response I get from other people (mostly men). Yet when people tell me I am beautiful I still assume they must be saying it to be nice, as if they would say it to anyone just to make them feel better. I live in this dichotomy where my inner life does not match up with the outer reflection. For large portions of my life, five or more years at a time, I diminished myself into the smallest space I could fill because that’s all I thought I deserved.

The very woman who brought me into this world was the one who made me believe I never should have been in it. She did not want me to be alive. She resented me because she couldn’t finish high school, because she was forced to be connected to my dad for the rest of her life, even though she’d divorced him; because I ruined the ‘perfect family’ she was trying to portray with my stepfather and half-siblings.

I finally understand, after five years of reflection, wondering how she could have let me suffer silently with depression and suicidal tendencies, which she knew about, but disclosed to no one. She wanted me to go through with it. Maybe not consciously, but on some level she was hoping she would get to cash in on that ‘poor mom who lost her daughter’ thing, look like a fucking hero, and then get to carry on with her plans for the perfect family.

The woman never praised me unless it was over something that would make her look good. I was expected to make straight ‘A’s, meaning if I got a ‘B’, or god forbid a ‘C’, I would get scolded and accused of slacking off, but my sister and brother were praised for their mediocre report cards. She pushed me so hard, and yet never seemed interested in reading anything that I wrote until I wrote a fucking poem about her.

But the thing is, I’m actually over her. That’s, I think, what had to happen to ignite the true healing of the wound. I have actually mourned the loss of the woman I thought was my mother. The fantasy that I had of a mother who would someday connect with me, and acknowledge some of the pain she caused me, has died, and I have finished grieving the loss. I know now that she can’t. It’s not personal, it’s not by some curse put upon me by the universe. I just so happened to be given life by a narcissistic teenage mom whose father was a pedophile. I no longer see her as my mother. I see her as Ronda, the woman who raised me with less passion and love than most foster families would provide. In fact, it was much, much worse because this woman was not just indifferent to me. Not only did Ronda not love me, she actively hated me and blamed me for ruining her life.

Now that I’ve accepted that, into my bones, now that I understand how very little control I had over the circumstances of my own upbringing, I can now undo the self-sabotaging habits that this fact created through most of my life. Now I realize that, as an adult, I have the power to change. I can and will be better because I want to be, and no one can stop me but me. I have finally begun shedding the skin of my childhood.

This post inspired by “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star

Storms

Storms

Athena DionLeave a comment

Through the thorny thicket of anxiety I exist within, I can sense something beyond it, something safer than the world I imagine… possibly even something secure.

There’s got to be a reason, or many reasons, why I am so vastly different than the person I was six months or a year ago. If I had to list the things I believe have helped me in my recovery, I would have to say:

  1. I accepted that I fucking overthink everything. Literally everything within my head is exaggerated: what other people think of me, how bad my mistakes really are, how little I am worth… just coming to that realization was probably half the battle.
  2. My amazing therapist Dawn Brown, whom I’ve been meeting with online for over a year: We have never even met in person, but she has done more for my well being than any of the dozen or so counselors, therapists, and psychiatrists I have seen over the last 26 years.
  3. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.
  4. Healing Trauma by Peter Levine.
  5. The Crappy Childhood Fairy

Because of all of these things combined, I have started to see the manifestations of past traumas as represented in my body. All of these experts will tell you that CPTSD is highly connected to sensations in the body. That tightness in my chest is the extreme anxiety, fearing all other people and nearly every single situation that might occur throughout the day. It’s like all of the muscles remain contracted in such a way as to prevent the person from being hurt again. It’s like the inside of your body becomes armor around your severed and broken heart. I mean, I have pain that is just too big for me to feel. So I hold that back, I hold it in, because I’m afraid of what will happen if I really let myself feel that.

But, little by little, I have begun to ease it out of my body with the guidance and techniques found in the above sources.

The routine I have found that seems to be working magic is adapted from The Crappy Childhood Fairy’s technique.

