A Gift, Anger and Forgiveness

I feel:: cranky
What song is on a loop in my head right now:: Tori Amos~Mother

I managed to go to church today despite my stomach. It did threaten to keep me at home, but it suddently got better. I got to church a few minutes late ( I missed Communion and the music had already started.), but everything was ok. Some old friends of mine, Perry and Siobhan, were there. I haven't seen them since the days of Ground Zero. It's been over 10 years. It was amazing to see them. Perry actually spoke to me and gave me a hug. that was nice and another surprise. He would have never done that when I knew him before. Siobhan looked amazing. I have never seen her look so pretty. She was glowing. We talked for a bit and she told me that they have a 2-year old son, but he wasn't with them this morning. Shame, I would have liked to have met him. Perry gave the serom. It was on Ecclesiastes 1-3. First, he gave some history of the Jewish people on a timeline and basically skimed over Chps. 1 and 2 because of time constraints. He focused on Chp. 3. He said Chps 1 and 2 were a thesis and were Solomon asking himself questions about the nature of the world. He said, after you state a thesis in a paper, you go on to prove or disprove your thesis. He said that Solomon disproved his thesis. He was trying to figure out the nature of the world through his natural, philosophical mind. God had given him great wisdom, so I guess he figured he could do it. His conclusion: All life is meaningless. A chasing after the wind. In Chp. 3, he brings God into the picture and he then says that the best thing people can do is enjoy their lives and rejoice in the work God has given them because these things are gifts of God. The point being that without God, life is meaningless, but with God, life has meaning and purpose. I got something else out of it too. I noticed that between Chps 1 and 2 and Chp. 3, Solomon completely reversed himself. He contradicted himself. I can identify with this because I vascillate and contradict myself constantly. It's like I try to reconcile the world with my belief in God. God doesn't submit to the world's rules though. I guess that's the problem. I should probably just focus on God and forget the world. (Duh.) The hard thing is that I live in the world and I have to be a part of it to survive. I have to work and I have to make money. I have to go to classes because I know that that is what God wants me to do. (I have known that I was supposed to go back to college since 1992, but it took me until 2001 to do it. Hmmm, that's another 9 year increment. Is it significant? Maybe I'm just a stubborn ass.) This is confusing to me. I wish I could find a resolution. I don't really have all of this sorted out in my mind. Anyway, the sermon was great. I forgot how intelligent Perry is. I was amazed that he actually got up in front of the church and taught. He must have changed a lot over the years.

Church today was like a Ground Zero reunion. Everywhere I looked, there was another person I used to know/work with. After the service was over, I got to talking with different people and all of them said basically the same thing: Welcome to the Ground Zero reunion! It was weird, but not in a bad way. I kept having all these memories of being at Ground Zero and being with all of those people. I felt a feeling of family and belonging that I have never felt before. I felt like they were my family before and I loved them before, but I never felt like I really belonged with them. I isolated myself most of the time. This feeling was 100 times stronger than it ever was while I was living at Ground Zero. I felt more equal with them, whereas before, I always felt like the blundering student. Today, I felt like I really belonged with them and that I had gotten my family back. I can't explain how happy this made me. God gave them back to me and me back to them. It was an everythingisrightiwiththeworldandthiscannotgetanybetter moment. I feel so humbled that after everything I've done in the past 10 years, despite of myself, despite how long I've stayed away from them, that not only would God give them back to me, but that they would accept me. Amazing gift. He just let it fall on me. I felt like God was holding me in His arms and I was warm with His love. I really felt like He was there with me. (I realize that this sounds an awfully lot like "warm fuzzies", but it was something totally different and way above that.) I hope I can always be as grateful for them as I am now. I get frustrated so easily and I tend to have high expectations of people. I hope I don't get caught in that trap again of expecting people to do things I think they should. I hope I can just accept them and love them for who they are. Flaws included. What an awesome day.

There is something that marred my day, however. Backing up to yesterday, I masturbated twice. That's not really what disturbs me. What does is that during both times, I had fantasies of a father figure raping me. I called the man in this fantasy "Daddy". This is the first time I've ever had fantasies like that. Although, I have had rape fantasies many times before. Considering what I've been through, I think it's odd that I would fantasize about someone raping me or gang rape. I feel so ashamed every time this happens, as I did yesterday. In fact, I still felt dirty as I was driving to church this morning. I wish I didn't have those fantasies. Why do they excite me? This makes me feel ashamed of myself. What kind of a freak am I? Who fantasizes about being raped? That is so sick and so perverse and so wrong. As I sit here, I am still shocked about the Daddy/rape fantasies. These fantasies come to my mind unbidden, as if they were just waiting there for the right moment or trigger. This makes me feel like inside I'm really a dirty person. Like I don't even know myself or the full extent of what I'm capable of. What is really disturbing to me is the thought that I might be fantasizing about things that actually happened to me. I had a dream/flashback of my grandfather repeatedly putting his finger in my anus when I was 3 or so. This happened just last week. Is it that far of a leap from there to a masturbatory fantasy? I don't sit around and think of sexual things to fantasize about. I realize that's hard to believe, but I don't. The fact that when he was alive, I called my grandfather "Daddyboy" also connects this for me. Also, scenes like this are in my mind when I'm having sex with Ryk. Sometimes I even hear the voices of my attackers. (I told this to Cathy during my last therapy session and she was concerned that I thought they were outside voices. I assured her they were not. They are just memories fo things I have heard before. Sometimes I can't control their emergence.) I stopped trying not to masturbate a few years ago. I have been doing this since age 4. I remember also that I used to masturbate in public and I would get in trouble for it. I finally realized after all these years that it is a part of who I am. Even though I was a victim of incest, assault, and rape, I still feel like a sexual person. I still have desire. I used to try to choke it down and stifle it because I was taught that masturbation is bad and that the only women who felt sexual desire were sluts and whores. That's the way I felt for a long time. I felt like I was nothing but tits and ass. A cum receptacle for men to use. I hated that feeling. Sometimes, I still have that feeling, but thankfully it goes away for awhile now. (I'm getting that cry-knot in my throat now just thinking about it.) How does a person learn to value themselves? Everyone wants to be valued and respected for who they are. Everyone deserves to be respected for being human. Our society is so focused on sex that it is hard to find my identity apart from it. I feel like I have been brainwashed my whole life and I'm angry about it. I'm angry at the injustice of it. Not only for me, but also for everyone else it happens to. This anger makes me want to lash out, but I have nothing to direct my anger towards. So, I'm castrated. Again. As I look back on my life, I wonder why all of these things have happened to me. If I wasn't afraid of being labled a paranoid freak, I would say that it all seems like some sort of insidious plot to keep me under control. Am I the only one who feels this way? I hope not.