I decided to finally crack that first journal open and start reading it from the beginning, which starts right after I got home from the mental ward of the hospital, which was January 25, 2011. I will share some of my experiences from that time in a few....because first I have to say that I am perplexed....there is a huge gap of empty space, with the carefully torn-off stubs in the notebook, which is a gap from an entry on 3-9-11 to an entry on 11-30-11, so someone took a whole bunch of pages out of this notebook. I don't know who or why, even racking my brain to think if I did it for some reason. very weird and unsettling. i can't find the missing pages anywhere. more than a little freaky, that's for sure. well, i will say that there were good things and bad things...the stronger i got physically the more i realized that things were very, very bad...my marriage was dead, my children, mother, all lived through me or did things because of me or to spite me, you name it. i spent all of my time trying to make everyone happy before my attempt. and at first, after my attempt, i spent a good bit of my very limited energy trying to reassure everyone that i was okay, that i didn't need to be watched, that it was all just a little bump in the road. ridiculous....then it hit me what i was doing, falling right back into the life i had done my best to leave - and my family, they were happily letting me do just that.
When i started going to therapy, which was, in journal time, shortly before the gap of missing pages, or the middle of march, 2011, it didn't take long for me to realize that i was not crazy, they were crazy. They had sucked the life right out of me, each in their own way. and i had to tell them that, and i did, eventually. of course the blameless denied, the passive aggressive said it was all their fault, in an effort to get me to disagree and take the responsibility. it was so strange, as i learned to step outside of my world enough to see my former life and my new life and the timeline of it all laid out for me to review. I could see why my childhood had started haunting me....i was never good enough, or jewish enough, or christian enough, or short enough, or pretty enough, or dumb enough.....i never fit into the world that i had to live in. i tried to fit, and i was berated, and i tried to be my own person, and i was ostracized. it didn't end with school, either. my work life was the same, most of the time. my relationships as well. it all makes sense from this side of the timeline.
but there was a definite pattern and a simple explanation why i spent almost 30 years trying to be a perfect wife, mother, friend, daughter, person. why i was determined that everything could be okay...i could be both parents to my sons and a mother to my mother and my husband. i was stretched a wee bit thin. when i started group therapy i was totally unprepared for the people that i would encounter and feel a great camaraderie with. i think i really felt like i belonged for the first time ever. considering the very different existences that we all had, we had great commonalities as well. I was amazed mostly at the power that the mothers had over almost every one of these people, all who had been in therapy a long time. I was feeling rather normal...don't worry, that didn't last!
I will search for my missing pages....they tell the real story, from what i recall. that may be why someone absconded with them. but they have to be somewhere, and i will ferret them out if they still exist. they must be pretty damning to someone...or someone's proof that i'm crazy or something....we'll see!
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