  1. I write down my fears and resentments and I write down my intention to release them.
  2. I meditate for whatever small increment I feel I can handle at that particular time, sometimes five minutes, sometimes fifteen.
  3. I do the same yoga stretches:
    1. Child Pose.
    2. Cat Pose.
    3. A kind of sitting up on your knees and arching your back backwards while pushing out your chest pose. I don’t know what it’s called, but it does help me relieve some of the pressure in there, and I can usually feel a relieving popping sensation.
    4. Downward Dog.
    5. Sun Salutations.

Just those few poses, done slowly, has eased a lot of built-up tension. And after that, I usually take a shower and try to meditate while in the shower doing mindless washing and shaving. I usually think the words ‘simple’, ‘release’, or my favorite ‘easy’. Then I try to dress in a way that actually reflects my personality and makes me feel better about being seen in public. I’m getting regular massages, and I lie on a tennis ball in bed to ease incredibly tight and sore pressure points. I’m taking better care of my house, health, and finances. I am taking better care of myself… it’s almost as if I am developing self-esteem.

I had some when I was living 12 hours away from my mother, and was earning enough money to take care of myself. But then I went and self-sabotaged the hell out of myself.

Now that I have put five years between my mother and I, I think it’s having  a similar, but much more intensely positive effect. This time… I have truly prepared myself to never see her again if I didn’t want to. I was having nightmares where people were forcing me to see her. My chest is tightening now and my heart is beating faster as I write about it… because my mother terrifies me that fucking much. She controlled me, even when she wasn’t around. She shaped me into someone she could shame in order to make herself feel better. She never truly wanted me to succeed. And she was too fucking smart and manipulative to let anyone else see that side of her. Everything she did was deniable.

I am getting better because I have finally learned that I am my own human being and no one can make me do a fucking thing that I don’t want to do, and no one can stop me from doing what I really want to do… this is my life.

This post inspired by Storms by Fleetwood Mac.

I Wish I Knew You

I Wish I Knew You

Athena DionLeave a comment

First week serving at a Hawaiian Bar and Grill. I kicked ass. I am learning to tend bar. I’m about to start singing again. I made $100 last night. There were rare nights when I worked as a stripper and made less.

I’ve been learning a lot about my physical pain and energy levels. When I work with purpose, when I feel like what I’m doing matters, I don’t feel tired. I don’t feel my aching body as much.

Even though I started stripping because of my depression and anxiety making it hard to hold any other job, it actually spoiled me for an entire decade. I got used to only having to work 2-4 nights every 2 weeks. It’s much less grueling than a 9-5. Yeah, I danced my ass off but I was in shape. It didn’t make me tired to dance all night.

Now, I am experiencing that same kind of ‘numbing’ to the difficulty in serving and bar tending. The money I’m making is directly within my control according to how much I can make people feel good about themselves. It’s the same psychological game as stripping. Making a killing doing virtually ANY job you can have that is reliant upon tips is completely rooted in the understanding of human psychology. From the ‘veteran’ or the ‘mother’ standing on the street corner  with a sign, to the most upscale restaurant server, to the highest paid features in gentlemen’s clubs, to the most brilliant musicians playing on the streets, to the most tenacious entrepreneurs, the one secret they all share is knowing exactly what it takes to get other people to give them money. Maybe they show you a talent or skill set which is impressive. Maybe they quickly and radically get you to feel sorry for them. Maybe they play on your emotions, your sex drive. Maybe they are simply endearing and inspiring and seem to effortlessly win the hearts of the many.

Who knows if the guy holding that sign is really a veteran, who knows if the woman is really a mother of two. Who knows if they even mean it when they write on the sign, “God Bless.” The point is that they knew what to write on that sign that would get the most people to quickly roll down their car windows and hand them cash for absolutely no other reason than the emotional reaction stirred within them by the sign.

Honestly, when I was a dancer, I got paid much, much more for sitting and talking to men (and a few women) than I ever did for doing a dance. People would buy me anything from a $20 drink to a $500 bottle of Dom, just to have me sit and talk for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, they would hand me cash under the table to keep me from looking for more money at another table. And they kept the drinks coming. They were literally renting my attention. I was not naked, dressed scantily for sure, makeup and hair, all dolled up, but they were not admiring that part of me, otherwise, why wouldn’t they have spent that same money paying me to dance in front of them in a thong and high heels? They wanted to get to know my personality, my brain, which happened to be housed in a young, sexy woman’s body.

