still going on

[VAC]

Hello,

These are strange times for me....old friends skirting death, others dying.

At the same time I have to fight distancing myself from the family and friends around me. I can actually go to that place I ran as a child and their voices become distant to me.

I am very much a social creature, but at the same time could dwell in a remote place.

Fall has come to us from the 90's and 100'a down to 70's to 80's and some rain...flowers are blooming again.

I have received an offer to "go public" again and have mixed feelings, but don't want to self-sabotage as I have in past. I need to lose weight and change my image a bit. I I walked away from a world I had constructed for years almost a decade ago to come inside and deal with the years oi lost memory in myself and my daughter.

Perhaps it is time to go back.

I know all that sounds nebulous.....if there has ever been a man that displays cognitive dissonance I can be the poster child. I am able to garden a bit now which gives me great comfort. I know my wife thinks I slip and is worried about the future.

at the same time she is dealing with both her parents at end of life, and both of them hate her if you go by their words and actions. It has her stirred up and she as well has many years of blocked memories.

I am working to maintain and grateful and positive outlook. I am wired to go on and so I shall.

[Fleur]

Hello VAC


Great to read the season has changed, cooled somewhat, and you are enjoying being in your garden


I feel for your wife - those messages cut horribly deep. May she have ways to let it slide as much as possible. Very difficult


Regardless of whether you accept the offer to be more public, losing extra pounds will probably help you in various respects - "to thine own self be true"


Much caring

[VAC]

Hello,

Long absence...I wrote a long post a couple of weeks ago that was straight from my heart and it got erased when I tried to post it. Figured no one needed to see it but me. I was emoting.

Amazing to have flashes of new retrieved memories....it makes me angry. We are cleaning out one storage building at a time. I have a friend who helps me out and I let him take everything he wanted. There were a few things I wanted to keep. Some of my dear grandpa's tools. I need to get them out and work on them. A really old shaving mug from one of my great-greats.

Three more storage buildings to go.

This sort of thing distresses me. My dad was a hoarder like you see on TV. I really have to fight feeling this is symbolic of my life.

There is an inner image of myself that no longer exists in my present man....I was that inner image until I was 49. That was when I had recall. I have aged so in the following years. In my youth, my looks were all I had that I could depend on, and there was a persona created around that. I have always had some kind of skin issues and several years ago I went to a dermatologist for some treatment.

He freaked out on me and started shouting at me in the office so loudly others could hear, "NO BODY CAN BE PERFECT!"....he was quite angry with me.

It depresses me to see myself as I am not.

Age is inevitable....I call it names. Wicked bitch is one of them.

I know this sounds shallow and selfish, but you don't understand the life I used to live and how much being as close to physically perfect as possible depended on it...If I had a little less conscience I could have gone places in the entertainment field. That is not fantasy.

I now find myself repulsive and disgusting...perhaps it is my come uppance. I was an arrogant and haughty creature. I would go alone to bars and have a few drinks and just begin to dance alone. It was for me. I felt alive when I was in motion.

Vanity and stupidity.

I have never dyed my hair or done anything to look younger.

I guess I am saying all this for a couple of reasons...I have always identified with being an attention getter. My normal was to walk into a room and have everyone stare at me. My wife knew it. It was just the way it always was. That part of my life is gone now and I want to hermit.

Recently, a friend of over 49 years died a long and agonizing death....he wanted assisted suicide. I talked him out of it. He told me that he never knew someone could hurt as he did. HE was given two month to live, but fought like a tiger and lived two years.

My personal T is very ill and fighting for his life....we are like brothers. I worked for him as a volunteer for ten years so I could learn. He is one of my heroes. I am selfish, but I am praying for him to stick around if for no one but me. Only God knows how much this man has helped me. I do not like to see him suffer.

I also had some bad dental work done and would like to strangle one of my dentists...no details. I just suffered a month of misery due to his incompetence

So I have complained and been shallow and I needed to get it out.

The flashes of recall, are as usual a series of images and words. It has been hard but makes me realize and lot of things in perspective. My parents were miserable, unhappy people. My dad made my mom live in a dump when we could have lived anywhere. He kept up mistresses better than he kept up my mom. They worked so hard for one another and against one another. So many times I thought of running, but it was always how and two. I could drive as well as any adult by the time I was ten....I could have hitched a ride on the train near our house...I could have hitchhiked

I was 14, and we were traveling. My parents and brother had been really special. WE stopped at a gas station and store in the Midwest, and I stayed n the car so I could have a few quite moments from them. A big van from California pulled up with a band driving it, long hairs. They were headed back. I looked in the back of the van: plenty of room and a place to hide. I went through the process and realized the police would have given those guys hell. Anyway, another thought.

