House of Lies

I fucked up…

I fucked up BAD. In my own eyes I lied. In the eyes of others it may have just been failed to tell, whatever the case, I fucked up. I was scared to tell the one person who really deserve to know what happened, I won’t splay it out here because if I can tell the rest of the world but have fear in telling the ones I love there is a major communication break.

Last night I finally decided I should come clean. I’m not sure why it was last night and not when it happened, or when we were in better moods but I finally admitted I had withheld information, as well as that I had accidentally slipped the information to a friend when it first happened a few weeks back. I knew there would be anger, disappointment and a lot of worrisome emotions.

What I didn’t know was what would happen to me. I figured I would be punished, I wasn’t. Not in the common sense of the word, I have yet to experience any loss of privileges, I wasn’t yelled at. Nothing.

Somehow that hurt more than any punishment I have received in my life. Knowing I had disappointed someone I love so deeply and getting very little feed-back hurt beyond words, beyond my own comprehension. It would have been easier for me had he exploded the way I had expected, shortening the leash, anything, something, but not nothing. Nothing hurts.

Nothing cut so deep that I ran out of tears as I sobbed my guilty self to sleep knowing that there was sheer disappointment on the other side. I have felt small all day, like a child who knew they had done wrong and were going to be getting a good lashing from daddy, when he gets home, out behind the shed with a willow switch, leaving bruises and marks for days.

I don’t feel like I got away with lying, because I hurt so deep down emotionally. Yet at the same time I wish I could pay my penance in a way that can be acknowledged by the two of us so that it really can just be the past.

I lay here now, looking out the window at the bright blue sky and wonder what would have happened had I hid this with him here. Would the cold shoulder and the hurt be just the same or would there have been far more heated words, genuine tactile anger? Would I be punished? I guess I don’t know and I hope I never find out. Honesty is the key to any relationship and now that the truth is out there, exposed, leaving me questioning it, making me feel vulnerable.

They say the truth will set you free. If that’s the case, why do I suddenly feel so trapped?

Free

I lay here with pain emanating throughout my body and I stare at the blue sky begin to darken as the sun slips down the horizon for another night of blackness. Tears stain my cheeks as I look out beyond the trees and wonder what if anything is looking back at me. I feel damned. I feel lost. I feel everything one could feel all at the same time.

I look up at the ceiling above me and count the knots in the pine again, you would think I would in the least have an estimate as to how many there were, but no, I find myself having to count them each and every time. I see the rows of nails and think of the hundreds of tiny nails holding the pine high above me and I wonder how she did it when she was dying and I can barely get up and don’t even have a diagnosis. I wonder if I will die the way she did, with cancer ravishing my body until it finally submits to the shadows of death that have always visited and were never for me. Will they look the same as they are carrying my soul to the other side as they do when I watch them take the souls of others?

I feel worthless today. I have even posed the question about retraining which we all know wouldn’t be a good idea. I just feel so not me, and I feel grounded when someone holds the reigns. I am already powerless over so much of my life. One would think that I would want to hold onto the little control I have but it’s quite the opposite. I feel like I am playing tug o’ war with myself and well that means I am always guaranteed to both win and lose. I need to be able to hand all this chaos over to the hands that carry me through and trust in them, trust in them to not break, not to drop me, not to hurt me. Trust those hands to keep me safe, healthy, content and even happy. My own hands don’t do any of that. Not for me anyway, not lately. I want to have nothing to do with me. Strangely, it’s just easier which allows me the freedom to relax rest and worry just a little less.

Yes, freedom.

“ "You cry in pain when I spank you, yet your body betrays you letting me know your enjoyment," he breathed in her ear, her wetness only arousing him more. “

Stockholm Syndrome

“You can use the pool whenever you feel like it and relax in the sun to dry off but do not burn Slave. Remember, if you burn yourself you're burning my property and I'll have to punish you for it. There is sun-cream in the bathroom -- use it."

"Yes Master" Jess felt a bizarre moment of warmth at the thought that he cared so much. Cared enough to punish her??!! Was she going crazy?" –MelloT

I don’t think I could have worded things better if I tried about how simple and confusing and complex it is all rolled into one when you realize you have no escape, no rights, and no identity outside of the person you are required to call “Master”.

We moved a lot. Nothing ever felt like home and when we had a home of our own I did everything I could to try and cheer it up, make it more friendly, hide the pain and sorrow. Painted the kids rooms in colors that matched but the patterns were distinctly different. The nursery even had our hand prints on the walls in other colors of paint. It hid the pain and it kept me busy. The living room was a dark burgundy. This is where most of the things happened in that house. It seemed a good fit to have it stained the color of dried blood. I tried to brighten the kitchen up with the most beautiful shade of purplish blue. The natural light from the three large windows surrounding the dining table played off that color and made it homey and inviting. Too bad what looked like a home was a prison, my cell, a torture chamber, all rolled into one cute little house in a cute little neighbourhood with a cute old man neighbour.

Our bedroom. I know I painted it when pregnant with the last baby. I remember picking out colors and trying to find something bright but not garish. The bedroom was in the basement, with a long skinny vertical window it was a small room but had a walk in closet large enough to hold the dressers. I spent a lot of time in that room, pregnant, nursing, tied up, tormented and raped. Maybe that’s why I don’t remember the color. Too much pain, too much trauma, too much of anything really. I can’t even remember what the floor was made of, a throw rug maybe? Funny how now that I think about it I can’t remember the room in which holds the most pain. I wouldn’t doubt if whoever sleeps in there now hears my screams echoing from the walls. I haven’t a doubt that my energy and pain is trapped in that house the way it is me. I think the both of us, the house and I, are equally haunted by everything that happened to me within its walls.

I remember walking into the bedroom after months of not being allowed into it and finding it set up like a dungeon. The bed was ordained by a strong steel headboard and footboard that I had never seen before. Cuffs were attached, although I didn’t dare touch knowing this was set up like this for me. The TV was no longer in there at the end of the bed. Instead it was in the unfinished half of the basement along with some other things that were not necessary within the confines of a dungeon. I knew I had been disobedient. I hadn’t been allowed downstairs in months. I had been granted a thin mattress to sleep on in the living room on the floor, normally with handcuffs firmly in place. Hiatts. I will never forget the branding on them or their distinct black color against my pale white skin. I was rarely allowed to go outside and never unsupervised.

The last several months of my captivity I remained in the living room, unless I had to use the washroom, even bathing was supervised, and I was to cook and prepare food for the children and for him. I remember when he threw the mattress down on the floor in the living room for me. I thought we were going to watch a movie or something and sleep upstairs. This became my new hell. I will never forget the clicking of the handcuffs as he counted each click so they were perfectly even on each wrist. He looked me in the eyes and for some reason I looked back at him, defiant yet scared. He said “you have been a bitch, bitches are dogs, and dogs do not get furniture, they sleep on the floor”. I had nothing to say in protest. I had nothing to say at all. He granted me my favorite blankets and several pillows which I was most grateful for. He told me that when I was obedient and could follow the rules and quit acting like a bitch I could rejoin him in the bedroom. Until then, I was in the living room.