I got inside the heads of a lot of people. I figured out what made them tick. I gave attention, affection, and advice. I entertained with wit and intellect, and I exposed my very, very honest soul.

About 2 years into dancing, I had a conversation with a bartender at the club about how uncomfortable I was with taking these people’s money for virtually nothing. And I will never forget what he told me. It erased my guilt completely. He said, “These people (the regulars who made up the bulk of the dancers’ income) are looking to fill a void in their lives by spending money. They could be doing drugs and getting prostitutes. They’re just lonely right now, and you give them companionship. Hell, you could even be saving some of these guys.”

It should be noted here that many of my regular customers admitted to me that they were bipolar. I think I was a stand-in therapist for them, because by that point I had been learning about depression and other mental disorders for about 6 years, trying to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. PTSD, at that time, was mainly recognized as a problem afflicting only combat veterans.

And about the moral part of dancing on another woman’s husband, those women were always way better off with their men coming to see me, who would never in a million years sleep with a married man for any amount of money, than with him hanging out alone with his secretary, who might have needed the validation a lot more than I did.

I could tell you dozens of fascinating stories, and give you some personal insight into my ten year study of the human psyche and human sexuality, but you’ll have to wait for it…

I am also becoming much more in tune with my body. I’m starting to feel comfortable with the fact that I’m not a hot 24-year-old anymore.

I’m a hot 38-year-old.

This post inspired by I Wish I Knew You by the Revivalists.

Alligator

Alligator

Athena DionLeave a comment

I had an interview today. It went really well. I think I’ll get the job!

I have fear that I shouldn’t be buzzed. I have fear that I won’t be able to handle a new job. I have fear that I’m a bad mom. I have fear that I am like characters that I read about or see on screen. I have fear that people don’t like Quarky. I have fear that I’m like Hitler or Casey Anthony. I have fear that I’m like my mother. I have fear of my power. I have fear of my pending success.

Somewhere I developed the belief that I’m a REALLY bad person, even though I have absolutely no evidence of me being this really bad person. In fact, most of the actual evidence of who I am in my life would reveal a kind, loving person who empathizes with people from all walks of life. She’s an attentive mother who wishes nothing more for her child than to be happy, healthy, and successful in his own life. She cries over other peoples’ sad situations, even some that she doesn’t even know. She wants the best for the Earth, for future generations. She truly contemplates things like the meaning of life, treating others as she would want to be treated. She cares about equality among ALL living things.She always tries to be honest with others and herself. She is sensitive and caring about the ways that she affects other people. She is quick to apologize when she believes she may have hurt someone else. Yet, inside her is a mama bear who will do whatever she must to protect her child and ensure his happiness, health, and future success.

When I couldn’t control the rages, I turned to books and therapy. When I realized it was because of the anger I held back from my mother, I unleashed it. I put space between her and anyone who insisted that I continue being around her. I hated her for the way she made me hate myself, and the way that was affecting my son. I needed to own that feeling. Even if it meant losing my sister, my brother, my stepfather, his family, and most of my mother’s side of the family. My son growing up in a home where his mother has dealt with her anger, her own past, her own family’s toxic dysfunction… that is worth all of those relationships put together

He is MY RESPONSIBILITY. What happens to him and how he will turn out, it all depends on the way I deal with him now. I know this because I know what would’ve prevented me from decades of therapy, addiction, spinning my wheels, and dating all the wrong men. A mother. That’s it. And it wouldn’t have had to be my birth mother. I could have been raised by practically any human in the world other than her, and I would have likely received more love, more praise, more acceptance, and more affection than I actually did. Most strangers in my life have shown me more kindness. The other people in my life have given me the shred of self-esteem that has kept me going through the worst of times.

