It is an odd feeling, suddenly to have the weight of that lifted from you. I think I didn’t realize at the time that even though I was mostly off the eggshells for the last decade, they were still there. I still waited for the next flare, the next insanity, the next whatever that sent me into the spiral of grief and fear and pain. Suddenly there is only silence.

I think any woman that has been thru abuse, whether it’s emotional or physical or a combination of the two, or even just watching a loved one live through their own has ingrained in them certain triggers. It simply does not matter how far you’ve grown past the event, it does not matter how much time has gone by or how much distance you have from the person. I’ve spent literally years in therapy trying to make myself whole again, and while the triggers are lessened, they still exist.

I cannot deal with screaming. I just cannot, it makes me shut down, or it makes me unleash my own fury. The problem is that my anger can scare me, I’ve tried so hard to not emulate what I had been so used to that if I feel angry it terrifies me because what if that means I have become all that I despised for so very long. Shutting down and taking a step back from it is just so much easier and so much less scary.

There are still things that I have not gotten away from. Spending so long just feeling like you were not enough, no matter how much you did or how hard you tried left this permanent need in me to please, to overdo, to push myself past my actual limits. It can be a double edged sword because while it gets me places, advances me in my life also takes me to the edge of proper functioning. I will work until I collapse, which is great for those I work for but has given me ulcers and migraines and put my personal relationships at risk. All to try to gain the approval or acceptance that was always just out of my reach.

I am terrified of physical contact in anger, whether it is against myself or someone else. I am the one that picks up the phone if I see something out of line and calls the police. While I make the call I hope against hope that the simple act of a stranger doing for that woman something that most will not (I know having lived thru it on more than one occasion) will give her the courage to walk away, run away, just get out. I have seen people look away, ignore what is going on right in front of their faces, tell themselves that it’s a personal matter and none of their business.

I am begging all of you, the next time you hear that screaming smashing thing fight, the next time you see a woman grabbed, shoved, pushed, pulled away, to do something, anything to try to help. Sometimes all that woman needs is to know that someone else gives a damn, that she is not alone in thinking this is not right, or more importantly just that she is not alone. It is easy to make excuses for those that we think love us, whether they are spouses, boyfriends, fathers or brothers. It is too easy to fall into the “it’s my fault” trap, had I been more careful on those eggshells this wouldn’t have happened, I wouldn’t have upset him, I deserve this for whatever reason. Logically you KNOW it’s not right, you KNOW you deserve more but the disconnect between what is logical and what is emotional can sometimes be too much to overcome. You spend your life making excuses for things you would never excuse yourself for.

I promise at some point I will get back to cheery happy “you won’t believe what happened to me posts”, I’m just working through some crap right now

My philosophy has always been that when life takes a giant crap on you there are two paths to take. You can either let yourself become the victim, which I did for a while when I was younger, or you can stand the hell up and fight back. Life is about growing, learning and becoming stronger, otherwise all you’re doing is making excuses.

I see people, know people who all the time use the horrible things that have happened to them as a crutch. Please hear me when I say there is a time for mourning, there is a time when you just need to break down, just need to feel the sorrow and the pain and think damn right now my life blows. Eventually though that corner needs to be turned, what’s happened has happened, you can’t change it and cannot undo it no matter how hard you try. Either you bask in the suck of it and make it the reason that your life can “never” be good or you learn from it, let it make you stronger.

This current round of bullshit will also pass. It won’t be easy all the time, it will try to drag me down and while occasionally I will allow myself to bask in the suck of it, the majority of my time will be spent using it as yet another life lesson and yet another thing to make me stronger and better.

So as I’m sure you locals know my father flipped the fuck out. I’m not just talking about the flip the fuck out that my family and I were used to. I’m talking giant, public, flaming, news at 11 flip out.

After the initial blitz of crap that came from it where nearly everyone I’ve ever known or worked with called or emailed or facebooked or whatever’d me died down I was left with some reflection. In a way it’s kind of like a giant release. Suddenly all those who wondered why I was always so weird around him, or why I didn’t seem to care for him understand or at least think they understand.

Now, finally, the ties that bind, those that have been holding us, gagging us for years are severed and I can talk freely. We’ve spent decades being yelled down, manipulated, and abused into submission and damnit I don’t have to be quiet anymore.

