"As the twig is bent, so the wound is set." is the phrase that I often use to describe my 'differentness'. My 'bent' on life, my 'woundedness'. Sometimes I just don't have the strength to fight and I end up staying in bed and pulling the covers over my head, in effect effect saying "You win, I'm dead inside!"
I missed the SNAP, Survivor's Network of those Abused by Priests, conference in Washington, D.C. I was given a scholarship to attend but I'm unable to attend. I attend as many of the local SNAP meetings as possible. However, I have surgery to take place on Monday and it would not be wise for me to go out of town at this time. I miss alot of events because of my health issues. I believe my physical health is linked to my emotional and psychological health. Here's the link to SNAP's website.
://www.snapnetwork.org/
Last night I realized that the reason I feel dead inside is because I feel my American dream died. My name is Ida, pronounced "e-dah" in the European manner, because I was born in Slovenia and went to school in Austria before coming to America.
My first American dream was to grow up to become President of the United States.
It was the vote on Sonia Sotomayor. It was a combination of my jealousy and my fear. I was jealous of her good-fortune in having her work recognized and having people helping her along the way to reach her American Dream. I wondered if Sonia's dream once had been, to become President of the United States. It was fear that Sotomayor had sold out to the cultural forces in the country, both political and judicial, who seek sexualize children by claiming that laws protecting children infringe on the constitutional rights of the predator. I know many of you don't quite get it even though I did address this issue in my first diary and continue to address this issue in my comments on this and other blogs.
I have to tread carefully because my life experience is different. I seldom find people who can understand my life experience as a survivor of sexual abuse by a priest. An example is here. http://www.dailykos.com/...
I know (I mean KNOW) that there is an oligarchy that intends make the sexual mentoring of children normal. There actually is a cultural movement of politicians and judges who are out there to protect the constitutional rights of the sexual predator.
Some TU's (Trusted Users) have raised shrill unreasonable criticism of my comments and I believe have wrongly given me 'donuts'. Some have wrongly called me a bigot and a troll when I perceive the bigotry and trollishness was emanating from them! Then they conveniently hide my comments, while leaving their responses to my 'alleged' comments on the blog. I have to wonder what I said wrong. Others tell me to try and find out how I offended them, causing them to hide my comments.
Some think only their GLBTQ identity is good enough and that I'm not GLBTQ-enough. It's GLBTQ-my-way-or-the-highway. I suspect that I've tasted and seen more flavors of GLBTQ than most dKos members. Since I was on a quest, for my American dream, I went to Olympic heights as well as to the proverbial 'dark night of the soul'. I'm more about telling the story of what I have experienced than labeling and judging. Not so for a small-horde of TU's (Trusted Users) who deliberately gang up on me, misquote me, then troll-rate me. They are an ugly bunch telling me that my experience isn't true and needs to be hidden from the dKos community.
I've been to that kind of crazy-making-place before.
As a survivor, I know the suffering of the child who is manipulated into satisfying adult sexual desire. I was exposed to this when Sister Mary Evelyn called me into the principal's office to tell me that God had "chosen me" for being special and that it was okay for me to "see things, hear things, that that other people did not see or hear." Sister then gave me a book on the lives of female Saints, other women to whom God had spoken and she told me not to be afraid. Oh yes, the good priest had done a number on me. I was a special kind of nut. Not that I understood that at my tender age.
I was in 7th Grade when I tried to kill myself. I had seen the face of evil and I was told that it was the face of God.
If, as Jungians (I once served on the Editorial Board of the Jung Institute's magazine, Transformation) believe, that there are no accidents in life and that there is a collective unconcious where the magical/divine/scientific tapestry is being woven; then there must be some reason for my frequent encounters with the evil/face-of-God of child sexualization. The abuse of power.
I've seen that kind of crazy-making from politicians, too.
I worked in politics, both as a Press Secretary and a lobbyist. It was in my political work that I discovered how deep into psyche of the political and judicial leadership the goals of promoting the constitutional rights of the sexual predator and the sexualization of children was as a national agenda. Among most people, childhood is a sacred boundary that adults protect. Not so with many politicians and judges. Many have as their dream the sexualization of children and protecting the sexual rights of the predator.
The constant stress, fight versus flight finally broke-down my immune system and caused me to suffer with lupus/scleroderma, followed by so many complications that I became physically disabled.
Of all the politicians that have deliberately tried to hurt me (Blagojevich is one of them. I e-mailed Whoopie Goldberg on The View to ask her to have Blagojevich apologize to me for hurting me) Rahm and a handful of others, did not interfere when his staff reached out to help me. For some reason Rahm Emanuel detached himself from hitting me like the political pinata I have become.
I fitfully fell asleep at dawn on Friday. My whole body still aches. My head hurts. I feel anxious and tearful. I remain fearful and broken. I remain convinced that child sexualization prevents me from living a healthy, happy and productive life.
As one woman, Sonia Sotomayor achieved her American Dream, I applauded with ambivalence. My American Dream died when I was a child. I no longer think I was merely bent. I think my childhood was killed. I think I died as a child. I wonder what the Supreme Court will eventually say about the constitutional rights of the sexual predator. I wonder if I will ever stop being afraid. I wonder what my life would have been like if my childhood had not been killed. I wonder what my life would have been like if along the way people helped me. Or, if the politicians, hadn't agreed to hurt me for political gain. The most egregious one, Blagojevich, sold me out (by interferring in my healthcare, which almost sounds implausible, but it's documented by Dr. Carol Adams and confirmed by Blagojevich's lawyer Matt Ryan) for a shot at the Presidency. More than one powerful person, politician, lobbyist, lawyer, judge, has admitted that they were told to destroy me or at least not help me or even to talk to me.
Crazy-making? Only if I let them. When I talked on the phone with Dr. Thomas Szasz, author of "Insanity and Ideology" he advised me that it was futile to fight-back when the government leaders want to hurt you. Dr. Szasz said they were going to do what they could to scare me and then they would label me. Dr. Szasz told me the only control I had, was self-control. No crying, screaming, ranting. No reason to have anyone see me as anything but a calm and rational human being.
My American Dream is to heal meself, heal my hurt child, heal my frightened teen, heal my wounded woman. Then I think my body would finally heal me. My latest diagnosis given to me by a surgeon is "scar bones created by sclerodermic scar tissue". Perhaps my body makes scar bones to make up for the lack of a spinebone in confronting the trials in my life. I'd rather cringe under the covers in bed, than face life. I've become afraid of life. I feel even more afraid when I see Blagojevich mugging-it-up on the comedy stage and posing as a wounded Christ. Rod on stage in a Second City send-up, "Rod Blagojevich,, Superstar." I see Blagojevich doing his Elvis impersonation. I would love to go mano-a-mano on The View. I think I could make Blagojevich cringe. I would like Blago to hear what happened to me, when the jail gates closed behind me and I spent 6 days and nights in Cook County Jail while the politicians threatened me with psychiatric hospitalization, medication and electro-shock, unless I pleaded guilty to multiple charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Blagojevich knows what happened to me. I doubt he was treated the way I was treated. I would love to share our "NOTES BEHIND BARS". Blago can karaoke Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock". I could sing "Midnight Special". I will e-mail Simon Cowell.
Did you have an American dream?