Over a year with the same therapist, and she is still throwing me compliments and making sure I accept them. That’s because a year ago I didn’t believe any of them. I didn’t believe there was anything to love about me. I believed I was worthless. To my core, my entire life, I have believed that I was worthless. I did not expect anything good to happen to me. I didn’t expect to ever feel better than anxious and depressed. I felt defective. I was a mistake. That’s what I believed.

It wasn’t until I allowed myself the courage to truly begin analyzing my past, realistically, no matter how hard it may be to face the truth, that I began to see the change in myself. I had to face that my mother didn’t love me.

Small memories would surface. They weren’t repressed memories. I always remembered them, but I never realized they were bad because everything was minimized by her. To her, nothing was ever a good enough reason to lose your emotional cool.

Once I’d accepted that she didn’t love me, then I had to accept that it wasn’t the fault of the tiny child that I was. It wasn’t MY fault. It wasn’t because something was wrong with me that made me hideously unlovable. This part is way trickier.

Healing from PTSD, whether complex or not, is a big, fat irony. Normally, when you think of healing from something, you think of moving on from it, of the problem going away. But with PTSD, you may think, “I’m moving on once and for all, I’m going to live in the present, I’m going to appreciate what’s in the here and now and in my bright future.” And then one day, the old events and feelings come back to smack you in the face out of nowhere. And then, the shame of not being truly ‘over’ it, of not being grateful enough, of not being appreciative enough, of not being strong enough to let go of the past retraumatizes you. You hate yourself for allowing it to come back. You mentally punish yourself for not being free.

The only way to truly heal from this cycle is by not forcing yourself to be free of it. You must accept it. You can live in the present. You can be grateful. You can look forward to your bright future. But you must understand that that future will also have the remnants of the past in it; that you must be prepared to deal with future replays of the past, if and when they happen. To be healed with PTSD means to truly be integrated with the part of yourself that you hate, to allow that part to show its face, whenever necessary, without shame.

My therapist asked me, after I read the above paragraph to her, “Do you think you identify with the PTSD so much that you can’t let go of it?”

I thought about it and said, “If the PTSD is part of what makes me empathetic towards others’ feelings, sensitive to others needs, an attentive mother, an honest writer, full of depth, then I don’t want to get rid of it.”

At the end of the spectrum from this point of wanting to be away from it all, I feel a love that could create a million big bangs. I feel my love so powerfully that it consumes my entire body like the weight of the universe sitting on my abdomen. There are no words in any language to describe what I feel when I really think about my love for my son, my husband, our amazing pets, the various loved ones, friends, and strangers who have been there for me. I’m crying just writing about it. In a minute, I’ll probably sob for about 5-10 minutes thinking about it. There’s seriously nothing I wouldn’t do for them. I absolutely hate the time that has been wasted on me dealing with my past. It’s not fair to any of us. I wanted so badly for it to be a quick healing process, 6 months of therapy and I would be over my family’s abandonment. I mourned the loss of who I thought they all were to me, all at once.  That takes more than 6 months, unfortunately. You really can’t rush it.

But in the aftermath… there is more life left to live.

The next day…

Got a call. I start training for my new job on Monday.

This post inspired by Alligator by Of Monsters and Men.

Sunflower

Sunflower

Athena DionLeave a comment

I asked myself tonight, “How awesome could I be if I just backed off and trusted myself?” Trusted the process of living and growing as something that could possibly be good; even if everything before my present situation was so painful and intolerable that I literally had to check out from reality from time to time. No human should ever have to live through what I’ve lived through. No one ever deserves to be abused, used, neglected, isolated, abandoned, choked, raped, and homeless. No one deserves to be a human guinea pig for Big Pharma’ s psychotropic drug department and a practice run for various therapies aimed at a grotesque number of diagnoses from the DSM. No one deserves to have a mother that doesn’t love them. No one.

So within the last few days, something has happened that has never happened to me in the past 38 years, as far back as I can remember, right back to my very first memory…

While I was potty training, maybe around two years old, my Dad was chasing me to spank me for having an accident. I ran to my mother who was lying on the couch watching TV, covered by her rainbow-colored, crocheted blanket. I got right between her and the TV, sobbing for her to help me. She looked right through me.

