..dear reader..

She stayed over last night. In the morning I had a lot of hetro sex dreams, wandering about looking for a man to have sex with, I'm not sure if I found someone. During the day I have had increasing memories of having sex with my mother. I call them memories they are more like impressions of memories. Its not like I can say they are new but its been a while since they have felt so real. The way she touched me and rubbed against me gave me much more physical pleasure than abuse from my dad or men. It's not like I can see her face in the memories, maybe it wasn't her, maybe I'm just putting these feelings onto her because I have rarely felt, very close to her. Even when I was little. What I can remember clearly that amongst the carnage of 2001 I was having sezuires, flashbacks, lots of memories that I was reliving and accepting as part of my past. Until one day she came over and I couldn't do it anymore. I remember standing on the stairs in my flat in Aberd...

I'm glad that Burke's book exists and others like it but all the survivor stories I have read so far have left me feeling like there is so much more to be said, so much more that needs to be learned and the writers did not put as much of themselves into writing as they could of. I do not want to take anything away from the extremely important work done by Burke's and others just that I feel I need to explore the issues such books raise in me and how little I feel they are addressed. As I said in the title this is a personal response, the abuse I experienced occurred over a longer period and involved many more people so it is not surprising that I should finish the book thinking 'is that all?'. The first thing that bothered me about it was the beginning where she describes her life first in terms of her relationship with her father then her husbands. As a feminist this is frustrating for me, surely there were other important relationships in her life as she grew...

It got a bit weird for a while last night, for a little bit. I had been reading 'Wholeness', the abuser father of the narrator was an anesthesiologist who injected her and gave her pills before she was molested by friends of her dad. I started to feel a tingling all over which reminded me of the times I have been put under to have teeth removed and for the laparoscopy. It wasn't particularly intense and it felt unnerving rather than scary. Unlike the woman in the book I have mostly been conscious of the fact that the 'normal' family facade was just that. During my teens the 'me who had never been raped' was a pretty thin veil, not enough of a personality to even call an alter. I don't know how many times I swore to my self 'I will never, never forget this', I would often loose the details through the hypnotism or whatever happened afterwards but I rarely lost the feeling that awful things were happening and that I had to fight. When I tri...

write a whole book about me that is. Although not today because I'm tired and irritable. Been spending a lot of time walking that fine line between weeping and not weeping. I wish I could just cry, I'd feel better then, that relaxed, cleansed feeling I used to get after cutting. I'm not even tempted to do anything like that though, carrying and giving birth to the permanently hungry fairy prince sorted that out. Maybe I would of grown out of it anyway. The new psychiatrist isn't a big believer in therapy. She said she's not sure dredging stuff up helps and she's right there is not point in dredging without the proper support to deal with it all. I still want to do it though, wish I lived in California like the women who wrote 'Wholeness' did. Could really use some of that looking deep inside to see the parts of myself and visualising to give them what they need. Memories keep pushing but they rarely break the surface. There's been sex me...

Had a fantastic laugh out loud dream last night. I was reading Triumph over Darkness by Wendy Ann Wood in bed, its very simply written and maybe that helps the messages of hope and healing get through. Anyway in the dream I was very drunk and very happy, falling over, getting lost, dancing with other weirdos in weird jerky styles. I didn't feel like a weirdo though and they didn't look like weirdos either just people, experienced people dancing and letting off steam. I ended up in Cardiff, where I snogged a the member of a boy band and got a lift home in a a big black flash truck-car. On the way to the car I passed a stretch limo it had something on the roof, I'm not sure what if was - a piano or something and I remember looking at it and saying 'tasteful' and who ever I was with laughing with me. At one point in Cardiff I wondered off down this narrow street of white houses and realised I was alone, but all I had to do was say 'stereophonics' in a We...

Felt less awful today, especially after my 'Wordless Wednesday' award. People have called me 'strong and courageous' before but it was hard for it to mean anything. It wasn't a choice, I woke up, sometimes in the middle of being brave. Answering back, making phone calls, remembering everything, smashing up their objects, smashing up their people. I get too cocky about the violence and omit that one of my survival skills was nothing to do with violence although it did motivate it. I fell in love with people, I would see someone who had something I needed, a position of power, a personality trait, a way of seeing things and would dedicate my life to giving them as easy a ride as possible, sometimes literally. I would fight their abusers, hide their money, give them new names, new identities, everything I couldn't do for myself. I was well aware that part of my motivation was just that, to give someone something that I needed but couldn't get. But there...

It's just my late teens and early twenties I want back, not to see him again. It's this latest virus thats making me feel ultra depressed, its not love sickness. His wife was on the wrong list long before she met him and he walked straight into it. He was always blind to the amount of genuine conspiries behind our life 'choices'. Listen to me, no wonder people think I'm deluded. In Glasgow I knew he was in trouble outside, the back of a car, a group of Fife men, one with a video camera. I was standing at the bar, trying to be indifferent, trying to be what I had to be if I was to become anything in that city. I couldn't do it. I put my drink down and ran out there to put the video camera to its best use as far as I'm concerned, as a blunt instrument. The violence is always a blurr afterwards when its me thats doing it, but during it time slows and I feel like a force of nature. After he'd pulled his trousers back up we sat on the street with ou...