sex

i don't want to hurt myself by having sex with men in order to make you happy. i want to be the person i am, because the person i am would make you happy.

to punish myself for you is to turn into the person you say i am.

hope

 i think maybe what you meant could have been loving. i think maybe you just couldn't see the truth, and that in not seeing who i am you said something unintentionally life-crushing.

i used that dildo on myself two days ago, brutally. i hurt myself beyond reason with it. it went so deep into my cervix, and then it also tore me open more than my cervix had ever been (i could not dilate past 3.5cm for my daughter. i was forced to try to deliver vaginally for 10 hours because my scheduled C-section was delayed, and by the time the surgeon came to see me, i had already begun labor, so it was likely 12+ hours. she died before they performed an emergency c-section 12 hours and 27 minutes after the scheduled one), and the biggest part was very punishing at the entrance of my vaginal canal. i hurt myself so very badly to punish myself for what you say i am, and do, and how you say i hurt my boyfriends, when i have always been the dazzling part of their lives. i fill them with shame at not being talented, but i do not do it. they do it. they feel like i shine so brightly they're not worth my love.

but, truthfully, they are sociopaths and narcissists. they are groomers. i was only a child and i had four men grooming me. i know you can't see inside my life.

but i cannot continue to try to believe you are a narcissist. it would destroy me so utterly i would never allow myself to live.

i know that most of my exes are narcissists. i know this is true. i do not believe you are one. i believe now that you projected things onto me from your past, things that have wounded you and frightened you.

i cannot continue to believe you hurt me for fun, that you wanted to turn me into a project. i believe bianca. you projected things onto me and you have issues. except...i believe with all my heart it comes from pain. she thinks "there's something wrong, a problem. a core issue." she's right, but she's new to compassion. she's new to depression and emotion. she's still struggling to believe that she shut down her emotional self when she wxperienced the trauma she has shared with me, and its effects. she has always responded with disgust and anger to people like her ex-husband brett (the one you read the poem about) and to me when i said that being molested and raped as a child and teen was like coming untethered, and that Black Snake Moan was more therapeutic than i had ever imagined it could be.

so, you see, she's right. but she can't understand that the "issue" is that you've been hurt. she says i'm making excuses for you, and that because i have such deep emotional trauma doesn't mean that you do.

i have things i want to say. i am still afraid to say them.

but the pain i brutalized into myself with that dildo is slowly ebbing away, and what's left is: why did i punish myself for something you said that isn't true? if it were true, it would have been something i'd wrestle with emotionally. i'd feel guilt. i'd feel so many things and grapple with what i'd done to myself.

all i feel is like...it was useless.

i never meant to ignore your feelings. i'm having a very hard time typing this. i believe that what happened was a miscommunication, and that i know what the miscommunication was. i'm pretty sure i know. 

i'm scared to write it. my therapist said that the impact of the trauma from last year was so strange to him because it was not even anything but a narcissistic rage from a man i barely knew. he could not understand why it hurt so deeply i could not see the forest for the trees for weeks

this time, i do not believe 

the man is essentially broken. i believe the man has pain he is trying very hard not to access, and projected it onto me. narcissists are not human. they are broken beyond repair.

you are not. i have always wished for you to experience wonderful things with women you meet, women who care about you, women who want to love you.

i have never wanted to control you or make you mine while you are halfway around the world. that would be the ultimate selfishness. i think 

it was

a misunderstanding...

and i know

i dissociated, but i know exactly why. i made sure i spread out all the facts before me.

and my girlfriends are all telling me anyone would "go crazy" if a man pretended he had never told me that moving to a country in europe (that is war adjacent) and that he knew six months was a long wait, but that after the six months were up, assuming it is only a six-month stay, i should move toward him.

that is crazymaking. that is your responsibility to accept and bear. you have to, cédric; otherwise you're not the man you strive to be, or the man i love.

i think i know what's going on.

you have somehow been in relationship after relationship with women you believe you have rescued.

i think that is what you mean, and it is not for us.

i would never hurt you by being anything but who i am...i am

the life of the party

and i thought this was what you knew to be true. i thought you were purposely destroying my core to turn me into someone to despise.

but i think...you didn't understand the reason for the dissociation.

what dee did was pretend he had never promised me brunch, a real date.

i never told you

but when he was here

it hurts 

he said he had chosen me for my glasses

so i know, and i am so ashamed of myself

that he wanted to see me look up through or above my glasses during blowjobs and then discard me

but he had said he wanted me for a life partner 

all he chose were my glasses and he loved my. breasts

my figure

so much

he was asking for more.

but my glasses and i did not want to be so silenced

love

 all i really feel for you is love

but at what you said...terror has maybe edged toward anger.

you meant to destroy me to my very core.

how could you say that because i was terrified of dee making me throw up all over his penis and swallow my own vomit, and watch him tell me it was a really good "suck,"

his word, i don't know how to handle that word, it is so vile

and the memory it brings up is a man i thought was my first real, happy boyfriend...

...who made me vomit and swallow my vomit, slamming it down my throat, loving hear me retch

watching me helplessly flail as he shoved my head with his hand

i have never in my life until you been told

i drain the fun from a man's life

i had only meant to reach out and connect with you and find out who you are

i would

never

sent you other women, experiences you want to have, happiness

i only hoped that we would be the correct fit someday...but wanted you to find that fit even if she isn't me

because 

you deserve love...

cessation

bahie.

but i think i'm going to show you. 

and the world can see it, because that's how toxic

how disgusting

what shit

you ground into me.

such utter disrespect

and i wanted you to be free. but you indicted me and wanted to leave me with my abduction

when i

have fought. and clawed. and found my way to a beautiful poet, you.

not to be smeared into something i am not.

not to be thrown into the deepest ocean and told i owe $62.37 for swimming lessons. 

harlot

when i was fifteen a boy at school, jason kulchinsky, started calling me a harlot. sometimes a couple dozen times in a row.

i went to a residential high school; this was routine at dinnertime. "harlot harlot harlot harlot harlot."

i was only 15. i had never even been kissed.

he did this for at least two years. yes. two. he was a grade above me. so two.

turned out it was because he had a crush on me. it was cruel.

but maybe now i need it. 

i'm trying to make things right with dee. i know i'm acting like a classic victim. i'm watching myself do it and my heart and brain are screaming, "stop! why are you letting him deny everything?"

but i am not capable of being with someone...and i can't even understand why you want me to be. i know i somehow destroyed my favorite friendship

pregnancy

he's 23 and wants a baby

says he has trauma like mine

that he gets flashbacks going down on women too soon

i told him if he ever has flashbacks i'll give him all the time

he needs

to get out (and no, i don't want this, i don't want him 

i want to move to poland but you're too scared of me

for me to try)

because both of the men i love

yelled at me and said i had to be myself NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW

and made it so much worse and turned and walked away saying

my flashbacks meant i wasn't good enough

and left me bleeding

oh, a baby would keep me from anything 

everything

keep you safe from me

dee

 he says it was all consensual

and he's so angry with me

but i see the same in you

you refuse to let me be me

you two cause me such searing pain and break my identity

and then tell me my identity isn't real

if i could just hide in this, in dee

i could be strong