Liz7803's Journal

I went to couples therapy today. I told my therapist that alot of the pain I am experiencing is from my early childhood emotional abuse and that I had to start writing about it, to get it out of my head and on to the paper. My husband's infidelity was the trigger, and also created the worst pain I can remember, but it also opened a Pandora's box, a black whirlpool that sucked me down into a terrible dark place.

 I have been on Effexor for two and a half years, since I found out overtly of my husband's fucking around on me. I say "overtly" because I knew that he was deceiving me for several years, but just didn't know the specific facts. I am very grateful for the effexor; it helped me survive a terrible time in my life. It also was like undergoing a biochemical lobotomy: I felt about 10-15% of my emotions, and the rest was just not there. I also lost my sexual identity. I didn't care if I ever had sex again, whereas before that I had been multiorgasmic.  I felt like a eunuch.  I finally healed enough to face the terror and pain, and now have been off of it for about 3 weeks. I feel dazed by the pain I now feel. Small things tell me that my husband is still lying to me, and I don't know if he will ever be brave enough to tell me the truth, or relate to me in a truthful manner. I may have to accept him as a deceitful person, or get him out of my life. I don't think he is cheating on me now, but since he has to hold on to the lies about what happened, I feel very unsafe around him. I still feel he wanted me dead, so he could have the material things I possess, and our son, and submissive sexual partners to fufill his sexual fantasies on demand. Since he was found out, and the shame has kicked in, he denies wanting me dead then or now, but I just don't believe him.

He also killed my belief in love between a man and woman. In a strange way, that is why I let him stay around: I don't believe anyone else would be any different. We had sexual obsession, which lasted several years, but when it wore off, he blamed me for not feeling good about himself, and started pornography, internet sex, gambling and sex with other women. 

 To begin the story of my life, I feel like I am sitting at a dinner table and there is an elephant on the table in front of me, and somehow I have to eat it. I guess I will start one bite at a time, and just go back to the very beginning, to the earliest memories, and just be there emotionally, as it was then.

My earliest memories are at about 2 years old.  We live in a place called California, and I am cold alot because my mother says it is so warm in California that we don't need coats or sweaters. I have colds all the time, and cough and the snot runs down my nose. I rub it because my nose itches, and my father tells me that I will rub my nose into a squashed mushed up ball mixed with snot and it will stay that way. He looks at me with disgust. I am sitting under a pine tree with my 5 year old sister and 4 year old brother. It is a secret place, and the grown-ups can't see us.  They have a bag of cotton balls and tell me that it is candy. They make me eat one, and laugh when I spit it out. One day, my dad comes home with a present for my brother. It is a Roy Rogers  cowboy hat and two capguns that fit in a belt. I tell my mother that I want a cowboy hat too. She tells me not to ask for things. I remember a lady coming to our house. She is skinny and very old and her teeth are black. Mother tells me that she is the landlady. I didn't understand, so mom explained that the house we live in is not ours, it belongs to this lady. It is Halloween and I go trick or treating with my brother and sister. We go to a house where there is a very tall man who fills up the whole doorway. I am very afraid of him, and won't go up to the door and cry.

 CHINESE DINNER

I am very little, three years old, and we go to Chinatown to have dinner. It is very strange in Chinatown, with lots of smells and lights and stores with strange things. I have never had a meal out of my house before, and am excited to have dinner in a new place called a restaurant. We go into a shop, and there are many different things to look at. A very ugly Chinese  man, with a round face, and fat, with big black moles and strange eyes is talking with my parents. They come over to me, where I am standing with my older brother and sister. He has a little wooden box, in the palm of his hand, and he opens it up. It has a little round button in the middle, that looks like a sponge. He tells me that it is a magic box, and that I should press the button. I refuse to, and try to pull away. He tells me to push the button. Then my father tells me to push the button, and I look at my mother, and she tells me to push the button. I don't want to, but I push the button. There is a razor blade in the button, and it cuts my finger. Everyone laughs, and I cry, and I know that my mother and father don't love me. I look at the blood running down my hand and suck my finger. My mother tells me not to cry.