visit

I had a really good visit with my mom today. Some days I can just be in the moment and enjoy the time that I have with her but other times, like yesterday, I get overwhelmed with fear and sadness. I was tired but she didn't need anything done, so I laid on the sofa and she sat in her comfy chair and we watched boob tube for an hour or so. We didn't talk much. I think that we might have snored at each other a couple of times though. It was really comfortable and nice. I don't know if I will get over there tomorrow but I will be going over on Friday. I owe her money, she has become obsessed with money lately and I'm going to try to get her some French onion soup from Tim Hortons. She said that she's been craving it lately.

I've decided to stop nagging her so much about if she is taking care of herself, eating, taking her pills, etc. I mean this disease is very serious and the end is coming one way or another, I don't want to be a bitch in her last days. I didn't even think about what I was doing until I went to visit with my husband and son. When we got back my husband observed that I peppered her with questions and suggestions the whole time. I don't want to be like that. I just hope that she doesn't suffer too much. I really don't like to think of her being alone so much of the time, but I don't know what to do about that. I have my family to take care of. Guilt sure is a pain in the ass sometimes.

Self absorbtion

There is so much happening in my life right now and I feel like I am becoming more and more self absorbed. I think about my gender almost constantly and how I can be myself in this world. My mother is getting sicker and sicker and I hate myself because I'm worried that she let the insurance on her car slide and we use it sometimes. My aunt is in the hospital and work has just become insane. I can't believe how much there is to do, I have new duties and no raise. It is getting harder and harder to make ends meet.

I can focus somewhat on my son and husband but that seems to be the extent that I can reach out. Maybe I'm just being too hard on myself. Maybe I'm not behaving any differently, just my internal life is out of whack. I don't really have anyone who I could ask. I'm sure that I seem more frustrated at work (I am) but they know that I have two ill family members so they are forgiving. No one but my husband and one friend who I don't have much contact with know about my gender.

I have this knot in my gut and my jaw, shoulders and neck are just killing me. I don't know how to get myself out of this state. I had a forum that I was a part of but I was attacked there because I'm transgender. I know I can't transition because I'm just not strong enough to deal with that shit on a daily basis. But then how can I be the man that I feel myself to be? I'm not a physcial man, I'm not a social man, so in what way exactly am I a man?

I understand that as a human, I can't keep up this state of stress long term and I'll settle down after awhile, I just hope that it is soon.

Recovery

I've decided to change the focus of my blog to 'recovery'. I'm also hoping that this new focus will help me keep on top of my blog.

I am in the process of quitting smoking and I find that after about 5 or 6 days I just become so filled with anger and after smoking for a couple of days the anger dissipates. Well, I just finished reading a book on quitting smoking and the whole focus was that smoking doesn't do anything for you but for me it does. I have to do something about it myself or I will just continue to smoke.

Even just naming the feeling of anger helps a little, but not enough. There is so much to be angry and even sad about that has happened and is happening in my life. I'm angry at the people who sexually abused me, I'm angry at the man who sexually abused my child, I'm angry because my mom and my aunt are sick. I'm angry that I'm gender queer in a very straight world. How can I express myself unless I can uncover myself under all these layers of repressed emotion? How can I be free or find peace until I can do that?

I am angry at the people who abused me. They took so much away from me at such a young age. I was abused twice which I sometimes think isn't such a big deal and if it had been just the first time, I don't think that it would have been so bad. I can look back at the time between the first and second incident and see that I had been recovering. I had a family that cared for me and supported me and even without being able to tell anyone I was starting to feel safe again. The first incident happened when I was five and although I have blocked most of the memory it has been corroberated by outside sources. It involved oral sex. I look at sweet little five-year-olds now and it makes me sick what that man did to me. How could anyone be so disgusting as to want gratification from a five year old? I'm feeling sick right now just thinking about it. But it was done to me. That is real. I think that I need to make it feel real before I can move on, because for so long even in my previous attempts at recovery it has felt like some abstract thing, not a real thing. My jaw is clenched just thinking about it, and my stomach is queasy.

I am a wreck, an absolute, complete, total wreck. I don't know what to do, it doesn't make any sense. I quit smoking almost a week ago and I was pretty much fine for 4 or 5 days but now, I just can't. I want to scream and cry and it makes me wonder if smoking helps me supress all these feelings of anger and sadness that I have. If so, there are a lot of feelings that I have had or should have had over the last 30 years, how can I do this? How do I go about this? Add to that the stress of having two close relatives with stage 4 cancer, I just don't know what to do. Plus I'm taking care of three kids today. I just want to go back to bed and stay there for like months and months.

My last post made me feel better for about a week or so. I am so filled with anger and fear so much of the time. If the fear partly a fear of my anger? I hate standing for myself. I'm just so afraid that if I let myself go, the anger will never stop. There is just so much behind that wall, I feel like if I let just a little bit out there will be a huge flooding river that will never ever stop.

How can the would let just a couple of people in your life fuck it up so completely. I can point at about 5 people who just fucked me up so much. And now here I am spending half a lifetime trying my ass off to recover. It isn't like there is much in the way of resources for me. Where do I go for help? There isn't anywhere. I'm trying. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do with anger.

Sometimes it feels like everything fills me with anxiety. I ask myself if I want to live the rest of my life this way and the answer is always no, but I don't know how to change. I want to keep a better house, I want to be a better mother, I want to be healthier. Even just thinking about it I get this creepy crawly feeling in the pit of my stomach. I would love to pursue my hobbies, but I just sit at the computer and read a stupid forum or play stupid little games. Not even interesting games, just stupid ones.

