Rambling about the Negatives.

I've been avoiding writing about this for a number of reasons, but I realize that if I don't get it out, I won't really get it out of my mind.

About 2 weeks ago, my husband and I watched the movie "Good Luck Chuck" at home. It's not a great movie. The basic premise is that the guy is a luck charm - if he sleeps with a woman, she will automatically marry the next guy she dates. At a certain point in the movie, they show him "providing his service" to many many women. It's fairly graphic (R rated, I think).

So anyway, my husband got turned on by the movie, and I was just not in the mood. If he'd asked or something, I probably would have been okay, but instead, he basically pushed me onto the bed and did it to me, even though I protested some of the time.

I completely blocked it out until 4-5 hours later when I was taking a shower, and then suddenly, it hit me, and I started crying uncontrollably. I didn't want him near me, I told him not to touch me. I felt completely violated. Over the next few nights, I had a series of very lucid dreams which I couldn't clearly distinguish from reality. They weren't terribly traumatic - just so clear that I couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't anymore. I asked my husband about a phone call he'd made and he swore he'd never made it, for example. It was something that he'd have absolutely no reason to lie about - I asked him who he'd called about getting something in the house fixed, because I remembered having heard him on the phone with someone - as I played back the conversation, I realized that parts of it were illogical, so I'm going to have to go with the idea that it was a dream.

I also called my mother and asked her if they expected me to look online for silverware for them, and my mother basically said "that must be your other mother."

Then there were a few dreams where I "woke up" and realized it must be a dream, but that happened in a dream as well. I also had a night when I couldn't fall asleep at all. I was just anxious and uneasy for hours. Finally, I had something from the alcohol family and I was able to sleep. It was the first time I needed chemical help to sleep in a very long time. Since then, I haven't had to drink myself to sleep again, so I guess whatever it was is mainly worked through.

For some reason, I've had a really powerful reminder of something that happened to me in my early 20's.

The background: I was living with my parents, but my dad had pretty much told me to get out, just not in so many words, and I was still in school and didn't have a job, so I had no way to get out - actually, that's not true, I could have moved in with my brother & his wife (they offered, and they actually had space for me - I could have had my own mini-apartment in their basement), but the commute to school would have been near impossible, and they said I couldn't bring Doggie, who was pretty much my only friend at the time.

Anyway, I used to mess around in chat rooms a lot, and for whatever the reason, I had a lot of BDSM fantasies (in which I was a sub), so I started trolling for someone who would keep me on the side and pay for a place for me to stay. This guy Aristo picked me up. We arranged to meet someplace, and he took me back to his apartment. I won't go into all the details of what he did to me, b/c this isn't a porn site. At one point, though, he had me on all fours on the floor, and he sat on my back and pulled my head up by the hair so I was looking at a full-length mirror, and he said "look at you, you're a cow. See how you're my cow?" I was sobbing, but I wouldn't resist. I needed a place to live too badly. In the end, I refused to see him again, and I stayed at home another few hellish months (basically, the ruling was that as long as my dad didn't see me, I could stay).

Eventually, I got a job and my mom gave me enough money for me to put a security deposit on an apartment, which I shared with a guy roommate. He was actually a really nice guy - never made a move on me and got along with Doggie really well. I lived there for 2 years.

After I moved out, my dad started talking to me again, and I think he felt really guilty. He bought the place I live in now and he let me live here rent-free until I got married. Now my husband and I pay about half the going rate for a place like this, so I mean, my dad's really tried to make amends for what he did. He just doesn't realize how far things went. I think he'd cry if he knew.

Paint

I haven't written in a while for a number of reasons. Mostly because I don't write here when my husband's around. My husband likes to remind me that he's not meant to be my therapist, and as such, he doesn't need to hear what I went through in all its grueling detail...

I'm trying to decide where to go next. Sometimes, something's screaming to get out, but right now, a few voices are competing for the top of my mind...

A few nights ago, I had this thought. When my baby was born, I realized that we needed to repaint the nursery because there were garish designs of cartoon characters on the walls. My husband painted three layers over the designs. I asked him the other night whether we could strip off the paint, and whether the cartoon characters would still be there. Of course, he said it was possible. So I think. If we strip off the woman I've become - the mother, the wife, the writer, the friend - I'm still what I was under that. I'm still a scared girl with her shoes missing. I'm still the person whose life spun so out of control that she can't even name all of her sexual partners, and isn't even sure she'd recognize all of them by face.