A few days later the computer was relocated from a desk in the unused nursery to a spot on the TV stand, where I could use it freely without using furniture. A webcam was turned on and several people including my ex watched it, or could watch it, at any given time. Many nights the phone would ring and I would have to get up without disturbing the baby, while shackled just to answer the phone and it would be a Master on the other end letting me know he is watching me and that I wasn’t quick enough or I had slept too late, or I was to get up and do things. If I didn’t obey the commands of these men my captor would be told and I would be punished swiftly and without remorse right there in the living room.

I never did get brought down to the bedroom turned dungeon. I had needed something from the closet for the baby when I decided to go through the door and into the room for the first time in months. I was shocked. My heart stopped for what felt like forever and after a close examination and a dreadful fear of being caught I stumbled back out of the room, forgetting what I was doing in the first place and praying that I would never see the inside of that room again. My prayers were to be answered a few short weeks later.

Moving On?

My mind is once again bouncing about in every which way. I am thinking a lot about the past and the future and wondering what the future will hold given the past. I wonder if I am going to end up in a relationship that entails some form of BDSM whether it is for the odd sex scene or if I will end up enslaved. Having been forced into the slave industry in the past I know it is weird that I miss it, or even wonder about what role that will have in the future. Obviously I don’t miss being kidnapped and raped or held for all that time. I do however find myself missing not having to make decisions. My anxiety peaks so easily and I find it so much easier to just say “here you decide”. I don’t ever want to be in a place where I have no choice, where my opinion isn’t respected or asked or even punished for giving, but I do miss the freedom that comes from not HAVING to make decisions.

Right now my health is up in the air. Cancer has been uttered and tests take forever. I have medications and naps and all kinds of stuff on my plate and I can’t keep track of any of it. I have really realized how much I enjoy being able to say “this is this” and me not having to put forth a second thought about those things.

Then there are the strange cars that have been following me, one trying to push me off the road, twice, into the lake only to speed off when I signalled to the police station, running into people who have been confirmed before as stalking me. And another who thought tailing me from a distance would work last night. I pulled over on a dark abandoned stretch of road enraged and I expected them to either go by me to intimate me, or to approach me and make their move. They didn’t expect me to pull over and they pulled over immediately as well, keeping their distance, as I sat there waiting for them to make a move they did a U turn and sped off in the direction in which we came.

Part of me feels like screaming out that if they want to take me and finish where they started then they should just fucking do it! Another part of me is just frustrated by the lack of balls they have, thinking that driving around and wasting their time to track me will get them anywhere. I have brought them on some many interesting road maps leading them to absolutely nowhere!

I have lived in fear for so long and I don’t really fear them anymore. I feel challenged in a sense and I feel frustrated. I know you don’t escape a family like that to live happily ever after, it has been seven years. It feels like something epic is in the works. What I don’t know. However there have been far too many coincidences for my spidey senses to ignore. Part of me wonders if the reason a person in Hamilton called to discuss him was to create an alibi of sorts. Only problem is I have said from the very start that this is a family, like Charles Manson family, he doesn’t need to be within 2000km of me in order for me to be kidnapped and never seen again. That’s how this operation works. People in high places can get anything done. We see that every day when it comes to aristocrats and diplomats. I have no doubt that I could end up on a plane to destination anywhere without any questions. Unfortunately for me, I know very well how loudly money speaks.

Regardless of this chaos, the fears, the anxiety, the health issues, I am ready to move forward. I am ready to commit my love and my life to one person. I am eager to please and to be pleased, to love and be loved, to go through all my own chaos along with his. Life won’t be easy as we adapt to one another, especially with my traumatic past popping its’ ugly head up but I am eager to experience it. The good and the bad.

Seeking Peace

It’s those last lucid, intimate moments when you embrace someone knowing full well you will never see them alive again that you remember for the rest of your days. You reflect back on those moments and wonder if the person could have left their human vessel anymore peacefully then they did and whether or not you could have or should have said or done something differently. The questions that you always ask but will never have answers for, at least not in this realm. 

It’s those very moments that instill a fear of our own mortality because in those moments you are staring the angels of death in the face and begging them wholeheartedly to leave your loved one alone, even though deep down you know full well that they already have a foot out the door and you are left with only one choice and that is to accept death is imminent and cannot be avoided. You may not know which breath is the last, but with each strained rise and fall of their chest you look on, wondering if each is the final one that you will ever see. Part of you silently begs the person to let go and move on to the heavenly gates and another part of you refuses to relinquish your belief that they will open their eyes and get up as though it were nothing but a bad dream. 

In these moments, no matter what your physical age, you become an unwilling member of a group of people who have seen far too much and who have been changed forever. 

You now possess knowledge. 

“They” say knowledge is power. I have yet to figure out who “they” are but I guess that’s irrelevant. Sometimes knowledge is the most powerful thing you can have. You can explain, you can empathize, you can comprehend and you can even teach. Unfortunately though many who feel they are knowledgeable also feel as though they have nothing left to learn. A truly wise man knows that every moment of every day, every interaction either spiritual or physical is an opportunity to grow, to learn, to mould yourself into a better person. If you neglect to realize that with knowledge you must also pursue opportunity then what you know means absolutely nothing.

It’s actually a sad thing nowadays because everyone does a minimal amount of work to become an “expert”. Many people would rather have a young doctor because he is more up to date with the new stuff instead of the doctor who has been practicing for 30 years because he is old and couldn’t possibly know anything knew! The truth, they all take upgrading courses about new medicines, equipment etc. Older doctors often do choose what is tried and true over what’s new and intriguing but it doesn’t make them wrong. Just like a lot of new doctors will excitedly try something new, to make their mark in this world. Turns out that no matter which route they take the conclusion is normally the same and ultimately, your health care is up to YOU. If you want a new test or med, ask if you want something old because it has worked and you like its years of study better than ask! 

Ask and you shall receive!

Now, I know you don’t always get what you want but it never hurts to ask. Being meek and scared to use your voice gets you exactly what you ask for, nothing! Be persistent if you get a no or two. Sometimes it takes a bit before someone realizes that you are serious. 

Well, I need to rest a bit. My body is protesting me being upright for so long. I overdid it the last two days and I am certainly feeling it. I feel so helpless and pathetic, but I guess that’s okay. Just something I need to figure out how to accept. It’s a lot of work to come to terms with feeling this way, both physically and mentally.

A lot of work. 

The Stranger Next Door

People always say that they couldn’t be abused. They couldn’t be brainwashed. They couldn’t fall into that sort of life. They don’t understand the complexities that go into that type of relationship. It’s not like you wake up one day and decide you want to be owned, possessed, injured, raped, beaten, held prisoner. You don’t make this choice in a moment. Before you even realize that you are a prisoner you have been forced into that life, those ways. 

It starts out simple, like dinner isn’t ready. Maybe things are kinky in the bedroom. One day dinner is burnt or late and he goes a little crazy on you. You don’t understand how or why he is reacting that way but you don’t like it. You try harder to please him… likely for the kids. You want things to work because you don’t want people to look at you like everything you have accomplished was fake, for nothing. 