Then if I do go and do something that I should be proud of, I just brush it off as not good enough. When will I ever feel good enough. And good enough for what? I'm just a person, I'm not perfect. Some people like me, hell, some people even love me. I'm good enough for them.

I know I'm probably just worried about my upcoming inventory. I'm a material handler and my whole year and a half of work is about to be judged and I already know some problems that there are going to be and I just plain don't have an answer to the questions that are going to be asked. The thing is, I'm pretty good at my job and next year I'll know more and be even better. There is nothing I can do until I get to work tomorrow, so I don't know why I am worrying right now. It is stupid. As you can see, even when I am trying to make myself feel better, I make myself feel worse. Right now I am down on myself for the things at work that are wrong, the fact that I'm not in bed yet and the fact that I'm worrying about all this stuff. And on top of it all, I called myself stupid. Where can I find some peace? I just want a little bit of peace. I had it a couple of weeks ago and now it is gone.

On being a non-offending parent

My son was molested when he was 4 years old by his father. The incidents occurred over a 4 month period and involved oral sex as far as the police, social workers and the doctor could find out.

I left my son's father when my son was one and moved as far away as possible while staying in the same province. At that time I suspected that he was using crack and I was afraid for my own and my son's safety. I went into a shelter and the workers there told me that they could put me in touch with people who could make my son and I essentially disappear. I then made the worst mistake of my life, I decided to trust the system.

My son's father was given supervised and then unsupervised visits. After 2 years of court, the final custody order was in place and the father had one overnight and one day visit a week. Pretty much as soon as the ink was dry on the order the father started to try to alienate my son from me. He would tell him that I was going to leave him like I left his father and things like that. I never bad-mouthed my son's father to him but assured my son that I would always love him and always be there for him.

About a year after the order I started to notice changes in my son, very serious changes. He was becoming violent towards his grandmother and I. He started talking about suicide. He had serious stomach problems to the point that his doctor thought that he was developing an ulcer. A 4 year-old with an ulcer. I called the children's mental health people and wrote them a letter and got no response. Then my son told me that he and his father played secret 'penis games'. I had no idea what to do with that information. I did not try to pump my son for information because I had known a woman who's child had probably been molested but the child's statement had been tainted by the reaction of the mother. I called the parenting help line and they told me that I had nothing to worry about and that I shouldn't call child protective services because I didn't want them in my life. A friend of the family who was a social worker said the same thing.

A while after that, I was giving my son a bath and he told me that his father had him kiss his penis and the first time it tasted bad but then he got used to it. Again I didn't press but I was screaming my head off inside. I asked if there was anything else that he wanted to tell me but he said no. I read the fastest bedtime story ever in the world and called my mother and cried all night long. The next day I called child protective services and set up an intake appointment. It was going to be several days before I could get in and I had to send my son to his fathers for a visit in the interim.

They told me that he was the best witness that they had ever seen because I didn't freak out or press my son for details so he was not bothered by talking to the social worker and police officer. My son's father was charged and free on an undertaking. I felt like my son and I were prisoners. I was afraid to go anywhere because I might see his father. He committed another crime so that he could go into protective custody before he went to prison for molestation (sexual interference was the charge that he pled guilty to). They connected the crimes so that he served his sentences concurrently. He served 5 years for robbing a conveince store and 2 and 1/2 years for robbing my son and I of so much.

It has been 6 years since this happened. God only knows where my son's father is. I found out during the investigation that he was on the child sexual abuse registry in another province. If family court had bothered to look into that, this all could have been avoided. My son is doing well but I am still a wreck. I worry about his future. I still see symptoms of trauma in him at times and it takes a lot of work to try to change his negative thinking.

For the first year after it happened I felt a real disconnect with my son. It was so hard to love someone who had been hurt so badly. Slowy, I started to reconnect and we have a really good relationship now. For me is has been the shame that has been so debilitating and still deeply affects me. I told my son's primary and grade one teacher, but he did some stupid thing one day and the grade one teacher hugely over reacted and treated him like a sexual predator. I decided that I wasn't going to tell any more teachers.

When I hear people at work or whatever talk about children being molested, I just turn my mp3 player up as loud as I can. They have no idea what it means to live with this and I sure hope that they never will, but it isn't like I can stand up and say "You stupid gits, you have absolutely no idea what it is like to go through this!". When I hear people go on about how bad parents are when kids are in trouble I just want to slap them because I know how impossible it is for parents to get help for their children. I mean it is a year waiting list and there are no in-patient facilities for children or youth and only a very limited services are available here. Parents are just out there on their own.

I don't want to tell anyone for two reasons. One is to protect my son's privacy. The other is that I know that there is a certian segment of the population who blame the non-offending parent. The thing is that I can actually understand that reaction. If it wasn't my fault then it could happen to anyone, even their kids. If it wasn't my fault then the system does not work to protect children. If it wasn't my fault then parents cannot protect their children. The problem is that there is a part of me that believes it too and that leads to the guilt and shame that I still feel six years later.

My first post

This is my first post on my new blog. Cool. I've decied that my blog will be mainly about being a gender confused, non-offending parent (if you are one, you know what that means) who is currently suffering from mildish anxiety and depression with occasional posts about dealing with close relatives suffering from cancer.