So how do you strip those layers away?
I don't want them anymore.

PS Aunt Flo showed up.

Swimming

Today, I went swimming. I do that about three times a week. The pool was less crowded than usual, but since they clean the pool once a week - on Sundays, it was filthy. Basically, there are all these white fluffy things floating in the pool. It didn't take me long to realize that they're mucus. What was harder was suppressing my gag reflex... EWWW. I'm the type of person who finds wiping a baby's nose harder than wiping their rear.

Speaking of babies, I'm pretty much sure I'm not pregnant this cycle, though Aunt Flo is still MIA. I don't know why I was so sure that I was pregnant, but whatever. If Aunt Flo ever shows up, then there's another cycle to work with. If not, I think I'll get my doctor to put me on metformin. It worked last time, so I'm hoping it'll work this time.

Baby is so sweet. We had lunch with my mom, and she was just giggling and smiling the whole time... except when she tried to eat my cell-phone. Then she was just very intent on the task at hand.

Back to swimming, while I was swimming, I was in this whole bizarre fantasy about my high school English teacher. He was this British guy, not particularly attractive. Once I accidentally ripped a poster that was on the wall, so he asked me to stay after class and tape it back together for him. I held the sides while he taped it together. Somehow, for me, that moment was intimate. It's bizarre, but I guess it was the closeness, or the look on his face, or maybe the fact that at some points during the year, he talked to me after class, and somehow I felt like he understood me more than other people. At any rate, I still fantasize about him. I don't get it. Back then, I would have said he was the one I was least likely to fantasize about.

Back in high school, there were two male teachers I thought about a lot. One, I thought was the sweetest man alive. He could play guitar, and he had this sweet singing voice, and he used to sing at assemblies sometimes. Oh gosh, what I wouldn't have given for a hug from Dr. Johnny. Just thinking about him makes me all soft on the inside, even though I know that he never really thought much about me.

I guess it started on our freshie weekend (I went to a semi-posh private school for high school). There was this senior chick who came to wake us up and none of the girls got up and she got upset so she went to Dr. Johnny and Dr. Lamm and told them that we didn't want to wake up. So the two of them came to our floor of the hotel and started singing and shouting and stuff. It was so funny. I got up, no doubt with bed-hair and all that, and I said "we may be awake now, but we're going back to sleep." and Dr. Johnny said to me "Good morning, Miss Catherine, you look exceptionally beautiful today." Having the self-esteem of roadkill, it was basically love for me. And then the guitar. Nothing and I mean NOTHING is as hot as a guy who can play guitar.

And I don't mean guitar hero. I mean classic guitar, or better yet, twelve string. I mean soft sweet songs like "Cat's in the Cradle" and "Country Roads" and sitting around a campfire. I wish my husband would play guitar. We have a friend who plays pretty well, and I'm about ready to jump his bones every time I see him take out the guitar. Not a good thing.

Okay, here's the real problem. Why the hell am I fantasizing about every man on Earth EXCEPT my husband?! I love him. I mean it. He's made all my dreams come true. He's made my family accept me. He's given me a beautiful home and a gorgeous baby. He even accepts Doggie, although he isn't overly fond of dogs. So why can't I want him as much as I want every damned man that's out of reach?!

He's kind. He's gentle. He has a nice singing voice. He plays piano. He's attractive. He's strong. He has a variety of different talents, most of which impress me. He brings home a good salary. He's even muscular and not too hairy. I wish my body would just respond to him the way it did when we were first together. I want to have passion with him, and I just don't. I don't want to think about other men. I don't want to be this girl.

Two More Early Memories

These two are slightly more disturbing, but still, not into the stuff that came later.

I remember wetting myself, and my mother was angry. She took me, and sat on the stairs and stripped off my pants and hit me over and over on my rear. Big Sister called (she went to boarding school for a while - it was a better school than what we had available on post) and my mother sat there with me across her lap and talked to Big Sister. I wasn't allowed to talk to her.

And another time, I remember my dad was listening to music, probably classical. He held me across his lap, dressed, and drummed on my rear. It felt good, and I told him to do it harder.

I think this second experience is where my spanking fetish comes from.

Early Memories.

I said before that I'm an army brat. I remember what happened when by which house I lived in. I don't remember my first two houses. I remember the third.

It was a big house - there were a lot of us, I'm the youngest of a whole brood. I don't remember much from that house. I remember good things. I remember fish my big brothers had caught swimming in my wading pool. I remember building tents with my siblings. I remember sleeping bags draped on the backs of chairs to make a tent. I remember building with legos. We had our own special games. We'd build cars and see whose car survived a head-on collision best. We used to build "marble machines."

