My Skeleton Has Scars

Today's post is a really hard one to share. It is not happy, not even a little bit. These are my raw thoughts. My heart has crumbled, it has blown away. Who I was a few months ago is not even able to be revived, she's gone. Instead, the skeleton left behind is in pain, it is broken, and it has no option but to hang on to the grain of hope that someday something will come of this. Someday I pray there is beauty from these ashes because right now I'm not seeing it as a possibility. So here is my post:

Today the urge feels a bit stronger than I am. It started about nine years ago, maybe ten years now. For a while I just gave in. I tried to go with it because I am not strong enough to fight it.  I did what it wanted. Between scars, pills, anger, and the like, I went with each wave.

At some point I stopped. Well, I went to camp. I was forced to go to camp. I despised church camp and the church I went with.  The fights between my mom and I grew as she continued to make me go to church and also the extra activities that came up along the way. Great. Each one physically pained me. I went to church each Sunday and Wednesday for months, fighting back tears of rage and doing my best to avoid talking to anyone. I was pretty good at it too, people stopped trying to talk with me and they let me serve with the children because that was the only place I seemed even slightly happy.

Today the memories and the thoughts are piling up. Three sessions of therapy did nothing. I was classified a “crisis”. Yes, they flat out told me I was a crisis case. Awesome. Counseling didn’t do anything. I spent hours in an office saying whatever happened to pop into my head. I do not like talking. I do not like babbling. Therapy was all about babbling. My counselor called back yesterday to set up another appointment. It didn’t seem like a good use of money so the appointment was declined and she took me off the list.

A month after it happened, I met my current boyfriend when I was out dancing. I was sitting on a stool watching everyone else dance by, jealous that nobody asked me to dance. That wasn’t new to me though, it was just confirmation of the things I’ve been able to accept years ago. He came and asked for a dance. I said ok. We had small talk during the dance like names, occupations, where we are from. It was great. After the song I walked off the floor and he tried to start up a conversation. Actually, he stood there and didn’t say much while I tried to keep up the conversation so I would seem rude. After about 10 minutes I got bored and told him to have a good night and come ask me to dance later, if he wanted to. He said okay and I walked off. I rejoined my friend that I had come there with and we talked for about a half hour. He returned and asked for my number. Being an idiot and super excited a boy asked for my number, I gave it to him. He waited two days to text me. I was convinced he forgot about me, after all, he had forgotten my name when he came back to ask for my number. Red flag.

We’ve been dating three months. We got engaged a month ago. I know, engaged after a couple months of dating, I must be crazy. I am.

How did I get engaged so quickly? I’ve been making poor choices. One such poor choice was going out dancing with my boyfriend and a huge group of my friends. I’ve done it before and managed to stay safe. I know my limit of four drinks and I stick to it. The boyfriend and I had had a fight earlier that day about sex. He wanted it, said he needed it, and I wanted to wait for marriage. We’ve had this fight dozens of times and we never reach a common conclusion. He hears what he wants, I cave because he begs and pleads and whines. That’s how I got into a rough situation a few months ago, same exact formula. I had plans to stay at my brother’s apartment that night. Boyfriend wanted me to stay at a hotel with him but I told him no. He kept bringing me drinks. He knew my limit too. He surpassed it by several drinks. Joke’s on him, I ended up blackout drunk and threw up in his truck, several times. He took me to a hotel, telling my friends that he would take care of me, and he did.

I woke up the next morning naked, next to him. He tells me I started the sex. He had stripped me down to get me showered off, so naturally he stripped down too. Then he says he tried to put me to bed but I climbed on top of him and started having sex with him. That sounds nothing like me and I don’t remember much of the night. I was the crazy prude who didn’t want to kiss anyone until she could kiss her husband on her wedding day when the Rabbi told him to kiss the bride. I was the girl who didn’t want to hold hands until she was engaged. I was the girl who wanted to date for at least a year and then be engaged for at least a year before getting married. My life isn’t supposed to be like this!

We fought about that night. I tried to break up with him. He knew how I felt about sex before marriage. He is twice my size and he was in his right mind. He was the one who had brought me drinks. He knew my past and he had heard my story. He saw tears streaming down my face when I finally verbalized what had happened with the last one. He promised he would take care of me. After my 30 minute break-up speech, he talked me into staying with him. He told me I am amazing. I told him I am used goods and he told me that it wasn’t his fault; I was the one who started it.

I believe him. That makes me question the first one. Maybe I’m just some girl who wants to be the victim so that she doesn’t have to own up to her own mistakes.

At my grandfather’s funeral, I learned that my dad had been married before my mom. I was about six. The next few years revealed that they got married after I was born, because I was born. Neither of them have been happy married; it doesn’t take an adult to see that. They got married because of me. If I had not been born, they wouldn’t have been stuck with each other.

If I had not gone to the small town dance New Year’s Eve, maybe I would have a completely different life right now. Maybe I would be whole, maybe I would be pure, and maybe I would still have a future. The “maybe game” does nothing but give me panic attacks these days. I used to be able to play it and imagine a life with a loving husband, children, animals, land, and a career that I love. All surrounded by my family and his family and all of us get along great and everyone is happy to see each other when we visit.

Today I am resigned. If I marry this man I am engaged to, I pray it is a happy marriage, but I do not want children anymore. If he leaves me, I will be strong enough to make it in life on my own. I will not subject another person to being in a relationship with me. The man that I have prayed for deserves someone that is whole and pure and lovely. The woman I strived to be is dead. So today, I am tired.

I am tired of the mask I wear when people ask me about my first breakup. My family knows the guy and his family well, they all live in a small town together. I ran into his mom when I was doing clinicals at a local hospital and she informed me he told her we broke up because I was planning on going to Texas to work when I graduated. That makes the breakup my fault instead of his because it was easier for him to explain it that way instead of telling his family the truth.

My dad doesn’t know why we broke up. He told my mom that I am just being dramatic. I probably am.

My brother told me that people go through things that are much worse than what I’ve gone through so I need to just get over it. I do.

My mom told me I need to stop being alone with boys because bad things keep happening. She’s probably right because both of these bad situations have been my fault.

My mentor told me I was silly when I told her I wanted to wait for my first kiss until my wedding day. Then she questioned if I was sleeping with my first boyfriend when he raped me. That shows she believes it was my fault, because it probably was.

My friends tell me I need to break up with my current boyfriend/fiancé. They don’t think I can run my own life or make my own decisions.

Boyfriend thinks I don’t give enough to him. He says he changed his whole life for me because he saw me and fell in love. He says I haven’t changed anything for him. I told him he doesn’t have to stay and he says he does because he loves me. This is fight #7364 about me not putting out. He gets mad I am going to have too much time taken up with class, clinicals, homework, and work which will leave me no time with him. However, he thinks I should be spending every night with him, otherwise I’m the one tearing us apart. I probably don’t submit enough, I’ve already slept with him and who needs to be a nurse anyway. I just need to work on time management.

The urge to just slip away and no longer be here is getting stronger. I’m being pulled limb from limb, drowning, burning alive, and suffocating under the weight of this life. Yes, there are so many ways I could make my life easier, for now I feel like the L-rd is telling me to sit still and let things happen as they happen.