What if I really am a good enough person??? I have to give props to The Crappy Childhood Fairy for putting in front of me what I needed to hear at this level of being ready to finish healing and move on, which was preceded by a over a year with the most amazingly patient therapist, Dawn Brown. I saved the best for last. Make no mistake, it  took a long time to get here, over five years in fact. But I am finally close to being truly healed from my Childhood PTSD.

I’m actually starting, for the first time in my entire 38 years, to value my own dignity and self-respect. I WANT to do things that make me proud of myself. I just went to two places that, weeks ago, I would’ve thought I was MOST DEFINITELY NOT good enough to work for, and I applied. This is similar to what happened when I went to apply at Hooters. I didn’t think I was good enough to get the job, then I did. And then I become a dancer within about 3 to 4 months because I thought, “I’m already flirting with guys in skimpy orange shorts and a low-cut tank top, and I could make like 10x what I’m making here if I got down to a thong.”

I took that leap. It was one of the best things I ever did in my life, aside from having my son, marrying my husband, and choosing each and every one of our amazing pets |Bless all their sweet spirits|. Stripping was among those best things I ever did because it got me away from being dependent on my narcissistic mother. She was smothering and controlling me in every way. Being around her made me hate myself. I had to move from Missouri to Florida to get away from her. In the strip clubs, I found my power; and they wouldn’t fire me when I had my inevitable depressions, which plagued me since I was a preteen. I had a lot of trouble holding down regular 9-5 jobs because my suicidal feelings and behaviors would surface once every few months, and no matter what job I had, and how much I loved and appreciated the opportunity, I would lose it eventually by not showing up.

It wasn’t fair, but it was my life. I did what I had to do.

This time I’m going to do even better. I’m gonna make real money with my clothes on…

 

This post inspired by Sunflower by Post Malone + Swae Lee

Ayy, ayy, ayy, ayy (ooh)

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ohh (ooh)

Ayy, ayy

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh

Needless to say, I keep her in check

She was all bad-bad, nevertheless (yeah)

Callin’ it quits now, baby, I’m a wreck (wreck)

Crash at my place, baby, you’re a wreck (wreck)

Needless to say, I’m keeping her in check

She was all bad-bad, nevertheless

Callin’ it quits now, baby, I’m a wreck

Crash at my place, baby, you’re a wreck

Thinkin’ in a bad way, losin’ your grip

Screamin’ at my face, baby, don’t trip

Someone took a big L, don’t know how that felt

Lookin’ at you sideways, party on tilt

Ooh-ooh, some things you just can’t refuse

She wanna ride me like a cruise

And I’m not tryna lose

Then you’re left in the dust

Unless I stuck by ya

You’re a sunflower

I think your love would be too much

Or you’ll be left in the dust

Unless I stuck by ya

You’re the sunflower

You’re the sunflower

Every time I’m leavin’ on ya

You don’t make it easy, no, no

Wish I could be there for ya

Give me a reason to go

Every time I’m walkin’ out

I can hear you tellin’ me to turn around

Fightin’ for my trust and you won’t back down

Even if we gotta risk it all right now, oh

I know you’re scared of the unknown (known)

You don’t wanna be alone (alone)

I know I always come and go (and go)

But it’s out of my control

And you’ll be left in the dust

Unless I stuck by ya

You’re a sunflower

I think your love would be too much

Or you’ll be left in the dust

Unless I stuck by ya

You’re the sunflower

You’re the sunflower

Yeah

Source: LyricFind

Somebody That I Used To Know

Somebody That I Used To Know

Athena DionLeave a comment

Now that I am seeing some of the fruits of my Quarky labors, why do I find it so hard to believe that this will work????

Because of all the disasters I’ve lived through. Even my family of origin is a disaster. The secrets, the drama, the games, the denial, the neglect, the abuse, and the abandonment leaves one with a sense they had just left the church of scientology. My fucking mother is the L.Ron Hubbard of our family. That’s why I was cast out when I called her out on her toxic shit.