We used to lock each other in small places. Once I got locked in a small wooden box. I went there myself, and the latch closed by accident. It wasn't anyone's fault. I soiled myself in there. I slept there. I don't know how long I waited. Big Sister said that when she pulled me out, I was covered in sweat. I was probably four.

One time, my parents went on vacation. They left a colleague of my mom's to watch us. He came with his wife and daughter. His daughter was my age. They put us in the bath together, and my mom's co-worker washed us both with soap-on-a-rope. He didn't do anything wrong, but it still plays at my mind.

My dad used to go to the bathroom without closing the door. I remember wishing I could pee standing up.

My dad used to beat up brother #2 a lot. He'd use his fists and his feet. I don't remember him using a belt or shoes. I think he stopped doing that earlier than I can remember. I know that I feared belts, and I know that there was something about shoes. It plays at the edges of my memory, but it's not something I saw. My mother would cry, whimper "no honey no." and he would take it out on brother #2. It was almost always him. He was a tough kid. He probably had ADHD, but they never diagnosed it.

There was a family that we were friends with. I called the woman Nanny. Once, she was putting me to bed, and I did something she didn't like. She spanked me, but she missed my rear. She spanked straight down the middle. I still don't like her because of it. We're still in touch.

I used to go to a daycare center. I once cut another kid's drawing. There was grass and I wanted to make it more real, so I took scissors and I cut little lines parallel to each other to make blades of grass. Later, I saw that the kid was upset, but I kept silent.

Once I was running when I wasn't supposed to be running. They put me in a crib in the baby area, and one of the workers said something nice to me, and I was so embarrassed that I told her not to talk to me.

Once I screamed and they put me in the corner.

Once I went over to another girl's house and she had a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine. I was disappointed at how much work went into one tiny snowcone.

I told someone to "Buzz Off" and someone told me that it meant to die.

Twice, people I didn't know gave me stuffed toy animals. I named them after characters from the movie "Annie."

Apparently I was cute. Apparently, that was my task in life. Everyone said that Tabitha gets whatever she wants. Everyone thought I had it easy. I did have it easy. I had a happy life. Look at everything here, and you see a normal, happy childhood.

Things didn't get much more complicated until later, I guess.

Good Times

I was going to start with my childhood memories of abuse, but this memory keeps coming at me. It's a good one, not abuse-related. I was eighteen, and I used to use IRC a lot. I had been dating this guy - we'll call him Quasi, cuz he reminds me of the Disney version of Quasimodo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame - yeah, that ugly - who was way older than I was, and I kind of didn't like him, but I was needy enough to stick with him. And then I started chatting with this guy Amos. We kinda chatted online for a while, and I gave him my phone number.



Amos was 20 or so. He was Australian, and his accent was the biggest turn-on. Plus he was brilliantly smart. I was still dating Quasi, but the first time I talked to Amos, we talked for 6 hours. We only hung up when his phone battery (cordless, not cell) ran out. Then he charged it for a minute to call me back and say good night.



It took a while of chatting with him before I finally got the guts to dump Quasi - there were a bazillion other factors involved. Eventually, I baited Quasi until he grabbed me and forced a kiss on me, and then I threw him out of my dorm room and told him to go to hell. (yeah, I was a sweet one.)



So back to Amos. I wanted to meet him, but I was in school, as was he, and we were both taking a pretty heavy courseload, plus our campuses were like a two hour drive apart.



Anyway, this thing came up and school was cancelled through the state for a day, so I called him and asked if he wanted to come hang with me. He said it'd be cooler if I come hang with him, cuz his roommate was out of town, so we'd have the place to ourselves.



Sounds like a dumbass decision to go up there, eh? I was still a virgin and had every intent of staying that way - though I'd gone pretty far before. Anyway, I went back and forth about it in my mind, told a friend where I was headed, and hopped a bus. This was back before I had a cell-phone, so I told Amos I'd call him when I got to the bus station. He said he'd borrow a car, and get me from there, cuz his campus isn't easily bus-accessible.



