Who I Am: Homeschooled, The End

By the time I entered high school (if you can call it that), I was no longer who I was.

I should clarify that: I had learned how to pretend to be who I needed to to be in order to fit in long enough to finish my homeschool curriculum and get the hell out. To outside observers in our church, I was the Homeschool Poster Child. While many others among my small peer group would go on to become failures in our homeschooling community--for example, out of my group of friends, three of them would go on to become 1) pregnant at 13, 2) convicted of manslaughter, and 3) a runaway at 16--I was considered a success, in spite of being merely a female. I stayed out of trouble, went to every church service, and avoided all appearances of evil. I raced through the four years of high school curriculum in two years by working through the summers, and my parents, with the assistance of our church, typed up a transcript and pressed a gold seal onto it. To me, it carried about as much significance as a gold star on a chore chart. But it was enough.

Things I Wish I Could Say To My Therapist

You don't get to tell me that it's time for me to be happy now.

In the last year or so, I have lost my family.

I have lost all hope of ever finding my faith again--in fact, I don't believe in god now and can't discern any purpose to the universe in general.

I have discovered that my marriage is a fraud and I can't tolerate my husband's touch.

I have realized that there are parts of me that are irreparably broken and I will forever feel like an outsider in my own world.

And in the most unbearable and pathetic transformation, I have lost my ability to dissociate at will. I feel like my skin has been ripped off and I am walking around in acid rain all the time. It's pathetic because I know everyone else feels their emotions all the time, and sure it's unpleasant or painful at times, but hey, that's part of being human so what's the big deal, right? Except I truly believe my emotions can kill me when they become overwhelming and suffocating and I can't turn them off anymore.

So I should get out more often, go to lunch with a friend, go shopping, because it's time to move on to the next phase of my life? Really? That's your suggestion for feeling "better"?

Fuck you.

Grieving My Narcissistic Mother

I've been in a funk now for a while. More than a funk, really--more than just the blues or feeling down in the dumps. And more than just a while. I really think it started around Mother's Day this past May.

For many years I struggled with buying a Mother's Day card for my mother. I couldn't buy one that showered her with praises for her extraordinary maternal virtues or gushed with my undying gratitude and love for her, because frankly that would have been dishonest. If Hallmark made a card that said, "Happy Mother's Day...Thanks for not actually killing me," that would have been perfect. But I didn't have that problem this year, or last year either for that matter, because I no longer have any contact with my family of origin. Haven't had in 1 year, 2 months, and three weeks, in fact. But who's counting?