And I could’ve tolerated her behavior if it weren’t for one crucial thing. The affection and nurturing one is supposed to receive from their mother, or a similar caregiver, is the very foundation of a human being’s sense of self-worth. That is why mine is practically non-existent. Where most people, upon reflection, can say without a doubt that, even though she made mistakes as all mothers do, that they know that their mother does love them. Motherly instinct is probably one of the most innate and strongest parts of a woman’s psyche. Yet, in a very few cases, it does unfortunately go wrong. Mine was one of those cases. I have honestly seen her show more ‘affection’ for a dog than she has ever shown me. Her intentions are, and always have been, so utterly driven by her own ego that it seems, to someone who had witnessed it consecutively longer than any other human being alive, there isn’t a moment that she isn’t stacking herself against those around her, and trying to come out on top. She HAS TO. I didn’t learn why until I was 32 years old, and I had gone for several months without speaking to her.

My aunt, her stepsister, came to visit and we had a talk. She revealed to me that my mother’s father, my aunt’s stepfather, had molested my aunt and some of her friends. She didn’t think that he’d done anything to my mother because she was his only biological daughter… my mother was spared.

This made me realize that, on some level, my grandmother and mother must’ve suspected something, but to preserve the family unit in poverty in the seventies, they had to pretend like nothing was wrong. And that’s where my narcissist mother learned to deny any negative thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and pretend like everything was great. She pretended when I was attempting suicide over and over again. When her mother died. When three of our family members died in the same car accident. My mother, true to form, was a fucking rock. This led me to various maladies such as depression, anxiety, and trauma-induced psychosis. I was way too fucking young to know what was going on, but I did tell her that I needed to see a psychiatrist when I was about nine. I was told to go back to bed.

Also, because she was spared, maybe that instilled a sort of superiority within her which fueled her narcissistic drive to look perfect at all times. I have never, not once, heard her utter a genuine apology to anyone. I have heard her speak badly, or jealously, of every single person she knows behind their backs. And I’m sharp enough to have some idea the kinds of things she says about me. After all, I’ve been observing the woman my entire life. She GAVE me life. I wanted SO BADLY for her to love me. But when we were speaking alone, with no one else there, it was always like that scene in Ever After where Drew Barrymore asks Angelica Houston, “Was there ever a time, even in its smallest measurement, that you loved me?”

And the stepmother replies, “How can anyone love a pebble in their shoe?”

I was my mother’s biggest mistake. She never had to say it. It was observable in every deniable way to anyone who was willing to look. She hated my dad and my presence got in the way of her perfect little family with my stepfather and step-siblings. I secretly wondered if her denial of my suicidal tendencies wasn’t, more simply, her subconsciously hoping I’d eventually succeed. She did not want me.

And this is why I have self-sabotaged the hell out my life. I have wasted so much talent, and skill, and creativity. I have caused myself endless frustration and agony to carry on the internal opinion of myself that she imprinted within me.

My very first memory, when I was potty-training, was of my father chasing me to spank me for having an accident, and I ran to my mother, sobbing. She looked right through me at the TV. It was like I didn’t even exist. Her crying baby wasn’t even worth a glance. That cuts deep. It leaves scars that never actually heal. Every relationship you forge after that, every goal you strive for, every single step you take in life, is shaded by it. If your own fucking mother can’t even love you, what the fuck are you worth?

It goes against the very grain of human society, past and present, to sever ties with one’s family members, let alone one’s mother. But we know that there are a few Casey Anthony’s out there. Just like there are serial killers and child molesters. These people are among us. We have to be brave enough to name them when we see them, even if they are our family members whom we feel obligated to protect. I’m disgusted by my grandfather’s actions. I respected him and loved him when I was a child, and he didn’t deserve it. Generations later, we are still undoing the damage he caused to our family. Fuck him.

Over the last few decades, something major, among other things, has shifted within our society. Throughout history, humans have depended on family members for survival. I remember how much my grandparents helped my parents, especially with me and my siblings. But my husband and I feel all but alone caring for our autistic son. I have very few people stepping up to help. It’s just as well because I don’t trust many people anyway with my background, and the fact that he is the only child I was lucky enough to have.