There are always threats looming over head and a punishment waiting. It is shameful, it is embarrassing and now it is your life. Definitely not what you expected your life would become. 

I often wonder how many women out there are owned by their boyfriends or now Masters. It makes me so sad to realize that I am not alone, that this does happened to people, threats do exist, victims are taken and survive. You don’t have to be kidnapped to be held against your will, or brainwashed by fear. If these people looked like monsters no one would go near them. Instead they are your average every day person. They have jobs, decent homes, don’t draw much attention. They fit in and slip through often going unnoticed. That’s how they like it. You never hear someone saying “I knew my neighbour was a psycho kidnapper” instead you hear “wow, I’m shocked, he seemed so normal, I had no clue”.

Look at the green river killer. He killed for some 20 years and fell in love and was married during that time. He kept newspaper articles about his crimes and when questioned he said it was nothing to worry about. His wife had no clue. His friends had no clue. Countless women brutally tortured and killed and no one had any clue. He was the average everyday psycho, just like the rest of them.

Then you have people like Charles Manson. He was the alleged mastermind behind seven murders, and committed one or two of them on his own (can’t recall and refuse to Google right now). Because of the way he chose to live his life, the petty crimes, and his “family” he was given a death sentence for a murder he wasn’t even present for. His mind and the way he portrays himself instilled insurmountable fear into everyone who heard him speak. He isn’t being punished for his crimes; he is being punished for crimes that his “family” committed, allegedly for him. When people ask who killed Sharon Tate everyone says “Charles Manson” but that’s not the case. He wasn’t even there!!! I have been rooting for him for years to get out of jail and he keeps getting denied parole because his mind terrifies everyone when he speaks.

Ted Bundy was suave enough that he had a woman in a bag and was pulled over. The police noticed the bag and he convinced the officer that it was just smelly trash. The officer let him go without looking. 

Then there are cases like this http://westfield-indiana.funcityfinder.com/herbert-herb-baumeister-serial-killer-in-westfield-indiana/ where the person appears to have a normal life regardless of extremely strange behaviour. He was successful and because of that success he got away with killing over 50 people and unless you’re a nerd like me, you likely have never heard of him or this case. Another case of monsters don’t appear as they are. 

It was interesting, as I was writing about Manson earlier it popped up in my news cast on the sidebar that he was denied parole again today. Then Letterman came on and he also spoke of Manson being denied parole, making stupid, corny jokes as only Letterman can. 

I have no clue where the point of all this is going. I just started to write because I was feeling triggered about my own past and how it’s the friendly neighbour you need to worry about and not necessarily the guy who seems to be creepy because he is misunderstood. 

I have had a LONG day for me and I have a lot of stuff to attempt to do in the next few days. None of which I actually thing I can get done. I am sick of being in pain, and pain that makes me sick.

At least tonight I can sleep knowing that for now I am free. It may not remain that way. I may be taken against my will at any given time. I have no clue what the plan is by the sociopaths who once held my life in their hands. Today I was free, tomorrow I may be dead. Only time will tell. At least because I refuse to be quiet about this that if I am killed people will know exactly who did it and where to find them. 

My Take

It is just about ten thirty at night and I am laying here in pain. The pain hasn’t eased up much the last month and the last week has been among the most brutal of all. My legs are going numb and aching deep to the bones. Standing or walking for more than a minute or two causes back spasms so badly that I have to hold on to something as my legs and body begin to tremble from the aches. I am exhausted all the time and my meds just add to that. It seems like all I do is sleep or nap or think about when I can rest. 

This has been hard for me. Mostly because of the constant pain that I fear will never end. It’s different when you know the cause because then you have hope for release from the prison your body suddenly represents. Feeling as though all I do is whine or moan in protest because of how my body is failing me is also hard. Yes, I have always been a complainer, but I have only ever been stopped in my tracks once before. Never mind day after day after day. I feel like I am failing, in everything I do or say. 

For the first time in my life I think I am actually realizing that I am a mere mortal and that I could be facing my mortality as I sit here and write. That controls a lot of my thoughts, not because I am afraid of dying, but because I know at some point I will, whether it’s now or far off in the future. One day I will be sitting here and have the knowledge that the next breath could very well be the last. 

If it wasn’t for the pain I am in I wouldn’t be pursuing a diagnosis. I would rather live in ignorant bliss for the rest of my days then know that something is or could be wrong. It’s odd that pain holds so much power and can force us to do things we would never do. I see now why it is used by people to get answers. Pain is a powerful motivation and if you have a chance at release you would do about anything to achieve it. It’s a very scary place.

After nights of sleep deprivation and pain I have concluded that if this constant ache continues for much longer I will likely end up in the psych ward. Lack of quality of sleep, being able to do stuff is quite literally driving me batty.

I’m the one everyone goes to when they have a problem. I am expected to mend hearts and reunite people with their own souls yet in these moments I can’t focus on much of anything. I have quickly become a bad friend because I am snappy and offering shit for advice along with the snappy comments. It’s not that I don’t care, because I do. It’s that I can’t focus long enough to be of any use. At least that’s how I feel.

Certain people have been god awful to me about how I am feeling while one or two others seem to genuinely care and worry. This blog makes it look like I am looking for pity, and I am not. I always write about how I am feeling, this time it just happens I am feeling like shit.

I have anxiety about the upcoming week. Lots of behind the scenes stuff going on with family and I need to make an appointment as well. Those things seem daunting at the moment but they need to be done regardless of how I feel. I just hope I feel well enough to deal with them when the time comes.

I look around here and see the world falling down around me and I wonder how long it will be before I can get things cleaned up and put away. Its spring, I get antsy and usually do my best cleaning around now. Instead the place once again looks like a frat house after a party. I was hoping to do a vegetable garden this year with the kids but I can’t imagine being able to maintain one now. It is weird how in the face of death life is put on hold. I guess essentially certain things are a death sentence that begins now, regardless of when your physical body actually chooses to separate from your soul. 

Last time I posted I posted a copy of the short story The Yellow Wallpaper. 

The reason I posted about this is because women’s mental health really hasn’t changed all that much. I have been told to rest so many times in the last few months, not because of my sanity but because I have been sick and it really does drive you nuts. The author really captured that resting is often the worst thing you can do, or at least have forced upon you. I understand my physical limitations but I don’t think people realize how taxing that can be mentally. I often feel like I am slipping into psychosis yet I know I am not because when I do I don’t know it.

The saying “a crazy person doesn’t know they are crazy” is very true. When you are holed up in the bathroom slicing your wrist and you believe it is rational you are very far off from being sane, at least in that moment. It doesn’t mean you are insane all the time. It means that you get sick. You collapse mentally and you can’t pull yourself out of that hole. The people around you suddenly don’t make sense because you cannot rationalize with the irrational nor can you truly empathize with someone when you have never experienced what they have.

