The secrets need to go away.

I told E. about my mother. And my problems. (Which is of course the same.) This is something I've been tip-toeing around for some time now, because I haven't found a decent way to phrase this (and doubt there is one, anyway). Like, "hey there, friend! So my mum is sometimes, more often than not, a crazy person! Which kind of sucks! She also seems hellbent on ruining my life! Which is why I kind of hate her! And myself, too! So, anyway, have a nice day, gotta go to therapy!". ... Yeah, I don't think so either.

But here's the thing: I want the help. I want the support. (Hell, even give me the pity if absolutely necessary.) And, most importantly, I want the secrets to go away. The secrets, they are evil little bastards. They are part of the problem.

Sometimes I want to go to a really crowded place and scream it out loud, just force them all to listen and then pour it out, everything, every ugly, pathetic detail, so that the world knows, so that the world cannot turn the other way. Because this is me being that dysfunctional little creature so full of anger and hurt and desperation. And this is not my fault. This is something she did to me. A something that I'm still incapable to grasp or describe but is in everything, in what I am and what I do and what I feel.

Ever since I ventured into that little therapy spree of the past months, I'm disturbed by how much I was in denial over my own life. Over the things I forgot, the things I chose not to think about, the things I found fancy euphemisms for. (The classic? "My mother and I, we don't get along so well." Hah. I would think so too.) It's like I put all the monsters in a cardboard box and placed them in the attic to fade to dust. Only that monsters don't stay where you put them, they peek out at inconvenient times and say "boo" and the walls you built to escape them just crumble away.

The forgetting, it's a good thing, I realize that! It enabled me, always, to get by, to go on with my life. For about seventeen years, which I remember as a haze of apathy, that worked surprisingly well! Then everything came slowly crushing down and I found it increasingly difficult to keep lying to myself. But the first priority at that time was: survive, then it was putting back the pieces together so as to leave as little scars as possible, and then it was fighting back. (I'll be forever grateful for Swantje, bless her bossy Prussian ways, putting me through hell the first three months of my social year, because, boy, did I have something to fight there. And it helped, a lot! Because I learned that I wasn't helpless, that I wasn't always the victim.)

But now that I'm at a place that makes me feel happy and good, that I have people that appreciate and love and support me, I think it's time to stop the forgetting. So I went to see a therapist! Multiple therapists, actually, because the therapists, they are busier than the Pope himself! And I start to remember! Sometimes there's, say, this sentence I read or overhear somebody say, and then the memory is there and it's like a slap in the face, because why the fuck did I not realize this? Why the fuck did I not remember this, understand this?

I can't really sleep at night without sleeping pills. It's not pretty! An example: when I was little and my father was away on work, my mother would lock me up in the bathroom over night when I annoyed her. With the lights out! I was, of course, terribly afraid of the dark and too small to reach the light switch. She knew that. But then, she gave me a blanket to sleep in the bathtub, so all was well.

The day I remembered that one, I curled up in my bed and cried a bit, and then I stared at the wall angrily and asked the wall, why didn't anyone notice? Why not then, why not later? Why did it take nineteen years for someone to say, "someone must have fucked you up real bad, otherwise I can't explain that" (Swantje, bless her direct Prussian ways)? But this weekend I remembered something: Someone did. When I was twelve, I told my friend L. about my mother, in confidence, and she went to her mother, who went to my mother and confronted her about it. And my mother, she fumed and she yelled at me, because how dare I go around telling people lies about her and I should just keep my mouth shut. Otherwise, I'd ruin everything and it'd be all my fault! (Her standard line.) And I? I kept my mouth shut from then on.

Yes, secrets are evil little bastards. I've never told anyone much about this, not even now that I actually start telling people about it (because I will not be silenced, I will not keep my mouth shut); it's only parts, painting pictures with a broad brush, because it's painful and I'll feel dizzy and weak the rest of the day. It's kind of worth it, though. Because you know what? For all my mother's efforts to make me feel worthless, for all my emotional unavailability, my self-harm problem and sudden outbursts of emeritism, I'm kind of awesome. And people come through. Because they like me, because they want to support me. I guess I win this round.