Now, people can call on Care.com and fork out the big bucks for the best day cares and preschools. We don’t need our parents to help us raise our children.

This changes the dynamic of what constitutes ‘family’. Families can no longer afford to behave badly and then pull the ‘family’ card without consequence. Family is no longer an obligation. It is a choice. If your family is not a source of love, support, and affection, why are you obligated to spend time with them? Make friends who can give you the emotional relationships that nourish your soul. Do not feel obligated to EVER sit across the table from someone who has bullied, belittled, abused, or neglected you without remorse. I AM TELLING YOU WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING YOU… YOU DESERVE BETTER THAN THAT. Realizing that one concept was the first, and biggest, step I ever took toward developing some sense of self-worth: no longer allowing others to abuse me just because they shared DNA with me.

Now if I could just convince myself that I am worthy of success…

This post inspired by “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye (feat. Kimbra)

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Uninvited

Uninvited

Athena DionLeave a comment

Right now I keep flashing back to when I was dancing in Memphis. When I was 19 to almost 21, I used to drive to Memphis from Northwest Arkansas to work for 2 to 4 days. I would earn enough to pay all of my bills for the month, and then I’d go home. Sometimes I would go twice a month, if I needed more money for something.

Some of you, upon reading that, had the thought that I might have been hooking to make that much money. But, in about a decade of dancing, I never once slept with anyone for money. I never hooked up with, or dated, any of my customers. (I did, however, date several coworkers, including my husband, the father of my child.) When I started my dancing career, I made that personal commitment to myself that the only reason I would ever sleep with anyone was because I found them attractive and wanted to date them, never because of money. I will admit, I did turn down a couple of very appealing offers.

A part-owner of a very famous department store chain once offered me $10,000 for one night. When I told him no, he said to name my price, and I said I didn’t have one. He said, “Everyone has a price.”

“Well, I don’t,” I said as I gulped down the $20 glass of white wine he’d just bought me, which was earning me $10 for just talking to him.

Another time, a very cute actor from one of the soaps that I (and my mother) grew up watching asked me to go to his hotel room. I was seriously dating someone, so I turned him down. I also didn’t want to be some guy’s ‘groupie’. Like, how many women actually said no to him?

I did. I said no.

This is why it bothered me when I started hearing about Brett Kavanaugh on the news. I was one of those girls who was raped while fucked up at a party in high school. And I was one of the many who didn’t tell. I, like all the others, didn’t want to be called a lying slut, didn’t want to be caught up in he said/she said bullshit over something that I couldn’t control.

The very night it happened, one of the guy’s buddies called me the ‘town mattress’. Everyone thought I was a slut. And yeah, I didn’t get any affection at home where I should have, so when I figured out how to get it from guys, I used it. But the difference between being a slut and being raped is that when your being a slut, you’re into it and enjoying it because you actually like the guy. There were probably 3 or 4 other guys at that party I would’ve willingly slept with, including the guy who called me the ‘town mattress’.

But the guy who had sex with me, while I lie there not moving or talking, was not one of them.

Of course, I blamed myself for getting fucked up, even though I might have been given something which I didn’t know about. I had, before that night, been drunk and high many times, but I had never been laid out on a bed unable to move or speak. I was super thirsty, but couldn’t yell for someone to bring me a drink.

I remember thinking that maybe I was slipping into a coma. Even though I couldn’t move or speak, I still knew everything that was going on around me. That’s when I heard the bedroom door open and close, and someone approached me in the dark. He climbed on top of me. I knew who it was by the sound of his voice. He said, “I’m gonna have sex with you now, but I’m not gonna kiss you because you threw up.”

My mind, just like when I was younger, stepped in to protect me from the trauma that was happening. In my own little world, unattached to my body, I began having hallucinations that a voice was talking to me, telling me the ‘secrets of the universe’. But the voice said I wouldn’t remember any of it the next day. It said that I would remember them, far into the future, when something reminded me. I didn’t know if it was supposed to be an alien or some other-dimensional being, but I remember being stunned by the things that it told me. Enough to distract me from the fact that I was, at current time, being raped.