Instead, all you can do is support that person, listen to them, be their shoulder to cry on, even if it doesn’t make sense to you. Their feelings and emotions aren’t wrong. They are what they are and should not be dismissed. If a person wants to write or draw or just sleep you need to respect that, as long as they aren’t doing anything reckless. Care for them, love them, don’t punish them for feeling how they do or for not feeling something you believe they should. 

We all grieve and mourn and feel in different ways and often over different things. What hurts me may be brushed off by the person next to me and what makes that person break may be something that doesn’t affect me in the least. 

Each of us are different, but one thing I believe we can all agree with is that no matter how sane we are, we can all be broken by something as simple as The Yellow Wallpaper.

The Yellow Wallpaper (1899)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (1899)

Charlotte P erkins Gilma n, The Yellow Wallpaper, first published 1899 by Small & Maynard, Boston, MA.

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height f romantic felicity -- but that would be asking too much of fate! Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it. Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted? John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

John is a physician, and perhaps -- (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) -- perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.



You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?

If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression -- a slight hysterical tendency -- what is one to do? My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing. So I take phosphates or phosphites --whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again.

Personally, I disagree with their ideas.

Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.

But what is one to do? I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal -- having to be too sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition. I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus -- but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house. The most beautiful place! It is quite alone standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people. There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden -- large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them. There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now. There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years. That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid,but I don't care -- there is something strange about the house -- I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window. I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself -- before him, at least, and that makes me very tired. I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it. He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he took another.He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more. He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and allthe air I could get. "Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear," said he, "and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time. 'So we took the nursery at the top of the house. It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children,and there are rings and things in the walls.

The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off -- the paper in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide -- plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others. No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long. There comes John, and I must put thisaway, -- he hates to have me write a word.

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We have been here two weeks, and I haven't felt like writing before, since that first day. I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength. John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. ohn does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him. Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way! I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already! Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, -- to dress and entertain, and order things. It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous. I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wall-paper! At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies. He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on. "You know the place is doing you good," he said, "and really, dear, I don't care to renovate the house just for a three months' rental." "Then do let us go downstairs," I said, "there are such pretty rooms there." Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and said he would go down to the cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain. But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things.

It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim. I'm really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper. Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deepshaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and gnarly trees. Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check thetendency. So I try.I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me. But I find I get pretty tired when I try. It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now.

I wish I could get well faster. But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had! There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down. I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere There isone place where two breaths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down the line, one a little higher than the other.I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store.I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend. I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe. The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here.

The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother -- they must have had perseverance as well as hatred. Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars. But I don't mind it a bit -- only the paper.There comes John's sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful of me! I must not let her find me writing. She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick! But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from these windows. There is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding road, and one that just looks off over the country. A lovely country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows. This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a, different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.

But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so -- I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.There's sister on the stairs!

----------




Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are all gone and I am tired out. John thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a week. Of course I didn't do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now. But it tired me all the same. John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall. But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so! Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.I don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone. And I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very often by serious cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want her to. So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal. I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall-paper. Perhaps because of the wall-paper. It dwells in my mind so! I lie here on this great immovable bed --it is nailed down, I believe -- and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.

I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of. It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise. Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes -- a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens -- go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity. But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase. The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that direction.They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion. There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all, -- the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction. It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess.

----------

I don't know why I should write this. I don't want to. I don't feel able. And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way -- it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief. Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much. John says I mustn't lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat. Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.

But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished. It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose. And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head. He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well. He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me. There's one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wall-paper. If we had not used it, that blessed child would have! What a fortunate escape! Why, I wouldn't have a child of mine, an impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds.

I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see. Of course I never mention it to them any more -- I am too wise, -- but I keep watch of it all the same. There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder -- I begin to think -- I wish John would take me away from here!

----------

It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.

But I tried it last night. It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does.

I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.

John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wall-paper till I felt creepy. The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out. I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper did move, and when I came back John was awake. "What is it, little girl?" he said. "Don't go walking about like that -- you'll get cold." I thought it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away. "Why darling!" said he, "our lease will be up in three weeks, and I can't see how to leave before. "The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town just now. Of course if you were in any danger, I could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you." "I don't weigh a bit more," said I, "nor as much; and my appetite may be better in the evening when you are here, but it is worse in the morning when you are away!" "Bless her little heart!" said he with a big hug, "she shall be as sick as she pleases! But now let's improve the shining hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!" "And you won't go away?" I asked gloomily.

"Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will take a nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is getting the house ready. Really dear you are better!" "Better in body perhaps -- "I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word."My darling," said he, "I beg of you, for my sake and for our child's sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?" So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep before long. He thought Inwas asleep first, but I wasn't, and lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately.

----------

On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind. The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream. The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions -- why, that is something like it. That is, sometimes! There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light changes. When the sun shoots in through the east window -- I always watch for that first long, straight ray -- it changes so quickly that I never can quite believe it. That is why I watch it always. By moonlight -- the moon shines in all night when there is a moon -- I wouldn't know it was the same paper. At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be. I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman. By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour. I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can. Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after each meal. It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don't sleep. And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them I'm awake -- O no! The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John.

He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look.It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, -- that perhaps it is the paper! I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I've caught him several times looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I caught Jennie with her handcon it once. She didn't know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she was doing with the paper -- she turned around as if she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry -- asked me why I should frighten her so! Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John's, and she wished we would be more careful!

Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!

----------

Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was. John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wall-paper. I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was because of the wall-paper -- he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away. I don't want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week more, and I think that will be enough.

----------

I'm feeling ever so much better! I don't sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in the daytime. In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing. There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried conscientiously. It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw -- not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper -- the smell! I noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here. It creeps all over the house. I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs. It gets into my hair. Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it -- there is that smell! Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like. It is not bad -- at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met. In this damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the night and find it hanging over me. It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house -- to reach the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell. There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the mopboard. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even smooch, as if it had been rubbed over and over. I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for. Round and round and round -- round and round and round -- it makes me dizzy!

----------

I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move -- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern -- it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads. They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white! If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad.



---------

I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I'll tell you why -- privately -- I've seen her!

I can see her out of every one of my windows!



It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight! I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once. And John is so queer now, that I don't want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I don't want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself. I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once. But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time. And though I always see her, she may be able to creep faster than I can turn! I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.

----------

If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much. There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don't like the look in his eyes. And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report to give. She said I slept a good deal in the daytime. John knows I don't sleep very well at night, for all I'm so quiet! He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind. As if I couldn't see through him! Still, I don't wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months. It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly affected by it.

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Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough. John to stay in town over night, and won't be out until this evening. Jennie wanted to sleep with me -- the sly thing! but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone. That was clever, for really I wasn't alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper. A strip about as high as my head and half around the room. And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish it to-day! We go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they were before. Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing. She laughed and said she wouldn't mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired. How she betrayed herself that time! But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me, -- not alive ! She tried to get me out of the room – it was too patent! But I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for dinner -- I would call when I woke. So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it. We shall sleep downstairs to night, and take the boat home to-morrow. I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again. How those children did tear about here! This bedstead is fairly gnawed! But I must get to work. I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path. I don't want to go out, and I don't want to have anybody come in, till John comes. I want to astonish him. I've got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!

