If I'd put in a request for a Best Friend, I couldn't have done a better
job. Hell, you even live within walking distance, and you email in the
middle of the night.
I'm starting to trust this thing now. Small shivers of fear accompanied
me writing that, but I really mean it.
I'm getting a taste of freedom. I'm starting to want it. I'll bust my
ass to get it, keep it if I can.
I think of you as an, "of course!" Like you've been here all along and,
if not, should have been.
I'm finding out something about my body: the damage to my genitals
really is pretty bad, after all. I've spent so much of my life with a
mind over matter attitude toward it, I've tried to ignore it as much as
possible. Denial and all that.
Today, especially now, I'm really feeling it. I'm feeling how extensive
is the pain. It covers more of my body than I'd thought. And it's more
painful than I admitted, even to Dr. Bowers. And I'm lying here, legs
open, with nothing touching me.
It's pretty bad.
But I'm learning how to experience the truth now. I expected not to be
comfortable.
It never occurred to me, in my entire life, before that I really need to
accomodate this pain until I can end it. I'm not saying I should submit
to it. I'm saying I need to be gentle with myself about it.
I couldn't let myself feel it until today. I couldn't let myself. I was
still too busy, suriving instead of recovering.
Today, I'm angry. Today, I'm defending that curly headed kid from that
sick bitch who mangled her.
It must have hurt like hell! And a raw wound, in a diaper? Jesus. The
infections could have killed me.
She often complained that, when she'd try to dress me for church, I'd
kick her in the breasts once she put my dress shoes on me.
She told me, all my life, I was a mean, evil little kid for that.
All she wanted to do, she said, was love me, and here I was, kicking her
breasts.
I was supposed, I guess, to feel guilty? I never did; I was always
silently surprised that she was surprised.
I didn't know she'd mangled me, of course, but I knew how she treated me
when I was older.
I even told her that once.
She said, yes, but I was such a sweet baby, before I turned sinful and
mean. Before she had to "punish" me...
I'd just look at her, dumbfounded.
I think, my whole life, some part of me knew she was crazy, knew she
would, of course, have hurt me as an infant. Hell, she hurt me when I
was older, even when I was innocent of things. Why wouldn't she have
hurt me when I was newborn?
She never wanted me. She wanted an ego extension, a mirror and a doll.
I was this inconvenient, embarrassing, willful, uncontrollable ego that
came with the package, and must be stifled at all expense: beatings,
drugs, blackmail...what ever it took to kill me and keep the doll.
Well, she's dead now. You're right.
That little girl needs me. She needs a real mother. She's madder than
hell, scared to death. I need to take care of her. She hurts herself,
she's so desperate.
It throbs. It's hot. It burns. It's cold. It's numb. It radiates
out through my groin and into my upper thigh. It travels to my anus,
which clenches in response.
I have got to help that child.