He knew I wouldn’t say or do anything about it, and he knew that no one would believe me if I did. He had a cheerleader girlfriend at my high school, and I was just the ‘town mattress’, living out of her Geo Metro at a truck stop. Why would he go slumming it with me?

So, the Kavanaugh debate forced me to ask myself the question, even though I didn’t see any point to telling back then, what would I do if I saw him running for the Supreme Court? Would I feel compelled to let the public know that the guy was a rapist? I probably would feel, at least, compelled to do so because it seems like the right thing to do under those circumstances.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I know this is not a cut-and-dry issue just because I know from firsthand experience that I was raped. I was there. I am my own witness even if no one else believes me.

BUT, that does not mean that every boy or man who is accused of rape is automatically culpable. If women have enough power to accuse men of rape and automatically be believed, then there will be some women, although I’m guessing very few, who would take advantage of that. Should a woman be allowed to get away with lying about rape because they got caught doing something they shouldn’t have been doing, or they are ashamed of how they behaved sexually? Do any of us want that to happen to our own sons?

No, we do not. But, if our sons are guilty, there should be justice.

Unfortunately, in many of these circumstances, there just isn’t enough proof for any outsider to say definitively what happened behind closed doors. My experience was one of those times.

But I know it happened, and so does he.

 

This post inspired by “Uninvited” by Alanis Morissette.

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Out of This World

Out of This World

Athena DionLeave a comment

He knew EXACTLY what to say and when to say it. I was too smart to fall for it, but too damaged to resist it. I just wanted to FEEL loved, and by that point I didn’t care if it was all a lie. Our whole relationship was this weird psychological game that only we knew how to play. We were severely codependent.

He needed to feel powerful and dominating and I, in having failed a dozen or more times by that point at killing myself, I had resorted to torturing myself. So I obstinately ignored every single red flag, and jumped headfirst into the belief that he was my soulmate. As most friends and family tend to do when you are making a huge, terrible, and possibly dangerous, mistake, mine all but abandoned me. A few called from time to time, but not a single human being, for those nine months of my life, was physically there, looking out for me. I take that back, my former best friend’s ex-husband once saw the guy get angry with me in public, and refused to leave the front porch until I told him, myself, that I was okay. And once at a party, a random stranger noticed the way the guy talked to me, and took me aside to ask if he was beating me. I denied it.

The only source of love that I felt through all of that was from my cat, Oreo. The guy knew this. He threatened to snap his neck all the time.

While going through these immobility excercises (from the audiobook mentioned below), I’ve started realizing why I couldn’t move past this particular trauma. I can’t complete the escape because that would’ve meant leaving Oreo behind for him to kill. And no matter how many times I relive the experience, I can never imagine myself running away to safety. I had to freeze so that Oreo could live the long, happy life that he did, not dying in a monster’s hands. I almost died for that cat, and I would again and again and again. Fuck the guy, Oreo is my fucking soulmate. Of all my departed loved ones, he is the one that makes me hope the most that our souls do leave  our bodies to meet somewhere beautiful for all of eternity, so I can, one day, pet him again.

That moment when his hands were around my neck, I gave in to death and told the guy to, “Do it.” That look in my eye scared him. He pulled his hands away. If I had struggled, if I had fought back, maybe he wouldn’t have stopped.

The second time, I went limp and hit my head on the bar in the bathtub. If I hadn’t done that, he wouldn’t have been startled by the near-killing of me enough to stop. If I had fought back, he would have killed me. I survived by immobilization, just like a damn opossum.

And by the way, if you continue reading my blog, I guarantee you will hear more about the amazing Oreo, that cat I always jokingly (but almost seriously) called my firstborn.

This post inspired by Out of This World by The Cure.

Listen here.

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I also want to give a recommendation for the audiobook which has helped me tremendously in dealing with PTSD. Today I started listening to it for the second time, and this is the clearest I have ever felt on this particular trauma. I even gave the guy a couple of involuntary air punches. I felt how strong I was as a dancer back then. If it hadn’t been for Oreo, I could’ve torn that room apart in a frenzy saving myself. I know that now.