But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on! This bed will not move!

I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner -- but it hurt my teeth. Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision! I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try. Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued. I don't like to look out of the windows even -- there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did? But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope -- you don't get me out in the road there ! I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!

I don't want to go outside. I won't, even if Jennie asks me to.For outside you have to creep on the
ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way. Why there's John at the door! It is no use, young man, you can't open it! How he does call and pound! Now he's crying for an axe.It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!

"John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!" That silenced him for a few moments. Then he said -- very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!" "I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!" And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door. "What is the matter?" he cried. "For God's sake, what are you doing!" I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper" (1913)

This article originally appeared in the October 1913 issue of The Forerunner.

Many and many a reader has asked that. When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it. Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and --begging my pardon -- had I been there? Now the story of the story is this: For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia -- and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in 1887. I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over. Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again -- work, the normal life of every human being; work, inwhich is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite --ultimately recovering some measure of power. Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it. The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate -- so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered. But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper. It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.

The Black Shroud

I was going to write about the rules, the rules I was forced to live by for so long, the rules that still creep up and dictate my life and give me so much fear. Its odd how something as insignificant as a list of rules can cause so much havoc in your mind years and years later. I often find myself saying “Sir” or having my eyes cast down while walking past a man. People don’t realize the depth behind being held and abused. They can’t comprehend how those seemingly insignificant things can and do affect me every single day of my life all of these years later. 

I no longer fear rejection the way I once did. Oh, I still fear it. I still have anxiety about it but for the most part I can and do know when I don’t want you in my life and why and I have no problem with walking away and freeing myself the way I once did. It’s funny how I use the word “free” because I am far from free. Yes I can escape a situation but mentally I am still a terrified 17 year old who is forced to sign slave contracts, threatened to be sold into the sex slave industry and beaten, raped and recorded for anyone to see. I just no longer need to use sex as a means of getting or keeping people in my life. Quite the opposite actually as it has now been five years since I last engaged in sexual activity. I am proud of that. I took myself back, at least the parts I could. 

Lots of me is forever lost, damaged and even shattered never to be replaced or repaired. Wounds don’t heal. Not the mental ones anyway. They are just one upped by another and another until you think you have dealt with them. Then, one day out of the blue a word, a gesture, a touch will slam you back into the place you thought you had escaped all those years before. You realize you are in fact still bound by the chains that once held you so firmly in place. Sometimes, you will even still feel them against your flesh. Especially, when you are exhausted and your mind is allowed to wander. 

You will panic, you will blame and you will be paranoid that the good people in your life are actually out to hurt you or are working for the other team. Life is nothing but a cruel, cruel game that we are all forced to play. 

You will look a man in the eyes and wonder if anyone caught that, if he is insulted, if your Master will find out and punish you. Of course He will because when He asks you to confess you will admit it knowing you are to be punished for breaking the rules. It would be worse to lie. 

Then you realize that you are free, or you think you are. You then begin to wonder if having down cast eyes is noticed by people in the life style and if they can tell you have been trained when you let the word “Sir” slip from your lips while your eyes are down. Being conscious of your every move makes you wonder if everyone else is conscious of it as well. 

Part of me accepts that I am just trained now to be paranoid, to live knowing that I may or may not be taken at any moment by a Master who decides to claim me. Like I am branded with a slave mark that all Masters can see. 

I struggle with figuring this all out. I struggle to know who exactly it is I see in the mirror. Getting dressed is different, being allowed to wear what I want, instead of what is pleasing/required by the person who had held me for so long. I can wear pants!! Although, I must admit I still prefer dresses. I never did before but I do now. However I know each time I put one on that it is MY choice, not His, but mine alone. 

Being sick right now has left me with many thoughts and questions that I doubt will ever have the chance to be answered honestly. Likely because the statute of limitations will never run out and unless my captor is in jail for his crimes against me he will always have to stay quiet to keep from going there. 

I stare out the window at the black of night and wonder if it looks back in at me. Being engulfed in darkness seems to be my forte. Even on the brightest days with the warmest sun I am wearing a shroud of black, covering me from head to toe, hiding who I am really am so well that not even I know who would be revealed if the shroud was lifted. 

“I have no future. Heaven wasn’t made for me” –Manson

I feel like this is true and has been for some time. I am very sad and I am very lost and I am very deep in the darkness, wandering around without a light to guide my way. Searching for other lost souls just so I can feel, just for a moment, like I belong and these feelings are real because someone else has known them too.

Genuine

Oh how I wish I was able to depict my genuine feelings and emotions onto paper, or in this case a word document. I would express the sadness and fear and guilt I have been feeling over the last few months and I would be able to express the pain I am in physically without coming across as though I was whining. I have been told that my depth is what attracts people. Maybe they are right. It seems as though I have had year after year of tragedy and loss, with no time to breathe and mourn as everything continues to crumble around me. 

It has been helpful to have the internet back as far as this journey towards healing goes. I have met so many wonderful and loving people who not only understand but who often relate. I always hate when someone truly understands because that means they have been in my place, they have been beaten, raped, lost a child or children. They can empathize in the most explicitly profound ways because of that often unspoken understanding. 

I also have found it interesting how empathic one can be over thousands of miles through the power of observation and genuine care. I have read so many people without meaning to and can normally pick up on their moods by the way they say hello. It is definitely an interesting place to be when you can physically tell that someone has a sore leg without them complaining, or how you can look at what appears to be a jubilant moment in someone’s life and see beyond the false smiles and into the pain buried deep beneath the layers of life. 

The most intriguing thing I have learned about myself is that in several cases I have been able to pick up on emotions and feelings of a person who I have never had any first hand contact with. The second hand contact I have experienced is amazing because I have been able to bond, for a lack of a better word, with these people and they have no clue they are being sent positive thoughts, prayers, white light, energy, etc. I wonder how many other people like myself can pick up on second hand people. 

I am grateful to one person in particular who has helped to block things out for me with his energy so that I can focus on my own health and to sort out feelings/emotions and spirits both good and evil. I have also been able to take this “time out” to learn about my own beliefs and faith system and where exactly it is I fit in. I haven’t figured that one out yet, but obviously where I was isn’t where I should be or I wouldn’t have taken the chance to question that faith in the first place.

It seems as though every time I find the answer to one thing I am left with more questions than I can even begin to answer. I guess my thoughts are like bunnies, you start with two and before you know it you have hundreds. 

For now I must rest. It’s that time once again unfortunately.