You younger married people: love each other please. I would no sell my soul to Satan, but oh dear God I would like to have just one month back with her to be young again. Never neglect each other, never stay cross, never be too tired, never stop courting one another.I know that I am different, but she is my heart. I remember when I realized we weren't going to have anymore children, I went into a quiet place and wept. I mourned for the end of that season in our lives. It was so wonderful.

Now I am mourning the passage of myself. I am not dying and this is not some cryptic message.But the man I am is fading away, and I want more time. I do not know the man I need to be at this season of my life. I do everything I know to do to let my wife know I love her.

My adult children are wonderful, hard workers, moving on, but I can't live their lives.

Thanks for listening.

[VAC]

Hello,

I wanted you all to also know I have been speaking out rather spontaneously about the CSA in my life. It is not vindictive, it just comes out of me.

I do so in public gatherings. I did so tonight in a small group.

It amazes me that so many people have been silent, but they too were victims.

The memories coming back to me now are not all bad, some just incredibly sad. I think sorrow laid on my family like circling vultures. Often I have thought wounded people had an invisible target that drew heartache to them. My parents mourned privately I think, but not with one another.

The latest vignettes have been scenes of me when I was just past being a toddler, but 3 or 4. I was a dangerous child. People talked about me They moved out of the neighborhood to get away from me. My parents could not keep help because they were afraid of me. Too much to go into detail, but that is for another day.

This is going to sound weird, but life is weird some times. I can forgive my parents for what they did to me.

Even after ten years, I am still reeling from the knowledge that my dad molested our daughter for years right under our noses. That was my first fear when I had recall. You all would like my daughter...brave and beautiful and at the top of her game now. I can't tell her but she so reminds me of my mother. I have never seen another human with eyes like mother....intense steel blue gray eyes, large and deep set.

There will come a time when I will leave this world and go on to see them again. I wonder what we will say to one another? Both of my parents died in my care with me telling them that I loved them. That may be hard to understand, but love is something that can't be taken from the heart even when the destructive power of hate and unforgiveness seeks to sweep over all being like a tsunami.

I can remember towards the last decade of my dad's life before I remembered how odd he would look when I told him I loved him. Once I asked him his advice about a decision I had to make. He said something to me like I was grown and needed to grow up and make my own decisions. I told him that he was still my father and I needed his advice and wanted him to help me with this situation, that I wanted him in my life. I traveled quite a bit in those days. Mother was still alive the first part of that decade.

I always called my folks at least once a day to check on them. I bought them gifts. I did their yard work for them. I continued to give my dad gifts from other places after my mom died. He always looked so strange when I did something for him, or told him I loved him. Looking back and having the timeline set in my mind, I realize that for part of that time he was abusing our daughter. The abuse was severe enough to affect her physically. I have died a thousand deaths in this. I walked the corridors of the hospital when she was in labor and wept. I won't go into the details. I have wondered if my baby will ever stop suffering. She is still in T once a week.

I guess the bottom line of this is that despite this all, I would so like to be able to erase all of this and in a perfect world for it never to have happened, and to be able to love my parents without the cruel slash of truth that should never have had to be realized.

I provided personal care for a handicapped veteran who had lost both arms and legs. Then he had a series of strokes. He was non-verbal but very alert. He was on a feeding tube. Of course every personal thing had to be done for him. What he had was facial expressions. He was so ashamed to not be able to anything. I could make him laugh. I could coach him into swallowing, to see the joy of having a cool sip of water go down his throat. His intelligence was not diminished. He had been a fighting man. I remember his eyes.

Sometimes they screamed.

[Jonesy]

Hi VAC

Thank you for continuing to share with us - you always give me food for thought. I hope you are well.

[VAC]

Jonesy,

Thank you....I think I am surprisingly well. I never thought I would live this long. Our daughter loves us both, but needs her mom. I like to watch this. It is odd the things that give me comfort.

I am comforted by watching my wife be a mother and grandmother---she has always been so selfless. One of my greatest pleasures is to be able to listen to her play the piano and sing. I lean back and close my eyes and remember so many things. Music is what brought us together. Heaven is for my wife and daughter to play the piano and flute together.

We got to see our daughter in concert last night.

I love watching my wife do the things she does that she considers not very important. She is innately elegant without being presumptuous or arrogant: it is in her being. One of my prize possessions is a rather brilliant portrait that was done of her just before we started dating several hundred years ago.

Our son survived my relative youth....I was 31 when he was born. He is fortunate, as my daughter is, to have a loving and supportive mate. He is a motivated man. I regret the geographical distance between us, but it is only a few hours. Our state is large.

