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Entry: I have realized that
my anger-triggers come from two sources: my childhood abuse and the subsequent
illness tragedies in my family, and from my promiscuous encounters. When I was
young, I could defend the encounters as youthful exploration. Now older, the encounters
have become more damaging. I feel out of control and used and taken for granted
or rejected. This causes hurt, then anger, then explosions of rage. Being
rejected feels like being banished from the life of another, the fun and joy of
that life. It pricks me like my first rejection from the boyfriend SD, whom I
had admired and whom I thought of as a great guy. It also pricks at the teenage
banishment and rejection of being kicked out of the house I had lived in since
birth. Always being reprimanded and ridiculed as a child and teenager took from
me the power of my voice as relevant and important. I stopped being able to
effectively communicate my feelings and needs to others. This allowed men to
come on to me when I did not want the attention. My inability to vocalize my
true needs allowed me to let many various men take from me what they wanted
without me demanding consideration. I essentially became a caged bird, like
Maya Angelou wrote of, allowing degradation and arguable rape situations to occur.
Like Asha in The Prisoner’s Wife,
I engaged in these encounters but yet I separated myself from the actual event.
My soul was absent most of the time. I acted in a way I thought I was supposed
to act, sexually. I did things I thought the men would like. I relied then, on
the men to be good to me, instead of requiring it. Many men have used me for
sex and nothing more. Some men I became tenuous friends with. Mostly, I shut
down so that I wouldn’t feel I cared that they were using me. Some still
contact me and to this day they have no idea that I feel they hurt me. I don’t
understand, yet, why I have behaved the way I have, why I have let myself be
abused. Maybe it is because I became accustomed to abuse as a child so that
abuse seemed to be natural. I have also noticed that I have almost a compulsive
urge to argue and disagree. I almost feel unsettled when things in an intimate
relationship do not include battle. If there is nothing to fight about, I push
a fight. I allow my discontent with myself to fuel the fire. I believe this has
everything to do with growing up in turmoil and constant bickering. If all you
know is fighting or passivity, you fight or you are submissive. Both are
extremes. Each perpetuates abuse. One is the abuser, the other allows for abuse.
These are some of the issues I must work out. The first step is to stop having
sex because it is when I have sex that I begin to feel I lose control of a
situation and am unable to express who I really am. I must engage everyone, at
this point, on a level only of friendship. I have to find out what that means,
though.
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