Healing

"The biggest myth I have experienced in my life is that "time heals all wounds". The wounds never heal, the pain never goes away, life moves forward and new wounds begin to overlap. At the end of the day, the pain, the sadness, the anger is just as fresh today and tomorrow as it was yesteday and the day before." -me

The Rain Fell

Once again it is 4 am. Seems like I am either asleep all the time or not at all, no happy medium here. I have been lying in bed the last few hours listening to the spring rain gently falling to the ground, with the chill of the still cold air filling my lungs and house. It was weird to lay down and hear a dog barking somewhere far off in the distance. This winter was a short one. It was only two weeks ago that my son was hiding in a snow fort, now there is no snow to find, let alone build a fort with. Things in the garden have started to pop up and the buds are forming on some of the braver trees. I shouldn’t be surprised given the weather, but they are about 6 weeks earlier than normal. I am continually reminding myself that it is still March as it feels more like end of April early May. We have had record breaking highs several times in the last week or so. 

I have been thinking a lot the last few days about how I want to have another baby. I am getting old now and I really want to start a family. The whole thing, husband, house, kids, dogs, etc.; I am not sure if it is bothering me more now because of my age or if other things are the cause. Spring is always a hard time for me anyway as it’s the time of year that my last baby would have been born had she survived. It is hard for me to sit here and think that my dark haired angel would be five in a few short weeks. I know people miscarry or lose infants or children every day. What I don’t know is how they move forward. I have been paralyzed by fear for all these years because of her returning to the heavens where she belongs. 

Humans are selfish beings. For some reason we would rather have the person alive, tactile, and suffering then to consider letting them move on to where the pain of today and tomorrow no longer exists. I just want my babies back, is that too much to ask for? I suppose it is because that then makes me the person who would rather have them here suffering this world then happily playing angelically, innocently for eternity.

I have been blessed over the last several years with finding sisters like Christine and for finding friends who support my often insane rants and conspiracy theories. I am lucky to be intellectually stimulated by what I consider to be among the most intelligent people in the world from nearly every race, religion, culture and place. Who can ask for more as far as loving friends go? When I am told I am being prayed for my all these diverse groups I cannot help but to think at least someone has to be right!

The rain is beginning to trickle again and the cool air is causing my bones to ache. A train is rolling on off in the distance causing a beautiful rumble to echo off the lake. The train is blowing its’ horn which they never do at night or in the wee hours of the morning, meaning something is on the tracks, likely a deer or two. 

Staring out at the blackness of the night used to make me feel anxious. Maybe it’s my medication but now I look out at the darkness and I feel as though that darkness represents my life – dark, cold and scary, yet somehow familiar because it has been lingering over me and following me for so long. That dark hole allows me to realize how much I am edging the brink of insanity and how easy it would be for me to just be sucked out completely into the unknown. Honestly, it is met with little resistance. Which is where the fear I am feeling seems to stem from.  

Bouncing About!

I guess one could say this has been a fairly emotion week for myself and several of my friends. We have been dealing with everything from illness, to bullying, to financial issues. It seems like when things hit they always hit hard and fast which I guess is or can be a good thing because everything is over and done with at once, but boy does it wipe you out. 

I have been betrayed by someone who I never could have imagined hurting me, never mind on purpose or without explanation. I guess months of talking to one another day in and out isn’t enough regardless of how much you claim to care or how willing you seem to be to protect one another. Funny how things work out, that’s for sure. 

I have been having randomly insane dreams and flashbacks again in my sleep. Stress is always so kind to me –NOT! I find myself feeling as though I am drowning in a sea of chaos and confusion. I think it is fair to say I am exhausted both mentally and physically. 

I was asked to rest today and I did for several hours. I am good at arguing against it because of nightmares but I have come to realize in the last week or so that when someone says I should get some rest that they are likely right, even if it is frustrating. After all, I wouldn’t fall asleep if rest wasn’t required. 

I was feeling rather reckless earlier on. I think that has subsided, at least for now. Maybe I am just overwhelmed by everything and I am just too tired to keep fighting. I am feeling rather submissive at this point and it isn’t going without notice. I have just come to realize that in a lot of things I am not willing to recognize what I actually need versus what I merely want. 

I think I will be done talking about that stuff it’s just depressing and really uninteresting.

I have had my little girl spirit coming by again most evenings. It always seems like she is here so early because of the time change. I am always surprised when a spirit follows the daylight savings time rules, but then again they wouldn’t be visiting me and communicating with me or touching me if they were residual instead of intelligent. I have known for quite some time now that she was a young girl but tonight while she was playing with my hair as she always does she revealed more of herself to me.

She has dark hair, nearly black, and skin about the color of mine, very white. She isn’t one of my children, but she is related in some way, which I find odd because I don’t know of anyone who lost a female child who was related to me. Only boys. She revealed to me that when she died she was older but for whatever reason likes this younger age to visit me in.

Child spirits are always hard to deal with, especially when you have lost children of your own. I love how she always plays with my hair though, feeling those tiny fingers on the back of my head. She reminds me of when my own kids were young and it often makes me sad because she also reminds me of the children in the heavens whom I am missing out on. The only solace this brings me is knowing that my angels don’t have to deal with the pains of this world and that they will forever remain innocent and pure because they were taken back by God Himself. 

Spring is already in the air, the snow is gone rather early this year and things are starting to pop up in the garden. The birds are back and many of the trees are beginning to get buds. It is very weird for March where I live. Normally at this time of year I am still contending with snow and shovels and heat. I don’t even have the heat on right now. Normally I would be considering buying seeds and starting them indoors at around this time of year. It appears as though the growing season is going to be longer this year than normal so I am thinking now about doing a vegetable garden for the first time in a long time.

I have so much on my mind right now everything is bouncing around so horribly. I don’t know if I am going up down or round in circles. 

I have lots to say but no means to communicate it so I will end here for today.

In Between

I haven’t written in a few days which is odd because I usually like to put everything I think out there as it helps to clear my head. This past week or so I have been struggling a great deal with a lot of different things including my own mortality. Doing what’s right for me is never easy. Especially when I have never really cared before, we were sent you with one sole mission in life and that was to die, so I am left asking the question, why can’t we as a society accept our own deaths or the deaths of our loved ones? Other cultures who we consider more primitive deal with death in such a profound, loving and spiritually appeasing way. Somewhere along the line we lost that and became this society that fears that in which we cannot control. I often wonder what the catalyst to this extreme and rather sudden change regarding death was. It came to fruition somehow and instead of being embraced it became feared. 

Selfishness perhaps?

As I lay here awake at quarter after five in the morning my mind is flooded with thoughts from the most rational to the most irrational I have ever had. Bouncing from one thing to the next like a fox on a trampoline. I have images pouring in faster than I can process them and they are all becoming jumbled into one big mass.

I see myself fighting, being restrained in a hospital and then I see myself fighting and being restrained by the men who took my soul. I can see the ceiling tiles that I would stare up at while being raped. I can feel the hands on my flesh being gentle just before they assault me. I can hear the word “sorry” when the torture is done for the night, but then again, was it ever really done?

I close my eyes and as I drift from the present to the past I can feel the restraints on my wrists and ankles. The cold steel followed by the click of a lock causing my stomach to twinge from that sense of permanency that the lock seemed to give off. Like the lock possessed an energy all its’ own, strange how an inanimate object can hold such power and be associated with so much pain. It wasn’t the locks fault.