I accidentally hopped the wrong bus - it got to the right place, but took an hour detour to make a stop in some other little 2-bit towns. Anyway, but the time I got to the bus station, he was in total panic. I called him and he was like "oh my gosh, thank goodness you're ok" and all that. And then he picked me up in this crappy looking car that was kinda scary in and of itself. We went back to his dorm, and at first we were just talking. He gave me something to drink, and then I was teasing him about something, and I started tickling him. He tickled back at first, and then he grabbed some scotch tape and taped my hands together. It was a huge turn-on, not at all scary, he was giggling the whole time, and then I was on top of him, kissing him.

He kissed really amazingly, and pretty soon, he stopped to undo my hands, cuz they were in the way, and then he was lying on me kissing me. I guess you'd call it dry-humping, cuz his legs were between mine, and he was making my whole body respond. The funny thing was, I didn't even realize he had an erection. I felt something on my leg and assumed it was his belt buckle.

After a while, Amos tried to touch my breasts and I said "this is too fast for me" and he backed off. Then I went to the bathroom to change into pajamas. He snuggled in next to me and we slept together like that all night. The next day (which was our day off), he borrowed a car again, and he took me to this place not far away. There were these mountains there, and he took me up high so I could look down into the valley. The view was breathtaking, and we just stood there with our arms around each other. Later, he took me out for lunch, and I should have already gone back to school, but my first class was late the next morning, so I stayed over a second night. Again, we slept snuggled, but nothing "happened."

Cool thing about this timeframe - he was doing a project for a photography class. He picked a rose and took pictures, and then I played with the rose. I was kinda sad that he didn't want to take my picture. I wish he had. I don't know how to explain it, but I felt like it would make me more real, more permanent.

By this point, I'd really fallen for Amos. The next week, I had an early class and no afternoon class, so I jumped a bus. I went to visit him. He took me to a class of his. I had my hand in his through the whole class. He was kind of embarrassed but he liked it too.

It was this whole weird thing, b/c I had met a bunch of his buddies online, so they wanted to meet me. And then I'd posted a pic someplace with me and a rabbit, so one of the guys had asked me something about the rabbit, and I said it had died, and he laughed, and he felt really bad about it, so he showed up there with a rabbit. It was pretty bizarre, cuz the rabbit lived with my folks (who had moved in the meantime), and I couldn't really have a rabbit in the dorms. But this buddy of his had been chatting up a pal of mine at my school, so he wanted to meet her.

You gotta understand, my school is not into co-ed dorms, so we were kinda at a loss for where to sleep him. I asked my brother who had an apartment off campus, but he was about to get hitched so he was like - no way, I'm too freaked. I don't know why I didn't figure on that. Anyhow, I was like, okay so you can crash in the lounge in the guys' dorm, but he wasn't cool with that. My roommate was away, so I snuck him in, but like... I was totally into Amos - I wasn't gonna spend the night with his friend in a dorm, so I forced this other chick to crash with us. Plus we had a mouse problem, so no one was willing to crash on the floor, so we pulled the two beds together, and I slept between Chick and the wall, and Friend was on her other side, so I was all appropriate-like. (as if!)

So anyway, we shoved Friend off back to school, and things were pretty cool. A coupla days later, Amos sprained his ankle, so he couldn't come out to see me. I managed to find a bud who went to college with Amos and was heading back to my college town by car, so he picked up Amos and brought him to hang with me.

I was so into him. All I wanted was to mack on him. All very appropriate, fully clothed stuff. Chick and Roommate both showed up. All was well, we were dressed. Good stuff. I remember a lot of music with Amos. Especially Dire Straits "Romeo and Juliet" and some Paul Simon, and Simon and Garfunkel. Whenever I hear Romeo and Juliet, I still think about him.

Anyway, we got together a few more times. His dad met me once - he came to pick us up so we could go back to his place. That time, we slept in separate rooms, because I was feeling guilty about co-sleeping. His folks totally wouldn't have cared. I didn't meet his mom or sisters or anything. Just his dad. Apparently, his dad was impressed with me.

The next time we got together, he took me for a walk in the woods on his campus, and he broke up with me. He kept singing two songs that day. "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and Tracy Chapman's "Baby Can I Hold You Tonight." I was pretty messed up about that, but I was never mad at him. Just sad.

So why am I posting this? Why does this even warrant a blip on this radar? Because every time I hear any of those songs, I start missing him all over again. And also because the passion I had for him - it seems to be missing from my repertoire now. I love my husband. He's incredible. I'd give anything for him, but I don't feel that breathless desire to mack on him. And more than that, Amos has been showing up in my mind way too much. I swim, and sometimes, in the pool, I'm back with Amos, kissing him, loving him. Why? Why can't I give all of myself to my husband?