As I collect my thoughts more, as life settles into this new normal, which is not normal at all honestly, I plan on posting more. It’s cathartic, but most importantly if it helps just one person then it’s worth it. I know that out there there are thousands of women who are afraid. Women who don’t know what they will do to set him off next- those who don’t believe they’re good enough because they’ve spent so long being told about all of their faults and all of the things that they do wrong. I know what it’s like to not know whether you’ll make it thru the night without yelling, praying that just one week will go by without a blow up, without the shit being thrown and the fists coming at you. You are not alone, you can survive it, you can be stronger.

Let me put all this health care debate into real person perspective for you. For those of you that are regular readers, or up to date readers you know about my cancer scare. You all know my mother had breast cancer at the young age of 40. My Doctor, and all other doctors recommend that i have regular mammograms starting at age 30. I am now 31. I went through the scare, the sleepless nights, the unexpected medical expenses of just the copays and prescriptions and the quite real fear that I was going to end up being sick, not cold sick, Cancer sick.

I have insurance, our insurance isn’t great, but it’s not horrible. Thankfully I have a company that takes a lot of the expense of coverage for me. Thankfully for my coverage for my husband and myself I don’t go broke every paycheck trying to just keep us insured. However, even my insurance, my fairly good insurance largely failed me. Two months after my cancer scare I got a bill from the medical imaging facility that had provided my biopsy and mammogram and ultrasound. Apparently my insurance decided to cover a portion but not all of my bill for services. I owe them an additional $200+. Granted for my husband and I this is not a HUGE amount of money, it’s painful but it won’t force us to skip bills. For others, that single bill means they no longer have money to pay rent, buy food, buy gas to get to and from the job that will pay for what the insurance will not.

After getting and opening the bill, hubby of mine looked at me and said you know, if you’d really been sick one or both of us would have probably had to file bankruptcy. The sad part is, he’s completely right. We were one positive test result away from not only dealing with months of chemo or surgery and recovery or radiation, based on what my insurance DID cover vs what it did not we would have been drowning by this point in medical bills.

So please, pretty please do not tell me that we do not as a country need some type of healthcare reform. Please do not tell me that it is OK for an insurance company to suddenly decide that someone who is sick, and has been sick for years is no longer “insurable” forcing them to go to an insurance plan where they still pay hundreds of dollars of month that in the end saves them some money but not what it should. Personally, having a parent who has reached the “uninsurable” level and seeing what they go through with what they pay just to get SOME level of coverage I think the insurance companies already have their own Death Panels, composed of people just looking out for the bottom line, just trying to get that profit.

I can only assume that the people out there protesting, holding the signs, making a scene have either never been sick, or had a scare, or seen a friend or relative go bankrupt or go without care simply because they cannot afford to get the care they need. They’ve never gotten a bill, a letter from an insurance company saying that test to see if you had cancer? Yeah you didn’t really NEED that so we’re not paying it, even though you give us thousands of dollars a year. Either that or they’re all on the insurance company payrolls. I hope my country wakes up soon, gets past whatever this bullshit is that is holding us back and making us all look insane. Perhaps we need to have a sane people rally, where we can all show up and just stand there quietly saying thank you that someone finally is intent on making a change.

Umm…. Lets break this down shall we?

Naked Men = Good

Hot Men = Good

Yoga = Good

Hot Yoga = Yeah that’s good too

Hot Men doing hot yoga= I’m all on board for that

Naked men, doing hot yoga, that’s where something in my head just snaps a little. It’s one of those moments where the individual components all are fantastic on their own or in smaller combinations. It reminds me of the friends episode where Rachel is making the thanksgiving dessert, and the pages of her magazine get together and before you know it she’s made a concotion of Ladyfingers, Strawberries, Whipped Cream and Beef Browned with peas and onions. All by themselves all excellent, the first three ingredients excellent, the last three also excellent. Together, one hot mess.

Yoga is a calming thing, it’s a centering things, it’s all about strenghthening and elongating and releasing stress. It is also a thing which can contain poses that while fine, hell even lovely with your pants on just get a little weird when they’re off- and that applies to the ladies and the mens. I for one am just not sure I could watch, much less follow a naked hot man getting his downward facing dog on. I’m not sure if it would be more laughter or sheer horror and shock that would get me, but one of them sure as hell would.

I can’t help but wonder if I’m the only one who notices this.. but then again I did catch the hymen plucento on that coffee commercial and according to my top search phrases lots of people caught that too.

If the rednecks know how to get online and get to our site I’m super excited to see what kind of stuff they post about. I’m sure I’ll find at least a few interesting things to share with you all…

I actually was on a plane into the ‘ville with Meatloaf one Derby Eve, and he stood next to me at the baggage claim- I still wish that I’d taken the chance to ask him then, cause you know obviously that’s a question he doesn’t get all the time.