I miss a lot of things. I miss feeling the kicks of a baby growing inside of me. I miss the will to get up in the morning and live, instead of having a life that I have learned to hate. I have come so far yet really gone nowhere. Today, fear is my chain. It is what holds me still. It is what prevents me from moving forward and learning to love to live again. Fear may only be four short letters but they may be the most powerful in the English language. 

I remember growing up and how close me and my cousins were. We saw each other every weekend, we played hide and seek in the most insane locations. We got stuck in quick sand and had to yank each other out. We would slide ourselves down embankments of sand hundreds of feet into areas that had collapsed from rainfall and we had fun. We called our giant hole “the junior grand canyon”. It gave us years of enjoyment as it progressively grew and it was our secret because we were told not to go there because it was dangerous. Now us girls rarely talk. Not even at Christmas or Thanksgiving. We have all become separate entities. People who grew up as my sisters are now unrecognizable to me in both image and in who they have become. I definitely struggle with respecting them, or anyone who I once considered to be family. “The good die young”.

Now I live my life in hiding with few neighbours and no one who comes into my home. I have my dogs and my cat and my bird as my friends and I have become this recluse who doesn’t recognize their own life, or in this case, lack of life. Fear has trapped me here somewhere between life and death. Maybe this state of mind is in fact the purgatory that the church once spoke of. I look around this hell hole and each pile of stuff, each book that hasn’t been put away, each box; they all represent the chaos that I feel deep within. I can’t bring myself to organize and put things away because inside I am so deeply out of order. You can look behind the piles of stuff and see that I was once quite organized. Books on the shelves are in order of size. The knickknacks are specifically placed. The reality is you can see the exact moment in which I decided to give up on life, the exact moment in which I allowed my life to stop, the moment in which the pain became unbearable and that I quit loving because if you love you lose and I can’t afford to lose anyone else, not now, not again. This chaos doesn’t just represent the mess I am in; it represents my loss of control over my life, my emotions, and my fear. It shows that I am being dictated by a power far beyond my own control and most of all it shows that I really don’t care. In that moment something inside of me gave up and I quit. I don’t know how to turn that desire back on, likely because I don’t care enough to want to. 

Part of me has all these crazy plans and the other part, the dominating part, keeps me locked up inside. Is this a result of having post-traumatic stress or is this something bigger than that? I am most definitely lost and have far more questions that I do answers, yet when I am given the opportunity to ask my questions I draw a blank, like a printer without ink. I open my mouth and nothing comes out. I tend to be shy, fearful, and most of all ashamed of how I feel and fear.

It’s quarter to six now and I am still rambling on. It helps that I can type fast I suppose or much of this would be missed and lost into the air forever. I have described myself as feeling dead inside but really I know that’s not the case. I feel far too much pain and sorrow filling the holes within my being to be dead. If being dead is feels like this then maybe that’s where my fear in the after-life stems from.

I tried to kill this pain because of someone making it even worse. I wonder how it feels to be the person to push someone over the edge on purpose. Does it make you feel big, powerful? I would feel horrible if it was me that had caused that break and pushed someone over the edge I often teeter on. Unfortunately, we live in a society where most people are more concerned about themselves then they are others and they will gladly hurt you just so they can have a moment of feeling as though they’ve won. The internet seems to have made it even easier to purposely hurt another person because we disregard one another as human. We create a persona that allows us to be anyone or anything. We aren’t all the person we claim to be online and honesty is lost and real people who you only know by a screen name end up hurt, or dead.

I suppose I will post this and then head to bed. I am not really sleepy yet but everyone keeps insisting I rest. Not sure if they want me to rest because I physically need it or if they are worried about the mental fractures I have been dealing with over the last few months. With the new chaos and fear I am rather fragile. The word “rest” reminds me of the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Sometimes I swear laying here and looking up at the knots in the pine and looking for faces or patterns in those knots will drive me over the edge like the woman depicted in that story. Psychosis is psychosis in my book, regardless of the cause.

I have come to realize that maybe it’s not death that scares me but living forever in this realm and then the next that gives me goose-bumps and instills a fear deep within my soul. I believe that to die would be a great adventure. I guess I will find out one day, as far as I can tell no one has ever conquered it and lived on forever. If they have, they have yet to admit it. Then again, I wouldn’t admit it either. I suppose that would be a one way ticket to the nearest padded cell. 

I Miss Your Love

There is something, at least for me, that is so beautiful about death and even blood. I have watched many times as my blood breathes and sucks the container in trying to get its own oxygen before it finally decides to die. It is so nostalgic to be sitting their alive, and at the same time watching a part of yourself die. It is not only nostalgic but symbolic in so many ways.

For me when that slice goes through my flesh and the blood bubbles up and begins to drip onto the cloth below it symbolizes how dead I feel inside, it reminds me that I am still alive. “I hurt myself today to see if I still feel” – Johnny Cash. The pain I feel in the days following as I begin to heal is connected to me emotionally. It represents the emotional anguish I am feeling. Each cut, each scar, has a story, has a pain associated with it. When that blade hits my flesh everything deep within me is suddenly tactile, it is real, it can be bandaged it can be healed. If I could find a way to do that within myself instead of externally I would but I haven’t been able to. 

I look around this makeshift house and I often find myself staring up at the knotty pine ceilings. Counting every single nail and wondering how my grandma managed to do each one by hand while literally dying of lung cancer. Each of the nails has her energy. She held each one firmly and gripped it as she hammered it into place, one after another after another.

This house may be unfinished, it may be too small and it may be a cluttered mess, but every nail, every board, every piece of wood, every crack or break was placed here by the hands that held me when I cried, that slept with me when I was a child, that nursed me back to health when I was sick. Those same hands taught me how to iron, how to fold the dreaded bottom sheet of a bed. They nurtured me and taught me how to cook, to bake, to scrub cigarette smoke off of white cupboards and walls. Those hands encouraged my love for art, for birds, deer and nature. They taught me how to garden flowers, fruits and vegetables.

Those old worn hands that were far beyond their years brushed my hair and drew on my back and I did the same for her. They taught me that a weed can be beautiful as long as it has a flower and that sometimes even the biggest sunflower will get pecked by birds before you have a chance to retrieve the seeds. I learned to walk around my flower beds every day and yank what shouldn’t be there and become excited at the buds and new growth that occurred between now and the day before. 

Maybe best of all is that she taught me to embrace the gifts god had given me. She taught me that being empathic and psychic was okay. She taught me that ghosts were real and not to be feared. I saw my first UFO with her at around three in the morning. I am happy to say that the gifts I have were nurtured by someone like her, who had the strength that I will likely never possess, pieces of her live on through me in so many ways. She taught me how to love unconditionally no matter how many times someone screws up, and even if you can’t have that person in your life that the love doesn’t have to end because the friendship/relationship has.

I was raised to believe that you sleep when you’re tired even if you are having a siesta every day and if you’re not sleepy to use that time for yourself because you only have each moment and each minute once. You can never go back, you can never relive that moment again, except in memories and dreams. Much like the internet, what you put out there in the physical realm is irrevocable.  

