Guilt
When I first started to remember all the shit from when I was little it drove me mad. I felt like my entire universe was falling apart and then some. Nothing in the world made sense and everything in it was terrifying. I'll never forget the one night when I remembered the name of one of the girls that was being abused with me. I was in bed with my girlfriend at the time and I woke up from a dead sleep. And I mean woke up. I was 100% awake and ready to run and I just shouted out the name Christine. I then proceeded to panic. Of course my then girlfriend woke up to my shout and couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. Looking back it's kind of funny. Here I am in bed asleep and all of a sudden BAMM- I just remember a detail like that. It's shocking to they system. I felt sick and my world felt like it was crashing down again.
Every since I was little I hated being called Christine. It would drive me NUTs. It's one of the main reasons I started going by Chris- because people couldn't get it through their fucking heads that my name ended in a god dammed A and not a fucking E. Anger. Intense- I want to rip out your fucking through for calling me that anger. It makes me defensive and makes me want to run away.
Until last night as I was sitting on the sofa watching a show I never realized that my anger at being called Christine could be directly related to my anger over all this shit. Not sure, I have the hardest time figuring out where my anger is, who it is, what triggers it and who it's staring down at any given time. But- this whole connection to getting so fucking pissed off at something as little as a name does suddenly seem to make more sense overall.
So the real reason why I am writing this whole thing actually has nothing to do with that revelation. Apparently I am completely avoiding the real reason why I decided to write.
Ever since I remembered her name, and then a few years later their last name I had always felt this immense guilt. Somehow without a name none of it happened. It was only some fucked up business going on in my head that wasn't real and if i simply ignored it then it would go away. (yeah I've learned the hard way that shit doesn’t work). When they had names they became people. Living beings- one of whom was someone that I see as myself in a way. Call it dissociation or whatever but I swear in my head she looks exactly like me only a year or 2 younger. Abused. Scared. Nowhere to run or hide. Only I got to leave. I got to go home and get away. It disappeared from memory as soon as it happened each time and I got to continue to ignore it completely after those years passed and our families weren’t friends anymore. But she had to stay. Live there. Be there. Exist there with 2 people in her household that were going to be there to cause her pain.
In my mind and dreams terrible things always happen to her:
SHe goes crazy, gets hooked on drugs, ends up on the street.
She commits suicide after long bouts of depression.
She sees me one day at some random place and comes over and slaps me across the face.
My family finally figures out who and decides both are families should suddenly get together for a reunion and I find out all the other sick details I really don't want to know she faced each day.
Overall, in my mind, she's dead or miserable.
I've tried to find her a ton of times. But spelling how I remember, as a kid with dyslexia is impossible. I never heard things right anyway so now let's try digging that out of my head 23 years later.
Izzy has helped me. Never with success.
I feel guilty I never told anyone. I feel that all the terrible things that happened to us after the first time, and happened to her after I left the picture are direction and completely my fault. I failed. I let everyone down. All i see in myself through all this is a some weak person who didn't do shit to fix anything. Who didn't fight, who didn't yell and scream and who didn't protect others or myself.
This weekend has been a bit of a hard one. Well not just the weekend the last 3 or 4 weeks in particular. I feel really depressed, lack of motivation, running isn't helping, and all I want to generally do is take drugs and forget. A beer a night is my little treat for making it through a day without ripping off my skin because FUCK i just don't even know where to put all this self hate.
I mean wow. It's against my chest and I can't get the weight of it off and I am just suffocating.
Last night I am watching a movie and I ask izzy to help me look again and we go to some website to figure out how to spell foreign last names and wham. There is there last name. So we go to facebook of all places and type it in and there they are. Took like 2 fucking minutes. After 23 years it takes 2 minutes to finally find them. Scary and really makes me want to hide. But, there they are and both the girls have smiling pictures and seem happy enough. I feel some sense of relief. They are alive. That makes me feel AMAZING. All those terrible dreams seem more distant. I don't know it doesn’t really give me any more answers than that.