My wife and both my children make me laugh...but my son is hysterically funny.

I guess this is the unwanted gift of CSA, but I live wondering who else my dad got to. My son denies that anything ever took place. Still astounded I had all those decades of hidden memories. I guess one of the most troubling things is to look back and realize how much my parents resented my family and me, and the undercurrent of focused destruction through them.

I hope this finds you and yours well, Jonesy. I see everything going on in our worlds and hope protection and provision for you and yours, and for all those here I know.

VAC

[VAC]

Hello,

Long absence...another funeral, the death of my mother in law.

We both caught some lurking crud from our grand daughter who is in day care during the week. I really have not felt well at all, but have goofed off.

The Holidays here were quiet and pleasant for us. I know so many have unpleasant memories attached. I think the ship has sailed for us: that kind of use events to label holidays as depressing events has been broken over us by our own decision. This will not be the Christmas my mother in law died, but the Christmas we did thus and such.

Great volumes of stench are emerging from past memories, images in volumes, up from some pit within me. They are for the most part, wisps and shadows of times past I had tucked away. I am glad no one killed me or shot me.

TRAVESTY. So much destruction.

Have a Happy New Year!

VAC

[VAC]

Hello,

I don't want this to hurt anyone, so please read this at your own risk. I had a storage room cleaned out. I gave half the stuff to a friend and the rest is under our carport.

There are things there I would like to keep, bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam not just of my life, but generations past. In this batch (one more storage building, two storage units, and two attics to go)....I found my old high chair.

It is a nice looking wood highchair that I decided to sand and varnish over the whole chair, and keep it in corner for grands. Others had moved it for me, and I was about to grab it and move it so I could look at it. When I picked it up and moved it, actually as soon as my hand touched it, many emotions and images flew through me and at me.

I put it down and started at it.

The images of a dining room set with a nurse in attendance to attend my brother, a white table cloth, the ever present grief of my parents. Mother's hair was almost silver when I was born at 34. Me being impossible, a lunatic child. I saw the tray I ripped off and the foot feet I ripped off, and the teeth marks around the spindles and arms where I chewed the paint off. The overwhelming grief of everything hell used to mark my parent's young married life. This will not stay in my house.

It has opened up a whole new flurry of what I would call mini visions, flashes. It has been depressing. It has forwarded into the horror that went out from me as a young child...I was a dangerous boy. People moved away from our neighorhood to get away from me. The memories that have come to me have been ferocious.

No fears, I am ok.

last week a friend of 40 years died suddenly in bed, almost instantly. His calendar was full for 2020. They have many children.
Two others are fighting sickness.
Dealing with lies and insubordination in the staff of a business nearly destroyed and showing signs of resurrection, people who know better basically cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

I am tired, not of living, but of sorrow. Singing is a fix for me. One of my secrets is I dance when I am alone. I was in my early 40's before I stopped yearning for a wall of mirrors, balancing bar, and a long room with polished wood floors. My dogs watch me. Working in the garden is a joy to me as well, despite the feral cats that seem to never go away and dominate everything with their urine and feces.

I don't mean to come here and dump, but this has been a challenging time.

I know I mentioned the death of my mother in law, a remarkable woman. My wife did not see her from the time she was 8 until she was 18. My wife and I started dating when she was 20. Her mother was 46 and looked years younger. She was a professional woman, a model, and a dancer. She was elegant in every sense of the word, tall and buxom. She was a head turner. I won't digress into all the years held, but she was bound to find fault with my wife for loving me and raising our children. My wife served her mother for 20 years and was rebuffed at every possible turn. Her mom became obssessed with her weight when she was around 60, even though she was not overweight, and starved herself down to nothing.

This broke her health and her mind. It was tragic. The more my wife tried to help her, the meaner she got. Finally she had to get away for her own sanity. She was nice to others. Will say more about this later. She started calling for my wife the last few months of her life, and she was allowed into the house to see her mom.

The last few weeks have been a rollercoaster. We are ok: sense and sensibility and reality are often not nice.

Thanks for your ears....

[Harmony]

Dear VAC,

Sitting with you and just listening. I understand more and more that life although the most wonderful gift is not fair.

Harmony

[Watercolor]

Oh, oh, oh! I'm not an old timer. I didn't look at the section I was posting in. Will leave my post along with adding this lil apology! Or if staff wants to remove, I understand!

So sorry for the floodgates coming open with the highchair. I can only imagine.

What a terrible dynamic your wife endured with her mother. Such pain.

Hope some easier times are on the horizon.