Lastly, I was taught that it’s okay to be selfish regarding your own life. It’s okay to be sick and make the decision to refuse treatment. It is okay to die on your own terms without the influence of anyone else. It is not a sin to die and it is not a sin to prolong life for those who wish to stay. I was taught that embracing death as another chapter in life was exactly what death is. It doesn’t mean you no longer exist. It means you no longer exist within the vessel in which you were sent. I was taught that when someone on their death bed tells you they are going to haunt you that they likely mean it and that no matter how sad the people standing around are regarding your death that it is a human reaction and an action of selfishness.

Saying goodbye isn’t easy, so say so long because you will see one another in your dreams, you will feel one another at important events. People don’t live on because they were written about, they live on because they touched a persons’ heart in such an insurmountable way that their stories continue to be told, their life continues to be analyzed and in each fleeting moment you think about that person and can honestly say “grandma would of bought this” without feeling a sense of dread or loss or anger.

I have come to realize over the years that the best way to take back your life is to control your death. To die on your terms with your convictions and to not be swayed by those who would rather have you suffer every moment in pain just so they could have you for one more day or create one more memory. There comes a time when we each must choose to follow our own hearts and create our own life paths, even if that means toes get stepped on along the way.

Do I miss her?

Yes, she was like a mother to me but I wouldn’t wish her back, not to the pain and suffering that she was living with every day and trying to hide so as to stay strong. If I could have everyone back healthy both mentally and physically I would take it but then I realize that when I die I will be whole for the first time since the moment of my creation. Our souls will meet up again in the heavens and maybe even on earth.

I would rather be whole than shattered the way I have been for more than half of my life.

Yes, I would rather be whole.

Connected Me to You

“I would go lay on the beach in the dark of night and watch the sky dance, it was wonderful” –Me

I find it so magical when you and I can be 1000 miles apart and stare up at the same time into the brightness of the black night sky. We can watch the moon together, we can see the stars. Suddenly that thousand miles doesn’t seem to exist, the gap is filled because of the magic that is so far away. The chill running through you as you lay back and watch all of space and time right before your eyes. It is easy to see why ancient cultures revered the movement of the sky the way they do. There is something so beyond our grasp that tends to pull you in.

When I look up at the moon I am looking at what hundreds of thousands of people are seeing at the same time. Oddly looking into the unknown is somehow grounding. It makes you realize that distance on earth has no bounds and that you are a part of the sand or grass in which you sit.

It also gives you a feeling of being small and almost insignificant. You stare up at the dotted sky and you wonder if the stars are looking back at you. You wonder how many are even still burning. So many are burnt out but we still receive their glow because of how many light years we are away.

I often wonder which ones are the souls of people, who I have loved and lost, staring down and guiding the way. When I die will I become someone’s guiding light? Will you?

I remember at one point talking to a priest and telling them that if believing in Jesus gave me everlasting life I didn’t want it. I tend to still feel that way. Everlasting is a lot of time. It would be easier to believe I will come back as someone and not just roam another realm for all of eternity. I guess my ideas on spirituality have a whole lot of things picked out from several different “religions” and my faith is based on that. Do I believe in a god? Yes, but I also believe in other gods. Christianity tells us through the ten commandments “You shalt NOT have any gods before ME” to me this is highly suggestive that even god almighty believes there are others, he just wants to be, or demands to be, the most high. 

Now, I don’t know where my actual belief system falls. I guess somewhere between Hindu and Pagan. I am not really sure. I don’t believe in a monotheistic faith, I believe in reincarnation, but I also believe in heaven, hell and being trapped in between.

I guess the journey to find out who I am continues to be ongoing. I am fine with that. Maybe no one ever truly finds themselves. Life is an ongoing piece of growth. I doubt we are ever actually done. If you think you have figured out everything there is to know, you either don’t have many questions, or you have given up on learning who you are. 

They say “you learn something new every day” I suppose that holds more truth than people would want to believe. Especially in our societies where people tend to believe that they are a registered professional and can do no wrong. The fact is we have two choices, live or die. If you give up you are dead whether you have left this realm or not. If you decide to live you learn, you change, you modify and you grow. You are open to new ideas, concepts and understanding. 

I would like to say that even though I often feel dead inside that I am an ever evolving being, learning from my actions, from the world around me, both good and bad and the history of the world. Every moment in life gives us the opportunity to learn, it’s up to you to decide what exactly it is you take from each moment.

This week I have learned a lot about myself and the people around me. I have come to realize that when someone is hurting me and they refuse to change their ways I HAVE to protect myself and be willing to walk away, even if that walk hurts because living to die is getting really old. I am tired of the person who I have become. Dependant, melancholy, depressed, emotional and untrusting.  

I have allowed the wrong people to influence my decisions the last couple of months and that was dumb. Being a victim already I know a bad situation when I see one and I should never have fallen victim to others, or myself.

In this world, there tends to be only black and white. Most of the time I live in the grey areas that are far less explored.

I am exhausted and sore. I need to rest. I am beginning to loathe that word. I have been sick so much so often the last while and it’s one thing after another after another. I am tired. Fighting a fight that you don’t even want to be part of is draining all around. 

Love and Loss

I had this boyfriend named Steve. He had two kids who lived with his mom because he was in and out of jail for heroin and the chaos that goes with it. The kids’ mom was dead from an overdose.

Anyway, he and I shared a wall for a few months while in jail, and we could reach each other with a newspaper and would pass the TV remote back and forth that way. He realized I wasn’t sleeping and was listening to me having nightmares at night, so he started to sleep on the floor up against where my bed was. His body heat would warm the thin steel wall. When he still continued to hear me whimper in my sleep he purposely got his hand slammed in his cell door and it was shattered. They gave him pain meds because he had surgery.

Every morning, afternoon and night he would pass me his pain meds inside the remote so that I could sleep without the nightmares.

I was later transferred to a different jail and we continued to talk. One day his letters stopped coming. My friend Gerry sent me a letter with a drawing in it and he told me Steve died of a heroin overdose.

The morning I was transferred I knew I was going to be. I was the only girl in that area. It was about 5 AM when the CO (corrections officer) came to get me. Gerry and all the guys woke up to wish me luck and say good bye. I remember I was holding onto Steve's cell door and this male guard was trying to pull me off, it was so early and I was screaming Steve's name and begging them to not take me away. Finally, I let go and was semi dragged down the corridor while sobbing, when I got to Gerry's cell he was crying too...

Of all the traumatic moments in my life I would have to say that one probably tops them all.

I loved Steve. Steve loved me. No one had ever sacrificed themselves for me the way he did and no one has since. I often look up at the stars at night and wonder if one of the glistening beams is his soul staring down at me. I try to be good, not for you, not for blood, not for my kids, but for Steve. He watches me. He wanted better for me then what I had been dealt. We had dreams, aspirations. Sometimes while staring up at the darkness of the night I wonder if he was the one God had sent for me and that because he is gone I have lost that chance.

Et je t'aime encore –And I love you still